New Dawg… Old Tricks?

This blog is going to hit home for a majority of us and I apologize up front if anybody feels offended, but realize this is not the intent of this article. I had recently been dealing with a lot of support calls lately with people moving to subscription, which is the best bang for your buck having the newest technology as soon as it is released at a discounted price, along with all of the many other advantages and benefits that go along with being a subscription holder. Which is a great thing for everybody, but here is where things start to turn downhill…

People are creatures of habit… and that is understandable and once they start doing something they get, they want to keep doing it that way, because it is easy and it works! Completely understandable… IF WE COULD FREEZE TIME! But unfortunately, we live in a fast paced technical world, and things are always changing and there will always be someone trying to build a better mouse trap; even if it take a little while to work out the bugs. But where I see the problem compounds its self is when I have someone ask for help to make their new software to perform and look like the older version. For example the first thing I hear is “How do I turn off that ribbon thingy and where are my toolbars?”

…I KNOW, I KNOW!!! We are all saying “Hey wait a minute, he is talking about me!” Well, no need to be concerned, I was talking about me a few years ago; but if you feel guilty, GOOD NEWS, I have a solution for you too. Here is how I see it …everything that you know now, you were able to learn, and I am not just talking about school. And lets face it, technology advances faster and faster everyday… could you imagine an astronaut telling the rocket scientist, “Can you make the new space shuttle run just like the older one?” … or a consumer telling the cell phone company, “I don’t like the newer thin cell phones because they are harder to find than the 8 pound brick that you used to use as a cell phone, perhaps not so many years ago.”

Well the same thing, weather we like it or not, is what happens every time we load your new software and try to make it look and work like the older versions, which Autodesk realizes that people want to be able to do this, and that is why they keep a lot of the old menu items available and just turn them off, “to try and keep the customer as happy”. But unfortunately, this makes it easer for all of us to convert right back to our old tricks, and before we know it we are trying to keep up with everybody else flying to Jupiter, but in a rocket that was only design to go to the moon. It’s hard to get out of that comfort zone, but you know what I have learned over the years, it’s a lot harder and more time consuming to update yourself from a 2 year technical coma, than to just spend a little bit of time updating yourself as soon as the technology is introduced. Plus, then you get to take advantage of the new tools that were design to increase productivity. I have found the only reason it take longer at first is that I just don’t know how to use it yet. It’s kind of like using the stove over the microwave, it may take some time to learn how to start the microwave than the stove but in the long run the microwave is much faster. Also if you were to bring up all of the toolbars that replace the Ribbon tools, you would only have enough drawing area left to draw postage stamps; so unless that is all you design, I would take the next step to learn how to the new functions work before writing them off. Plus don’t forget the new release of Autodesk 2011 products is just around the corner, which also means that Autocad 2007 will no longer be supported by Autodesk. 

So, I have made it a point that when ever I teach a class of current users of AutoCAD I always go over the new interface and show them how to use them properly. And you know what? That is now the preferred method they have chosen to work today. So take some time and go through the New Features Workshop, our take a hands on training at an Autodesk ATC (Authorized Training Center) site, LIKE OURS!!! (…Sorry I just had to pitch that! LOL). However you want to learn it… but most of all, just don’t ask that person that is stuck in a rut, from the 1990’s, if you want to know what you NEW AUTOCAD is capable of now. You would be surprised what NEW TRICKS this NEW DAWG has up it’s sleeve.

-Isaac Harper

Poor Performance and Running out of memory error…

Today I wanted to talk about some things that you can do to try and avoid the memory error that you might have received and perhaps also improve your computers performance. So after doing some research from our own findings, Autodesk Discussion Groups, Customer Support cases and straight from the Analyst team at Autodesk, I have found that there are lots of things that one could do to help your memory and computer performance issues. Here are a few things that might help you out. By no means, are these “cure all techniques”, but they should help…

1. Empty your Temp folder on a regular basis; using Xrefs leaves a lot of data that can slow down your machine.

2. Set FIELDEVAL to 4, this will only evaluate the fields when plotting, and avoid constant regenerations.

3. Set INDEXCTL to 2, this will index the drawing making it much quicker for future work.

4. If you use a lot of Layouts in your Drawing, then check your Caching Layouts settings in the options dialog box under the System tab, set the “Layout Regen Options” to “Cache model tab and last layout” so when switching layouts it does not regenerating the entire drawing every time.

5. Check your Scales List; we have had cases were someone using an older version with a lot of Xrefs in their drawing caused the scales list to climb to almost 3800 scales; which drastically decreased the performance. I all fairness this issue has been addressed in the newer versions but to could be coming from older content. So, if you go to Annotation Scale button and the list is overwhelming? Then you can reset this list by clicking the “Custom…” option near the bottom OR the “Edit Scale List…” under the “Users Preferences” tab in the “Options” dialog box. Once the Edit Scale List dialog box opens hit the “Reset” button.

6. Another thing that you could try is to close and re-open Autocad software through out the day. This will free up some virtual memory that is being stored; I would say at lunch time and again at the end of the day at least.

7. Make sure you are running the latest service pack for this software. You can do this easily buy clicking the “Communication Center” icon at the top-right of your Autocad screen located in the “InfoCenter” toolbar. Please note you will need to have internet access.

8. I have also been told that some people that need to work on multiple drawings at a time were able to work around this by opening a couple of sessions of the software and only running a few drawings in each; rather than working on a bunch of drawings in one session of AutoCAD.

9. Run a registry scanner and cleaner regularly. This can help track down issues and get rid of them. If your registry is good, you will see better performance. Also, run a cleanup utility to help get rid of unnecessary junk. The following site has an excellent product to check out: http://www.stevengould.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=69

10. You can also reduce the amount resources taken by Windows by going into the Control Panel and click System, In the System Properties dialog box, go to the “Advanced” tab, set “Visual Effects” to “Adjust for best performance”.

11. Performance options – adjust paging file size. Right click on “My Computer”, and select “properties”. Then inside the system properties dialog box select the “advanced” tab. From there under “performance” click “settings”. Next, in the “performance options” dialog box click the “advanced” tab. Under “virtual memory” click the “change” button. Now, look at the initial size setting. This value shout be set to 1.5 times the amount of RAM in MB value. (1GB is equal to 1024 MB). For example if the computer has 4GB of RAM, this value in MB is 4096. SO, take 4096 times 1.5 and this value is 6,144 MB. This is the initial value to put in. Next, look at the maximum size in MB. This value should be 3 times the amount of RAM in MB value. SO, for a 4GB machine multiply 4096 times 3 to get the value of 12,288. Once these values are plugged in, click the “set” button and then all of the “ok” buttons to get out of the routine. One thing to note is that you will be prompted to restart your computer before the changes will take effect.

12. Another thing that you can check on your computer is to see if you have the 3GB switch turned on, if your computer has at least 3 GB of RAM. If you don’t go to this link to turn it on. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=9729516&linkID=9240697

There are other things that may work as well (purging unused content, cleaning up the drawing file of unneeded duplicated entities with the “Overkill” command in the express tools, or even “Wblock” the file out to rebuild the content in oversized files, or file with corrupted entities. The list goes on.). But all of the suggestions listed above are the most recommended workarounds for memory and performance issues for now.

Also make sure you are sending in your error reports to Autodesk, Inc when you crash so they can review and suggest additional comments to try and submit them to the proper software developers to find a possible solution to the problem.

So if you are having these types of issues; please try these steps and let me know if these alleviate some or all of your problems?

Thank you,
Isaac Harper, CD
Cadsoft Consulting

Welcome to our new AutoCAD users section…

Welcome Everybody.

I wanted to introduce this new area just for AutoCAD users; I know what you are saying, “Why create a section for CAD, when the word on the street is BIM?” Don’t get me wrong Revit is a great product and does some impressive things, and will become a big part of the future, but it is still fairly new compared to the CAD market. Also I have found that a lot of Revit users still use AutoCAD platform drawings (about 20%) to complete their deliverables because of many reasons, from comfort levels (meeting deadlines), software limitations, or just already having pre-existing content that they don’t want, or have time to recreate. Not to mention there is still a lot more CAD users then there are BIM. So this area of our Blogs will concentrate on the CAD to keep you up to date, make your day to day operations run more smoothly, and hopefully show you a few tricks along the way. However, I have some good news for the AutoCAD user since the introduction of the new Revit interface it now looks similar to AutoCAD with the new Ribbon tool in place to better make the transition to BIM when you are ready.

But welcome to the new AutoCAD Blog and I am always interested in what you want to hear more about, or anything that you may want to share like “Tips or Tricks” you have learned with all of our readers.  In fact, we have even moved some previous content from our BIM BLOG that dealt more with AutoCAD content than Revit. So if you never checked them out before because it was under the BIM title and you were not using BIM; take some time and check them out. If you have an idea for a future posting then please contact me at:
isaac.harper@cadsoft-consult.com
Until next time… Thank you for your time.
Isaac Harper

AutoCAD Tips and Tricks – MULTIPLE Command

The MULTIPLE Command
I’m sure there are a lot of times you want to use the same command over and over with out having to manually restart the command over each time by right-clicking or pressing the spacebar. You need the MULTIPLE command! This is not a new command, however, it is not on the Ribbon either, so I wanted to let you know it still exists, or introduce it to you, if you were not aware this command at all.

Here is how the “Multiple” command works. Let’s say you need to draw a lot of circles in various locations and sizes. (This also applies to any command you want to repeat.) At the command line type MULTIPLE and then hit the [enter key].  Now, type in the command you want to repeat (like CIRCLE) and hit enter. Voilà!
There you go! Now, you can keep on creating circles without having to manually start the command over and over. When you are done, just hit the ESC key and that will end your “Multiple” session.

So now if people say the you’re redundant; that you repeat yourself; that you do things over and over… just tell them you’re use the Multiple command.

Displaying the Classic Toolbars in 2010 Products

Recently we have had a few customer support request on how to display their “classic toolbars” in Autocad 2010 as well as the vertical products like Architecture, Civil 3D… and so. Yes, there is an AutoCAD Classic Workspace available out of the box, but only for the platform software and not the verticals. Even though I whole heartedly support the use of the Ribbon; sometimes you have older customization in a toolbar or you just want to use both the toolbars and the Ribbon to ease into the transition. In this blog I want to show you 3 simple ways on how easy it is to still be able to redisplay that hidden content.

First let’s look at the platform product, AutoCAD and its different ways of displaying toolbars.
1.The easiest way is if you liked the old look and feel of AutoCAD prior to the Ribbon then just change the Workspace to AutoCAD Classic and presto and it will have that old appearance that has been around for many versions.
a. Workspace button located on the Status bar at the bottom of the screen. Just click the dropdown arrow and change it to AutoCAD Classic.

b. By default the Ribbon is not displayed in this workspace. (Remember that does NOT mean you can’t take advantage of the Ribbon in this old look; if you want to add it also… At the command line just type RIBBON and it will display. When you want to hide it again type: RIBBONCLOSE and it will disappear again.

2. Another way in AutoCAD Platform is to go through the old Menu Bar that used to be the Pull down menus that were replaced by the Ribbon. Aww Yes; you can even reload your old pull downs, but for now we are just showing how to display it so we can get to the Toolbars section through inside it.
a. The first step is to display the Menu Bar by going to the dropdown options in the Quick Access Toolbar. (Note: the Quick Access Toolbar is not the same as the regular toolbars; it is a whole different menu area and for the most part is always displayed and can either at the top of the AutoCAD Screen or below the Ribbon only. You can Also display the Menu Bars in the Veridical Products; remember they don’t have the Tools pull-down menu that you will need in the next step.

b. Next you will see the Menu Bar appear above the Ribbon tabs. Go to the Tools pulldown and than Toolbars -> AutoCAD -> (then pick which toolbar you want to display first.

c. In this example the Draw Toolbar will then display where it was last displayed.  Now here is the good part you only need one Toolbar displayed in order to access the rest the way you used to turn on and off the display of all the other Toolbars. To do so just (right-click) any icon on the toolbar and you will see a list of the rest of the Toolbars in the shortcut menu, just pick the ones you want to display like you have done in the past versions.

3. The Last way is the best way to display a Toolbar, because it works in both; platform or vertical products through the command line.
a. At the command line type:
Command: -toolbar
Enter toolbar name or [ALL]: layers
Enter an option [Show/Hide/Left/Right/Top/Bottom/Float] <Show>: Show

This dash in front of the command name suppress the CUI dialog box and allows you to just type in the name of the toolbar you want. Once you have the first toolbar displayed; refer to step 2c above to display any other desired toolbar you desire.

I hope this helps; Thank you for your time and if you have suggestions for future Blogs that you would like to see? Please feel free to email me at isaac.harper@cadsoft-consult.com.

Annotative or Not?

Hi Everyone,
AU is just around the corner, so to get you in the spirit of things, I thought I would devote this blog to a topic “similar” to what I am covering at AU …Annotative Objects. By Autodesk standards these objects are Text, Mtext, Dimensions, Hatches, Tolerances, Multileaders, Leaders, Blocks, and Attributes.

But today I want to talk about items that are NOT considered Annotative Objects; but can perform like they are….

First off; Tables. I was amazed when Autodesk made most “Text like Objects” Annotative, but not Tables. Even if you assign an annotative text style to the table, it doesn’t work. Perhaps it is because most people use them in the paperspace environment only. So here is a way you can make it work. Block the table afterwards, and make the Block annotative. Now it will be able to scale up and down with the Scale list pretty simple and it performs the way you would expect.

Tip: If the table is a separate drawing that you are going to insert into the current drawing as a block? Then set the ANNOTATIVEDWG system variable to 1. This specifies whether or not the drawing will behave as an annotative block when inserted into another drawing.

Next let’s talk about Fields. You may have not even thought about it because we mostly insert them into “Text type commands”, (like Text, Mtext and so on…) but if you have ever used the FIELD command there is no place to set annotation scaling. Therefore, just keep inserting them into you “Text like commands” and you’ll be fine.

Finally, I want to talk about Linetypes. First let me explain… I know there is the LTSCALE command that globally controls the scale of linetypes. But it does not get controlled by the Scale List. Plus as you switch back and forth between Model and Layout tabs you had to keep readjusting the LTSCALE so that all the different viewport scales in paperspace would plot correctly and uniform using the PSLTSCALE. Well now you can set the MSLTSCALE command to a value of 1 in model, and from there just use the Annotative Scale List on the Status bar menu. This way you won’t have to readjust your LTSCALE command back and forth anymore. Cool Huh?

That’s all we have time for right now, but realize that AutoCAD is very customizable. With a little imagination and the power of the CANNOSCALE (Sets the name of the current annotation scale for the current space) and the CANNOSCALEVALUE (the system variable that holds the current Annotative Scale and Returns as the inverted scale factor.) sky is the limit for all you Menu Customizers, Script Writers, Macro Makers and Lisp Routine-ers out there!

Take Care,
Isaac Harper

Common Navisworks Issues and Resolutions

In today’s fast paced world having your program not performing correctly (or even not at all), is very frustrating and time (and money) consuming. So when I’m trying to help our customers with their Navisworks problems, One thing that is nice to know is if the issues are unique to that person and their computer; or if it is reported known issue and lots of people are experiencing it.  So, I thought I would go through some of the more popular support cases going on… and some solutions that we found and have passed on to our Navisworks clients. Here are some issues and solutions for Autodesk® Navisworks® Manage 2009-10

1.  Issue: Performance issues and settings. When you navigated around a model, performance was slow and the navigation was choppy.

Solution: Large models, hardware configurations and constraints, and system settings all affect the performance of Navisworks®. There are some basic adjustments that you can make to optimize performance.

Most modeling computers operate with 4GB of RAM. However, you can enable the /3GB switch in order to free resources and use more memory for various system processes. Enabling the /3GB switch is not complex and information is widely available on its use and how it can be set.

Try turning off Hardware Acceleration to see whether performance improves. Follow these steps:

1. Open Navisworks.

2. Click Tools menu > Global Options > Interface > Display.

3. Clear the Hardware Acceleration check box.

4. Exit Navisworks.

5. Restart Navisworks.

If performance improves, the issue is probably due to the graphics card drivers. Graphics card drivers could be out of date or become corrupted; check for an update every few months. Check with the manufacturer of your graphics card to see if new drivers are available. If they are, install them and then turn Hardware Acceleration back on (click Tools menu > Global Options > Interface > Display). If no new drivers are available, or newer drivers do not resolve the issue, leave Hardware Acceleration turned off.

If you access files from a central server location, bandwidth may cause performance issues. This is not common. However, if you experience slow performance, try copying the files from the server to your computer to see if this improves performance.

2. Issue: Navisworks Flythrough – Flythrough always opens automatically when starting ShipConstructor. Once you load Flythrough, it will always popup whenever you launch ShipConstructor. This happens even if you close the popup before closing ShipConstructor. NOTE: this only happens when flythrough window is not docked.

WorkAround: This is a known issue with ShipConstructor. For the time being, if you dock the flythrough control, as opposed to have it floating, the problem will not manifest. The Problem seams to happen in all of there 2008 products releases (A little over 50 or so.) and when you check the Fixed in Version portion it list: Pending Development

3. Issue: Exporting a short animation walkthrough from Navisworks. Using “presentation” mode, some of the objects are rendered as black. This happens in AVI, PNG, and JPEG exports.

Workaround 1: User having same problem importing MEP in Navisworks, They got passed it by using presenter to add a material / color to all the valves.

Workaround 2: Go to the Presenter tab and try deleting the material called “By Layer”. User claims this has worked in the past.

And lastly, are there some unanswered issues out there still?” Of course there is… But by no means would I discourage anyone from deciding not to use this very useful program because of them.  In fact for what it can do for you and workflow, (not to mention all of the different software programs that it works with…) I would say “Navis”WORKS”.