Without A Net

Autodesk recruiting for focus groups

I'm just passing this along, in case one of you live in these areas and are interested in providing your input on AutoCAD and several other Autodesk products:

Are you an Autodesk software user in Boston, Toronto or Portland (Oregon)? If so Autodesk wants your input on improving its products at a focus group or visit to your location. If you’re selected to attend you’ll receive an iPod Nano 8GB.

Research will be conducted in late January/early February. Focus groups will be conducted in a downtown hotel in each city at approximately 6:30pm – 8pm on a weekday evening. Customer visits will be conducted in the day time and will last approximately 1 hour.

If you’re interested in participating and helping us improve Autodesk software let us know by completing this form.

In my experience, these focus groups can be a good opportunity to give us your feedback and help improve AutoCAD (not to mention the iPod Nano). If you're interested, don't respond to me ... just complete this form.

Autodesk University: A Personal Retrospective

After a long and hectic week, another Autodesk University has come to an end. Although the attendance at this year's AU was apparently down from previous years, it really didn't feel like it. This year's AU had all the energy and activity of earlier conferences and I would have been hard-pressed to tell you if it had less attendees.

I taught two classes ("How to Get the Most Out of the Action Recorder" and "All Things Layers in AutoCAD"), presented one of the new AU virtual product clinics ("Online License Transfer in Autodesk 2010 Products"), did an interview for AutoCAD Exchange with Heidi Hewett, met many of our Subscription customers while manning the Subscription kiosks, and enjoyed the chance to meet and chat with some of our Platinum Subscription customers over lunch. All in all, it was another hectic, yet satisfying, week at Autodesk University. My MacBook Pro performed admirably for the 3rd year in a row and, with the exception of a couple technical and logistical issues between my two classes (when you only have 30 minutes between classes, it's not cool to rush to your next classroom only to find the previous class hasn't been dismissed yet), things ran without a hitch.

I was reading the survey results from my classes this year and was amused to see the following comment from an attendee, "He did well - I understand it's his first AU." Although I wasn't completely sure how many AUs this was for me, I definitely know it wasn't my first in the 17 years of AU conferences. After digging through my old files, I confirmed that this was my 12th Autodesk University over the last 14 years.

My very first AU was in 1996, at Navy Pier, in Chicago, IL – two years before I would be hired by Autodesk. At that time I had been writing articles for the solid (but, sadly, short-lived) AutoCAD Tech Journal quarterly magazine. I was approached by Miller Freeman editors (who also published CADENCE magazine) and was asked to teach a class at AU. My first AU class was "AutoLISP Programming for Professionals" where I focused on how to write user-friendly AutoLISP programs that anticipated the unpredictable nature of end-user interactions. I just dug out the original handout (14 pages - even then I couldn't keep it to recommended page limit) and, with few exceptions, the concepts could still be taught today. Between then and now, I have only missed two Autodesk University conferences: 1998 (I was a new Autodesk employee that year and wasn't able to attend) and 2005 (my AutoCAD development schedule just didn't permit the time that year).

I always enjoy AU because I get to meet so many of our customers. Every time I see someone with an AU badge in an elevator or outside the hotel – when I just need to breath actual air that doesn't come from casino filtration systems – I ask how the conference is going for them. Invariably, I get a positive response that usually includes a statement like, "I didn't think there was anything else for me to learn in xyz area but I have learned a lot this year." Excellent! That's why you come to AU and that's what makes it all worth the effort for both the teachers and the attendees.

Another one of the best parts of attending Autodesk University each year is the chance to spend time with my AU friends: people that I only see – once a year – at this conference. These are friendships that have developed over the course of the last decade (or more) and they are an important part of my AU experience. AU is our chance to catch up, commiserate, and talk shop for as long as our AU schedules will allow. So … to my good friends, dave espinosa-aguilar, Scott McFarlane, James Wedding, Alex Lepeska, and anyone else I'm forgetting right now: It was great seeing you last week and I look forward to seeing you again next year.

Were you in attendance this year, either live or at one of the virtual AU sessions? Let me know how it was for you?

"Dude, my PC just, like, totally freaked out, you know?"

Some time ago, Tom Bradley wrote a post about the importance of submitting detailed customer error reports (CERs) and how the details you provide in the user comments can help us in narrowing down a problem and arriving at a resolution to the crash that kicked off the CER in the first place. Typically, CER user comments fall into three categories:

1. No details at all.
2. Step-by-step details of what the user was doing when the crash occurred.
3. Swearing, fury and vitriol at Autodesk for the crash.

Every now and then, however, we come across CER comments that fall into a completely different category:

"Dude, my PC just, like, totally freaked out, you know? It was like, one minute I was editing some text or something, and then like, the next minute it was like totally locked up and CAD was like, I'm not responding, and I was like are you responding, and it's like, no I'm not responding, so I was like doing nothing for a little bit and then like the dialog box of despair comes up and tells me that AutoCAD LT could, like, not continue. I was like nooooooooo!, but then the dialog box was like, would you like to save your changes, and I was like, yeah man, that would be like AAAAWWWWSOME."

Now, from a diagnostics standpoint, this isn't the most helpful comment I've ever seen, but it sure is one of the more creative. So, thank you, AutoCAD LT user ... you made me laugh! A hotfix for that particular problem is now available and you should have already received a CER round-trip email notifying you about it.

Note: Even though I shared this particular CER comment (and how could I not), I did so with the explicit permission from the user and I did not share the user's name or any other related information. We take this data very seriously. All customer-specific data is kept confidential and is never shared internally or externally for marketing purposes. CERs are very important to us so, if a crash occurs, don't hesitate to hit that Send button and always provide comments to help us reproduce the problem.

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.

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.

AutoCAD and Internet Explorer 8

I just got word that Autodesk now officially supports using Internet Explorer 8 with AutoCAD. The only issue found is the Live Update problem on 64-bit that I reported here a couple of weeks ago. Other than that issue - which is currently being investigated for a future fix - IE8 has been tested with AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD 2010 and everything is behaving as expected. Although previous versions of AutoCAD weren't officially verified, we expect that they will also work fine with IE8.

Customer Error Reporting - Help us help you

Greetings all. I would like to take a few moments and blog about the importance of submitting detailed customer error reports (referred to as CER going forward) and also speak a bit about the difference between these and a Service Request (SR). 

In my prior role as a Support Manager here at Autodesk, I would occasionally speak with a customer who was experiencing issues with their program, submitting CER's and wondering why no one was replying to their requests.  It seems they were not clear on the difference between an SR and a CER, which is understandable.  Each CER is captured in a back-end database, but not everyone who submits a CER will receive a follow up. In fact, you may only be contacted if a developer needs more information. More on this later.  A Service Request is an actual support ticket submitted through the Subscription Center and you will receive a reply directly from Autodesk when logging a new SR (if you do not, please let me know).  The details and service levels of this program are outlined in the Subscription Terms & Conditions. 

On the AutoCAD Services & Support page we have a detailed write-up on the Customer Error Reporting process. To summarize, when your software crashes and you submit a CER, these reports are captured in a database and categorized so that software developers can review them.  While the report will give the engineer an idea of where the crash occurred in the code, providing the steps you used leading up to the crash is very helpful and will assist the developer in identifying the issue. I can assure you these reports are reviewed on a regular basis and prioritized based on severity and the number of customer reports. Another important reason to submit these reports is the CER round-trip process which will give you feedback if available. If a workaround (or fix) exists for the problem you reported, you will be sent that information via email instantly.  You will also be notified of fixes as they become available for issues that you submitted through the CER system.

I hope this clears up the process and helps you understand why these reports are important. So the next time your AutoCAD session ends prematurely, please submit a detailed CER (with steps to reproduce if available) and resist the urge to just curse at us. 

And Now For Something Completely Different

You might have to be in IT or product support to really appreciate this.

AutoCAD 2010 and SSE2 Compliance

For my first posting on WaN I thought the new requirement for your processor to be SSE2 compliant was worth a mention.  

SSE2 was introduced in 2001 by Intel with the Pentium 4 and then AMD added support for SSE2 with the introduction of their Opteron and Athlon 64 ranges of AMD64 64-bit CPUs in 2003.

AutoCAD 2010 now requires SSE2 compliance. If your machines processor is not SSE2 compliant then the install will be blocked. This also applies to Autodesk Design Review 2010.

During installation or deployment you will see that the option to install is grayed out:

Greetings from San Francisco

Hello everyone and welcome to my first post on "Without A Net".  I'd like take a few moments to quickly introduce myself personally. Like Tom mentioned, I am a Division Manager here at Autodesk.  I recently moved to the SF Bay Area so that I could work closely with the teams developing the products that you use every day.  Previously, I was based in our Manchester, NH office where I spent my days closely interacting with our support teams who are delivering technical support to our partners and customers in North America. Needless to say, unless you really appreciate 5 months of snow per year, the weather has been quite an upgrade. With all of the sunny days and beautiful landscape I have decided to take up a new hobby of Mountain Biking.  It has been great fun but it's definitely a lot more difficult than it appears in the magazines. Of course, I went with a Marin when purchasing my new bike.  How could I resist when they have a "Designed with Autodesk software" sticker plastered right on the frame?

A hot subject of late is social networking. I enjoy connecting with old friends as much as the next person, but I am also finding Facebook to be a nice way to stay up to date with my favorite products, bands, etc. To supplement this blog (in addition to Twitter) we are also experimenting with a Facebook page.  You can find our page here.  Please stop by and become a "fan".  I have been adding content for a few weeks and hope this will evolve into a nice resource for AutoCAD users who frequent Facebook.