Don't use LMTOOLS to borrow Autodesk products

Borrow and return licenses from within the Autodesk product you have is the way to go.

In AutoCAD it is found in the Tools menu but for products like ADT and ABS it is hidden in Help>About>Product Information and then you can select License borrow.

Via Autodesk Knowledge Base

Turbo is back

A bit nostalgic see that the Turbo development products from Borland are back. I used Turbo Pascal and later Delphi quite a lot many years ago. Great products.

Now Turbo C++, Turbo Delphi, Turbo Delphi for .NET and Turbo C# are released and the Explorer versions are even for free competing with Microsoft's Visual Studio Express products.

Technorati: Turbo, IDE, Borland, free

Autodesk software for free for students

Great initiative by Autodesk. One thing I wonder is what software's are available. Something in the back of my mind says that I've seen a list of the included software's and that Architectural Desktop is not included but Revit is. Another setback for ADT? Let me know if this has changed or if I'm wrong.

Via Between the Lines

Technorati: Autodesk

DWGgateway supports DWG 2007

Some days ago I mentioned that Open Design Alliance supports DWG 2007. Now it seems to be used by SolidWorks an ODA member. The beta for DWGgateway that works for AutoCAD 2007 can be downloaded. Notice that this link must be used to get the beta.

According to their email:

DWGgateway 3.0 (beta) now works with AutoCAD 2007

If you’re an AutoCAD® user who occasionally has issues sharing files with colleagues, DWGgateway™ can make your life easier than ever now that it reads files created with AutoCAD 2007 and converts older AutoCAD file formats to 2007 format

Try DWGgateway 3.0 beta

Use DWGgateway to:
* Open files from any version of AutoCAD.
* Create Adobe PDF documents.
* Eliminate the need to upgrade your AutoCAD licenses.

Notice the following. When I installed the software and started ADT 2007 I got a dialog box forcing me to activate the product using name, email, title and country.

It still forces me for example to plot both the model and the layout to PDF even though I just want the layout. It uses the saved page setup and does not use the AutoCAD plot interface.

Uninstalling DWGgateway does not clean up fully from CUI. The menu and toolbar show up as unresolved.

For some DWGgateway can be useful no doubt. But if you want PDF files I recommend CutePDF instead and if you want to convert between different DWG versions I recommend DWG TrueConvert 2007.

Here is what I said about DWGgateway almost a year ago.

Technorati: Open Design Alliance, DWG, AutoCAD 2007, AutoCAD, DWGgateway, PDF, CutePDF