NavisWorks 2009.1 released

Good to see that the pace of new releases for NavisWorks continues like before Autodesk acquired the company.

The updated version of the Autodesk NavisWorks line of products now provides:

• DGN v8 file reader
• Localized in French, German, Japanese, Russian and Simplified Chinese
• Compatibility with most native AEC design and laser scan file formats
• Support for Revit assembly codes for "symbol" element types
• Properties support for new style DWF files (as exported from Revit)
• Asta Powerproject V10 support
• AutoCAD Mechanical 2008 64-bit support
• 64-bit exporters now included in the main installer
• Vico Constructor 2008 support
• Enhancements to application programming interface (API)

Press release

A good news with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

A limitation many have found trying to run applications or code located on a network share is now removed.

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Allows managed code to be launched from a network share!

Not sure yet if it is enough to just have 3.5 SP1 installed to have it working though or if the code needs to be recompiled for it to work.

Update via Brad Adams:

“No, an existing application does not have to be recompiled or changed in any way to take advantage of this.   Your current 2.0 Applications will just work, you don't have to target anything new in 3.5..”

Second update:

“The framework is now better optimized for startup. … What this means to you:  Even your JIT code starts faster!”

AutoCAD profile automation with AutoLISP

I got a question how to force load a profile in AutoCAD without having to do it manually.

‘Hi I was looking at your AutoLisp but I don’t think I saw anything like Loading an profile each time you open AutoCAD, let’s say I have a Profile call “General”
And I wanna open AutoCAD with that profile. I know there is a switch but once it loads it does not do it anymore . the reason  why I want to do is If I chance something in the profile and export it when a different user go into AutoCAD I want them to autoload most recent Profile rather then unupdated one.’

I added the function forceImport to profiles.lsp. acad.lsp was then used to have it run each time AutoCAD started.

Error 32003 vsvars32.bat could not be opened for write solution

During installation of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 I got this problem:

Patch (C:\Users\JTB\AppData\Local\Temp\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1\VS90sp1-KB945140-X86-ENU.msp) install failed on product (Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU). Msi Log: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1_20080813_150733058-Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition - ENU-MSP0.txt
Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), Fatal error during installation.

I then tried to run VS90sp1-KB945140-X86-ENU.msp manually and got this message box.

Error 32003.File ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat’ could not be opened for write.

To solve it by I giving myself write permissions.

Success!

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 available

VS 2008 SP1 is about bug fixes, performance, reliability and some new things so install it.

• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 overview
• What's new in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• What's new in Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Readme

The preparation tool is intended to prepare systems that may have previously been updated with SP1 pre-releases. If you’re not sure run in anyway to be on the safe side. It goes pretty quick.

• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool

And the downloads.

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Download (.exe package)
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Download (.iso package)
• MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Via Somasegar’s WebLog and Aaron Stebner's WebLog with useful links for troubleshooting and more.

Room planning in 3D as SaaS

Autodesk Labs has Project Showroom but it has a long way to go to be something useful as it is really limited in functionality.

mydeco’s room planner is in beta and looks more useful.

Have you seen other solutions where you only need an Internet browser or would you do like me using AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture or Revit Architecture?

A SaaS DWG editor

Old news but I don’t think many have seen it so here comes a link to SolidWorks Labs Introducing BluePrint Now.

Here I have a drawing that I made from one of the sample drawings in AutoCAD 2009 and uploaded it. I’m able to make changes to it and save it back to a DWG file. I can even start a new drawing from scratch.
Support for easy zoom and pan with the mouse, dimensioning (didn’t scale good), texting (minor text height problems), drawing, modifying (could not get some of the tools like scale to work), snapping (missing perpendicular), etc.
 
Microsoft Silverlight is used as technology.
Autodesk also has a SaaSy editor, but Project Draw does not support DWG.

Batch convert drawings to DXF 2000 format using SmartPurger

SmartPurger has support to run a script or AutoLISP file and here is a sample I showed a client how to do to save drawings to AutoCAD 2000 DXF file format. It can easily be change to save to other DXF versions like AutoCAD 2007 DXF, AutoCAD 2004 DXF or AutoCAD R12 DXF.

Here is the code for the Script file:

(command "._saveas" "_DXF" "_V" "_R2000" "" "")
(while (wcmatch (getvar "cmdnames") "*SAVEAS*")
  (command "_y")
)
(if (not (equal 0 (getvar "dbmod")))
  (progn
    (while (not (wcmatch (getvar "cmdnames") "*QUIT*"))
      (command "_.quit")
    )
    (while (wcmatch (getvar "cmdnames") "*QUIT*")
      (command "_y")
    )
  )
  (command "_.quit")
)

Explanation why there is no space between l and other letters

In SSMPropEditor you might notice in the tree view like below that there is no distance between lowercase a and l in Architectural and Electrical but it look just fine with Structural and Mechanical. Why is this happening?

   vs  

Is is apparently normal for GDI+ text based rendering and GDIPlus is used in this treeview control. Here is Microsoft attempt to explain it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307208/en-us

What I did to solve this was increasing the font height a little. If you want to be able to edit multiple sheet set properties take a look at SSMPropEditor.

Examining the Autodesk-Bentley Agreement by Evan Yares

Read the interesting article here on Cadalyst by Evan Yares (former president of the OpenDWG Alliance (ODA, now Open Design Alliance, http://www.opendesign.com/). With his background he is able to fill in with background details like the OpenDGN project.

A related article Bentley and Autodesk Join Hands to Bridge DGN and DWG by Kenneth Wong is also worth reading.

Previous related posts on this blog are Keith Bentley’s comments on the Bentley/Autodesk agreement and Autodesk + Bentley Systems interoperability

Copy Layers in AutoCAD to a list or Excel

I tried this in AutoCAD 2004 and it didn’t work but in AutoCAD 2008 and AutoCAD 2009 it works (possibly some earlier versions too, but I don’t have them installed to try in).

You can select one, many or all layers (CTRL+A or right click and select all) and then press CTRL+C. Then just paste into Excel, Word or even directly to AutoCAD.

If all layers are copied a header is also included with all columns:

Status    Name    On    Freeze    Lock    Color    Linetype    Lineweight    Plot Style    Plot    New VP Freeze    Description

Notice also that if a column is hidden it will not be included.

I’ve known about this tip since before but got reminded that it also works in AutoCAD LT.

Remove hatch patterns on space objects in ACA

There are a lot of ways to remove hatch patters on space objects in AutoCAD Architecture. They can be removed per object, per style, per display configuration, etc.

This video shows some of the ways to do it. The concept can be used on other properties and objects.

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site solution

For some hours those with Internet Explorer had problems to access this site getting this message "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://blog.jtbworld.com/. Operation aborted."

The problem was caused by Site Meter so I have removed it until it gets solved.

Firefox 3.0 users didn’t have this problem though.

Update: The problem is now solved.

Cuil is not cool

Cuil (pronounced COOL) that recently was introduced to the public sure does have a problem to find relevant results.

Just as an example. When I searched for JTB World it shows a spam blog as first result.

Competing with other search engines will require it to work much better than this. It doesn’t help that it says “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages”. I have even found several examples when Google or Live Search finds a webpage that Cuil does not find at all so I’m not sure what kind of website it indexes as so many are not indexed.

PS. Cuil is an old Irish Gaelic word for knowledge and hazel.