SmartPurger 3.4 with support for scripting using AutoCAD 2013

SmartPurger 3.4 is now available. SmartPurger is a scripting and batch application for processing many AutoCAD drawings. It’s possible to use the built-in settings to purge and save to different versions as well as execute custom LSP or SCR files on multiple drawings. The possibilities are almost endless. Make changes to title blocks, update layers, add or remove xrefs, prepare drawings for as built or for release to customer, update MicroStation drawings that needs to be fixed and so on. And if you don’t know how to create the custom routines we can help you.

Here are the main news for this release.

Support for AutoCAD 2013 and the new 2013 DWG file format.

AutoCAD apps support. Get SmartPurger on the Plug-Ins Ribbon tab panel using the special bundle download.

Soon to be available also on Autodesk Exchange Apps.

Added support for AutoCAD console mode. SmartPurger can make use of AutoCAD Core Console (this is AutoCAD running in “DOS” mode without any GUI overhead) that was introduced in AutoCAD 2013 making the scripting process faster then ever as the Core Console takes less than a second to open per drawing. In a test using the Core Console took 11 minutes compared to normal AutoCAD 2013 that took 58 minutes to process 145 drawings. This is more than 5 times quicker in this case.

Here is the result after using accoreconsole.exe (AutoCAD Core Console executable).

Thumbnail color can be changed.

As default it is black

but can be change to any other color like white.

Support for purging of Detail view styles and Section view styles that was added to the PURGE command in AutoCAD 2013.

Support for custom Windows DPI settings. If you change to 150% or 200% it should now look good too.

Free trial now allows to script up to 10 drawings. But if you contact us we’ll send a time limited license so you can run SmartPurger without this 10 drawing limitation.

Existing customers get this update for free.

Now, stop all manual boring drawing processing and let SmartPurger to the work for you.

AutoCAD 2013 New Commands

In AutoCAD 2013 I have found these 34 new commands.

New commands	Description
AI_DOWNLOAD_LANGUAGE_PACKS	Open webpage for language packs.
AI_DOWNLOAD_OFFLINEHELP	Open webpage for offline help.
AI_OPEN_FACEBOOK_WITH_PRODUCT	Open webpage for Autodesk on Facebook.
AI_OPEN_SUBSCRIPTION	Open webpage for Autodesk Subscription.
AI_OPEN_TWITTER_WITH_PRODUCT	Open webpage for Autodesk on Twitter.
ARRAYCLASSIC	Displays the legacy Array dialog box. (came in AutoCAD 2012 SP1)
-ARRAYCLOSE	Saves or discards changes made to an array’s source objects and exits the array editing state.
AUTODESKCONNECTIONPOINT	Connector - connection point from Civil3D
ONLINECOLNOW	Starts an online session with AutoCAD WS, in which people that you invite can simultaneously view and edit your current drawing.
ONLINEDOCS	Opens your Autodesk 360 documents list and folders in a browser.
ONLINEOPTIONS	Opens the Online tab of the Options dialog box.
ONLINESHARE	Designates who can access the current document from your Autodesk 360.
ONLINESYNC	Starts or stops syncing your custom settings with your Autodesk 360 account.
ONLINESYNCSETTINGS	Displays the Choose Which Settings Are Synced dialog box where you can specify selected settings to be synced.
ONLINETOMOBILE	Sends a notification to your mobile devices, enabling you to find and open the current drawing on your mobile devices quickly.
ONLINEUPLOAD	Uploads specified drawing files to your Autodesk 360 account.
OPENFROMCLOUD
OPENONMOBILE
POINTCLOUDCLIP	Crops the display of a selected point cloud to specified boundaries.
POINTCLOUDINTENSITYEDIT	Opens the Point Cloud Intensity Color Mapping dialog box that specifies intensity color mapping for eligible point clouds.
RENDERONLINE	Uses the online resources in your Autodesk 360 account to create an image of a 3D solid or surface model.
SHOWRENDERGALLERY	Displays the images that were previously rendered and stored in your Autodesk 360 account.
SURFEXTRACTCURVE	Extracts isolines curves from a surface.
VIEWCOMPONENT	Selects drawing view components for editing.
VIEWDETAIL	Supports the creation of detail views by selecting an existing drawing view
VIEWSECTION	Supports the creation of section views by selecting a drawing view to cut.
VIEWDETAILSTYLE	Supports the creation or modification of detail view styles.
VIEWSECTIONSTYLE	Supports the creation and editing of section view styles.
VIEWSKETCH	Activates model space for a view and enters a “view sketching” state to edit and constrain a section line or detail boundary
VIEWSKETCHCLOSE	Exits a “view sketching” state and makes paper space current.
VIEWSYMBOLSKETCH	Constrains the section line and detail boundaries to the drawing view geometry.
WELCOMESCREEN	Displays the Welcome window when you start the program.
-WORKFLOW	(AutoCAD Suites only) Specifies a Suite workflow that prepares your drawing for import into Autodesk Showcase or Autodesk 3ds Max.
WORKFLOW	(AutoCAD Suites only) Specifies a Suite workflow that prepares your drawing for import into Autodesk Showcase or Autodesk 3ds Max.

Have I missed any?

Change AutoCAD 2013 from Network license to Standalone

AutoCAD 2013 can easily be changed between Network, Standalone and Multiseat Standalone licensing with a small registry hack that has changed a little compared to earlier versions. (How to change AutoCAD 2012 from network license to standalone)

Start the Registry Editor and the registry location is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R19.0 and then depending on AutoCAD vertical look in ACAD-B001 for AutoCAD 2013 or for example ACAD-B004 for AutoCAD Architecture 2013. Finally in AdLM there is Type that can be changed to any of the values 1, 2 or 3 as seen below.

1 – Network

2 – Standalone

3 – Multiseat Standalone

AutoCAD registry details explained

Google Drive with 5 GB Free Cloud Storage

Google Drive is now available with up to 5 GB free space for cloud storage.

Autodesk’s AutoCAD WS app is available in Chrome Web Store so you can access DWGs and DXFs and they can be opened from within Google Drive.

Only problem is that most everything in the editor is disabled. This will hopefully be fixed soon and also be able to open and save drawings to Google Drive from within AutoCAD WS.

Autodesk’s Pixlr Editor is also available as app to edit images with.

The search in Google Drive is cool. If you have images available to search among Google Goggles technology is used to recognize objects, logos, landmarks, text and much more.

On the topic of online storage. If you used Microsoft’s SkyDrive the storage is dropped to 7 GB but if you want you can reclaim your previous 25 GB if you log in now. Another cloud storage option is Dropbox (with a minimum of 2 GB free storage) that is quite popular but will probably get it tougher with the competition. One thing Dropbox has is version control of the files. Microsoft has a chart comparing the services.

AutoCAD OLE Hide Objects Bug

If you in AutoCAD 2013, AutoCAD 2012 and maybe earlier versions too select isolate and Hide Objects on an OLE object like a pasted image from the clipboard there is a glitch making it possible to unintentionally erase or move the OLE object but it cannot be listed with the LIST command. An irritating thing is also that if you try to click in the area where the hidden OLE object is to create a crossing or window selection it does not work unless you do it explicitly.

No source available in Visual Studio debugging AutoCAD .NET code

AutoCAD 2011 through AutoCAD 2013 is being in progress migrating to fiberless operation. See Wikipedia for more about Fibers.

This affects ARX application using acedCommand (replaced with acedCommandS and acedCommandC), acedCmd (replaced with acedCmdS and acedCmdC) as well as ARX or .NET application using AcApDocManager functions to create, close or activate documents. If P/Invoke has been used to access acedCommand in .NET API, it will not work.  Finally LISP *error* handlers using the (command) function. In most cases you simply have to replace (command) from within an *error* handler with calls to the new (command-s) function. Worth knowing is that (command-s) is significantly faster than (command). A limitation with (command-s) is that “pause” tokens cannot be used and the expression must represent complete commands..

AutoCAD 2011 introduced two variables FIBERWORLD and NEXTFIBERWORLD to help programmers to test and migrate code.
FIBERWORLD = 1 if Fibers are being used.
Change NEXTFIBERWORLD to 0 to disable fibers and 1 to enable fibers. Close and relaunch AutoCAD, or close all the current documents in AutoCAD and then open/new one.

If breakpoints in custom forms being opened using ShowModalDialog or ShowDialog cannot be hit when debugging .NET addins in Visual Studio 2010 the workaround is to set AutoCAD to run in fiberless operation (FIBERWORLD = 0). When you try to debug you may see this message in Visual Studio: No Source Available. No symbols are loaded for any call stack frame. The source code cannot be displayed.

The problem that you may have with FIBERWORLD = 0 is that the Ribbon is not working, you may get strange crashes and have other issues. If you cannot type any commands you may need to disable and enable the command line using the application menu and search for command. If you need to work on a specific drawing it can help to load it automatically from within the Visual Studio debugger as the open command may break the command functionality.

When ready remember to set back AutoCAD to run in fiber mode again.

JTB FlexReport 7.0 Introduces Automatic Chart Creation

JTB FlexReport 7.0 comes with the functionality to schedule creation of license usage charts. One usage of this functionality is to create an intranet web page that always shows the usage from the last 7 days for the main features (products) on your license server. Support for Vertex Systems licensed products is also added.

Downloads here. See also the Upgrade tips. Customers with maintenance have access to this release at no extra cost.

See the revision history for more details on this release.

Here is from the documentation of the chart client.

Auto Reports tab
With this functionality you can have reports automatically created as PNG image files at specified recurrence pattern.
This requires that the JTB FlexReport Auto Chart Service is running.
To set up a report first manually create the report you like to use.

Specify the recurrence pattern if the report should be created on an hourly, daily or monthly basis.
Hourly settings allow a report to be created multiple times per hour.

 
Daily settings allow a report to be created at specified days and time.

Monthly settings allow a report to be created on a monthly basis.

The Settings panel explained.
File Save Path is a path located where the Auto Chart Service is running. You can run this client on any computer but the report file will be created locally on the server. Use Validate Path to ensure it is correct.
If the report should overwrite itself each time use a fixed file name checkbox.
Enter a file name that is the basis for the report file. If fixed file name is not used the file name will have a suffix with the date and time. For example AutoCADperDay (2012-02-13 08.52.12).png where AutoCADperDay is the file name.
Specify also the size for the image.
When ready press Save Settings.

The report will show up on the Report List panel and can also be deleted from there.

JTB FlexReport is a report tool for applications using the FlexNet / FLEXlm (flexlm license manager), IBM LUM (IBM License Use Management), SPLM (Intergraph SmartPlant License Manager), SLM/Sentinel LM/Sentinel RMS, LM-X, Solidworks SNL License Manager, Licman, Primavera from Oracle, Vertex or 12D software licensing as well as any Windows application like Acrobat, Visio, single licensed AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT.

Contact us to get a time limited license file for free. You can try it in your environment with your real data for a few weeks with full functionality.
Full support is provided during trial period.

See also: Autodesk Network License Manager for 2013 products and Software Vendor Audits are Increasing

acad.exe The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000043)

I’ve seen this error with AutoCAD Architecture 2013. So far the only solution has been to try starting ACA 2013 a second time when it usually works fine.

acad.exe - Application Error: The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000043). Click OK to close the application.

I tried to run the three executable below this folder \3rdParty\x86\VCRedist\ on the installation media and since then I’ve not seen this error. But unfortunately this did not help as I later on got the error again.

Blogger New Comment Moderation Email Bug

For blogs on Google Blogger (blogspot) the optional moderation emails with new comments used to allow to “Publish”, “Delete” or “Mark as spam” as well as “Moderate comments for this blog”.

But since around a day ago only “Moderate comments for this blog” link is in these emails making it very hard to use as this link does not end up on the comment in question but just shows the Awaiting moderation list.

This must be a bug or bad decision by Google that needs to be restored. Not that I have that many comments but I can imagine the pain for bloggers with 10 or 100 comments per day. Do you have this problem?

UPDATE: 2012-04-15, problem solved. 2012-04-17, problem is back again. It took until 20012-05-29 and the problem is solved again.

VBA Download for AutoCAD 2013

VBA (Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications) is still available in AutoCAD 2013 but it is not included with the installation media. Find the VBA for AutoCAD downloads here at http://www.autodesk.com/vba-download. There downloads are found also for AutoCAD 2010, AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD 2012 in both 32-bit and 64-bit.

If you have existing VBA this can be good news but don’t get started to develop anything new in VBA for AutoCAD as we don’t know if this will be the last release with VBA or not. Consider to convert the code to .NET (C# or VB.NET) and if you like help with it please feel free to contact us.

Autodesk Network License Manager for 2013 products

No matter if you plan to add Autodesk 2013 products or not it is a good idea to download the latest version (11.10.0.3) of Autodesk Network License Manager or install it from any of the 2013 installation media you have. If you want to use 2013 products like AutoCAD 2013 you should use version 11.10.0.3 (even though some older versions might work anyway) and if you don’t plan for 2013 products yet, upgrade anyway because 11.10.0.3 is including a hotfix for a Potential Security Vulnerability in FlexNet license manager.

The following is a list of links to the latest version of the Autodesk Network License Manager (the installer itself is having version number 1.0.0, not so helpful)

• Autodesk IPv4 License Manager for Windows
• Autodesk IPv4 License Manager for Linux
• Autodesk IPv4 License Manager for Mac
• Autodesk IPv6 License Manager for Windows
• Autodesk IPv6 License Manager for Linux
• Autodesk IPv6 License Manager for Mac

Note: IPv6 implementations support mixed IPv4/IPv6 and IPv6-only environments. It does not support network license checkouts in an IPv4-only environment.

Instructions on how to Update FlexNet from a Previous Version.

Version numbers on the individual FlexNet/FLEXlm files: adskflex.exe and lmgrd.exe version is 11.10.0.3, lmtools.exe and lmutil.exe version is 11.10.0.0.

How to change AutoCAD from network license to standalone

FlexNet feature codes for Autodesk applications

License reporting with JTB FlexReport or our free JTB FlexReport LT.

How to start a VBS file using AutoLISP

If you in AutoCAD want to start a VBScript file with AutoLISP here are three ways where the variable app holds the full path to the VBS file:

(startapp "WSCRIPT.EXE" (strcat "\"" app "\""))

(command "START" app)

(if (setq WScript (vlax-get-or-create-object "WScript.Shell"))
  (vl-catch-all-apply 'vlax-invoke-method (list WScript "Run" app 1 :vlax-true))
)

If the START command is used you will quickly see the AutoCAD Shell so I prefer to use the startapp function.

If the path contains spaces like (C:\\Folder A\\test.vbs) the startapp function must have the path with double quotes like the snippet above, otherwise the Windows Script Host will show this error: There is no file extension in "C:\Folder".

Some of this works with starting or running other files (EXE, BAT, CMD,…) or open files in their associated application. See also how to Start a Windows application within AutoCAD.

SSMPropEditor 4.5 released

Here are the main news in SSMPropEditor 4.5 that now is available.

• Added compatibility for AutoCAD 2013. 
• Start Sheet Set associated with the current drawing when started from AutoCAD.
• Start Sheet Set by specifying DST file as argument when running the SSMPropEditor.exe.
• Bug fixes.

SSMPropEditor is a Sheet Set Manager (SSM) Properties Editor. With SSMPropEditor you can edit  Sheet Properties and Sheet Custom Properties on multiple sheets belonging to AutoCAD's Sheet Set Manager (SSM) or AutoCAD Architecture's Project Navigator (PN) Sheet Set View. AutoCAD is not even needed needed to use SSMPropEditor.

The upgrade is free for customers that purchased any earlier version. Get the downloads here.

Contact us to get a time limited license file for free.

The video shows an older version but the GUI and functionality showed is still the same.