Care for free food ... and learning too?

If, like me you want both I will be presenting at the SJCUG next week Tuesday.

Cadapult LTD will be sponsoring the event at the office of Adams, Rehmann and Heggan located at:

150 North Second Street

Hammonton, NJ 08037-2019

I will be discussing the use of Corridor modeling as it pertains to road rehabilitation and widening.

Come out for free food for your body and mind.

Sorry for the inactivity

Just wanted to apologize to all my readers for the seeming lack of activity on the blog. Things have been extremely hectic here at the office and construction of my house is reaching the halfway mark. Things will be settling down and I will begin posting more and more as time permits.

Off to see the Wizard

So the Civil 3D fairy dropped something off in my Inbox last night.

Here is a quick screenshot of what it was, more info to follow shortly.

LMTools ... for everyone

So I have gotten about 10 calls this week with various issues regarding LM Tools. Now this software is not inherently hard to configure, however there are some rules that need to be followed. One of these rules is a basic networking rule and should be in everyone's daily work flow. Back when Windows NT 4 came out it was not simple to browse the network to use the UNC path (\\Server) so everyone used a mapped drive letter: L:\=\\Server\data.

While this was a great practice back in the day it has grown long in the tooth and needs to stop being a common practice. With the advent of Active Directory and the ease of browsing a Domain/Workgroup it is much simpler to add a Network Place if using Windows XP still.

This leads to the real issue I have come across after 10 or so support calls regarding LM Tools. It also seems as if everyone has decided to upgrade their servers all at once. Is this some sort of conspiracy? More to come on that ... or not.

Since mapped drive letters work well for most tasks everyone figured it was ok to use it for allthings requiring network mapping. This is not the case for LM Tools. When specifying the location of the license file it is IMPERATIVE to browse to the file using the full UNC path. The majority of the support calls have been resolved by re-pathing the license file location.

So to "Everyone" ... just because everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right. Just as the GM commercial states ... "Everyone didn't know this"

Sorry for the rant but I needed to get this posted.

2010: The year we make ...

... all things better'ish.

Well today is the official launch day for all 2010 products from Autodesk. It's exciting to see the new features, but also quite hectic as calls for products start to stream in.

I am currently working on some articles for AutoCAD 2010 which "could" save some time for the average Civil user.

More thoughts to come.

Subscription Center Update

While sitting with David Blanchette he made mention of a few changes that are coming for the Subscription center. Lately, some clients have been complaining about the "value" of being on the subscription that is required when purchasing any vertical product from Autodesk.

It appears that the ears up in Manchester have listened to the crys and are in the process of revamping the Subscription program.

Look for Updates to no longer be free to non-subscription holders. They will be available for download only through Subscription Center. That is one of the changes coming. More will be posted here when they aremade available.

On a personal preference note, I know that we are notified through the InfoCenter when new Updates are available, I would like to see perhaps an imbedded link to the Update that would allow for amore direct download. Perhas a widget similar to reloading an Xref or something along those lines. Provide an option for the user to add their Subscription Center login to their user profile so theey can be verified at Civil 3D/Civil startup. However, this may be a moot point when the new Subscription Center is brought online over the next week or two. We shall see what lays in store.

Where are the Service Packs ... revisited

Just a little update to the last post ... I've been sitting with David Blanchette from Autodesk and we've been having a pretty good time talking about all things technical. I brought up the point that the update for Civil 3D wasn't called a Service Pack. Well, it seems like The 'Desk is getting away from the term "Service Pack" as it had a not so positive feel.

Now all patches and fixes will be called "Updates".

Another thing of interest is that while there is already "Update 1" for Civil 3D the users of the newly released AutoCAD Civil will not have an Update for a little while. That seems a little odd, but it was stated that not many licenses have been purcased yet so the need to patch it wasn't the same priority level as getting CIvil 3D 2009 updated.

Until next time keep the Earthworkers busy!