Don't be fooled by these spam emails that shows a blogspot link like these ones.
If you click on the link you will automatically end up at another site than the one you see. If you have restricted this in IE you will just see a site like the one below.
I think Blogger (Google) should restrict usage of these kind of redirections.
No VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) in AutoCAD 2009. I read in the CAD Application Development blog that Revit 2009 has it. That means probably AutoCAD 2010 will introduce VSTA unless Autodesk put resources on other things. AutoCAD have at least VBA and AutoLISP something Revit does not have.
Maybe soon in your hand.
APX 2005 could be useful to run for example Autodesk NavisWorks Freedom on a building site for example. With that good graphic processor it would be possible to look at your BIM model with ease.
Via BetaNews
For some reason the screen saver Photos in Windows Vista stopped working.
I think this is related to Nvidia's driver because it started after upgrading but I have not able to confirm this because when I installed the old driver the problem persisted.
It says "an error is preventing this slideshow from playing"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944221 didn't help.
I have tried the tip to delete any of these files to no avail.
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\Pictures.pd4
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Photo Gallery\Pictures.pd4
This can come up in Windows Photo Gallery and sometimes it just helps to manually browse through all images and then try the slide show again.
"An error is preventing this Slide Show from playing."
The solution for the slide show was for me to prevent Windows Photo Gallery from using hardware to accelerate image rendering by setting ForceSoftwareRender to 1 on the following registry location or you can save the two rows below to a .reg file using Notepad and then Run (Merge) it.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\Viewer]
"ForceSoftwareRender" = dword:00000001
To activate hardware set the value to 0.
It's nice that you can have private and public folders as well as invite certain persons.
Since it was released from Beta I have tried it a little and found that the downside is that the upload size is limited to 50MB per file. I made a spanning zip file with 49MB files and tried to upload them. There is a way to upload multiple files but for some reason a bug limited me to only get one of the files uploaded at a time.
Except for wishing the 50MB limitation to be removed it would be great to select multiple files for quick download, delete or move.
Via the SkyDrive blog
I have accessed my PC several times during the day and suddenly I've started to get this problem when trying to connect to it.
"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage..." Frustrated I wondered what can be the problem?
I tried to restart the laptop and that didn't help. An hour or so later I was able to log in again. It happened again the other day and then I tried to log in to that computer using Firefox instead of IE7 and then it worked. After logging out from Firefox I was able to log in with IE7 again. Maybe it had helped to delete the browsing history, clear the temporary Internet files and cookies or so in IE7. It happened when the session was on and the laptop went into sleep mode or hibernate and I guess something hanged at that point as I did not log out normally. Problem solved.
Some other reasons to this can be caused by a software error or conflict that is preventing the LogMeIn service from accepting incoming connections.
This can be resolved by either restarting LogMeIn on the target computer, or restarting the computer itself.
The cause is usually a software conflict with another 3rd party piece of software that interferes with LogMeIn listening for connection requests.
Microsoft published the binary file formats for Office a week ago.
Here is an explanation on: Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated?
To some extent this applies to binary formats like DWG. One day maybe Autodesk has to or decides to open up their format just like Microsoft. The closest to a DWG specification is the one that ODA has done based on reverse engineering.
OpenDWG specification in RTF format.
The general arrangement of data in an R13/R14/R15 file is as follows:
HEADER
FILE HEADER
DWG HEADER VARIABLES
CRC
CLASS DEFINITIONS
PADDING (R13C3 AND LATER)
IMAGE DATA (PRE-R13C3)
OBJECT DATA
All entities, table entries, dictionary entries, etc. go in this section.
OBJECT MAP
UNKNOWN SECTION (R13C3 AND LATER)
SECOND HEADER
IMAGE DATA (R13C3 AND LATER)
DwgInfoTip that I made is working with the raw binary format to extract DWG properties and show them as an infotip (tooltip) in Windows Explorer. AutoCAD is not even required to be installed for it to work. If it is installed you will see the infotip in file selection dialog boxes like the Open and Save dialog box.
Prior version support is the new thing for the 2009 products (soon to be available) when it comes to network licensing. When new licenses are generated for subscription customers the license file will allow the current and three past versions to run. Autodesk Network licensing tools include the Network License Manager, the Network License Activation utility, the FLEXnet (sometimes still referred as FLEXlm) configuration tools, and SAMreport-Lite. SAMreport-Lite from Macrovision is still the old 3.6 version from 2006.Even though this Knowledge Base document Understanding the error "
According to Autodesk support: “In most cases the error you are seeing when saving is being caused because the Design Center or another palette is still trying to do something in the software while attempting to save. I recommend making sure that all tool palettes, properties palettes, and the design center is closed by selecting the X button to close them. Normally this will resolve the issue.”
If you run into this problem you can find some helpful tips in that document. Sometimes when QSAVE does not work you can use SAVE or SAVEAS or click on the x at the top right corner to either close the drawing or AutoCAD. I've seen this several times after using the 3dorbit command. You may also try ._QSAVE in case it has been redefined.
Document "<drive>:\<folder>\<filename>.dwg" has a command in progress.
Hit enter to cancel or [Retry]:
From TS1067466:
Command in progress message while saving a drawing
When you tried to save a drawing, you received the following command line message:
Document "<drive>:\<folder>\<filename>.dwg" has a command in progress.
Hit enter to cancel or [Retry]:
This issue can occur after you merge cells in an AutoCAD table using the "By Row" or "By Column" options on the Table toolbar.
At this point, the only way to continue is to re-save the drawing. Follow these steps:
To prevent this issue from ocurring again, table cells should be merged using the All option on either the Table toolbar or the shortcut menu.
I found out on Matt's blog:
February, 1988 was the month when I started the development of FLEXlm.
Related to FLEXlm (GLOBEtrotter Software) is FLEXnet the new name by Macrovision. A few days ago the news came that another change is coming.
Thoma Cressey Bravo and Macrovision Corporation (NASDAQ: MVSN) today announced that an affiliate of TCB has entered into a definitive agreement with Macrovision Corporation to acquire Macrovision’s Software Business Unit in a cash transaction valued at approximately $200 million.
The transaction will result in a stand-alone company...
Specifically, the transaction includes the FLEXnet® and InstallShield® family of products...
I planned to have only few days off but it ended to be more than a week offline. First some planned vacation followed by unplanned hard disk crash and several days of problem with my ISP Bredbandsbolaget because of a problem on their end. In the mean time they had me purchase a new modem as I thought it would be quicker than having them send me one. The only good thing with the new modem is that I now can use full 24 Mbit per second ADSL speed instead of the old 8.
PS. I did not loose anything due to the hard disk crash thanks to my online backup with Mozy that is run several times a day.
Windows logo key 
A complete list of Windows Vista keyboard shortcuts.
Via Dag König: Windowsknappen+1, Hade jag ingen aning om (in Swedish)
Select the roof, right click and select Edit Object Display.
On the Materials tab click on the Add New Material button and add "Standing Seam" or whatever you want to name it.
Click on the Edit Material button.
Click on the current display representation in the Style Override column.
On the Layer/Color/Linetype tab make the Display Component "Surface Hatch" visible.
On the Hatching tab set appropriate pattern for the Surface Hatch Display Component.
On the Other tab make sure Top is selected on Surface Hatch Placement.
In Display Manager edit the current Configuration and the Plan View Direction.
On the Display Representation Control find the Roof object and make sure the Model Display Representation is checked.
Find also the Plan Set and in Display Representation Control find the Roof object and make sure the Model Display Representation is checked.
I used AutoCAD Architecture 2008 in this example. If you have a better way or another way please share it in the comments.
Thinking about the news on Microsoft's bid for Yahoo I found the following interesting.
Looking at the the last months statistics of organic traffic on this blog and jtbworld.com.
| Organic traffic in Jan 2008 | jtbworld.blogspot.com | jtbworld.com |
| 16745 | 10897 | |
| Yahoo | 687 | 1941 |
| Microsoft Live/MSN | 48 | 384 |
It certainly doesn't match the search market share that suggest that Microsoft and Yahoo combined has 25%. Maybe it says more about you that end up on this blog. You use Google and Google is better to show blog posts in the result.
A search for AutoCAD 2008 on Yahoo and my AutoCAD 2008 page is on second place and Live Search on third but on Google it's down on the tenth place.
A search on SAMreport alternative on the other hand something I wrote about on this blog is on first place on Google, on second place on Yahoo and on third place on Live Search.
This confirms that you are using Google and BTW so do I.
Please understand that any third party security software will conflict with Windows Live OneCare, so we recommend that removing the McAfee software to avoid conflicting with OneCare.Here is the reply I got from McAfee support:
When a computer has more than one Antivirus or Firewall application installed, the individual applications tend to conflict with each other for control of the computer's security. For example, with more than one Antivirus application running, every file on the computer that is accessed in any way is scanned by each individual antivirus application. Not only that, but all the files required to launch and perform the actual scanning operations are also scanned by the other applications, causing system performance issues and instability. This is sometimes referred to as an Antivirus Scanning Loop.
As Windows Live OneCare provides complete protection from viruses, worms, Internet attacks, and various other threats, we highly recommend uninstalling all other Firewall and Antivirus applications to avoid conflicts. If you have problems removing the third party applications please let me know and I will do my best to identify the contact information for the application's manufacturer to help you get in contact with them for further assistance.
McAfee SiteAdvisor is the 5-star rated Web safety tool that helps keep you safe from adware, spam and online scams as you search and browse the Web. McAfee products will not work with any other (third-party) Security software. Third party anti virus software from your computer may create a a conflict between the McAfee software which will cause incomplete or incorrect performance of your McAfee software.I wonder why not a word about this is told on SiteAdvisors page or in the FAQ.
SiteAdvisor is installed correctly and is working properly in your computer and is not interfering OneCare, If OneCare is creating conflict with McAfee you may decide, which security software to use.
If you're into CAD development take a look at Josh Johnson - Random musings of a CAD developer where he starts of with NSIS installer and how to attach a DWF with .NET and VS code snippets.
