Category Archives: AutoCAD 2008

Dealing with blacked-out leader plots in older AutoCAD

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Any drawing created in AutoCAD 2008 and later which uses Multileaders will present problems to users of AutoCAD 2007 and earlier. The users of the earlier release will find that rather than having leaders to deal with, they have proxy objects. As a result, it is impossible to edit these leaders in any way other than erasing them. Also, depending on the setting of the PROXYSHOW system variable in the earlier release, the objects may not display at all, or could display only as rectangles.

If the user of 2008 or later used the background mask feature when creating Multileaders, they might appear to be fine on the screen. But when plotting, the text part of each leader will come out as a filled black rectangle. That sort of thing has a long history of happening with wipeouts in some cases, depending on the output device and driver. This problem is different because it happens every time, and with all output devices.

What can be done if you are the recipient of such drawings? The -ExportToAutoCAD command, which can be used to create a version of the drawing with most proxy objects converted to standard AutoCAD objects, does not work with Multileaders. So I can see three options, in descending order of desirability:

  1. Upgrade to a more recent release of AutoCAD. Depending on your circumstances, this may not be a practicable solution.
  2. Forbid the use of Multileaders among your users and all parties producing drawings for you. This also may not be a practicable solution.
  3. Explode the leaders. This results in them becoming dumb text and lines, with no background masking. However, the masking can be easily re-established using the Textmask command that is part of the Express Tools.

It fills me with horror to suggest something as awful as exploding anything even remotely dimension-like, but if you have one of these drawings and you’re forced by circumstances to use AutoCAD 2007 or earlier, what alternative do you have?

This, along with various other Multileader design issues (such as non-integration with dimension styles), appears to be a natural by-product of Autodesk’s decision to add these objects part-way through the lifetime of a DWG version. The 2007 DWG format is shared by AutoCAD 2007, 2008 and 2009, but this interoperability issue affects even users of those releases that supposedly share the same format. Users of vertical AutoCAD variants are, unfortunately, accustomed to this sort of thing happening every year.

Studying Autodesk’s productivity study

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Heidi Hewett just reported the following on her blog, about a productivity study:

According to a recent independent study, AutoCAD® 2011 can help you work up to 44% faster with the latest productivity enhancements.

I have a couple of problems with that sentence. First, it’s not an independent study. It’s a study conducted by long-time respected CAD figure David Cohn, but it was specified and paid for by Autodesk:

This productivity study was performed at the request of Autodesk Inc., which funded this work.

That’s not exactly independent then, is it? Second, the study does not state that AutoCAD 2011 is responsible for a 44% improvement. That’s a figure that combines both the effects of AutoCAD 2011 (over AutoCAD 2008), plus the effects of using a newer, faster PC. Just stating that figure wthout such a disclaimer is misleading.

Now to the study itself. Let me make it clear that I have no problem with David Cohn, who is respected, experienced and honest. I do not doubt that his study accurately describes his observations of the time taken to perform the chosen operations on the chosen drawings. The problem is that the study is designed to concentrate purely on a set of AutoCAD operations that benefit from the changes of the last three releases. In other words, the dice are very heavily loaded. To David’s credit, he states that very clearly in the study report:

Each drawing was chosen based on a number of criteria designed to showcase one or more features of the software that did not exist in AutoCAD 2008 but were added in subsequent releases. While each drawing could certainly be produced using the features and functions available in AutoCAD 2008, the advanced capabilities added in subsequent releases would likely enable a typical user to produce the drawing faster using AutoCAD 2011.

Since the premise of the test was to determine how much time could be saved by using a new feature, the test itself was already predisposed to show that using AutoCAD 2011 is more productive than using AutoCAD 2008.

A quick skim-read shows that there are several other problems with the study. For example, it doesn’t attempt to measure the productivity of those operations that are common to both releases, which are much more likely to be used in bulk by typical users. The report states that the Ribbon interface is likely to be more productive, but makes no attempt to justify that by comparing the exact same operations performed using the two interfaces.

In addition, both AutoCAD 2008 and 2011 are measured on a typical middle-age PC using XP, but only 2011 is measured on a modern PC running Windows 7. The report states that the latter tests were performed after the former tests, so the times will also be biased by familiarity with AutoCAD 2011, the drawings and the operations required. That’s where the 44% figure comes from, and it doesn’t mean anything.

What’s the point of studies like this, that are self-evidently designed to produce a good-looking outcome? Who are they supposed to fool?  Come on Autodesk, either do these things properly or don’t do them at all. Please.

Another language pack cleanup solution

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My CADLock, Inc. colleague, Owen Wengerd has posted about a fix utility he has written to help clean up drawings infested with the language pack problem discussed here. I have not yet tested Owen’s utility*, but as this should run in any AutoCAD-based product from 2007 on, it could well be a better partial solution than Autodesk’s Civil 3D-only (so far) patches. Autodesk still needs to sort out its dodgy templates, of course, and should probably provide its own non-Civil 3D fixes, if only to maintain a little corporate self-respect.

As Owen has a long and distinguished history of being consistently and demonstrably better at AutoCAD programming than Autodesk’s own programmers, I’d be tempted to try this one first. However, Civil 3D users should probably apply the patches and updates anyway to help resolve other issues.

To find Owen’s utility, go to the ManuSoft ARX freebies page and look for CleanLanguage.zip. While you’re there, use the Software menu to check out some of the other stuff Owen has done.

* Edit: I have now tested it, and it works beautifully in both AutoCAD 2010 and Civil 3D 2011.

AutoCAD’s magic vanishing attachments

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There are now quite a few file types that you can attach to an AutoCAD drawing as a reference, in the same way that you can attach other drawings as xrefs. We’ve been able to attach other drawings since Release 11 (1990) and images since Release 14 (1997), but every release since 2007 has introduced a new kind of attachment. In AutoCAD 2010, you can now also attach PDFs, MicroStation DGNs (v7 and v8), DWF and DWFx files.

But should you? Maybe not. It depends who is going to use those drawings after you. If you know for certain that every user of that drawing is going to be using 2010 and later, that’s no problem. But if there is the possibility of earlier releases being used, your fine-looking attachments could vanish silently in the night. Attach a PDF to your drawing in 2010, give it to a user of last year’s AutoCAD 2009 (you’ll need to save it as a 2007 DWG) and what will he see? Nothing. There is no text-screen warning, no bounding box, no piece of text indicating the file name, nothing. Just a blank space where there should be useful drawing content.

This problem isn’t new to 2010, because there are similar problems with the other recent attachment types. Let’s examine them one by one:

  • PDF – visible only in 2010 and later (except for the special case of 2009 with the Subscription-only Bonus Pack 2).
  • DWFx – visible only in 2009 and later.
  • DGN v7 – visible only in 2009 and later.
  • DGN v8 – visible only in 2008 and later.
  • DWF – visible only in 2007 and later.

It’s important to note that the attachments don’t actually disappear from the drawing. They are still stored there, even if you save to an earlier DWG format like 2000 or 2004. The attachments survive the round trip to an earlier DWG format intact; they will reappear just fine if reopened in 2010. (Round-tripping of new object types is something that Autodesk has done extremely well over the years).

In most cases, the objects are stored invisibly as proxy objects (object name ACAD_PROXY_ENTITY, known in the early days as zombies). In some cases, they are listed as special Underlay objects (e.g. DGNUnderlay, DWFUnderlay). In 2000 to 2006, they all list as proxies. How can you list these objects in earlier releases when you can’t see them? With a bit of LISP, or old tricks like LIST ALL Remove Crossing.

The moral of the story for drawing creators is to look before you leap whan attaching new object types. For drawing recipients, it’s something to carefully watch out for. If you’re the customer and you use an earlier release, you may even wish to include a don’t-use-this-attachment-type clause in your specifications.

The _XREF_XREF killer

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If you’re an AutoCAD 2008 user you probably already know what the title refers to. If not, you probably don’t need to know. If your drawings are afflicted, I suggest you hop over to Between the Lines, grab the scale list cleanup utility and start cleaning up. Although I’ve found that this utility works very well, paranoia is usually wise in computing so make sure you back up everything before you start! The utility is installed into the AutoCAD 2008 or 2009 main installation folder, and you can make a shortcut to the CleanupScales.exe file on your desktop if you wish to make it easier to fire up.

To the Autodesk people who put the effort into creating this utility, thank you.