I have added a new freeware on my website.
It is a free plug-in created in VB.NET 2005. Use ADTListDefinition to import, create and export ListDefinitions quick and easy.
Tip. ListDefinition is the command to start the Style Manager with only the List Definitions.
There is a lot XML usage going on. I use it in an application for ADT 2007 I'm developing in Visual Studio 2005 and will export to Fi2xml. AutoCAD Palette Auto-hide Speed freeware modifies fixedProfile.aws (an xml file) that AutoCAD based applications uses.
The Mars Project from Adobe Labs with an XML-friendly implementation of PDF syntax with the new file format Mars (.MARS file extension).
Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework includes DWF (.dwfx) Viewing Capability based on the XML Paper Specification (XPS) from Microsoft. But even the existing DWF format uses a lot of XML in it. AutoCAD's .CUI, AutoCAD Standards Check File (.CHX), Autodesk Project Information (.APJ) files used by ADT as many others are XML files.
XML Marker - A free XML Editor that uses a synchronized table-tree-and-text display to show you both the hierarchal and the tabular nature of your XML data.
XML Notepad 2007 - A free XML editor from Microsoft. Version 2.2 published 11/27/2006.
3D PrintScreen that can grab a 3D model from any OpenGL based application and save to 3D XML and the 3D XML Player are free from Dassault Systemes.
When developing and debugging using Visual Studio 2005 you might end up not being able to debug. Instead of a filled red dot 
For me the solution has sometimes been to right click on the project in the Solution Explorer and go to Properties>Compile>Advanced Compile Options...>Generate debug info: Set the value to Full. Make sure the Configuration is the correct one as well.
Another solution can be that the active solution configuration does not include the project to build that you have the breakpoint in or the StartUp Project is not the correct one.
If your Internet access support high bandwidth and you want to establish more concurrent connections than two, perform the following steps:
With this registry tweak I can download 10 files concurrently. This works with all Windows Internet applications that use the standard API, including Internet Explorer. More can be found on this at Microsoft's KB.
Or the following four rows can be saved to a text file using Notepad and with the .reg file extension. For example MaxConnectionsPerServer.reg. Then just run (merge) this file.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
"MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:0000000a
"MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:0000000a
Often when you search a HTML help file (.chm extension) you find that the words you search for are highlighted and sometimes it can be too cluttered. A quick way to get the highlights removed is to click in the window part where the actual help shows up press F5 to Refresh (or right click and Refresh) the page just like in Internet Explorer. In Options there is also Search Highlight Off or Search Highlight On.
But in the AutoCAD 2007 Help file acad170.chm that is powered with AnswerWorks there is no way to see the search words highlighted. But there is a workaround. If you want to search in the users guide you can open that specific help file directly. In this case C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2007\Help\acad_aug.chm. Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007 Help file adt2007.chm for example is not updated to use AnswerWorks either.
An ADT 2007 and ABS 2007 help file related tip. You might have noticed that you cannot set favorites in the Help file in the 2007 products any more. Here is the workaround described. Open C:\Program Files\Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007\Help\ADT.chm or ABS.chm directly from Explorer.
Sysinternals Process Monitor v1.0 announced via Sysinternals Site Discussion.
Process Monitor, a system monitoring tool that not only replaces Regmon and Filemon by including file system and registry monitoring, but adds process, thread, and DLL monitoring as well as advanced filtering, event information, and basic data mining capabilities.
Bookmark this useful site! http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
Microsoft Office 2007 User Interface Ribbon can be licensed. Microsoft is offering a royalty-free license to use the Office UI subject to a very few restrictions. You're not allowed to make a word processor and competing with Word. Will Ribbon be used in applications like AutoCAD in the future? We'll see.
BTW. http://www.microsoft.com/ was the other day updated with a new look.
Just as Robin Capper I have started using the latest Beta of RSS Bandit. "Feed items appear in wrong feed folders" was one thing that irritated me most before. Now I just got that problem again. Only in one feed so far though. So the bug fix didn't solve it fully. But you might want to try using it anyway.
Adobe Reader 8 is released as well as Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. Reader has new user interface, 2D GPU acceleration ("NVIDIA® GeForce® and NVIDIA Quadro® GPUs let users do more with PDF files, and faster," said Pam Deziel, director, platform product marketing, Adobe Systems Incorporated. "Panning, scrolling, zooming…Virtually every major function in Adobe Reader 8 that takes advantage of the GPU will receive a tangible boost in performance. Things people may have avoided in the past, such as deeply detailed zoomable maps, are now easily displayed."), loupe tool, start meetings and collaborate with Acrobat Connect (Free web conferencing for the rest of 2006), link to Create PDF Online (Note that Create Adobe PDF Online only supports AutoCAD DWG files saved as versions Release 2.5 through AutoCAD 2002! Since AutoCAD 2002 there has been 2 new file formats.)
Technorati tags: Adobe Reader 8, Adobe, PDF
Download it here. More about it here. (includes SP1 updates for Standard, Professional, and Team Editions of Visual Studio 2005)
I first got this error message when trying to install:
The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch.
Then I remembered that I installed the beta of SP1 so I had to uninstall it first. Make sure to select Show updates in Add or Remove Programs. I forgot that first and could not find it.
The install really takes looong time as you are informed about when the install starts.
Great collection to tour Frank Gehry's Architecture using Virtual Earth or even the embedded Virtual Earth 3D that needs to be installed if you click on 3D.
Mozy is as I said before the online backup solution I use but I've tried some more and wanted to let you know that ProtectMyPhotos is a great and non intrusive program but limited to mostly images or photos and some other file types like most common document types like Word and Excel. If you want other file types you have to wait and see if it's added in the future.
A commenter to a previous post said:
There is an excellent website for online backup and storage information, news and articles. It is: http://www.BackupReview.info
This website lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
I see that Mozy is going up the ladder. Now on place 20.
Are you using VBScript, CMD or BAT? Are you using the old Command line using cmd.exe? Then Windows PowerShell is worth looking at. Windows PowerShell™ is a new Windows command-line shell.
Take a look at the VBScript to Windows PowerShell Conversion Guide. See Windows PowerShell Team blog and download from the homepage for Windows PowerShell.
You can run Windows command-line programs and start Windows graphic programs in Windows PowerShell. In Windows PowerShell, script files have a .ps1 file name extension.
Support for Tab-Completion. Start with for example get- and press tab several times and find cndket's like Get-Acl, Get-Alias, etc.
Windows PowerShell is built on top of the .NET common language runtime (CLR) and the .NET Framework, and accepts and returns .NET objects and you work with methods and properties.
Windows PowerShell has syntax features and keywords that are very similar to those used in the C# programming language.
A cmdlet (pronounced "command-let") is a single-feature command that manipulates objects in Windows PowerShell. You can recognize cmdlets by their name format -- a verb and noun separated by a dash (-), such as Get-Help, Get-Process, and Start-Service.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is supported with the cmdlet for accessing WMI objects, Get-WmiObject and is one of the most powerful ones.
You can reference COM objects like WScript.Shell.
$WshShell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
You can use the Win32_Product class to install Windows Installer packages, remotely or locally.
In addition to the familiar file system drives, such as C: and D:, Windows PowerShell includes drives that represent the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM:) and HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU:) registry hives.
If you want to use one of the free PDF printers or writers that are available hyperlinks does not always convert correctly when the Word document is printed to PDF. Typically this is when they are wrapped on two or more rows or have very long paths.
I've tried CutePDF Writer, Pdf995 and PDFCreator among others and they all had this limitation.
To solve this using CutePDF there is no free solution. You need to buy ($49.95) CutePDF Pro (Commenting -> Link Tool) to add those links back onto created PDF document.
PDF995 had the solution with the Word toolbar addin that comes with pdfEdit995 that also is free.
PDFCreator could not solve this at all.
Both the support for CutePDF and Pdf995 where quick to answer my questions.
There is a Field name introduced in AutoCAD 2007 named LispVariable. When selected it shows all Lisp variables available at that moment. Cool! But how useful is it. If you open the drawing and not have that variable and updates the field it will show ####. Have you found any use for LispVariable?
Here's the latest new stuff in Mozy:
In-Windows Restore Files in Folder (just right click in Windows Explorer) and a new virtual folder directly in My Computer to the backup files. 
I've used Mozy for some months. I feel safe and I like it a lot. It can even backup my Outlook data files when Outlook is running.
Update: For $4.95 a month, users may now backup unlimited amounts of data. Mozy now also offers consumers the option to order a copy of their data on DVD, shipped next-day air via FedEx.
I started to make sure my products work in Windows Vista as well as with Office 2007. During earlier betas of these versions there where a lot of incompatibility but now with the final versions Microsoft have managed to solve these problems so without any changes to JTB FlexReport it work fine in my tests with both Windows Vista + Office 2007 and Windows XP + Office 2007 .
A start-up, non-profit company, geared towards increasing the performance of the A/E/C Industry of Asia Pacific intend to create a special software, or group of software's, and distribute it to the public through open source. Functionalities included would be 2D, 3D, design computations, process optimization, virtual simulation, Quantity Breakdown, Import/Export to data library.
If you would like to participate feel free to contact josepaolocalma@yahoo.com. He is right now looking for a competent Project Manager for this project.
Most batch programs for AutoCAD and its verticals can only run script files (files with the SCR extension). SmartPurger can also run AutoLISP files (files with the LSP, FAS or VLX extension) directly among all other useful things. Here is one reason why it can be useful.
If you want to redefine a block definition without inserting a new block in a drawing you can insert a file using = as this example shows.
(command "insert" "blockname=c:\\path\\filename.dwg"))
(command)
The row (command) cancels the insert command but still the block is updated. But if this is run by the script command (command) stops the script from executing any further. It doesn't help to load a lisp file from the script file. But this can work when running a lisp file using SmartPurger like this sample below. The last to rows are needed for SmartPurger to continue and process the next drawing.
; The name of the block to redefine
(setq blockname "Tag - Metric")
; The path and name to the block use for redefining
(setq blockfile "C:\\temp\\Tag - Metric.dwg")
; Insert the new block and cancel using (command)
(command "insert" (strcat blockname "=" blockfile))
(command)
(command "QSAVE")
(command "_QUIT")
Click here to download the free trial of SmartPurger. It also for the AutoCAD 2007 platform where you might have trouble to get ScriptPro to work. The trial is fully functional except that you can only batch 3 drawings at a time. The fully functional version can be purchased from 25 USD. Since it has ability to close dialog boxes like the one for missing shapes it can almost run forever without interruption.
