Category Archives: AutoCAD 2009

The worst feature ever added to AutoCAD is…

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…the Ribbon, according to your selections in the What are the worst features ever added to AutoCAD? poll. As in the best ever poll, the winner (loser?) in this race had no serious competition. I’ve listed eleven top (bottom?) features here rather than ten, partly because the popular (unpopular?) choice Memory Overuse isn’t exactly a feature. But it’s mainly because I’d hate to see Action Recorder unfairly miss out on a well-deserved mention.

  • Ribbon (30%)
  • CUI (20%)
  • Help (on line / 2012) (18%)
  • Memory Overuse (17%)
  • AutoCAD Today (2000i/2002) (16%)
  • White / Cream Drawing Background (16%)
  • Unreconciled Layers (16%)
  • Nudge (10%)
  • Blipmode (9%)
  • Proxy Object Compatibility (9%)
  • Action Recorder (8%)

Given the reception the Ribbon received when it was introduced, maybe it’s unsurprising to see it top the lists here. Cloud observers may find it interesting to note that that Autodesk’s attempt to move AutoCAD’s Help on line has been very poorly received. Yo Autodesk with your Cloud an’ all, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but on-line Help has been voted one of the worst features of all time! Of all time!

The dislike of the intrusive, useful-to-some but short-lived AutoCAD Today feature remains strong a decade later. Light drawing backgrounds remain unpopular, which should not be a surprise to anyone, except maybe some people at Autodesk who thought it was a good idea to rehash old mistakes in a new and exciting way (“This time it’s magnolia!“). History, doomed to repeat, etc.

As for poor old Action Recorder, that has to be the ultimate brochure feature. It’s something for Autodesk to boast about rather than something for customers to actually use; “We responded to customer requests and fulfilled AUGI wishlists for a macro recorder!” Well, you did, kind of, by giving us something that’s about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Looks nice, though. Autodesk, please try again, but this time do it properly.

It’s interesting to note that the “worst ever” list is significantly younger than the “best ever” list. Only poor old blipmode is truly ancient. Only a single “best” feature (dynamic blocks) comes from AutoCAD 2006 or later. (In fact, that’s the only feature in the “best” list that was even introduced this century). In comparison, most of the “worst” list comes from AutoCAD 2006 or later, including the top (bottom?) three. So what does that tell you?

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.

Ribbon poll roundup

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Further to my last post, Here is a brief summary of this blog’s various poll results that relate in some way to Ribbon and CIP use. The most recent polls are at the top of the list. I have placed in bold those percentages that relate directly to the proportion of AutoCAD Ribbon use among the voters on this blog.

  • AutoCAD 2010 users’  Ribbon use: 44% (AutoCAD 2010 users’ CIP on: 36%)
  • Ribbon love: 28%
  • AutoCAD 2010 menu bar non-users: 23%
  • Inventor Ribbon use: 44% (Inventor 2010 users’ Ribbon use: 59%)
  • Revit Ribbon use: 42% (Revit 2010 users’ Ribbon use: 58%)
  • AutoCAD Ribbon use: 32% (AutoCAD 2009/2010 users’ Ribbon use: 38%)
  • CIP on: 27%
  • AutoCAD 2009 menu bar non-users: 21%
  • AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon one of 3 best new features: 11%
  • AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon turned on in some way: 29% (fully visible 13%)

The polls were run at different times over the past couple of years with different questions being asked in different ways about different releases, and responded to by very different numbers of voters. Don’t expect consistent or directly comparable results; this is not a scientific study. As with all polls here, there is a self-selection bias; those people who feel most strongly about a subject are more likely to find these polls and make the effort to vote in them.

The more recent polls generally have significantly greater sample size than the early ones. The smallest poll (AutoCAD 2009 best new features) has 37 voters, the largest poll (AutoCAD users generally using Ribbon) has 751. While the former certainly qualifies as Shaan’s “a few dozen”, the latter does only if you consider 62 to be “a few”. In which case, can I give you a thousand dollars and you give me a few hundred back?

Here are the poll details, which you can also see in the Polls Archive. If you think any of these questions or the available responses are in any way biased or leading , I’d be interested to hear your reasoning.

AutoCAD 2010 users, what are your Ribbon and CIP settings?
Start Date: 15 March 2010

  • Ribbon on, CIP on (24.7%, 65 Votes)
  • Ribbon on, CIP off (19.4%, 51 Votes)
  • Ribbon off, CIP on (11%, 29 Votes)
  • Ribbon off, CIP off (44.9%, 118 Votes)

    • Ribbon
    Start Date: 16 January 2010

  • Love (28.2%, 164 Votes)
  • Hate (71.8%, 417 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2010 users: pull-down menus – is your menu bar turned on (MENUBAR=1)?
    Start Date: 14 September 2009

  • Yes, it’s on all the time (69.3%, 475 Votes)
  • Yes, it’s usually on but I sometimes turn it off (4.1%, 28 Votes)
  • Yes in verticals, no in AutoCAD (1.9%, 13 Votes)
  • Yes (other) (1.5%, 10 Votes)
  • No, it’s usually off but I sometimes turn it on (7%, 48 Votes)
  • No, I never use pull-downs (13.7%, 94 Votes)
  • No (other) (2.5%, 17 Votes)

    • Inventor users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 11 September 2009

  • Yes (44.3%, 82 Votes)
  • No (using 2010) (30.8%, 57 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (15.7%, 29 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (9.2%, 17 Votes)

    • Revit users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 9 September 2009

  • Yes (41.6%, 153 Votes)
  • No (using 2010 in unsupported classic mode) (30.2%, 111 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (20.4%, 75 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (7.9%, 29 Votes)

    • AutoCAD users: are you generally using the Ribbon?
    Start Date: 9 September 2009

  • Yes (32%, 240 Votes)
  • No (using 2009/10) (51.1%, 384 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release to avoid the Ribbon) (11.7%, 88 Votes)
  • No (using an earlier release for other reasons) (5.2%, 39 Votes)

    • Do you enable CIP (Customer Involvement Program) in your Autodesk products in production?
    Start Date: 23 February 2009

  • Yes, always (17.9%, 74 Votes)
  • Yes, on some products/releases (8.9%, 37 Votes)
  • No, because of privacy concerns (30.4%, 126 Votes)
  • No, because of performance concers (19.3%, 80 Votes)
  • No, it is not available for me (3.4%, 14 Votes)
  • No, other (20%, 83 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 users: pull-down menus – is your menu bar turned on (MENUBAR=1)?
    Start Date: 28 November 2008

  • Yes, it’s on all the time (68.3%, 136 Votes)
  • Yes, it’s usually on but I sometimes turn it off (6.5%, 13 Votes)
  • Yes in verticals, no in AutoCAD (2.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Yes (other) (2%, 4 Votes)
  • No, it’s usually off but I sometimes turn it on (2%, 4 Votes)
  • No, I use the menu under the big red A (6.5%, 13 Votes)
  • No, I never use pull-downs (9.5%, 19 Votes)
  • No (other) (2.5%, 5 Votes)

    • Choose the best things about AutoCAD 2009 (up to 3)
    Start Date: 11 July 2008

  • Ribbon (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Menu Browser (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Quick Access Toolbar (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Smaller floating toolbars (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Status bar changes (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Action Recorder (18.9%, 7 Votes)
  • Modeless layer interface (18.9%, 7 Votes)
  • Quick View Layouts/Drawings (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Quick Properties (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Spell checking in text editor (29.7%, 11 Votes)
  • Rollover tooltips for objects (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Enlarged tooltips for user interface (0%, 0 Votes)
  • ViewCube (21.6%, 8 Votes)
  • Steering Wheel (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • ShowMotion (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Geographic Location (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • DWFx (5.4%, 2 Votes)
  • Off-white model space background (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Drawing recovery changes (8.1%, 3 Votes)
  • Updated button images (2.7%, 1 Votes)
  • LISP bug fixes (13.5%, 5 Votes)
  • Scale List bug fixes (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Other bug fixes (10.8%, 4 Votes)
  • Improvements available only in vertical products (16.2%, 6 Votes)
  • Other improvements in base AutoCAD (8.1%, 3 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 non-Ribbon users: why don’t you use it?
    Start Date: 20 June 2008

  • Uses up too much screen space (63.6%, 35 Votes)
  • Doesn’t make good use of my screen size/shape (45.5%, 25 Votes)
  • Using it minimised requires an extra click/hover (47.3%, 26 Votes)
  • Tab concept means extra clicks (65.5%, 36 Votes)
  • Dislike concept of hiding tools – want buttons to stay visible (60%, 33 Votes)
  • Tab switching is too slow (45.5%, 25 Votes)
  • Button click reaction is too slow (38.2%, 21 Votes)
  • Turning it off saves startup time (30.9%, 17 Votes)
  • Ribbon content doesn’t match my needs (43.6%, 24 Votes)
  • All the commands should be on it (27.3%, 15 Votes)
  • Express Tools are missing (32.7%, 18 Votes)
  • Other things I use frequently are missing (40%, 22 Votes)
  • Too hard to find things (50.9%, 28 Votes)
  • No advantage over existing methods (63.6%, 35 Votes)
  • Customising it is too difficult (43.6%, 24 Votes)
  • Don’t like the colour scheme (16.4%, 9 Votes)
  • Don’t like fuzzy text (ClearType) (25.5%, 14 Votes)
  • Using a vertical product that doesn’t make use of the Ribbon (23.6%, 13 Votes)
  • Want to avoid training expense/inconvenience (18.2%, 10 Votes)
  • Want to avoid initial productivity reduction (18.2%, 10 Votes)
  • Inconsistent with other programs we use (e.g. Office pre-2007) (12.7%, 7 Votes)
  • Opposition to Microsoft’s influence (23.6%, 13 Votes)
  • I’m a Luddite and resist change for the sake of it (7.3%, 4 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 users: in what state do you usually have your Ribbon?
    Start Date: 28 May 2008

  • Horizontal and fully visible (10.4%, 8 Votes)
  • Horizontal and minimised to panel titles (5.2%, 4 Votes)
  • Horizontal and minimised to tabs (7.8%, 6 Votes)
  • Vertical, floating and fully visible (1.3%, 1 Votes)
  • Vertical, floating and auto-hiding (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Vertical, docked and fully visible (1.3%, 1 Votes)
  • Vertical, docked and auto-hiding (Anchor left or right) (2.6%, 2 Votes)
  • Turned off (71.4%, 55 Votes)

    • AutoCAD 2009 & 2010 users – out of memory errors?

    22 Replies

    Some of the users I support have repeated out-of-memory errors while editing fairly simple drawings. I have some 2010 users who suffer from this problem while others using the same drawings on the same hardware get by without ever seeing it. When swapping users to differerent PCs, the problem seems to follow the user. Despite various experiments, I have no idea what is going on here.

    Is this happening to you or anybody you work with? Have you managed to work out if there is something that triggers it? Is there a user interface setting or method of drawing that you suspect of being the culprit?

    These messages are brought to you by AutoCAD

    7 Replies

    Over the past few releases, and particularly in AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, I have noticed an increase in the number of information notices (bubbles, warnings, task dialogs, Communication Center notices, etc.) being displayed. Shaan Hurley has pointed out that 2010 Update 1 introduces a balloon notification that periodically makes you aware of how much time remains before your subscription expires. Is this a good thing?

    There’s a poll on the right that asks a specific question about the default state of AutoCAD 2009 and 2010, but I’d also like to see some comments on this. What do you think of these messages? Are they useful? Do they get in the way? Do you take any notice of them? Are there too many? Do we need any others? Do you turn them off? Is it easy enough to control them?

    AutoCAD 2009 Update 3

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    Update (nee Service Pack) 3 for AutoCAD 2009 is now available. See Between the Lines for full details. As always, read the readme first. Here are the links:

    Readme
    AutoCAD 2009
    AutoCAD LT 2009
    AutoCAD 2009 for Revit Architecture
    AutoCAD 2009 for Revit Structure

    No word yet about related updates for the vertical products.

    While I’m not convinced by some aspects of the recently introduced multiple-update-per-release regime, I do approve of Autodesk continuing to maintain 2009 after 2010 has been released. People have complained about this not being done in the past, and on this score at least, I have to say that Autodesk has listened.

    What do you think about these updates? Do you use them? What about CAD Managers using deployments; do you deploy the updates? Is it too disruptive? Does it cause problems with the deployment no longer matching the installation, for example when attempting a repair install? Any other issues?

    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.

    AutoCAD 2010 – Will you miss the Menu Browser?

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    I’ve closed the poll that asked AutoCAD 2009 users about their MENUBAR setting. It’s very clear that pull-down menus are still very much in use in the Ribboned world of post-2008 AutoCAD. In AutoCAD 2009, an attempt was made to provide access to pull-down menus without sacrificing that strip of screen real estate. That attempt was called the Menu Browser, it was one of the thing you could find under the Big Red A, and it really didn’t work very well. In AutoCAD 2010, the Menu Browser has gone away. The A hasn’t gone away, just the ability to access pull-down menus through it.

    There are some who have expressed a deep dislike of the Big Red A, although it never offended me greatly. I just wished the features hidden under it worked better than they did in 2009. Personally, I generally prefer what’s under the A in 2010 than what’s there in 2009, but you may not. I know that when the 2009 user interface was being attacked, its most prominent defenders were those keyboard-heavy users who turned both the Ribbon and the menu bar off, giving themselves more screen space. On the infrequent occasions when a pull-down menu was required, those people were content to provide an extra click.

    When I found out about the Menu Browser’s death a few months ago, I expected there would be a severe adverse reaction from such people. Maybe there will be one when people hold get the shipping product and notice it’s gone. But after my poll showed only 7% of respondents used it instead of the menu bar, I’m now expecting that adverse reaction to be smaller than I originally thought.

    If you want to use AutoCAD 2010, want to work without a menu bar but still have access to menu items occasionally, what can you do? You can add a button to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), or any other toolbar, that toggles the menu bar on and off. Use the CUI command to add such a button.* The following macro will do the job:

    'menubar $M=$(-,1,$(getvar,menubar))

    There are a couple of downsides to this method. First, although this macro has been written in such a way that it should be transparent, it doesn’t currently work that way. When you push the button, AutoCAD will still cancel any command you’re in. Second, the screen resize forces a redraw, which could slow you down in very complex drawings. However, under most circumstances that redraw will still be quicker than waiting for a reaction from AutoCAD the first time you pick the Big Red A. By the way, that reaction time is better in 2010 than the very tardy 2009. As a result, even AutoCAD 2009 users might prefer to use the QAT-button method and forget the Menu Browser ever existed.

    * If there is enough interest, I will do a video tutorial explaining how to add such a button to the QAT.

    AutoCAD 2009 – Do you use the menu bar?

    22 Replies

    You may have noticed that I’ve added a poll to find out if the AutoCAD 2009 users among you are using the menu bar (i.e. MENUBAR = 1). I’m also interested in hearing your comments about your usage and the reasons behind it.

    If your menu bar turned on, why? Do you use it all the time or do you just need it for those less-frequently-used commands that you don’t have handy at your fingertips, on toolbars, palettes or the Ribbon? Do you need it because your own custom routines are on menus, or third-party commands? Does the vertical AutoCAD variant you’re using need it?

    If your menu bar is turned off, why? Do you never have any need for the stuff in there? Do you use the Menu Browser instead, sacrificing an occasional extra click for the sake of a permanent strip of screen space?

    AutoCAD 2009 Subscription Pack 2 – PDF Enhancements

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    Subscription customers of plain AutoCAD 2009 can log on to the Subscription Center and download Subscription Pack 2. This pack improves PDF output (long overdue and very welcome) and adds the ability to attach PDF files. That’s welcome too, but is of largely academic interest right now because of a total lack of interoperability. Unless you only ever provide your drawing files to people who also have plain AutoCAD 2009 with Subscription Pack 2, they won’t see the PDF underlay. However, round tripping is supported, so when you get the drawing back the PDF underlay will reappear.

    Here is a brief summary of the features, taken direct from the download page:

    PDF Underlays
    Now you can import PDF files, attaching them as PDF underlays. Once you attach a PDF underlay, you can use a variety of tools to snap to lines and objects, control the display of layers, move, scale, rotate, and clip the PDF underlay.

    PDF Output
    Key improvements have been made for publishing PDF files. File sizes have been reduced, making it easier to share designs. TrueType font support has been added, giving you control over precisely how your fonts are displayed.

    This bonus pack is only available in English for AutoCAD® 2009, although, if desired, it can be installed on localized versions of AutoCAD 2009. If installed on a localized version of AutoCAD 2009, all new and related commands display in English only.

    As usual, read the readme first, which contains much fuller descriptions of the new features.

    AutoCAD 2009 – An outsider’s look at the Ribbon

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    Kirill Grouchnikov is a developer who has a blog called Pushing Pixels. This wouldn’t normally be of particular interest to AutoCAD users, but he recently wrote a piece describing the AutoCAD 2009 Ribbon. It is always interesting to things described from a different perspective, in this case the Ribbon from a non-user’s point of view. He pays particular attention to the ways in which the AutoCAD Ribbon differs from Microsoft’s standards. As a non-user, he has skipped lightly over several aspects of AutoCAD Ribbon use, including some drawbacks of the current implementation, but it is still a worthwhile read, as are some of the comments that follow.

    Ease of use and the Ribbon

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    I have Office 2007 on my newest computer at home, which I bought primarily to familiarise myself with the Ribbon interface and allow me to discuss it from a position other than ignorance. I use Word and Excel 2007 on that computer, and find the ease of use about the same as earlier releases. Some things are easier to find and use, some things are harder.

    My 9 year old daughter recently asked if she could use PowerPoint at home, as she had started to use it at her new school for making little presentations and wanted to make her own at home for fun. I put a shortcut on her desktop and let her go for it, and she has produced some pretty impressive stuff with no help from me. Not only that, but my 7 year old daughter is now doing the same thing, having learnt just by looking over my eldest daughter’s shoulder. They don’t ask me for any help, they just get on with it.

    A vindication of the Ribbon’s ease-of-use claims? Not exactly. You see, they are using PowerPoint on my old computer, which has the completely Ribbonless Office 2000.

    I don’t hate the Ribbon. I just don’t see much benefit in it, even for novice users.

    Matt Stein’s Blog and Microsoft’s Mojave Marketing

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    Thanks to Shaan Hurley for revealing to the wider world the existence of Ribbon Man Matt Stein’s blog. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a blogging n00b like myself to welcome somebody with a blog four years older than his own, but I’m going to do it anyway. Welcome, Matt (no pun intended).

    Some of Matt’s blog posts (particularly the early ones) make for, er, interesting reading, so don’t click if you’re easily offended. Please bear in mind that this is a personal blog, not an Autodesk one.

    Matt and I generally get on fine, but we have had some frank exchanges of view and often agree to disagree. One subject where we are unlikely to share the same views is the Microsoft Vista marketing exercise The Mojave Experiment. This is something I planned to post about some weeks ago but then something more important came up and I didn’t bother. Here’s what Matt thinks, and here’s what I think:

    While this is a cute marketing ploy and might convince the terminally naive, it pretty obviously qualifies as propaganda rather than any kind of meaningful study. Here’s how it’s done:

    Find a selection of people with no experience of a product but with ignorance-based negative feelings about it. Make sure the hardware and software you’re going to show them all works well. Fix up the settings for minimal annoyance. Present an expensively prepared, well-choreographed demo that presents all the best features and none of the worst. Result: oh wow, what a surprise, it’s better than they thought.

    A marketing company could reproduce the same results with practically anything if they set it up right. I bet I could do it with Linux, OS X, Windows Me, whatever. Give me Microsoft’s resources and open slather to present things as fairly or unfairly as I like and I will hand you whatever results you request.

    For the record, I don’t hate Vista. I have Vista and XP available, dual boot, on hardware that can easily cope with the demands. In my tests on that hardware, Vista runs AutoCAD significantly faster than XP. Vista has been reliable and it looks nice, but I use XP about 95% of the time. Why? A few minor annoyances, but mostly it’s because Vista doesn’t support my mouse fully. Is that Microsoft’s fault or Logitech’s? Who cares? It’s something I have to put up with when I use Vista, therefore I generally avoid using Vista. As Matt rightly points out, Vista has a lot of minor “nice to have” touches, but all of them added together don’t make it worth putting up with a partially functional mouse. Neither do they make it worth buying a new mouse.

    Back to the marketing campaign, it reminds me of a productivity “study” paid for by Autodesk an age ago to show how much more productive Release 13 was than Release 12. It was released, accompanied by a poorly worded and deceptive press release (unintentionally deceptive, supposedly), to hoots of derision from a cynical AutoCAD user community. It convinced almost nobody and angered many, and was, all in all, a spectacularly bad idea.

    Autodesk marketing people, if by any chance you’re thinking of repeating that old mistake, or even “doing a Mojave” with AutoCAD 2009, please don’t. Just don’t.

    Has AutoCAD 2009 eaten your registry lately?

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    I’ve had a one-off report from a user of AutoCAD 2009 (actually, it was MDT as part of the Inventor suite pretending to be AutoCAD 2009, which isn’t exactly the same thing) and I’d like to know if anyone else has seen the same thing. His AutoCAD self-destructed and a little investigation showed that the section of the Registry that contains all the settings for that particular release had vanished without trace. This happened again later, but this time he had a backup of the Registry section handy and was able to avoid a second reinstall.  No Registry cleaners were involved.

    Have any of you seen this kind of thing happen?

    Look out for Update 1 for AutoCAD 2009-based verticals

    4 Replies

    If you have Communications Center disabled (this is quite common, it seems) or you’re not currently using your 2009-based vertical product, you may be unaware that Autodesk has released versions of Update 1 (formerly known as SP1) for the architectural and civil variants of AutoCAD 2009. Expect the other verticals to follow soon. A visit to the Autodesk site and search for “Update 1” currently returns 18 results. As usual, read the Readme first and exercise caution (or even paranoia) before installing.

    What you like best about AutoCAD 2009

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    I’ve closed the poll asking you to choose the top three things you like about AutoCAD 2009. For some reason it wasn’t getting many votes. Only 37 people participated, rather less than many other polls here, and I’ve now put it out of its misery. The small sample size makes the results of dubious value, but here are AutoCAD 2009’s “best things”, as voted by at least five of you.

    • Spell checking in text editor (30%, 11 Votes)
    • ViewCube (22%, 8 Votes)
    • Action Recorder (19%, 7 Votes)
    • Modeless layer interface (19%, 7 Votes)
    • Improvements available only in vertical products (16%, 6 Votes)
    • Rollover tooltips for objects (14%, 5 Votes)
    • LISP bug fixes (14%, 5 Votes)

    It came as no surprise to see that there was no love at all for the enlarged tooltips or pale model space, but I would have thought that ShowMotion would have been a useful addition for somebody.

    When is a Service Pack not a Service Pack?

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    When it’s an Update. This year, Service Packs are called Updates, and the first one for AutoCAD is out now. The 32-bit version is here and the 64-bit version is here. The Update includes LT, but there is no news yet about Updates for any of the vertical AutoCAD variants.

    As usual, read the Readme first. Also, as this Update has had a considerably shorter gestation period than the traditional six-month wait for the first AutoCAD Service Pack, you may be wise to exercise more paranoia than normal. Save and export your AutoCAD profiles, save your workspaces, make backups of your CUI files and put them somewhere safe where AutoCAD and the Update can’t find them.

    Does the shortened time before the first Update indicate that there will be more Updates in store? Probably. Although Update 1 (U1) fixes a lot of stuff, there’s still plenty more stuff left to fix in 2009. Oh, and just because it says in the Readme that something is fixed, don’t take it for granted that your particular variant of that problem is fixed. Try it out for yourself.

    I know that many of you don’t put an AutoCAD release into production until SP1 is released, so should you go now with U1 or wait for U2? (No, not the band). Or U3, even, if there ever is one? It’s up to you, of course, but in my own CAD management role I won’t be distributing AutoCAD 2009 with U1 to my users. I just don’t think it’s ready yet.

    You don’t think much of AutoCAD 2009’s buttons

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    I’ve closed the poll about the button images. It’s a general thumbs-down from you on that particular change, albeit not a spectacularly vehement one.

    I agree with most of you. The images themselves don’t offend me greatly, but their role in making things harder to find means that Autodesk erected another unnecessary barrier to Ribbon acceptance. The images themselves have crisper edges, but are sadly devoid of colour, making them harder to tell apart. One exception is with the object snap buttons, which I consider an improvement over their predecessors.

    More important than that is the fact that there were many, many things Autodesk could (and should) have done instead of putting development resources into this area. I know from personal experience that creating button images can be a very time-consuming job. I have some sympathy for the poor Autodesk people who put the effort into producing these images, only to have customers wishing they had never bothered. Nobody likes wasting their time.

    This sort of thing (there are many other examples), makes it obvious that Autodesk needs to obtain customer feedback on design decisions much earlier in the development cycle, while there is still time to throw out the dumb ideas. Doing so would offer Autodesk a lot of potential for more efficiently targeting its resources, to the benefit of both Autodesk and its customers.