Without A Net

Update to Autodesk Certified Hardware XML Database

An updated version of the Certified Hardware XML database has just been posted:

Certified Hardware XML Database Update

You may need to download this file if:

• You have new graphics hardware.
• You have a new driver version for your graphics hardware in the graphics hardware list.
• The status of your graphics card has changed in the database, e.g., the Status has changed from Supported to Certified.
• Autodesk or the graphics hardware vendor has resolved issues with your graphics hardware.

The current version of the Hardware Certification Database is 18.0.0.3. If the local version of your database is older than the current version, then your database should be updated.

As always, consult the readme for more details and installation instructions.

Updated Autodesk Product Manager BIN File

An updated version of the BIN file for the Autodesk Product Manager has been posted:

Updated BIN file for Autodesk Product Manager Utility

This version updates the Autodesk Product Manager to detect new Media & Entertainment products that are now shipping. Instructions for replacing the previous BIN file with the new one are included in the readme.

For more information on the Autodesk Product Manager Utility, you can reference this post from earlier in the year:

Autodesk Product Manager Updates

Update 1 issues with Live Update and 64-bit IE8

I blogged about this in May but now that we have released Update 1, I wanted to remind everyone that it is still an issue:

Live Update and 64-bit IE8

If you are having problems with Live Update downloading Update 1 because you are running a 64-bit version of IE8, download the update directly from the Autodesk Services & Support pages at these links:

AutoCAD 2010 Update 1
AutoCAD LT 2010 Update 1

Update 1 includes a fix for this problem so this shouldn't be an issue in the future.

Update 1 Released for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 2010

Autodesk has released Update 1 for AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD LT 2010. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of this update can be found at the following links:

AutoCAD 2010 Update 1
AutoCAD LT 2010 Update 1

This update is only for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and cannot be applied to vertical products that are based on AutoCAD 2010.

Installing Update 1 will increment the product version to 2, e.g., "AutoCAD 2010 - English Version 2".

Before installing Update 1, I strongly recommend you review the associated readme file for installation and deployment instructions, information for Windows Vista users, and details about the primary issues that are resolved by Update 1.

Thanks to detailed information from customers who used the Customer Error Reporting (CER) Utility, problems were identified and fixed in more than 30 commands and features. This is a perfect example of why those CER reports are so important and how they help us improve the product.

Cleanup Utilities Updated for AutoCAD 2010

Autodesk has released new versions of the Scale List Cleanup Utility and the Regapp ID Cleanup Utility that now work with AutoCAD 2010. These utilities run outside of AutoCAD and can be used to clean drawings of excess annotation scales and excess unreferenced registered application IDs.

More information on these topics can be found here:

Excess unreferenced regapp IDs causing performance issues

Custom scales cause performance issues with Open, Xref, Copy/Paste and Insert functions

The 2010 versions can be downloaded from the following links:

Regapp ID Cleanup Utility for AutoCAD 2010
Scale List Cleanup Utility for AutoCAD 2010

The previous versions can be downloaded from these links:

Regapp ID Cleanup Utility for AutoCAD 2009/2008
Scale List Cleanup Utility for AutoCAD 2009/2008

New Training Video: Online License Transfer in 2010 Products

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

Online License Transfer in Autodesk 2010 Products

The video is about 15 minutes in length and is intended to provide an overview of the Online License Transfer feature in the Autodesk 2010 products. The video gives a general overview of OLT including:

• Exporting and importing stand-alone licenses
• Removing the License Transfer Utility from installations and deployments
• A recently released Proxy Licensing hotfix
• Answers to commonly asked questions.

I used AutoCAD 2010 for the demonstrations but the concepts apply to other 2010 products.

NOTE: Although I recorded this video using the Windows 7 Release Candidate, that does not imply current support for Windows 7. Rest assured, we are testing Windows 7 and I'll let you know when we announce official support for the shipping version.

AutoCAD “acad.vlx” Virus and Solution

There is a virus being reported by a couple of our AutoCAD-based product customers. Rather than repeat all the details, I refer you to Shaan Hurley's posting on the subject:

AutoCAD Malicious Code / Virus Alert “acad.vlx” and Solution

The following technical solution provides instructions on how to prevent further corruption by this malicious code:

Acad.vlx Virus Cleanup

Text in PDF's displays as dots!

We are starting to see a number of users running into text display issues when creating PDF's using the DWG to PDFplotter in AutoCAD 2010.

When the PDF is opened, a message dialog pops up saying that a particular font cannot be found or created. In this example the font listed is "ArialMT".

     

After clicking OK the PDF opens, but some of the text is displayed as dots.

 
This problem occurs if the text contains any kind of unicode special character.

The workaround to the issue is to set the font handling in the DWG to PDF.pc3 file to "Capture all".

 

Once the pc3 file has been configured to "Capture all" fonts the PDF files will be created correctly.