Category Archives: AutoCAD

Why digitally sign your LISP files?

After I mentioned in an earlier post that I had digitally signed the sample LISP file I had provided, this generated some interest. In this post, I’ll explain why you might want to sign your LISP files. In a later post, I’ll explain how to do it.

These days it is standard practice for developers to digitally sign their code. Operating systems and applications are displaying increasingly scary warnings when coming across unsigned code. Here is an example of the sort of message you get when you load an unsigned LISP file into AutoCAD from a location that has not been explicitly configured as a trusted location:

If you’re a CAD Manager dealing with your own internal code, it’s not too onerous to configure AutoCAD in Options > Files such that a folder is trusted by AutoCAD and place your code in there. The folder should be read-only; if it isn’t, AutoCAD warns you when you try to configure it. If you do this, the scary warnings don’t appear to bother and confuse your users, even if your code is unsigned.

Another way a CAD Manager can avoid the warnings is to set the SECURELOAD system variable to 0. That’s generally not recommended because it turns off AutoCAD’s security features. While you’ll probably get away with this, there’s always a chance that a user will load some malware and then you’ll have to explain yourself to management.

If you’re not just using your code internally and it’s going to be used by other parties, then you’re not going to have that level of control over the user environment. In recent AutoCADs it’s possible to set up the installation deployment such that users can’t turn off the security settings. If the CAD Manager at the location using your code has done this, your potential users are going to be presented with unprofessional-looking scary warnings.

If you sign your code, users might still get a warning, but it’s less scary. It identifies you as the verified source of the code so they will have more confidence in picking the Always Load button. Once they’ve done this, other signed code of yours will be automatically trusted.

There’s another important reason you might want to sign your code, and that’s protection against other people’s modification of your code. If somebody edits your LSP file and then gives it to someone who tries to load it, the user is presented with an even scarier warning:

Note that this warning no longer has your name on it. This means it’s possible to protect yourself from people (internal or external) who well-meaningly hack about with your code and then try to blame you when it goes wrong. It also gives a level of protection against your code being infected by malware.

Note that all of the above only applies to AutoCAD 2016 and later. AutoCAD 2014 introduced some LISP loading security measures, but the signature stuff came a couple of releases later. Earlier AutoCAD releases, along with compatibles such as BricsCAD and ZWCAD, will just ignore the digital signature. It’s just a comment in the code as far as they’re concerned.

LISP files with the LSP, MNL, FAS, or VLX file extensions can be digitally signed. There’s a bug in the original iterations of AutoCAD 2016 and AutoCAD 2018 that prevents signed VLX files from working. This was patched later in both releases (2016 SP1 and 2018.0.2), but if you’re distributing your code externally there’s always a chance that your VLX might end up in the hands of somebody using a broken release. Also, VLX files that are digitally signed cannot be loaded into AutoCAD 2015 and earlier, broken or not. You should bear that in mind before distributing signed VLX files. I don’t do it and would advise against it. Thanks, Autodesk.

Given this information, if you decide that signing your LISP is a good idea, watch this space for information on how to do it.

Setting your application or document window size using LISP

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I intend to produce a few videos containing tips, tutorials, product comparisons and the like. I’ve set up a cad nauseam YouTube channel, but don’t bother visiting it yet because it’s empty.

One of the things I need to do for these videos make sure I’m capturing the screen at an appropriate resolution. I knocked up a bit of Visual LISP to take care of this task quickly and accurately, and you might as well have it. It’s a simple routine that allows you to accurately size either the main AutoCAD application window or the current document window (drawing area) within the main window.

The file is WindowSize.lsp. It should work in all full AutoCAD releases (not counting LT and AutoCAD for Mac) and AutoCAD-based verticals from 2000 on.

It works in recent BricsCAD releases (except the free and LISPless BricsCAD Shape). I’ve only tested it in Windows, but it should also work in the Mac and Linux versions due to the high degree of LISP compatibility provided even across platforms. It also works in ZWCAD 2018 for the main application window, but don’t use it on the document window because that doesn’t work.

Download it, put it in a location of your choice and load it into your CAD application (for example by dragging and dropping it from Explorer onto the drawing window).

Note: In AutoCAD 2014 and later, loading any LISP or other executable file may result in a warning depending on the release, the security settings, whether the file is located in one of AutoCAD’s trusted locations, and whether the file is digitally signed. I’ve digitally signed the file to reduce the incidence of warnings, but you could still see something like this:

The verified publisher should be cad nauseam as shown above. If you pick Always Load then you shouldn’t see the warning again for this file or any others signed by cad nauseam. Feel free to edit the file for your own needs, but if you do the signature will become invalid and you’ll be warned again when loading the file.

Once it’s loaded, enter the command WindowSize. The prompt sequence goes like this:

Command: WINDOWSIZE Window to size [Application/Document] : Width in pixels <1280>: Height in pixels <720>:

Now, back to work on the first of those videos.

Why Bricsys makes the best AutoCAD for Mac

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Bricsys has just released BricsCAD V18 for Mac. Here’s the download link and here are the release notes.

BricsCAD V18 is an excellent DWG 2018-based CAD application, and the Mac version lacks little in comparison to the Windows version. It’s so much more capable than the perpetually half-baked AutoCAD for Mac that I struggle to comprehend why anybody with the choice would even contemplate the notably inferior and seriously overpriced Autodesk offering.

That’s not just opinion, it can be supported objectively.

Price first. US prices are shown here for a single standalone license over five years, inclusive of the cost of upgrades. The BricsCAD prices therefore include maintenance (it’s optional); the Autodesk prices are for subscription (not optional). No temporary discounts have been included. I have excluded bargain-basement BricsCAD Classic because it lacks the full set of programming and 3D modeling tools. I have assumed that there will be no price increases over the next five years. Given recent history, that’s probably close to the truth for Bricsys prices. Autodesk, not so much.

Year	BricsCAD Pro	BricsCAD Platinum	AutoCAD
1	970	1330	1470
2	240	240	1470
3	240	240	1470
4	240	240	1470
5	240	240	1470
Total	1930	2290	7350

It’s worth noting that if you want to stop paying Bricsys, you’re left with the latest version to use indefinitely. You can change your mind and get back on the upgrade train later, if you like. That sort of flexibility is long gone at Autodesk, where subscription means no pay, no play. If you stop paying, despite having paid 3.2 times as much for your software over the five year period, you’re left with nothing.

Now, features. You may have noticed that Autodesk is now too embarrassed to list the differences between the Windows and Mac versions of AutoCAD on its web site. The Compare AutoCAD vs. AutoCAD for Mac page is now a shadow of its former useful self, devoid of all detail. If you want to get a reasonable idea of what’s going on with AutoCAD for Mac’s deficiencies, you can check out my post about the 2017 release that lists the missing features.

Alternatively, you can have a look at the equivalent Bricsys comparison page, which you should probably do anyway before spending any money. It’s strange that you now need to visit a competitor’s page to get detailed information about an Autodesk product, but in the CAD world these are strange days indeed.

It’s important to note that the Bricsys comparison page has issues; while the BricsCAD columns are up to date, the AutoCAD columns are a year behind. That page definitely needs an update in order to provide a fair comparison. Don’t rely on it completely (e.g. all of the listed products except BricsCAD V17 for Linux use DWG 2018 as the native format, not DWG 2013), but it will give you an approximate idea. Look at the little red X marks in the rightmost column and you’ll see that a whole bunch of the missing AutoCAD for Mac features, even after all these years, are very significant and their absence could rule out the product for you. Don’t expect much in the way of future improvement. either. AutoCAD for Mac is in maintenance mode, just like the full product.

BricsCAD for Mac is not just more fully-featured, it’s ironically also more AutoCAD-compatible than Autodesk’s effort. For example, try to run a selection of LISP routines in both products. Almost all of it will run just fine in BricsCAD. Anything that uses ActiveX or DCL (dialog box) calls simply won’t work in AutoCAD. You might be all right with some simple routines (if it was written for AutoCAD for DOS then it will probably be fine) but any LISP even moderately sophisticated is going to fail.

BricsCAD for Mac doesn’t just provide capabilities that AutoCAD for Mac doesn’t have and never will, it offers something more than that. It offers a path beyond basic drafting. You can abandon all hope of Revit for Mac – that won’t be happening. AutoCAD-based vertical products? Nope. Inventor OS X? Forget it. But the availability of a product like Bricsys BIM for Mac (not priced above – it’s US$770 extra if purchased seperately) is an obvious drawcard for Mac-happy architects. You can create 3D parametric models on your Mac if you use BricsCAD Platinum, and you can create them without straying far from a familiar AutoCAD-like environment. Sheet metal? Sure (at extra cost).

If you’re a Mac-only person and you’re wedded to Autodesk, you’re not only being ripped off, you’re following a dead-end path. Time to check out the alternatives.

AutoCAD 2018 for Mac – welcome to twenty years ago

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In the past, I’ve described how AutoCAD for Mac was released half-baked (as I predicted) and has remained half-baked ever since.

But wait! Autodesk has proudly announced AutoCAD 2018 for Mac. Skimming through that blog post, I must admit my jaw dropped when I saw some of the new features. This one, for example:

This “new feature” was first provided to AutoCAD users in the 20th century. It was an Express Tool in AutoCAD 2000 (released 1999) and was absorbed into mainstream AutoCAD a few years later. The alias editor goes back even further, to the Release 14 Bonus Tools (1997). That one was absorbed into AutoCAD in 1999. Some of the other new features are also old. Migrating your settings was new back in the century that started without powered flight. Now, not so much.

These features are new to AutoCAD for Mac, of course, and that’s kind of the point. Autodesk is advertising, as new, features that were born before some of the adults who are now using their products.

There are other very important features (e.g. DCL support, essential for LISP compatibility) that date back even longer (Release 12, 1992) and which are still missing from AutoCAD for Mac. That’s right, in some areas AutoCAD for Mac is a quarter of a century behind. And counting.

On the bright side, you do now get access to the pointlessly-changed 2018 DWG format. A couple of features are reasonably new additions, but they represent a small subset of the small number of minor improvements in AutoCAD 2017 and 2018 for Windows. If anything, the rate of improvement of AutoCAD for Mac is lagging behind even the glacial progress of AutoCAD for Windows, despite starting from a much lower base point.

I note with interest that Autodesk’s comparison page is now hiding the detail of the differences between the full product and AutoCAD for Mac. I guess if you have two identically-priced products and one’s missing a bunch of stuff, you might be tempted to hide the fact from your potential customers. This post of mine from last year will give you some idea of what Autodesk’s not telling you about what’s missing from AutoCAD for Mac. Clue: it’s a lot.

Mac users pay full price for their product and deserve much better than this. If you want information on a full-featured “AutoCAD for Mac”, don’t bother looking for it from Autodesk. Try Bricsys instead.

Tip: what to do when your text becomes empty rectangles

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Dear person who used the search terms “writing has become empty rectangle in cad” and “autocad text has become an empty rectangle” on this blog, I suspect you probably have a drawing where QTEXT has been turned on. To fix this, enter QTEXT at the command prompt, set it to OFF, and if the problem doesn’t go away by itself then issue the REGENALL command.

Pedantic note: the command name is QTEXT, but this controls a system variable called QTEXTMODE. QTEXT OFF is equivalent to both SETVAR QTEXTMODE 0 and just QTEXTMODE 0. In LISP it would be (setvar “QTEXTMODE” 0).

This tip applies to all AutoCAD releases and variants you’re likely to run. Because BricsCAD has a high degree of command-line compatibility with AutoCAD, it applies to BricsCAD too. The same may apply to other AutoCAD-compatible applications.

BricsCAD V18 – showing Autodesk how to do DWG CAD

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For years now, Autodesk has done very little worthwhile with AutoCAD. There have been a few small but welcome improvements, but it’s really just tinkering at the edges. The product as a whole continues to stagnate and yet blimp out. It’s getting bigger and slower with each new release. The downloads get bigger. The install times get longer. The startup times drag out. The responsiveness suffers. And for what? Pretty much the same old thing, every time. Sometimes you don’t even get a new desktop icon. Don’t get me started on value for money.

It’s as if Autodesk considers DWG-based desktop CAD to be a solved problem. Many CAD users accept this. There’s not much more that can be done to improve it, right?

Wrong.

Bricsys has, yet again, proven Autodesk wrong. It is very possible to significantly improve DWG-based CAD. The improvements to the just-released BricsCAD V18 go far beyond anything Autodesk has done for many years, and that’s improving on an already-excellent and innovative product in V17. I’ll be covering some of the most important changes in future posts, but for now here are a few Bricsys links:

BricsCAD V18 release notes. Loooong – just look at all those improvements!
Blog post Announcing BricsCAD V18: faster and smarter!
Blog post BricsCAD V18: The All-in-One Solution for General Design, BIM and Mechanical (posts by the legendary Don Strimbu – failing to hold on to Don was one of Autodesk’s most spectacularly dumb moves).
Video What’s new in BricsCAD V18 (YouTube, 8:42).
Video What’s new in BricsCAD V18 Classic and Pro (YouTube, 2:58) – shorter but not hugely informative.

Don’t take my word for it. The easiest way to test the validity of what I have to say is to try it out for yourself. Unlike Autodesk products, Bricsys downloads and installs are small, fast and efficient. How efficient? This efficient (R.K. McSwain, Twitter):

It’s a 258 MB download for an entire DWG-based CAD application which is significantly more fully-featured than AutoCAD. No nasty malware-like download manager. It’s not a stub or a pre-installer that expands itself before even starting the install proper. It’s a ready-to-run installer for the entire top-of-the-range product capable of parametric 3D, sheet metal design and BIM. It installs and starts up quickly. You can have no trace of BricsCAD on your computer now and be editing your DWGs with it (yes, including your AutoCAD 2018 and Civil 3D DWGs) in a few minutes.

Here’s the download link. You can evaluate it for 30 days.

Did I mention that perpetual licenses are available? Or that it’s way cheaper than AutoCAD? Or that when you report a problem it goes to a real developer who actually cares about fixing it in a reasonable timeframe?

CAD-related Twitter exchange of the year

First 2018.1-broke-my-AutoCAD reports coming in

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Thanks to R.K. McSwain for pointing out that at least one user has reported unexpected shutdowns from AutoCAD (Architecture, probably) following installation of the 2018.1 Update. The problem went away following uninstallation of the update.

Caveat updator.

Anybody else have any issues or are you all waiting for the early adopters to find out for you?

Edit: it turns out the crash occurs when opening 2013 DXF files.

Edit 2: a hotfix has been posted here.

AutoCAD 2018.1 released, but only for some

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Autodesk has released the AutoCAD (and LT) 2018.1 Update, not to be confused with the earlier ill-fated 2018.0.1 Update. It’s only available for currently-paying subscription and maintenance customers. The “non critical” bug fixes in this Update (by Autodesk’s definition) are being withheld from Autodesk’s other customers.

Those of you who have allowed your maintenance to expire due to Autodesk’s development inaction and unjustified price increases can consider yourselves duly punished for failing to fall into line.

If you have the execrable Autodesk desktop app installed (not recommended) and it works as expected, this update will present itself to you. Otherwise, get it from your Autodesk Account page. Go to Management > AutoCAD > 2018 Downloads > Updates & Add-ons and then pick the appropriate AutoCAD 2018.1 Update download.

It has yet to be seen whether this update will break things, so if you’re feeling nervous you might want to hold off for a while and let others find out for you. (Edit: it broke one person’s AutoCAD, see comment from R.K. below).

Weighing in at well over 400 MB, the AutoCAD 2018.1 Update download is about twice the size of a complete BricsCAD download, even before expansion. So it must contain a pretty impressive amount of stuff, right? Or is it all bloat? Well, it includes 2018.0.1 and 2018.0.2 and adds this:

Xref Layers Override – Improvements to Xref Layers make it easier to identify overrides and restore them to their default values.
Views and Viewports – A new Named Views panel is added to the View tab to make it easy to create and restore named views from the ribbon, and to create scaled views and viewports for your layouts. The new layout viewports are automatically assigned a standard scale that can easily be changed from a new scale grip on the viewport. Viewport grips have been enhanced.
High Resolution Monitor Support – Supports additional dialog boxes. Palettes and icons are correctly adjusted to the Windows setting for the display scale.
3D Graphics Performance – Work on performance continues to optimize the speed of 3D display for the Wireframe, Realistic, and Shaded visual styles.

The user interface has been touched up to support the above changes. The Preview Guide has been prepared to the usual excellent standard.

That’s all useful stuff, and most welcome. Work has gone into providing some genuinely useful adjustments. But there’s not a lot of it. Autodesk is still just tinkering at the edges.

Overall, AutoCAD 2018.1 is a pretty minor mid-term update, falling a long way short of, say, Release 13c4. That update was shipped on CD to all customers. Free. No maintenance or subscription required.

Bricsys does much more significant and worthwhile mid-term updates than this, and doesn’t charge for them. Perpetual license owners, even those not on maintenance, get them for nothing. Along with the bug fixes. Which are properly documented.

Autodesk used to do all that too, but its customer service has since regressed to the point that the standards of the Release 13 days are something to yearn for. Long-term Autodesk customers will know just how damning that state of affairs is. Autodesk lags a long way behind not only the competition, but also its former self.

Autodesk CEO and all-rental architect Andrew Anagnost has asked Autodesk customers to give him a year to prove that his business model will provide them with better value. It’s not clear when that year was supposed to start, but the all-subscription start date of 1 August 2016 seems reasonable. However you reckon it, a big slab of that year is gone and there’s very little to show for it.

Time to get your finger out, Andrew.

What’s changed at blog nauseam and why

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Last week, blog nauseam died. This post explains the background to that. You’re probably not that interested, so feel free to skip to the dot points that list the changes that have resulted.

The problem was a faulty WordPress installation was using excessive resources. This caused severe performance issues and resulted in the server software stepping in to throttle the site to prevent more widespread problems. The trigger for the WordPress fault has not been determined and may never be. This is somewhat akin to an old AutoCAD drawing suddenly going bad for unknown reasons. The problem may date back years but only recently became critical.

In discussions with my completely blameless web host, Saratoga Hosting, we determined the best course of action was to create a new, clean WordPress site and transfer over as much as possible from the mortally wounded old installation. This is similar to copying and pasting or inserting valid entities from a bad drawing to a clean one, and this is what we did.

I say ‘we’ because Dave from the most excellent Saratoga did a huge amount of work for me to ensure things went as smoothly as possible and with the best result. This is not the first time I have received quite outstanding above-and-beyond customer service from Saratoga in return for the few measly bucks a month I pay for hosting. Thank you, Dave!

Doing things this way provided opportunities for several improvements to both blog nauseam and its parent site, cadnauseam.com. These include:

Improving performance. A clean install that’s not generating many errors per second will load much faster than one that isn’t, just like a small clean program like BricsCAD will perform much better than an old bloated mess like AutoCAD that’s attempting to do hundreds of things a second even when sitting there doing nothing.
Upgrading site security. In addition to various unseen improvements including upgraded protection against hackers and better backups, the site now uses https SSL security, which is the way things are going to have to be in coming years. You may have noticed that the URL now starts with https:// and displays a little closed padlock, indicating this is a secure site.
Integrating cad nauseam with blog nauseam. My old cad nauseam site was a bunch of hand-coded HTML pages that were real cool in the 90s but which have been neglected for years. It’s now part of the same WordPress installation as the blog, which avoids duplication of various things and is much easier to maintain. It also makes sense for me from a business point of view to have my business site more closely associated with a successful blog.
Modern full-screen interface. The integration of cad nauseam and blog nauseam didn’t work well with the old Tempera site template, so I took the opportunity to switch to a cleaner, more modern looking template, Fluida. In addition to being very configurable, this template does all sorts of fancy hover-over stuff that some of you will undoubtedly hate, but in my tests it performed well and didn’t get in my way. The best thing about it is that it’s now full-width: Tempera was not. Some of you won’t like that change either, but I always dislike using a web site that confines itself to a narrow stripe in the middle of a high resolution CAD screen. Now I don’t have to dislike my own site.
I’ve redesigned the favicon to reflect the dual cad nauseam / blog nauseam nature of the site.

I have now restored the polls and image galleries. The automated redirection of old URLs to the new location should now be working. The downloads page is still a work in progress and will remain hidden for a while, but that’s mostly of historical interest anyway.

Again, my apologies for the breakdown and the inconvenience of change, but I’m glad that there have been quite a few positives arising from a bad situation.

If there are things about the site you don’t like now, feel free to let me know.

Automated .NET 4.7 update kills AutoCAD pre 2017

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Thanks to Robert Green for pointing this out:

Microsoft is installing .NET 4.7 as part of their auto updates and it is causing many legacy Autodesk applications to crash on any ribbon interaction. Touch the ribbon, away goes your software.

If you can keep from installing the 4.7 framework do so. If the damage is already done then uninstall .NET 4.7 and install .NET 4.6.2 using this download link. Note that the uninstall of the offending version must be done first!

AutoCAD 2013 to 2016 and Inventor are affected, and possibly other products. BricsCAD users are unaffected.

It is also reported that you can work around the problem by hacking the registry to identify an earlier .NET version as being installed (the usual caveats apply). That’s described in this Autodesk Knowledgebase article that works around a related but slightly different issue.

Don’t you just love the way continuous automated updates enhance and enrich the user experience?

Bentley marketers love Autodesk

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Bentley Systems marketers are currently taking advantage of Autodesk customers’ distaste for the Big A’s rent-or-GTFO business model.

For any Autodesk competitor, this is a fairly smart move. Autodesk has offered a free kick to its competitors and is betting on them all kicking the ball wide of the net. How accurate is Bentley’s shooting?

In this case, AutoCAD customers are being encouraged to take up MicroStation. Via the Cadalyst Direct opt-in advertising list, I received an email entitled AutoCAD Users, you need options. We listened:

Talk about feeling trapped (which has many Autodesk customers angry), options and flexibility (which Autodesk has removed) and listening (which Autodesk really sucks at) are clearly taking advantage of Autodesk’s self-inflicted subscription predicament.

“Work the way you want to” is only partly true. If you want to work with a pool of network licenses and not get unpleasant surprises in the way of excess-use invoices every so often, the Bentley Select licensing system may not be for you. Bentley has fixed some of the worst aspects of that system but it’s still controversial and unpopular.

It’s also stretching things to describe DWG as a natively supported format with no data conversions necessary. It’s true that MicroStation has supported open and save of DWG for some years, but as a secondary format. It’s not like BricsCAD, where DWG is the primary format and files can generally be seamlessly shared with AutoCAD users. I know from personal experience that DWG files originating in MicroStation cause a bunch of problems for AutoCAD users. I’ve had to write code to work around some of the issues.

Back to the marketing. The email, complete with imagery of a man cramped up in a cardboard box, pointed me to this page with a similarly confined woman:

With the cardboard box theme, it’s a good thing that Bentley isn’t marketing to cats. They would probably make ideal Autodesk customers.

So what’s the substance of the offer here?

If you own AutoCAD perpetual licenses, you can receive credit for the current value of your AutoCAD license toward the purchase of a MicroStation perpetual license.

That’s as specific as it gets: “credit for the current value of your AutoCAD license” could mean anything. Autodesk doesn’t sell software any more, so what’s the value of a license that has no current list price? You could have bought your AutoCAD 30 years ago for $2000 and spend $15000 keeping it up to date. How much credit do you get based on that value? 100%? 1%?

It’s an unknown discount off an unknown amount. What are the terms and conditions? Which AutoCAD releases and variants qualify? Do you get to keep your AutoCAD license? (Of course you do, Bentley can’t take it away from you, but they could have said so).

To fill in the gaps you’re expected to fill in a form and presumably get a quote. I bet most people will stop right there and close the browser window. I don’t know about you, but my interest in offers falls off dramatically when I can’t see what’s being offered.

I think Bentley has kicked the ball the wrong side of the post here.

Autodesk has released an update to fix the following AutoCAD 2018 problem:

Product users of version 2018 Autodesk single-user subscriptions may experience an intermittent crash. The crash occurs when it has been more than 24 hours since the last successful authorization check and there is intermittent or no internet connection, or the licensing authorization server is unavailable. The licensing authorization check occurs in the background and is completely unrelated to activities the user is performing at the time of the crash.
A fatal error message may be shown by the product. For example:

FATAL ERROR: Unhandled e06d7363h Exception at ee563c58h

Links:

Readme: Product crash when communicating with Licensing Server – Hotfix
Windows 64-bit: Autodesk License Service (x64) – 5.1.5 HotFix 1 (560 Kb)
Windows 32-bit Autodesk License Service (x86) – 5.1.5 HotFix 1 (1820 Kb)
Mac: Autodesk_License_Service_5.1.5.pkg (12.7 Mb)

Note that this crash only afflicts subscription (rental) single-user (standalone) customers. People with perpetual licenses don’t have to put up with the multiple additional points of failure caused by the subscription licensing system insisting on phoning home every 30 days. Yes, even if you pay for three years’ subscription up front, you’ll still need a working Internet connection every 30 days if you want to keep using the product.

At least, Autodesk has been saying it’s only once every 30 days (as if that wasn’t bad enough). The information provided with this hotfix tells a different story. What is the license server doing phoning home 24 hours after the last successful authorization check? Enquiring minds want to know.

No criticism of Autodesk is implied for providing this hotfix. As always, I commend Autodesk for fixing up problems as they arise. The basis of my criticism is the hotfix being necessary in the first place. It’s caused by Autodesk inflicting unnecessary complication on its customers for its own internal reasons. This one fails the “how does this benefit the customer?” test big-time.

The single-user subscription licensing mechanism has been a crock from day one, especially for CAD Managers of multiple users who have to deal with its onerous requirements. It’s an astonishingly poor design, very badly implemented. Even with this particular crash fixed, it’s still a crock.

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 3

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In this third post in what was supposed to be a two-part series, I have more to say about the BricsCAD documentation system. See here for part 1 and here for part 2.

Developer Help – Addendum

In this comment from Bricsys API person Torsten Moses, he informed me about the availability of the Lisp Developer Support Package (LDSP) in the Bricsys Application Catalog. As always, when presented with new evidence I am prepared to re-examine my position on anything. Therefore, I will now further discuss the BricsCAD developer documentation.

The first thing to mention is that the existence of the LDSP package is not obvious. To somebody who uses BricsCAD as-provided and as goes burrowing down through the Help system looking for information, that system is still broken. The documentation as presented to the user remains sub-standard, exactly as described in part 2.

Assuming you know of the existence of LDSP, how do you go about using it? Here are the steps:

Go to the Bricsys Application Catalog site, click in the search field and start typing LDSP (you don’t need to hit Enter).
The link to the Lisp Developer Support Package (LDSP) will appear: click that.
Enter your email address, accept the privacy agreement and pick Download. (Note in passing that this is actually published by Torsten’s own company, not Bricsys).

If you’re already a registered Bricsys user (you will be if you’re evaluating it), the download will start. If not, you’ll be expected to register (free):

Once you’re registered, the download results in a 12 MB file called Lisp Developer Support Package.rar (RAR is a ZIP-like format).

Any recent commercial ZIP utility (e.g. WinZip) will open RAR files and there are a variety of freeware/adware/shareware utilities available to do likewise. For example, RAR Opener in the Windows Store will present itself as the first option in Windows 10. But it goes without saying that going off in a hunt for utilities wouldn’t be on anyone’s expected to-do list when just looking for product help. A bunch of people would give up here, if not earlier.

I went through with installing RAR Opener, but when I attempted to open the LDSP file I saw this:

Oh, and a handful of empty folders were produced. Is there an email waiting for me at work with the password (my Bricsys registration email is at work but I’m at home)? Am I really supposed to have a password to open this RAR? If so, why wasn’t I prompted for one? RAR Opener doesn’t present me with that option anywhere I can see. Is the download corrupt? Does it refuse to work on a Sunday? I have no idea.

At this stage, many more would give up. How many prospective customers would be filtered out by this experience? There’s no way of knowing. However, I’m made of sterner stuff and persevered with downloading and installing another app from the Windows Store. 9 zip did the job and uncompressed the file, no password required.

Yes, the RAR Opener problem I had above isn’t a Bricsys problem directly. But it is indirectly, because the file I was given to deal with won’t open by default in Windows, where the vast majority of BricsCAD users will be working. It’s a level of obfuscation that you can get away with when dealing with cellar-dwelling geeks handling obscure pieces of open source software. It’s not appropriate for customer-facing documentation in a mainstream CAD application. Yes, even developer documentation, because with CAD applications like AutoCAD and BricsCAD, most of the developers are customers/users/managers, not people trying to sell utilities.

Once you manage to get the file uncompressed (it becomes 41 MB), there are three help systems provided in there (CHM, PDF, HTML). That’s excellent, and conforms nicely with the Bricsys philosophy of providing customers with choice. I was unable to find any broken links. However, even in the LDSP, standard AutoLISP functions are undocumented. So I still couldn’t find the (entget) help I was looking for in part 2:

According to Torsten:

…the standard AutoLISP functions like (entget) are not documented, as there are plenty docs on the web for this; but we document any extension beyond AutoLISP standard, even for the standard functions.

Sorry, but while “we don’t have that information but you can Google it” might have been an acceptable answer for a cheap AutoCAD clone’s API documentation ten years ago, that’s not where BricsCAD is today and most definitely where Bricsys wants it to be in future. Just two days ago, Bricsys CEO Erik De Keyser sat across a table from me and told me that BricsCAD isn’t intended as merely an AutoCAD alternative, but must go well beyond that in order to prosper. He’s right. The BricsCAD developer documentation today is not compatible with that vision. I know it’s that way for historical reasons, but we’re now at a different point in the historical timeline.

Conclusion – Addendum

My conclusion from Part 2 remains valid, despite the existence of LDSP. Both Autodesk and Bricsys have work to do. Downloading LDSP will help with some of the BricsCAD developer documentation failings but leaves plenty behind. It also provides its own set of unfortunate challenges.

This isn’t just a technical and ease-of-use failing, it’s a marketing one. That’s because it acts as a stumbling block to conversion of AutoCAD sites to BricsCAD. Disaffected AutoCAD power users in small sites and CAD Managers from large sites are right now taking tentative steps to evaluate the suitability of BricsCAD to replace AutoCAD in their complex LISP-heavy custom environments. They’ll want to know what’s the same and what’s different so they can estimate the effort and cost involved in the transition before getting in too deep. I know this, because I’ve done it myself. The first thing they will come across in their search is disjointed, very inconvenient and incomplete. It presents a less-than-professional image.

Some potential customers, like me, will persevere and discover that the quality of the developer tools implementation far exceeds the expectation generated by the documentation. Others will give up well before they reach that stage, and that’s a shame.

Autodesk acquires Angry Birds developer Rovio (repost)

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This post, originally published on 1 April 2012, brings back fond memories. That’s mainly because of this tweet from Carl Bass:

Autodesk announced today that it had welcomed Rovio Entertainment into the Autodesk fold. Following a US$2.6 billion acquisition, the publisher of mega hit video game Angry Birds is now Autodesk’s Mobile Entertainment division based in Espoo, Finland. “This is a tremendously exciting development for Autodesk going forward,” said Autodesk CEO Carl Bass. “Rovio is the world leader in mobile entertainment software,” he added, “so for Autodesk to have access to that market and that technology opens up a whole new world for us.”

Bass was effusive about the synergistic benefits of the merger and the benefits it will bring to the user interfaces of all Autodesk products. “When a kid starts playing Angry Birds, they don’t need to read a huge mass of documentation. Just show them a few cartoons and they’re away, instantly productive. This is the essence of the democratization of design; it’s not dumbing down, it’s funning up.” This potential ease of use is excellent news for AutoCAD users, because the documentation is now so terrible that it will be wonderful if we no longer have to try to use it.

Former Rovio CEO, Taikke Monniennren, now Autodesk Vice President in charge of Mobile Entertainment, is equally excited about the future. “We have already been given access to the Autodesk code base and my developers can see the potential there. By copying and pasting some code modules, we hope to be able to piece together the Angry Birds 3D Max Suite in a few short years,” said Monniennren. “The main challenge will be in keeping the download size manageable, but with a bit of luck we will be able to keep it down to just a few gigabytes.” In comparison, the original Angry Birds game was just over a megabyte.

“Do not underestimate the strategic importance of this announcement,” said Bass. “Although it may come as an unpleasant surprise to our competitors, our customers are well aware that this is the direction we have been moving for some time now.” This is true. Autodesk is doing whatever it can to appear young, hip, cool, trendy, mobile, social and just totally with it, man. It has been talking and sometimes acting big on Cloud and mobile computing for a while. Clearly, acquiring Visual Tao (now AutoCAD WS) was just the beginning.

Who would dare to call Autodesk antisocial? Autodesk videos are all over YouTube. On Twitter, many key Autodesk people tweet many times a day. The recent AutoCAD 2013 launch in San Francisco was done entirely via Facebook (which enhanced Autodesk’s green credentials by allowing a reduction in the number of press and bloggers flown in from around the world to only 120). The first thing a new AutoCAD 2013 user sees on installation is a Welcome screen that is largely dedicated to Autodesk pushing its app store and Facebook and Twitter pages. Because the Welcome screen phones home on each use, Autodesk can easily slip in new links to any other sites it wishes to promote. I expect your AutoCAD 2013 Welcome screen will sport Angry Birds gaming links within a few days. Angry Birds gaming plug-ins for AutoCAD and related products are likely to appear in the app store soon, but I expect we will have to wait for AutoCAD 2014 until the games become part of the core product.

Clearly for Autodesk, kids are the new adults. But is what spoiled teenagers do on their iPhones really a sound basis for the needs of professional CAD users in a corporate environment? How well does this concept work in practice? Bass answered that by showing a prototype user interface for AutoCAD that uses the new technology. He demonstrated it on a 48″ touch-screen, but it is believed that it will be at least partly functional using old-fashioned mouse-based technology.

Bass started by selecting a red bird from the Ribbon, which sported a snazzy new flouro theme. He dragged the bird down into the drawing area (which had a beautiful animated background with kittens, rainbows and unicorns; let’s hope that makes into production). While this was going on, the system was providing haptic feedback, with the screen vibrating and the bird squawking when dragged close enough to an existing object. By dropping the bird close to the end of a line, Bass was able to start drawing a line from exactly that point. He then drew back the bird and released it such that it was launched in the direction he wanted the line to go. As the bird shot forward, Bass touched it just as it crossed another line and it snapped on to the midpoint with a happy chirp. Perfect!

He then demonstrated other birds in action. To draw a polyline you use the yellow bird and touch it at each vertex as it flings itself along your desired path. To explode a block you use the black bird, triggering a loud explosion which I think will have to be toned down for office use. Ellipse? That white chicken thing that lays an egg. Multileader? The little grey one that splits up when you touch it. And so on. Bass already has his Finnish developers hard at work devising hundreds of new birds that cover most of AutoCAD’s key functionality. Some unimportant features, such as plotting and xrefs, are difficult to translate into birds and will be deprecated into command-line-only versions before being dropped completely in a future release.

The demonstration had to be curtailed after a few minutes when Bass’s arms became too tired for him to continue, but it provided an enticing view of a future where CAD is fun, fun, fun! Addicted users are productive users, according to Bass. “If you’ve ever seen kids playing Angry Birds, you know that they will happily sit there playing it all day every day without complaint. They don’t even stop to eat. The only time they take a break is when they’re forced to visit the bathroom. Even when they’re in there they will probably photograph themselves in the mirror and post it on Facebook. CAD Managers, don’t you wish you could tap that astronomical productivity resource?”

According to Bass, those managers will soon be able to do exactly that. His advice is, “Fire the old fuddy-duddy naysaying Luddites who are allergic to change and replace them with a bunch of kids off the streets. Give them Autodesk software they can’t resist using and they’ll soon be flinging pixels around like there’s no tomorrow. You’ll have an instant office full of the cheapest engineers you’ll ever find, and they’ll be begging you to take their work home with them. With the literally infinite anytime anywhere power of Autodesk 360, they’ll be able to do exactly that. In a few years, the kids in hoodies you see hanging around shopping malls won’t be waiting to snatch your bag, they’ll be leeching wi-fi so they can design your next car on their phones. And they’ll be doing it using Autodesk software.”

Bass refused to be drawn on leaked details about the upcoming iPod Shuffle version of AutoCAD or its supposed marketing slogan Shake to Design, though. “We have a very strict policy of never discussing our plans for future products,” he explained, “except when it suits us.”

The marketing gurus at Autodesk have written an independent productivity report that shows that AutoCAD with the new interface improves productivity by 632.7%. On Windows only, that is. This productivity phenomenon will not apply to AutoCAD for Mac, because there are no plans to provide the Angry Birds interface on OS X. Autodesk believes that this won’t concern Apple users, because Macs are shiny and look really nice.

The impressive productivity figure was generated by performing carefully selected tasks on AutoCAD 2013 using the prototype interface, when using the latest, fastest and most expensive hardware. This was then compared with completely different tasks performed using AutoCAD 1.4. On a twin-floppy IBM PC. With a 12″ monochrome monitor driven by CGA. But without an 8087. The resultant percentage was then multiplied by the number of years since Autodesk produced an AutoCAD feature that wasn’t half-baked on release.

In related news, Autodesk’s legal department has lodged applications to register the words ‘Angry’, ‘Birds’ and all images of feathered flying creatures as Autodesk trademarks. Cease-and-desist notices have already been sent to publishers of ornithologist guide books. Also in Autodesk’s legal sights is Disney Corporation, which clearly violates Autodesk’s intellectual property rights with its depiction of Donald Duck as not just a bird, but frequently as an angry one who goes around smashing things up.

The last word goes to Bass. “Look, the trend is irresistible, and those who can’t keep up will be left behind. Here at Autodesk we believe in freedom of choice. You can either choose to follow our vision of the future, or take to the streets with a cardboard sign and a chipped enamel mug. What could be more democratic than that?”

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 2

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In this pair of posts, I describe the BricsCAD documentation system. Click here for part 1, where I describe the general Help system and the descriptions in the Settings command.

In this part, I discuss developer documentation and draw my conclusions.

Developer Help

If we count the Settings descriptions as a system, there’s a third documentation system for BricsCAD. The Developer Reference isn’t offline and included in an install like the main Help. Instead, it’s online, just like Autodesk’s default. Unlike Autodesk’s system, it works pretty well.

Being online means the performance suffers, of course, but it’s generally not too bad. It appears quicker than Autodesk’s. A link within the main Help system takes you to the Bricsys Developer Reference which is just accessed using your default browser. Of course, that means your mouse buttons work correctly and you have all other the advantages of whatever functionality is built into your browser.

Hot tip: you can get to a real browser from within the AutoCAD pseudo-browser thing too, by right-clicking on a link and picking Open in Browser. The URL takes a while to mangle and unmangle itself before you get to read any content, but you get there in the end.

Unlike the general Help, the BricsCAD developer Help system isn’t so obviously superior to its AutoCAD equivalent. This is largely thanks to the outstanding efforts of Autodesk’s Lee Ambrosius who has managed to take Autodesk’s pig’s ear of a system and produce perhaps not a silk purse but at least a decent-quality cloth bag. It can’t have been easy.

Like the main Help, the BricsCAD online developer reference has a Contents mode with structure:

There’s an Index:

And there’s Search:

As the last image shows, the system contains not only missing information (where’s the (entget) description?) but also broken links; this wasn’t the only 404 I came across. That’s a bit embarrassing, Bricsys. There’s a lot of work to be done yet to bring this up to scratch.

There’s no Favorites section, but of course that’s built into your browser so it would be pointless reproducing that.

Of course, you can’t get context-sensitive help on functions within your LISP code from VLIDE, because BricsCAD has no VLIDE.

Conclusion

The BricsCAD documentation system is notably better than the AutoCAD one in many ways. However, it’s a long way short of perfect. Many aspects need attention, and there are multiple holes to be filled. Sometimes I find myself forced to use AutoCAD’s general documentation system to find out something about a system variable that’s common to both systems. That shouldn’t be necessary.

I’ve hardly mentioned the content of the respective documentation systems, but I must say Autodesk’s content is often superior (thanks, Dieter). But there are exceptions; the BricsCAD descriptions and pictures of various commands and options are better in some cases. For example, try to find out what the various options of the PEdit command do in both systems. With BricsCAD, it’s all laid out on one page and nicely linked.

The AutoCAD command documentation has been pared down too much in places to make each page shorter and simpler, hiding the content beneath sometimes obscure links. It’s possible to find out what the Pedit options do in AutoCAD, but it’s certainly not BricsCAD-easy and I initially gave up after chasing my tail for a while. I went back and found it later, but it took a lucky guess. Giving up after looking through a circular set of links is a common experience with AutoCAD’s Help. There’s a programming concept called mutual recursion, but I don’t want to experience it during a vain search in a Help system, thanks. A visible, navigable structure would help eliminate that issue, but there isn’t one. There needs to be one. Did I mention that already?

With system variables, BricsCAD’s Help is consistently and clearly inferior to AutoCAD’s. The AutoCAD content also tends to be better worded, with the BricsCAD wording being occasionally slightly awkward in a non-native-English-speaking manner. There are also some formatting issues with wide gaps left where the system attempts to expand command descriptions to the right margin and does a poor job of it.

As with AutoCAD, there are many video tutorials available for BricsCAD. I have not considered these in my evaluation but the few I had a look at were pretty good.

Who wins? Nobody. It’s a draw. Both companies need to step up. Autodesk mainly with its awful structure-free system, Bricsys mainly with its incomplete content, particularly for developers. But both companies have work to do in all areas.

BricsCAD documentation – a tale of three systems – part 1

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Because of the great similarity between BricsCAD and AutoCAD in terms of commands, variables and most aspects of usage, you would expect the BricsCAD documentation to be about the same too. But it isn’t. Much of the content covers the same areas and due to BricsCAD’s command-line compatibility, there must be a lot in common. But the Help system is very different from Autodesk’s. How so?

In this pair of posts, I describe the BricsCAD documentation system. I assume you’re familiar with the AutoCAD one. In this first part, I describe the general Help system and the descriptions in the Settings command. In part 2, I will discuss developer documentation and draw my conclusions.

General Help

The general Help system in BricsCAD looks a lot like the excellent CHM-based system that AutoCAD had in 2010 and earlier (thanks, Dieter). BricsCAD’s Help is offline by default, included with the standard download and installation, and very fast. Those are great things to have, and AutoCAD lacks them all. But the great thing about the BricsCAD Help system is that it supports different usage patterns, rather than Autodesk’s search-or-nothing method. Rather than telling users that they are expected to use Help in one specific way, Bricsys accommodates their disparate wishes. As usual, the customer-friendly way is the winner.

The BriscCAD system looks a lot more old-fashioned than the AutoCAD one. I don’t care about that. I do care about space-efficiency though, and BricsCAD is the winner there. You can of course resize the dialog and the size of the left pane.

There’s a Contents tab which allows you to navigate the hierarchical structure in which the information is arranged. That’s useful not only when looking for something in particular, but also when using the system as a self-teaching mechanism by working through an area and related topics. AutoCAD completely lacks such a structure.

There’s an Index tab that lists the indexed items in alphabetical order. You can start typing and the indexed items instantly change to reflect what you’ve typed, which is much more efficient than Autodesk’s system. AutoCAD 2018 Help does include an alphabetical list of commands and system variables in both online and offline versions, but it doesn’t give access to all of the topics.

There’s a Search tab that allows you to enter a search term and have several suggestions thrown up. Unlike Autodesk’s system, the suggestions are displayed in a space-efficient manner. Unfortunately, like Autodesk’s search, the suggestions displayed often differ from what you’re after. Even hitting F1 within a command doesn’t take you straight to the page for that command. In PEdit, the F1 visible suggestions don’t include the PEdit command page! It’s there, but needs a scroll down. That really needs work.

There’s also a Favorites tab where you can save and restore any pages you want to go back to.

But that hierarchical structure is the big winner. Destroying that structure in the AutoCAD 2011 pseudo-browser Help debacle and leaving it broken for seven further releases has to rank among the silliest self-destructive acts Autodesk has ever performed on AutoCAD. Because Bricsys never made that mistake, its general Help system is superior to AutoCAD’s. Until Autodesk throws away its flat-structure mindset and starts again, it has no hope of catching up to the BricsCAD system.

Oh, and your mouse’s forward and back buttons work in the BricsCAD system. How long have we been nagging Autodesk about that? Seriously, how hard could that be?

It’s not all good, though. As mentioned at the top, the AutoCAD content is generally superior. There are also quite a few holes. Enter a system variable at the command line and hit F1. You would expect to get context-sensitive information about that system variable. You don’t. You’re just taken rather uselessly to the “Welcome to BricsCAD” page. This needs attention to ensure context-sensitive help is available for all commands and system variables.

Fire up Help, pick the Index tab and start typing in a system variable name. In most cases, you’ll find it’s not in the list (e.g. FILEDIA). In cases where a system variable name does appear in the list (e.g. FILLMODE), double-clicking on it doesn’t take you to a description of the system variable. Instead, you will be presented with multiple topics and it’s often not clear which is the system variable description.

Settings Descriptions

For system variables and most other settings, you’re better off avoiding the main Help system altogether. Instead, use the Settings command. This is like Options in AutoCAD but superior, because it’s all there and arranged much more logically. You can navigate a hierarchical structure to find the setting you want, but you can also type part of the setting name or a related word into the search box at the top of the dialog. If that doesn’t take you immediately to the setting you’re after, you can use the up and down arrows to go to the next match. It’s all very quick and efficient.

Unlike AutoCAD’s Options, you don’t need to go hunting from tab to tab, visually scanning the dialog for the setting you want, which might be hidden under a button or not there at all. Also far superior to AutoCAD, the descriptions don’t hover over the dialog, obscuring what you’re looking at. Dieter has been hacking the AutoCAD dialog hover-tips down in size for years, but they still annoy the heck out of me until I turn them off.

When you find the setting you’re after, a brief description is displayed at the bottom of the dialog. In most cases, this has just the right amount of information you need without having to read through a whole page. If it doesn’t, in some cases it will tell you the setting name. However, this is missing in many cases.

This is a “could do better” area for Bricsys. Somebody needs to go through these descriptions, fill the holes (not a small job) and make them all consistent. While they are at it, get them to tie up all of the missing context-sensitive loose ends in the main system. Better still, provide a button or other method within Settings to take the user to the appropriate Help page. Currently, pressing F1 within the Settings command will give you useful but generic information about using the dialog. Unfortunately, it will not give you information about the setting you want to check or change. That needs to happen.

Click here for Part 2.

AutoCAD 2018.0.2 arrives

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AutoCAD 2018.0.1 is dead, long live 2018.0.2!

Here’s the readme.
Here’s the 64-bit direct link.
Here’s the 32-bit direct link.

This supposedly fixes stuff that 2018.0.1 broke, such as the signed VLX thing. Will this one break other stuff? I guess we’ll find out.

Bloatware – a tale of two installations

BricsCAD V17.2 64-bit Windows Installation

Installation Operation	Timestamp
Execute BricsCAD-V17.2.03-1-en_US(x64).msi	0:00
Prompt for questions	0:03
Click Yes for UAC Allow	0:14
Installation complete, start application	0:35
First run startup	0:40
Total time from install to ready to draw	0:40 (100%)

That’s astonishingly fast. Remember, this is an application that is more capable than AutoCAD overall. How does installing AutoCAD itself compare?

Equivalent AutoCAD 2018 64-bit Windows Installation

Installation Operation	Timestamp
Execute AutoCAD_2018_English_Win_64bit_dlm_001_002.sfx.exe	0:00
Self-extractor finishes initializing	2:46
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow	4:56
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper	5:04
Desktop icon appears	8:10
Install complete, restart required	10:21
Restart complete, start application	11:41
Activation begins	12:05
Activation complete	12:21
Close AutoCAD, execute AutoCAD_2018_Product_Help_English_Win_32_64bit_dlm.sfx.exe	12:25
Self-extractor finishes initializing	14:44
Self-extractor finishes extracting, click Yes for UAC Allow	14:54
Install screen appears, answer questions, start install proper	14:57
Offline Help installation complete, execute AutoCAD_2018.0.1_64bit_r2.exe	15:44
2018.0.1 install complete, start AutoCAD	16:50
Second startup complete	17:18
Total time from install to ready to draw	17:18 (2595%)

Installed sizes are roughly 0.5 GB for BricsCAD and 2.4 GB for AutoCAD. It’s hard to be exact because Autodesk likes to perform multiple installs when one is requested and tends to squirrel away various components in a variety of places. Here are the ten(!) new entries in Add or Remove Programs after just the first stage of the AutoCAD install:

OK, so maybe AutoCAD takes 26 times as long as BricsCAD to install. But the AutoCAD installation images are so much prettier than the plain old BricsCAD dialogs! Shall we call it a draw?

No.

Autodesk, you took a real pounding here. Bricsys chewed you up, spat you out, ground the chewings into the dust, set fire to the remains and then put out the fire with bodily fluids. Sorry, but you deserve it. Your installations have been ridiculously slow for years and are getting worse. Installing a vertical product or suite is beyond a joke; it makes even the AutoCAD install look speedy. It’s not good enough.

AutoCAD 2018.0.1 mystery deepens with silent withdrawal