AutoCAD support for more image formats: JPEG2000, MrSid, ...

AutoCADer blog has an excellent tips on how to install the free Raster Design Object Enabler to be able to enable IMAGE and IMAGEATTACH commands to handle JPEG 2000, ECW, MrSID and more.

• AutoCAD Raster Design 2009 Object Enabler
• AutoCAD Raster Design 2008 Object Enabler
• Autodesk Raster Design 2007 Object Enabler
• http://www.autodesk.com/aecobjenabler

Here are the file format list before and after installation of Raster Design 2009 OE:

and now this

Image Format	Image Insertable into DWG
DEM - USGS Digital Elevation Model (*.dem)	No
DOQ Native Format DOQ (*.doq,*.nws,*.nes,*.ses,*.sws)	Yes
DTED - Digital Derrain Elevation Data (*.dt0,*.dt1,*.dt2)	No
Embedded Bitonal	No
ECW Compressed Image Format (*.ecw)	Yes
ESRI GRID A - Arc/Info ASCII(*.asc,*.txt)	No
ESRI GRID B - Arc/Info Binary(*.adf)	No
JPEG2000 (*.jp2,*.j2k)	Yes
Landsat FAST-L7A (*.fst)	No
NITF (*.ntf)	No
QuickBird TIFF (*.tif,*.tiff)	No
MrSID (*.sid)	Yes

Notice that the setup should be run as Administrator if you have Windows Vista.

The Setup lists DWG TrueView 2009 and NavisWorks Manage 2009 but I have not tried if it really works. They are not listed on the Autodesk website:

Applies to:
AutoCAD® 2009
AutoCAD® Architecture 2009
AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2009
AutoCAD® Electrical 2009
AutoCAD® Land Desktop 2009
AutoCAD® Map 3D 2009
AutoCAD® Mechanical 2009
AutoCAD® MEP 2009

Who used licenses at 1am?

JTB FlexReport Detailed Reports can help you with this if you wonder why there are for example 7 licenses used in the middle of the night, or you might wonder about what users were using an application at a certain point when all licenses were used.

Set the filters like this for example. You don't have to specify start and end date because you can filter out that information later if needed. If you want a larger span you can set the start and end time between 00:00 and 04:00 as well.

Here are a couple of reports that shows you the result. One with checked out licenses that are not borrowed and one with checked out licenses that are borrowed.

Typically this is when an application does not return a license correctly when closed or it could be that the application is borrowed. Causes for this can be older versions of FLEXnet/FLEXlm or some bugs in the vendor application. One solution that worked for many is to use TIMEOUT or TIMEOUTALL. Even with that setting it will not help if the user left say AutoCAD running with a modal dialog box opened or a command in progress.

If you want to try JTB FlexReport a free trial is available upon request with full support without any cost during the trial period so you can make sure it works as expected.

AutoCAD crashes while saving, closing or plotting a drawing

This issue can occur when the Drawing Tabs Utility is loaded that I've written about recently. Obviously the good comes with some bad.

Knowledge Base document: AutoCAD crashes while saving, closing or plotting a drawing

Drawing Tabs application for AutoCAD 2009

AutoCAD 2009 comes with Quick View Drawings so not sure this free tool will keep being available in next version or not. But it does work for 2007-2009.

Even though the Readme says other things (only for 2007) I've been able to use Drawing Tabs in AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD 2009, ACA 2008, ACA 2009, other verticals as well as on Windows Vista. It's a great little piece of freeware but there is still no 64-bit support.

And in AutoCAD 2009 with the right click menu showed.

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2006/10/trick_or_treat_.html

Download Autodesk Bonus Tool Drawing Tabs ReadMe PDF

Download Autodesk Bonus Tool Drawing Tabs ARX file

FLEXnet limitation with many distributed servers

This might be useful for others with many distributed FLEXnet license servers.

Chris Dodge at Microdesk shared the following with me:

Just ran across something interesting with a large client -  Have you heard of this?

They had recently been having a problem where their "Suite" Autodesk products like Land Desktop companion and some of the Revit products could not get a license.    But "Regular" products such as Civil 3D 2008 and Acad MEP had no trouble.

Of course I checked and double checked PLIST – All was fine.

It WORKS if we set FLEXLM_LICENSE_FILE (registry and environment) to a SINGLE server.

The customer finally figured out that the problem started happening when they added a few more FLEXLM servers in the company….

They have a total of 17 servers – He counted the number of characters in his "@server1;@server2…" string, and found that products that need to "CASCADE" for their license don’t seem to like a server list that is over 128 characters.

PS. JTB FlexReport has no limitations on the amount of servers it can report license statistics on.

Future-dated posts to Blogger with Live Writer

Blogger now schedules future-dated posts is no longer beta. Now I just wish Windows Live Writer (WLW) add support for this. It warns me about not supporting this but it sure does work if you just click on Yes. This is great news.

Novedge Pulse and CadKicks as one-stop sites for CAD news

How do you keep up-to-date with CAD news?

TenLinks.com and CAD digest most of you knows about as it's been around for long.

CadKicks.com has been running for a short while now. CadKicks.com is a community based news site. Individual users of the site submit and review (kick) stories, the most popular of which make it to the homepage.

Now comes another CAD related site Novedge Pulse.

It’s a new free area of the Novedge website where blog posts, Press Releases, tutorials, and other pertinent information is collected, organized, and presented in a simple and clear way. At Novedge Pulse, you can also vote for each item with a simple and effective thumb-up, thumb-down system.

A glitch I've mentioned to Franco is that if you use PgUp and PgDn as a keyboard junkie you will miss some of the content. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Do you read/contribute to sites like this? Do you care? Do you not like it? Are they just stealing content on your cost? Do you find new blogs this way?

Personally I rarely visit sites like this but I can understand that they are useful for some and I don't mind that they aggregate snippets from my blog as long as they link back in a good way as they do and not just put up plain copies like many splogs do.

I have my doubts on how valuable the ranking is based on that it's probably only a handful that will bother to do the ranking.

What's in it for me? I checked how many referrals I've got so far and found 6 from CadKicks and 0 from Novedge Pulse and some of them could have been when I myself tried the sites.

Both these new sites have a lot of work behind to set things up to be user and community friendly so give it a try.

Via email and seen on the Novedge Blog.

Find commands in Office 2007 and AutoCAD 2009

You know what you look for in Word, Excel or PowerPoint but cannot find it in the Ribbon. Now with the free Search Commands this is so much easier.

Do you know for example where you can find the command to Insert Form Field?

It is found on the Insert tab and under Quick Parts. Took me a while to find the first time.

Or click on the Search Commands tab and enter "field" and there you have it as well as other related commands.

Hoover with the mouse over any of the results and you find more information including where it is found.

BTW. Similar functionality is included already out-of-the-box in AutoCAD 2009.

And here are the matches using Search menu.

 

The Microsoft Office Lab Website and Blog. This is another blog to keep a watch on as more useful tools will be released.

Max AutoCAD entity handle number

The handle value is stored as a 64 bit number (8 bytes) in the DWG file no matter if you run 32-bit or 64-bit AutoCAD. The maximum value for a handle is: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF" as hexadecimal or 6744073709551615 as integer.

If you for example use the LIST command you see the handle listed:
Handle = 1e9

Or if you list the properties using AutoLISP:
(entget(car(entsel)))
that can give a result like this:
(5 . "1E9")

If you with AutoLISP want to delete an object based on its handle ("1E9") this can be used:
(entdel(handent "1e9"))

The last tip can be useful if you have a problem with for example:
*Warning* Multiply owned object, handle "1e9"

You're Not as Backed Up as You Think

Ziff Davis Enterprise has a white paper about online backup, SaaS backup, cloud backup or whatever you want to call it. I've used Mozy for quite a while and think it's really convenient. My Outlook PST files, Visual Studio projects, AutoCAD drawings, everything is backuped and I don't need to think about closing Outlook or AutoCAD to have the backup working in the background several times a day.

IT departments typically configure user PCs so all work files are stored on network drives. But most users circumvent this approach, storing files on their hard drives. Additionally, laptops users often work outside the office and offline, synchronizing only sporadically and keeping their current work on the local drive. As a result, data on local drives doesn’t get backed up.

I know by experience how true that is with users having the bad habit to save all their CAD work on the desktop instead of in the correct location on the network for example.

You can find the white paper here after registering.

If you want to just try Mozy you can do it for free as long as you don't need to backup more than 2 GB. If you need more there are affordable plans for unlimited space.

LTCCLispWiki a free lisp source code repository

You find the Wiki launched by Greg Robinson at http://lispwiki.com. As the startup page is not much edited click on All Pages on the left side.

Greg Robinson's "LTCC was instrumental in creating the Bonus Tools program extension to AutoCAD release 14, which continues to be part of the core software package as 'Express Tools'"

I contributed with my hatchb.lsp as a starter.

Find blocks and more with Autodesk Seek

Looking for drawings, blocks for AutoCAD or Revit? Autodesk Seek finds DGN, DOC, DWF, DWG, DXF, GSM, LCF, PDF, RFA, RVG, RVT, SKP, ZIP files.

What is Autodesk^® Seek?
It is a web service that allows designers - architects, engineers, students - to search and find generic or manufacturer-specific building products or components and associated design content. This content could include 3D models, 2D drawings, specifications, and descriptions for that product or component.

Which industries are you targeting with Autodesk^® Seek?
Currently, it is targeted at designers working in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry. We are considering extending the service to include content particularly useful for mechanical designers in the future.

How do I use the browse capability on Autodesk^® Seek?
The browse capability on Autodesk^® Seek allows you to browse for content using AEC industry standard classifications, including MasterFormat 2004, Omniclass 1.0, and Uniformat II.

Senior Software Architect of Autodesk Inc. Mike Haley discusses the company's latest product Autodesk Seek and its business model at FORA.tv. See also The Autodesk Seek Taxonomy System and the Autodesk Seek Search Engine.

Via Between the Lines

Solve uninstall problems with Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

If you fail to install any program this utility can come handy. It is one of the tools you should know about and use in emergency situations. It can be used even with Autodesk products like AutoCAD.

Once you have removed the application using the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, it is strongly recommended that you follow the steps in solution TS45252 to remove other Autodesk applications and clean up any folders or registry keys left behind.

Download and instructions on Microsoft.com and Autodesk Knowledge Base document: Product uninstall from the Control Panel fails

Ribbon image sizes in AutoCAD 2009

Image handling in AutoCAD needs more work to be done as well as documentation. If you want to do customization you will find that there is a lot of trial and error. Unfortunately with the new Ribbon there are a lot of problems.

In CUI there are three sizes available, Standard, Medium and Large. It is not obvious what the difference is.

If Standard is used and no label is showed there is a frame around the icon as seen below on the one without a label. If Medium or Large is used and there is a Large image specified it will be used.

Another thing is that the image size is not respected. Notice that the images above are larger than the correct 32x32 size below.

 

What if you want to use other image formats than BMP. The "select image file dialog box" is limited to BMP file formats but if you enter * as file name and press enter or *.png you will find that you actually can select and use PNG, GIF, JPG if you want. One good thing with and reason to use PNG is the support for transparency.

Share your tips in the comments.

Rearrange the Ribbon tab order in AutoCAD 2009

This cannot be done with the Office 2007 Ribbon. It's easy. Just drag and drop the tab and you are done. Make sure your workspace is saved automatically if you want the location to persist. The other way is to use CUI (right click and select Customize).

Understanding Floating Point Precision in AutoCAD, Excel, etc.

AutoCAD has had 64-bit accuracy in the 32-bit platform for many years but still with 64-bit accuracy things can go wrong with with "unexpected" result.

Why is 1.320 - 1.3190 not equal to 0.001 when it really is 0.001?

Be careful when you make comparisons like this.

Both AutoCAD, Excel and many other applications are designed in accordance to the IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754). The standard defines how floating-point numbers are stored and calculated.

A floating-point number is stored in binary in three parts within a 65-bit range: the sign, the exponent, and the mantissa.

1 Sign Bit
11 Bit Exponent
1 Implied Bit
52 Bit Mantissa

A detailed article that describes this thoroughly is Understanding Floating Point Precision, aka “Why does Excel Give Me Seemingly Wrong Answers?”

Solution to Outlook.exe keep running after exit

For some time I've run into the problem that Outlook 2007 is not closed fully. The application is no longer visible but the process keeps running as can be seen in Task Manager. It is normal that it can take a few seconds up to some minutes but now it never stops running. And if an email comes during this time I got notified about it and can open that email. If I try to start Outlook it shows the application using the same Outlook.exe process. This happens on Vista SP1 and might happen on other Windows versions as well.

The solution in my case was that I found Skype (version 3.6) locking up Outlook because it was set to "Show Outlook Contacts" in the View menu. When I disabled that option Outlook closed as it should.

 

One symptom I have seen is that I get the notification that "A data file did not close properly the last time it was used as is being checked for problems. Performance might be affected while the check is in progress."

Another is this message when starting Outlook could be "Outlook failed to start correctly last time. Starting Outlook in safe mode will help you correct or isolate the startup problem in order to successfully start the program. Some functionality may be disabled in this mode. Do you want to start Outlook in safe mode?"

Then "Data file check in process" can be seen for quite a while.

Some other tips if this happens are to check the consistency of the PST files using SCANPST.EXE. Check also for other applications that might connect to Outlook or access the PST files like Google Desktop. Antivirus programs could also be the cause of the locks.

If nothing else works you can try to select "Perform an automatic sen/receive when exiting." in Options>Send/Receive...

Windows Vista indexing sidebar gadget

and after a while the index is up-to-date

I rely heavily on being able to quickly find information on my computer and among my emails in Outlook so this is a useful gadget.

It's easy to pause the indexing and also force it to index now with the latest Windows Search 4 update for Vista. Previously I used a couple of home made shortcuts for that purpose to a couple of cmd files with:
NET START "Windows Search"
and also
NET STOP "Windows Search"

Thanks Brandon Paddock for making it available. Get it via his blog or directly here.

I got an error that it could not find the adaptive.vbs script file but it was easily solved by adding an "en-us" folder and move the vbs folder there.

Solve problem with AutoCAD 2009 Help Search

If you find that your Search tab in AutoCAD 2009 Help is broken it can be fixed by running a repair of AutoCAD. One reason why this can happen is if you install AutoCAD 2009 and after that AutoCAD 2008.

This is what it should look like.

If you know a quicker way to repair this make a comment on how.