Without A Net

Training Video on YouTube: AutoCAD 2010 UI Changes

I just posted a new video to the Autodesk section of YouTube:

User Interface Changes in AutoCAD 2010

The video is about 23 minutes in length and is intended to provide an overview of some of the main changes that we made to the UI in AutoCAD 2010. This is the first in a series of videos that I'll be posting that focuses on changes to legacy features and functionality in 2010.

Next week, most Autodesk employees in the US will be observing a company shutdown and taking some vacation time. This is one of the many steps we've taken to help manage expenses in the current economic climate. Critical systems (including product support) will still have staffing and coverage during the week but if it seems quiet on the various blogs, RSS feeds and Twitter accounts ... now you know why.

See you on the other side.

Hotfix - Autodesk Design Review 2010

Using Autodesk^® Design Review 2010 default print settings to print to PDF may result in large print spooling sizes, low-quality output, or printing errors.

The following Hotfix addresses these issues:

Hotfix - Autodesk Design Review 2010

Changing the AutoCAD Text Window Length

I recently received a question from a customer asking how to increase the history length of the AutoCAD text window. As I recall, this used to exposed in the Options dialog but seems to have vanished over time. The default for the text window is 400 lines, meaning that you can press F2 and always see the last 400 lines of whatever has scrolled by at the command line, but sometimes this just isn't long enough and you want to be able to look back further.

You can set the history length of the text window by issuing the following statement at the AutoCAD command line:

Command: (setenv "CmdHistLines" "1000")

In this example, I'm setting the history length to 1000 lines. The allowable range is between 25 lines and 2048 lines. If you try to set a value outside that range, it will default to the last used length. This new value gets saved to the current profile.

If you want to find out the current history length, you can type the following:

Command: (getenv "CmdHistLines")
"1000"

Note that "CmdHistLines" is case-sensitive and must be entered that way. Also, the length value must be included within quotes as shown.

So, while not a new trick by any stretch (it's been around for years), maybe it's new to some of you.

2010 Causing License Activation Crashes in 2009

We have discovered a recent problem that can cause an AutoCAD 2009 product, when installed on the same computer as an AutoCAD 2010 product, to crash while trying to activate a stand-alone license.

The issue is that some products in the AutoCAD 2010 product line are creating an "AdLMInfoPath" key in the registry but leaving the value blank. This registry key is used to identify the path to the location where serial number information will be stored when a stand-alone license is activated for a particular product. This information is referenced during activation to find serial number information for prior versions of a product that may be already be installed.

When a product using the 2009 version of AdLM is installed, side-by-side, on a machine with one of these 2010 products, the 2009 product can crash when trying to activate a stand-alone license. It makes no difference what order the products were installed, only that they are installed on the same computer. We have identified the following 2010 products as setting a blank "AdLMInfoPath" registry key:

AutoCAD MEP 2010

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.1\ACAD-9006:409]
"AdLMInfoPath"=""

AutoCAD Architecture 2010

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.1\ACAD-9004:409]
"AdLMInfoPath"=""

AutoCAD Structural Detailing 2010

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.0\ACAD-8030:409]
"AdLMInfoPath"=""

The workaround for this problem is to delete the blank "AdLMInfoPath" key from the registry of these 2010 products. This will allow the 2009 product to successfully activate its stand-alone license.

Note: This problem only applies to the 2010 products listed above and the registry key should not be deleted unless it is blank.

This information is also available in the following solution on the Autodesk Services & Support Web site:

AutoCAD 2009 Crashes During Activation of a Stand-alone License

Deploying Design Review 2010

I was asked a couple of times last week how Design Review 2010 can be deployed to multiple machines as the download is for a web installer which requires an active internet connection.

The answer to this is to download via the Additional Install Option link which is shown in the image below:

 

After selecting the deploy Autodesk Design Review option you can choose between two installation methods, the Bootstrap Installer (MSI) and the Executable Installer:

 

To deploy Autodesk Design Review you should select the MSI download option.

For full instructions on deploying Design Review 2010 you should refer to the installation guide which can be viewed here:

Autodesk Design Review Install Guide

 

FLEXnet Licensing Hotfix for 64-bit Windows

A new hotfix is available to correct potential crashing problems with the FLEXnet Licensing Service on Microsoft Windows 64-bit platforms when launching an Autodesk® 2010 product. The crash may occur on startup during the Activation Licensing Service process and is usually accompanied by the message:

Activation Licensing Service has encountered a problem and needs to close.

This problem only occurs with Autodesk 2010 products installed on 64-bit Windows platforms.

The hotfix can be downloaded from the Autodesk Service and Support site:

FLEXnet Licensing Hotfix for 64-bit Windows

Parametric Constraints Training Video on YouTube

A couple of posts back I mentioned that I was preparing training materials that covered the new Parametric Design feature in AutoCAD 2010. That training video has been finished and published to the Autodesk section of YouTube:

Parametric Constraints in AutoCAD 2010

The video is about 30 minutes in length and is intended to provide a fairly comprehensive overview of parametric constraints. Because of time constraints (get it?) I couldn't cover everything, hence the recent blog postings of lesser known parametric tips.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Parametrics Tip: PARAMETERCOPYMODE

Continuing with lesser known tips for working with parametric constraints, I want to familiarize you with the PARAMETERCOPYMODE system variable.

PARAMETERCOPYMODE affects how geometric and dimensional constraints get created when copying constrained objects. PARAMETERCOPYMODE controls how constraints are copied both within the same drawing and when copying to another drawing.

When PARAMETERCOPYMODE is 0, no constraints get copied – only the objects themselves. This applies to copies created in the source drawing as well as copies pasted into another drawing.

Copying Within the Same Drawing

When PARAMETERCOPYMODE is set to 1, copies of constrained objects will include all associated constraints. Dimensional constraint names will automatically be incremented to ensure they are unique. This is as much as you can do with PARAMETERCOPYMODE when copying within the same drawing; all other values for the system variable only affect copying across drawings.

Copying Across Drawings

There are four settings (other than 0) that affect how constraints are copied when pasting into another drawing. Each higher setting builds on the lower settings.

When PARAMETERCOPYMODE is set to 1, copies of constrained objects will include all constraints. Constraint expressions that reference user variables will be copied using fixed constraint values. In the following example, dimensional constraint rad3 references user variable Var1 in its expression:

Constraints and variables in the source drawing

When copying to another drawing, the copy of the rad3 dimensional constraint gets set to the original value of Var1 and the user variable is no longer included.

Copy created in the target drawing with PARAMETERCOPYMODE set to 1

PARAMETERCOPYMODE == 2 behaves just like PARAMETERCOPYMODE == 1 except that expressions will continue to reference user variables only if they already exist in the target drawing. Using the previous example, if the target drawing already had a Var1 user variable, the copied constraint expression would continue to reference it and use its local value.

Copy created in the target drawing with PARAMETERCOPYMODE set to 2

Building on that, PARAMETERCOPYMODE == 3 also forces expressions to reference user variables if they already exist in the target drawing. If the user variable does not already exist, a variable will be created using its original value.

Finally, PARAMETERCOPYMODE == 4 copies all constraints, variables and expressions and will create user variables as needed. There is a subtle but important difference between this setting and PARAMETERCOPYMODE == 3. Referring one last time to the example, if the Var1 user variable existed in the target drawing and had the same value as in the source drawing, it would be referenced by the copied constraints. If Var1 had a different value than the original, a new variable would be created using the original value and expressions would be updated to reference that new variable instead.

Copy created in the target drawing with PARAMETERCOPYMODE set to 4

Notice that a new Var2 variable was created and the copied expressions were updated to reference Var2 instead of the local Var1 variable. This is because the Var1 variable in the target drawing had a different value than the Var1 variable in the source drawing.

The value of PARAMETERCOPYMODE is saved in the registry and is unique to each AutoCAD user profile. The PARAMETERCOPYMODE setting is only referenced during the copy operation and not during the paste operation. This means that you could set PARAMETERCOPYMODE to 4, do a Ctrl+C, open a new drawing, set PARAMETERCOPYMODE to 0, do a Ctrl+V, and it will still copy all the constraints, variables and expressions.

Parametrics Tip: CCONSTRAINTFORM

A few days ago I was preparing some training on the new Parametric Design feature in AutoCAD 2010 and was reminded of how much I enjoy this new functionality. The next few posts from me will focus on some of the lesser known aspects of working with geometric and dynamic constraints.

There are three types of dimensional constraints:

• The dynamic type constrains objects to a value and displays a dimension-like representation. Dynamic constraints do NOT plot.
• The annotational type is identical to a dynamic dimensional constraint except that it displays using the current dimension style. Annotational constraints DO plot.
• The reference type doesn't constrain an object at all but simply displays the objects value using a dimension-like representation. Reference constraints do NOT plot.

Annotational constraints can be very useful in situations where you want to contrain an object and you want that value to display just like a dimension. In fact, an annotational constraint uses the current dim style and has all the same editable properties as a standard dimension.

To create an annotation contraint, you typically start by creating a dynamic constraint, selecting that constraint and then editing the Constraint Form field in Properties to change it from Dynamic to Annotational.

This process can get tedious if you have a lot of dynamic constraints that need to be turned into annotational constraints. Fortunately, there is a quicker way.

If you know ahead of time that what you want to apply are annotational constraints, you can set the CCONSTRAINTFORM system variable to 1. CCONSTRAINTFORM controls whether constraints are applied to objects as annotational or dynamic. When set to 0 (the default), DIMCONSTRAINT automatically creates dynamic constraints. When set to 1, DIMCONSTRAINT automatically create annotational constraints.

Using the CCONSTRAINTFORM system variable can save you time by sparing you from having to convert between dynamic and annotational constraints. Note: this system variable is only used during the initial creation of dimensional contraints. Once a dimensional constraint has been created, you would need to use Properties to convert between the two types.

Processing Error when using Online License Transfer Utility

In a network environment where internet access is restricted, only allowing communication to a specific list of IP addresses the Online License Transfer Utility (LTU) can fail with the following error message:

    

In this type of network environment, to allow the LTU to function normally the IP address 64.238.213.178 must not be blocked.

Thanks for this information goes to Aaron Hai, from the Product Support team based in our Singapore office.