Clean reinstallation of AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD MEP

When trouble comes it can be easier and quicker to simply reinstall. But to do a more complete reinstall there are ways to manually remove traces from the previous installation that includes deleting files and folders and registry keys. This is also useful in some cases when there are problems to just reinstall using "Add or Remove Programs" in Windows or "Programs and Features" in Vista. This document describes the steps to do that.

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS1070370

Applies to:
AutoCAD Architecture 2008
Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007
Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2006
Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2005
AutoCAD MEP 2008
Autodesk Building Systems 2007.1
Autodesk Building Systems 2007
Autodesk Building Systems 2006
Autodesk Building Systems 2005

AutoCAD Tips Newsletter's Resource of the Month

Via AutoCAD Tips Newsletter that I can recommend to you as AutoCAD user.

Thanks Ellen. Take a look at Ellen's website for more about AutoCAD as well as PowerPoint.

Download AutoCAD Architecture 2008

Great that ACA 2008 can be downloaded. I hope other products will follow. And why not also have access to download older versions as well.

http://autodesk.com/aca2008-download

A downloadable version of AutoCAD® Architecture 2008 software is available here as an alternate form of media for users who have purchased AutoCAD Architecture 2008 and do not have DVD drives. Users should install the software using the serial number provided on the product DVD case.

Other downloads related to ACA 2008.

Hotfix - AecDtlComponents

Hotfix - DWF Package Not Viewable in Autodesk Design Review 2008

Certified Hardware XML Database Update

Hotfix - Hungarian Layout Switching

Hotfix - Vista Group Policy Objects

Hotfix - Live Update

UK Content Creation Guide

Unexpected Stop of the Creating Schedules Video

Hotfix - Autodesk Activation Update

ACA 2008 on www.jtbworld.com

Visual LISP IDE surprises

Running VLIDE in AutoCAD is a surprise each time. Most times the icons are visible enough but sometimes it's hard to see because of the light colors. This is in AutoCAD 2008 I have taken these screenshots.

This is a problem Autodesk is aware of but since VLIDE is such an old part of AutoCAD it's unlikely this problem will be fixed.

NanoScan

I just tried Panda's free online NanoScan. I tried to run it before but now it works on Windows Vista. It took longer time to get it installed than to do the actual scan.

It's an "instant" scanner that searches for viruses, spyware and other threats. It can detect, in less than a minute, a huge number of threats that could be running on your PC right now.

Runtime and Developer Extensions for Access 2007

This is great! What more can be said? It's free.

Microsoft Office Access Developer Extensions 2007
Microsoft Office Access Runtime 2007

Via Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access

Compacting current database in Access

In Access 2000 and Access 2003 there was a way to compacting the current database using this VBA code.

CommandBars("Menu Bar"). _
Controls("Tools"). _
Controls("Database utilities"). _
Controls("Compact and repair database..."). _
accDoDefaultAction

It doesn't work in Access 2007.

You probably will get Run-time error '5': Invalid procedure call or argument

But it works when changed to this.

CommandBars("Menu Bar")._
Controls("&Tools")._
Controls("&Database utilities")._
Controls("&Compact and repair database")._
accDoDefaultAction

or using DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdCompactDatabase

The major problem is that you instead will get this error message.

You cannot compact the open database by running a macro or Visual Basic code.

Instead of using a macro or code, click the Microsoft Office Button, point to Manage, and then click Compact and Repair Database.

What I did was to use this code to make it compact when closed.

Application.SetOption "Auto Compact", True

And when loaded restore it to not Auto Compact when closed.

Application.SetOption "Auto Compact", False

AUGI Nordic

This is related to Sweden and our neighbor countries so the rest of this post is in Swedish translated from Danish from the first page on AUGI Nordic.

Do we use the same language? No. But I do understand Norwegian better than Danish and Finnish not at all.

Nu är den här!
Support användare till användare av Autodesks programvaror till alla användare i den nordiska regionen. (Danmark, Finland, Norge och Sverige)

AUGI Nordic Region Officiellt Organiserad
Välkommen till AUGI Nordic – AUGI's nordiska avdelning. AUGI är platsen för professionella användare av lösningar från Autodesk. Här kan man följa med i senaste nytt – komma med förslag till förbättringar av programmen – tala med likasinnade – få goda råd - hitta lokala användarföreningar – ladda ner små program som andra användare gjort – få hjälp från kollegor från något av de nordiska länderna – starta en användargrupp. Kort sagt det mesta kan göras. Det enda som krävs är en anmälan (gratis medlemskap) plus en aktiv insats. Välkommen till AUGI Nordic!

www.auginordic.com

Via BLAUGI

PS. Bästa lexikon och ordlista för översättning mellan engelska och svenska är www.tyda.se or in English it would be "the best dictionary and vocabulary for translation between English and Swedish".

Google Reader does not show URL's in the status bar

As you can see below URL of links are not visible in the Internet Explorer status bar when using Google Reader. I have Windows Vista and IE7.

The problem starts first after a while almost like the bug with the shortcut keys.

Safari Books Online

I got a 30-day trial to Safari Books Online when I registered my copy of Adobe Acrobat 8.

Below is what it look like when I searched for AutoCAD as an example. There where only three quite old books specifically about AutoCAD. There are many more books on subjects like databases, IT, programming, etc.

• 72 books matching the category "Visual Basic".
• 81 books matching the category ".NET".
• 67 books matching the category "SQL Server".
• 26 books matching the category "Adobe".

The search functionality and overall impression of the site is good so far.

Between $219.99 for a 10-Slot Tech Collection and $439.99 for unlimited access of an annual individual subscription. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet. I usually don't buy and read that many books.

Not so obvious is what 10-Slot Tech Collection really means. Notice that you need to keep a book on you bookshelf for 30 days. Slot values can range from one-half to three slots. Even if you only want to read one page of a book you need to add it to the bookshelf.

Anyone of you that are using Safari Books Online or something like it? What alternatives are there?

Vista search within DWG files and AutoCAD 2008

It should be possible to search and find information within DWG files using Windows Explorer with the help of the AcDwgFilter that is included with AutoCAD 2008.
Is it only me or does not the search and find functionality in Windows Explorer work in AutoCAD 2008 on Windows Vista?

On the topic there is a 3:rd party solution available. It seemed to work well in my limited tests.

Marco van Schagen said...

... and now you can download a free trial of our new DWG IFilter 2007 at http://www.dwgifilter.com
I hope to release our final within a few days. The 2007 version also works great with Windows Desktop Search!

Via comments on Windows Desktop Search finds text within DWG's

Pan tips for AutoCAD

Here are some tips on panning in AutoCAD.

In some earlier versions (up to AutoCAD 2006) of AutoCAD you could hold down Shift and use the middle button (or wheel) on the mouse lock lock panning vertically or horizontally.

In later versions (AutoCAD 2007 and on) you will notice that orbit (3DORBITTRANSPARENT) starts instead.

Update: A reply in the discussion group also mention that if you first press down the middle button (or wheel) and then Shift it works as before.

What you can do is using Ctrl and the middle button. It works the same way as before but you need to be stable on you hand to make it only pan up or down or to the left or right.

But there still is a way to have it work as before. Use the command PAN (or 'PAN for transparent use) instead in combination with Shift and the left button or the middle button.

This button for Pan Realtime  is also available on the Standard toolbar (at least in AutoCAD 2008)

If you want more control on panning you can use the command line variant of PAN namely -PAN in combination with either Ortho on or Polar on. That way you can select to pan exactly a specified distance or even at a specified angle.

For more on PAN enter PAN on the command line in AutoCAD and press F1 for help.

I wrote up more details on this as a response to a question in the AutoCAD discussion groups.

In 2006 I could hold the shift key down, then click, and drag my middle
mouse button and I could only pan the contents of the viewport in a straight
90 degree direction. Now in 2008 when I do this I get some 3D orbit command
and not a pan. Can I change this back?

Update via email from Tracy Lincoln that I was approved to add here.

Nice PAN tip, keep up the good work!

You can use the command alias P for PAN and -P for -PAN... you can also use 'P and '-P for transparent use of these commands.

If you have right-click time sensitivity turned off and shortcut menu selected (Options > User Preferences > Windows Standard Behavior Area > Right-click Customization...) then you can right-click with nothing selected and select PAN or use the a key.

Autodesk Research

Interesting reading on different research projects as well as several videos. Take a look at Autodesk Research http://www.autodesk.com/research

Image above from Boom Chameleon. More on 3D navigation.

Maybe AutoCAD and other Autodesk software's soon will support the coming Microsoft Surface.

Via It’s Alive in the Lab

Autodesk acquisition of the Swedish Opticore AB

Opticore is a developer of 3D real-time software for interactive product visualization.

Here is a snapshot of a Swedish Volvo C70 rendered using Opticore.

Press release and the Opticore AB website.

"The acquisition of Opticore technology is part of Autodesk's commitment to set the direction for Digital Prototyping and offer a complete solution across the Manufacturing industry," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, senior vice president, Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions. "By adding Opticore products, Autodesk intends to offer the most complete design visualization solution in the market, providing automotive and product designers the opportunity to select the most cutting edge visualization product that best meets their needs."

Clip pipe in Vista to clipboard

In Windows Vista as well as Windows Server 2003 you can use the command line parameter clip to to pipe or output the result to the clipboard. (This was available in Windows NT and Windows 2000 Resource Kit)

Example: dir | clip

No need to mark and copy from the command window. Even file contents can be copied to the clipboard. It also works with PowerShell.

clip /? | clip

gives the result below that I just pasted in:

CLIP

Description:
    Redirects output of command line tools to the Windows clipboard.
    This text output can then be pasted into other programs.

Parameter List:
    /?                  Displays this help message.

Examples:
    DIR | CLIP          Places a copy of the current directory
                        listing into the Windows clipboard.

    CLIP < README.TXT   Places a copy of the text from readme.txt
                        on to the Windows clipboard.

I like it and want it on my Windows XP. No problem. Just copy clip.exe (found in system32) from a machine with Windows Server 2003 (does not work with the one from Vista) and place it in the system32 folder on the Windows XP machine.

Outlook 2007 Signatures and Stationary dialog box missing

I run into problem with Outlook 2007. When I selected Tools>Options>Mail Format>Signatures nothing happened. Restarted. Started in safe mode (holding down CTRL during start). No dialog box showed up.

The solution that helped was to run Microsoft Office Diagnostics available at Help>Office Diagnostics in Outlook.
Also at: Windows Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office\Microsoft Office Tools.

How to link information from tables in AutoCAD

You probably already know how to link between cells in one table. Just use formulas like in Excel: =B2+B3

Did you know it is possible to link cells between tables in AutoCAD?

Here is how you can do it.

Right click on a cell and select Insert>Formula>Cell

Select a cell in another table and you will notice a formula like this.

The formula can be changes to your needs. For example to:
=Table(2127834720).B2*A2

The formula options Sum, Average and Count can also be used like this.

2127834720 or whatever shows up is the Object ID for the table. If you save the drawing, close it and open it again you will notice that this value has changed. This is because the Object ID is just a file session valid value.

Notice that only numeric values can be cross linked like this. If you select a cell with text in it you will only see ####.

But if you have ADT (Architectural Desktop) or ACA (AutoCAD Architecture) you will notice that you cannot link to a cell in a Schedule object (AEC_SCHEDULE_TABLE). You can convert a Schedule to a table if you right click on the schedule and select convert to table.

How about text object (TEXT or MTEXT)?

You can Insert a Field (CTRL+F) and in the Field Category select Objects and then select the field name Formula. Now you will see the buttons for Average, Sum, Count and Cell.

If the number of rows in the table changes to let’s say from 3 to 2 the formula doesn’t change and the value that shows up after running Tools>Update Fields (command UPPDATEFIELD) shows #. The formula has to be changed to have a valid range to show the correct value. If you add a new row above the source row you will also notice that this needs to be handled manually.

You might also need to run REGEN to have the tables updated.

Some CAD related blog posts I've been reading

Design Review’s Digital Light Table - The CAD Geek Blog - About how to compare DWF files.

Seadragon and Photosynth in action, truly amazing - BLAUGI

Is CAD coming to a table near you? - BLAUGI - a post on the amazing Microsoft Surface.

Creating an AutoCAD table containing block images using .NET - Through the Interface - A lot of .NET for AutoCAD.

Pro/ENGINEER Experts Answer User Questions - CAD Insider

When can I expect right click customization for my mouse?
Wildfire 5.0 will have better customization. It may have right mouse functionality. The main problem is making the right mouse menu context sensitive.

Unhappy with Navisworks Acquisition: Architectural Record - WorldCAD Access

An Interview with Howie Markson, Sr. Director of Marketing of SpaceClaim - NOVEDGE blog

2D or not 2D Utilizing the Detail Engine in AutoCAD Architecture - L.A. CAD - 1-hour  free webcast

Video: Specular highlights - Part 1 - Ted Boardman's Visualization Blog

Other CAD related blogs I read are found on the blog's right side. Let me know if I miss a blog there. I read my blogs using Google Reader and the blogroll on the right side is from Bloglines so it is not always up to date.

If you don't like QUICKCUI in AutoCAD 2008

Here is what you can do in AutoCAD 2008. Undefine the QUICKCUI command to make it open up using the CUI command instead. Add the two rows below to your acaddoc.lsp or create it if it does not exist.
(command "undefine" "quickcui")
(defun c:quickcui () (command "_.cui")(princ))

Adobe Acrobat 8.1 and Adobe Reader 8.1 released

Adobe Acrobat 8.1 and Adobe Reader 8.1 are now available for download. In Acrobat, check the Adobe Updater (Help menu -> Check for Updates) to look for the update. You can also directly download Adobe Reader 8.1 or Adobe Acrobat 8.1 update.

I tried to use Check for Updates but it failed somehow so I had to download it manually.

A partial listing of what's new in 8.1:

• Microsoft Windows Vista™ and Office 2007 support
• Installing on 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista
• Print documents to a FedEx Kinkos office in the United States.
• Easily extract documents from a package. Search and print the current or selected document, or all documents within the package.
• Read and organize eBooks and other publications with Adobe® Digital Editions (a separate product). When you first click the Digital Editions menu item, you can download and install the Adobe Digital Editions software. After installation, choose Digital Editions to go directly to your Adobe Digital Editions bookshelf.
• Acrobat 8.1 provides a FIPS mode to restrict data protection to Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 approved algorithms using the RSA BSAFE Crypto-C 2.1 encryption module. This article has more information on enabling FIPS mode.

The following knowledgebase articles describe the 8.1 update in more detail:
401730: Adobe Acrobat 8.1 Update
401732: Adobe Reader 8.1 Update

Adobe Reader 8.1 can be downloaded here. Remember to uncheck Adobe Photoshop® Album Starter Edition as well as Free Google Toolbar on the following page if you don't want it. If you have Windows Vista you might get the User Account Control warning a couple of times. Just give it permission to continue.

A new download manager as you can see.

I was asked to restart the computer and a second after I had selected that I will do that later I got this System Modification Attempt warning by my antivirus software F-Secure. What it actually warns about is that the Adobe Acrobat installer wants to continue next time you start your PC. So I just selected to trust the application.

Here is what it look like in Word 2007. It uses the new Ribbon/Fluent UI.

Disclaimer. I got a free copy of Acrobat 8.0 as incentive to make some buzz around Acrobat so this is not the first and probably not the last post on Acrobat.

JTB FlexReport 3.3 released

JTB FlexReport will help you to see the license usage over the time and help to justify new purchases. This will help you to decide when and how many licenses you will need to purchase next time. Instead of guessing and purchasing more licenses than you really need you can save your money using JTB FlexReport.

If you have cascading licenses or multiple versions of the same application, you can combine the various separate reports to get a total usage. This way it can help you to comply with that your company are not using more licenses than allowed as can be the case if you for example have AutoCAD 2008, AutoCAD 2007, etc on subscription from Autodesk.

You find JTB FlexReport here.

Microsoft Tagspace

I have tried Tagspace before but never ended up using it. Let's see if I might start using it now. I'm still not convinced though. Here is the RSS feed for the AutoCAD tag.

Tagspace Overview

With today's release, you can now use Tagspace to:

• Tag Practically Anthing on the Web--Apply tags to practically any site on the World Wide Web, excepting those that are known to contain offensive, malicious, and otherwise inappropriate content.
• Browse Member Tags--See what other users have tagged and view their personal tag clouds, by clicking on their display names.
• "Tag Drafting"--Subscribe to the RSS feed for a tag (like tagspace).
• "Member Drafting"--Subscribe to the RSS feed for other members' public tagged items (my Tagspace RSS feed here;-), by clicking on their names and subscribing to the RSS feeds associated with their tagged items lists. 
  • "Tag Drafting" and "Member Drafting" are excellent ways to stay up to date, diminish information overload, and approach what I like to call "domain omniscience", at little expense to yourself.

Via Korby Parnell's blogpost

What bookmarking or tagging system do you use and why is it useful?

How to lock scale of nonrectangular viewports and more about viewports in AutoCAD

If you usually work with the Properties palette you might wonder how to lock the scale or access other properties on nonrectangular viewports.

Here is when a rectangular viewport is selected.

But when a nonrectangular viewport is selected it looks like this.

The reason for this is that a polyline is added and works as a clipping entity for the viewport. What you need to do is to take the extra step and in the drop-down box where it says All (2) select Viewport (1).

Now you can see that the properties are available.

A quicker way though is to select the viewport, right-click and select Display Locked>Yes. 

Here is a little about viewport locking from the help documentation.

By locking the viewport scale first, you can zoom in to view different levels of detail in your viewport without altering the viewport scale.

Once you set the viewport scale, you cannot zoom within a viewport without changing the viewport scale. By locking the viewport scale first, you can zoom in to view different levels of detail in your viewport without altering the viewport scale.

Scale locking locks the scale that you set for the selected viewport. Once the scale is locked, you can continue to modify the geometry in the viewport without affecting the viewport scale. If you turn a viewport's scale locking on, most of the viewing commands, such as VPOINT, DVIEW, 3DORBIT, PLAN, and VIEW, no longer function in that viewport.

NoteViewport scale locking is also available for nonrectangular viewports. To lock a nonrectangular viewport, you must perform an extra step in the Properties palette to select the viewport object rather than the viewport clipping boundary.

On the topic of viewports.

• The clipped viewports or so called nonrectangular viewports on the images where created using the MVIEW command and then selecting extisting polyline objects. Objects allowed are a closed polyline, ellipse, spline, region, or circle. The polyline you specify must be closed and contain at least three vertices. It can be self-intersecting, and it can contain an arc as well as line segments.
• Here is a patent on Reactor-based viewport clipping using arbitrary graphical entities.
• Viewports where introduced with AutoCAD R11.
• Nonrectangular Viewports where introduced with AutoCAD 2000.
• New viewport layer properties where introduced with AutoCAD 2008. These new properties enable you to apply layer properties on a per-viewport basis. Independent LT scale per viewport. Viewport Layer Freeze. The new annotation functionaly makes it possible to display objects differently in individual viewports.
• Create a polyline in modelspace based on a viewport.
• Speed up your work when you work with viewports.
• The undocumented SPACESWITCH system variable makes it possible to lock usage of double-click to enter into model space.
• AutoLISP sample code to get viewport scale even for clipped viewports.
• AutoLISP freeware program VPlayers.lsp to save, load, copy layer settings per viewport.
• AutoLISP code vpsel.lsp to select all visible objects in selected or active paperspace viewport.
• Creation of viewports using AutoLISP.
• The readme for AutoCAD 2008 has things to say about viewports that is good to know.

Google Gears presentation

I just watched this presentation by Aaron Boodman at Google about Google Gears. Interesting. Aaron is the one behind Greasemonkey for Firefox.

Prev. post on Google Gears.

Internet Explorer 7 crashes and Access 2007 crashes identified

I previously mentioned how IE7 crashes when clicking on some dropdown boxes. I have a sample of a drop-down box in that previous post. I also notice lately many strange crashes in Access 2007 like when I tried to create a simple query. The workaround was to start the application as administrator.

Finally I was able to isolate the problem to having Start++ running so I have notified Brandon about it in his forum and he is looking into the problem.

"it's a problem with any application that uses the System.Windows.Automation library and registers event handler on Automation events"

By the way I miss having Start++.

Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia!

Google Reader's keyboard shortcuts doesn't work

Annoying bug in Google Reader. I cannot use the keyboard shortcuts like j and k. At least I'm not alone. It works for a while but then it stops and I have to restart Google Reader to get it working for a short while again.

Google Gears and Google Reader offline

Google Gears is a really exciting development and one practical usage is already available. Google Reader can go offline.

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality...

The setup and installation is easy. So now you can use Google Reader on the airplane or the buss and when you go online again information on what you have read will be synchronized.

Images are not available offline though. Hopefully this will be added later on.

Windows Live Writer Spell Checking missing

I notice after installing the latest beta of Windows Live Writer that "Check Spelling" was missing from the Tools menu and if I spell wrong I want to have this working. But as you can see on the images I got the spell checking enabled.

 

It seems that since don't have en-US culture WLW starts without spell checking available. This will probably be fixed in the next version but until then you can use this small freeware application launcher that solves this. Download WLWSCL.zip and extract WLWSCL.exe to for example the WLW install folder and run it.

One tip is to create a shortcut to WLWSCL.exe and set the Start in folder to where WLW is installed. It could be "C:\Program Files\Windows Live Writer". This solved some issues I had when I used Steve Dunn's great Code Formatter Plugin.

This is the code. (Update: Does not render correct in Google Reader so look directly on my blog)

Imports System.Globalization
Imports System.Threading
Module Module1
    Sub Main()
        Dim exe As String = My.Computer.Registry.GetValue("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Live Writer", "InstallDir", "").ToString & "WindowsLiveWriter.exe"
        If Not IO.File.Exists(exe) Then
            MsgBox("The path to WindowsLiveWriter.exe cannot be found.", MsgBoxStyle.Critical, "Error")
            End
        End If
        Dim app As System.AppDomain = System.AppDomain.CreateDomain(exe)
        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = New CultureInfo("en-US")
        app.ExecuteAssembly(exe)
    End Sub
End Module

Ref. the comments to this post.

Word 2007 bug using Save As

When using Save As in Microsoft Word 2007 it is supposed to save to the same folder as the document you have opened. But I have noticed that once in a while it opens up to another folder. If I try again it comes to the correct folder.

A tip for quick access to Save As or other commands is to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar like this. Just click on the black arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar to customize it like you want. Select "More Commands...". Select "All Commands" in the drop-down "Choose commands from".

NavisWorks - Autodesk and a lot of questions

These questions and many other will sooner or later be answered but here are some of mine.

• Will the real-time navigation technology that makes it possible to work in very large models be included in products like AutoCAD, Revit, Design Review etc? I hope so. Try one of the models in Freedom and notice the great performance.
• Take a look at the marketing partners NavisWorks has today. Notice that "NavisWorks is a member of the Bentley Developer Network and actively works to support the latest versions of Bentley MicroStation." I wonder if the support for non Autodesk file formats can continue to be as good.
• NavisWorks used to release updates quite often. I hope they continue with that.
• Will Freedom be included somehow into Design Review? Design Review cannot handle as large 3D models as Freedom.
• Will NavisWorks be licensed using FLEXnet like many of the other Autodesk's products? Or is it time for Autodesk to look at a cheaper and maybe better system like the one from Reprise Software or maybe Microsoft's newly acquired SecureLM?
• Will NavisWorks be available for ADN (Autodesk Developer Network) members? There is a great API in NavisWorks that I hope to be able to work with more.
• Will NavisWorks be used as brand just like Revit or will it be something like Autodesk JetStream?

Hopefully this acquiry will prove to be a bright future for both existing NavisWork customers as well as all new ones that I'm sure will come.

Related: Autodesk to Buy NavisWorks

Windows Live Mail installation warning

I just installed the latest Windows Live Mail (WLM) and everything looked good with the email accounts, etc until I looked at the newsgroups. Only the newsgroup account was retained. All newsgroups and their settings where lost. I had to set up everything again. If you know how to retain this when installing please add a comment below.

Via Windows Live Mail's blog

FLEXlm / FLEXnet debug log

The debug log file contains status and error messages useful for debugging the license
server system.

But if the debug log grows too large you might end up with not accessing the license server licenses.

The path to the debug log is usually set using lmtools.exe>Config Services>Path to the debug log file but if the vendor deamon is restarted the debug log will be overwritten. If you don't want that to happen you need to create the options file using a text editor like Notepad.exe. It should be named like the vendor deamon but with the opt file extension. For example Autodesk's vendor deamon is named adskflex.exe and the options file should be named adskflex.opt. Place the file in the same folder as the license file and you don't need to edit the license file to point out where the options file is located.

Add this row to make sure that the debug log is added to instead of overwritten. Notice the + before the path. Double quotes are needed if there are spaces in the path.

DEBUGLOG +"c:\program files\flexnet"
NOLOG IN
NOLOG OUT

The syntax for NOLOG is as showed below. Notice that the options need to be on separate rows as in the example above.

NOLOG { IN | OUT | DENIED | QUEUED }

NOLOG suppresses logging the selected type of event in the debug log file.

NOLOG can be useful to limiting the size of the debug log but you loose maybe valuable information so you can make a habit to backup the debug log once in a while instead.

Reference: FLEXNET LICENSING END USER GUIDE.