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This Month
Tips & Tricks
AutoCAD Tips - JPEG image displayed
incorrectly Downloads, Hotfixes, Service Packs & Other Issues 3 Inventor hotfixes, New Inventor Hardware library, Nvidia Qudaro Certified Graphics card Memory Leak Issue, 1 Inventor DWF Extension hotfix and 1 Productstream/Vault hotfix. The result of last month's AutoDaddy competition and a new source of fascinating trivial facts. Micro Concepts Tech Conference 07 - Registration Now Open Registration is now open for the 4th Annual Micro Concepts Inventor Tech Conference. Full details can be found on the Micro Concepts Web Site at www.microconcepts.co.uk/techconference. We encourage you to register as early as possible to ensure you are able to attend the event of your choice.
Further details to follow in next month's bulletin. Free Web Training Seminar - Border creation, iProperties and MCTools There are a few places still available on the next in our series of Micro Concepts live web training seminars will taking place on Monday 26th February between 2:00 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. This seminar will be showing methods for creating drawing borders and title blocks in Inventor and using the iProperties and MCTools Set Properties command to easily and consistently populate the title block information. This web training seminar is available free of charge to customers with current support contracts. Details and registration can be found here. New Version of Micro Concepts Inventor Tools Now Available
The value of the Micro Concepts Tools for Inventor has now been increased again with the release of the Autodesk Certified Inventor Tools 11.1. Version 11.1 has the addition of some new tools and the update of existing tools based on feedback from you. A summary of the changes are as follows: Added Commands The new version of the tools can be downloaded from our web site here. Uninstall your existing version prior to installing this update. Thanks to everybody for your feedback and help in producing this new version. Micro Concepts Kick Start Programme Micro Concepts have introduced a new Programme aimed at helping you to move forward as quickly as possible with your Inventor usage reducing the time to produce production designs dramatically and giving you a faster return on your investment in Autodesk Inventor. Available to follow on from the Inventor Skills Part 1 Training course, the Kick Start will involve a Micro Concepts Engineer working with you at your location to discuss and help you to work through workflows and modelling procedures specific to your own designs. Another part of the Kick Start Programme is to help you with setting up your styles, standards, templates and borders specific to your own company's requirements, meaning you can immediately focus on producing your models and designs without having to be concerned about changing formatting settings you may be unfamiliar with. Our trial implementation of this programme has proven to be a valuable facility in greatly accelerating the implementation and productive use of Autodesk Inventor within companies. To find out more contact us on 01223 716200 or email us at support@microconcepts.co.uk and we can discuss tailoring a programme to your particular needs and requirements. Autodesk Design Review is now FREE Autodesk Design Review, which enables the viewing, mark up, amongst other functionalities, of DWF files from Inventor and AutoCAD products is now Free. One of the functions available in Design Review is the much requested facility to measure within a dwf file. Design Review can be freely downloaded by anyone, from the Autodesk web site at http://www.autodesk.com/designreview. Autodesk Inventor 2D to 3D Tool Autodesk have developed a new utility for people who need to create 3D models of parts that were designed in AutoCAD. The 2D to 3D Tool streamlines the preparation of 2D views by automatically rotating drawing views onto orthogonal sketches.
The first release of the 2D to 3D Tool is available on Autodesk Labs along with the previously published feature recogniser and other pre release tools and utilities. Autodesk have released it to the Labs site so you can get the benefit of the tool now while giving your feedback to Autodesk on the requirements for the further development of these tools. The Labs website gives Autodesk the opportunity to get your input on some of the tools they have in the development pipeline prior to finalising the requirements for integrating them within the main products. If you have a need for these tools make sure you try them, and give your feedback so that when they are fully released they meet your requirements. Autodesk Inventor Podcast From the official blog of the Autodesk Inventor Product Management Team In the Machine, comes this month's Autodesk Inventor Podcast. This was posted on 22/01/07 by Garin Gardiner of Autodesk and contains come interesting news and tips and tricks. Windows Vista support for Autodesk products With the release of Windows Vista some of you will want to know if you can use Vista with the current Autodesk range of products?
All current and previous releases of Autodesk products are not
supported for running with Vista nor is there any likelihood of
official support for this new operating system until the next
release. Our own provisional tests with this new operating
system didn't get as far as being able to complete the
installation. We would be interested in hearing from anybody who
has had any greater success, or any other problems you have
encountered in tests with Vista. More information on that and Vista support will be available at the upcoming Technical Conferences. This month we bring you some documents from the presentations at the Autodesk University that took place late last year. We have two Inventor documents: Representations in Autodesk Inventor and two AutoCAD Electrical documents: Configuring AutoCAD Electrical Migrating from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Electrical We will try to bring you some of the more useful information from this event in coming months. Many other documents can be found in the Technical Documents section of the Members area Value Arrow in the Feature Parameter box Most Inventor features have a parameter controlling
sizes. When adding such features there is an arrow
to the right of the dimension input box. This can be used to
quickly insert recently used parameter values or to link to
parameters that already exist within the part.
The measure tool can be used to insert a dimension equal to that of the item selected to measure, a gap or an edge for example. Note that the measure tool does not create a relationship between the measured item and the new parameter i.e. the value will not update if the item measured changes in size at a later date. Changing Perspective View Distortion If you would like to place a perspective view in an IDW and wish to change the distortion, or you wish to change the perspective view distortion in a part or assembly model carry out the following processes: For an IDW view:
In a part or assembly:
Normal Orthographic view Fully distorted Perspective view Setting the Publish Options for Automatically Created DWF Attachments If you are using automatic DWF creation option on check in to Vault and wish to control which publish options are used then you will need to first manually publish a DWF with the required options selected. The settings used in an automatic DWF publish are the same as the last used setting in a manual publish. If you manually publish a DWF using File > Publish and set all of the required settings, then when you next check in to vault with DWF creation turned on the same settings will be used. Also With Inventor DWF extension only you can explicitly control which DWF option is used by editing the registry as follows:
Level of Detail (LOD) Representation tips Saving View Representations as LOD, and LOD as View Representations You may have existing View Representations set up in your assembly and would like to change these to LOD to reduce the memory consumed upon opening the assembly. You can easily convert the View Representations to LOD by right clicking on the representation and selecting Copy to LevelofDetail.
There is also the same option for saving a LOD as a View Representation. The method for this is the same as before but right click on the LOD and choose Copy to View Rep. Using LOD and View Reps in Derived parts You want to create a derived part of a sub assembly and include some other components from the main assembly, of which you have a View Rep or LOD created to display this combination. Instead of deriving the whole assembly and going through the list of derived components to deselect the non-required items, you can derive a LOD or View Rep that exists in the assembly. The two methods are explained below: Using a pre set View Rep in the Derived Component:
Using an existing LOD in the Derived Component:
You will notice that only the parts that are included in the LOD are included in the Derived Assembly and there are no options to include any additional parts. JPEG image is displayed incorrectly when opening a drawing The JPEG image can be distorted despite the images being fine in the previous version. This can be caused by the JPEG file being in CMYK mode. To resolve this open the JPEG file in an image editor such as Microsoft Paint. Save and close the image with out making any changes. This will convert the image file to RGB mode and will now open fine in AutoCAD 2007. AutoCAD Mechanical/Mechanical Desktop Tips Positioning Dimension Text in the latest version When placing dimension text in the previous version you could position the text instead of it snapping into a default position. To over come this press and hold the Ctrl key to revert to the previous behaviour and place the text where required. Installing Autodesk Mechanical Desktop so that the usage of Inventor network licenses is optimised Mechanical Desktop (MDT) deployments use an Inventor license under which they were installed. If all of your Inventor license types are the same you will not have any issues with network licence usage. However if you have a range of Series and Professionals available problems may occur depending on how the installation was carried out. Inventor Licenses Cascade in the following order;
This is the PLIST order that is specified in your network license file. This order is used to determine which product disc should be used to install MDT. When MDT is started the license taken will be from the top of the this list. If none of a particular type are available the next license type down on the list is used. Therefore normal proceudre would be to install all Mechanical Desktop clients from the Inventor Series Mechanical Desktop deployment. Tip when using Copy Design If you are using Copy Design within Vault a time saving tip when toggling between reuse or copy status for files is to hold down the Ctrl key. This will allow you to select all files within an assembly or subassembly whether it is the top level or at a sub level. The video on this link shows a sub assembly being selected first without the Ctrl shortcut pressed and then with the Ctrl key pressed. Vault Add-in wrongly displaying '?' for status You may have come across an issue when you check the status of a file using the Inventor Vault Add-in, that the status was displayed as "?" despite the files having already been added to Vault. When you tried to add the files again, a message stated that the files were already present in the Vault. This issue may be caused if a SQL timeout has occurred. You can confirm this by looking in the vlog file on the server and searching for the word "timeout". An entry similar to the following should be returned: 2007-01-11 08:16:26 mid: 633041001863597051 code: 0 , Connectivity.Core.Exceptions.SysErrCodes.UnspecifiedSystemException System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. Server stack trace: at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream) This issue can be resolved by increasing the SQL timeout values for client and server functions. Follow these steps on the Data Management Server:
Depending on the size of the Vault and the server speed, larger values may be necessary for these timeouts if the issue continues. Autodesk DWF Tips and Tricks With the news this month that Design Review is now free to everybody we would like to remind you that we have a document on our members area giving tips and tricks on how to use dwf. Please feel free to distribute this to anybody you are issuing your dwf files to. The document can be found at http://www.microconcepts.co.uk/docs/dwf_tipsandtricks.pdf which is a link that does not require web site membership to access. Downloads, Service Packs & Updates New Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released
this Month. Major service packs and fixes in bold. Inventor Inventor
Series/Professional 11 Inventor DWF Extension Edition Graphics Nvidia Quadro Graphics Cards - Major Memory Leak in latest
certified driver
Please follow this link and choose your card to see if it is supported in Open GL mode. To check what mode you are using go to Tools > Application Options in Inventor and select the Hardware tab. If you change the mode in Application Options for any reason, these changes will not take effect until the machine has been restarted. Mechanical Desktop 2007 AutoCAD Mechanical No Hotfixes released this month AutoCAD Electrical No Hotfixes released this month AutoCAD No Hotfixes released this month AutoCAD LT No Hotfixes released this month Productstream / Vault Hotfix - Allowing Copy Design, Rename and Edit Properties Without File Migration
The AutoDaddy!! We had many responses to our enquiry last month to find out who is the AutoDaddy of our customers. If you remember, our AutoDaddy is the user with the earliest experience of using AutoCAD and is still regularly using AutoCAD or Inventor today. Our own earliest experience was with AutoCAD 2.6 but there were a number of you who have used AutoCAD since version 2.5. Our AutoDaddy though was Alan Wright of Harman Pro. Alan has been using AutoCAD since as far back as version 2.0. That's over 22 years ago, when a mouse was more likely to be found nested in the computer than controlling it!!! Tea Break Trivia
This month's tea break trivia is courtesy of a fascinating book
- Why Don't Penguins Feet Freeze which is full of readers questions and answers
from New Scientist magazine. Further details on that
here. We fully recommended it even if you have enough random
trivial information occupying your brain cells already. Why Does Hair Turn Grey? Apparently grey (or white) hair is merely the base colour of hair. The natural colour is produced by dominant pigment cells at the base of each hair follicle. As we age more of these cells slowly die and the colour is lost from each hair. The result is that our hair gradually begins to show more and more grey. This generally happens over many years, however the pigment producing cells actually speed up production of colour as we age, so can temporarily darken the hair before the cells die. Interesting as that is, it doesn't explain why our Sales Manager, Mark Mills' hair has suddenly gone from containing a liberal amount of Grey to a curious shade of Ginger overnight!
Let us know if you've had your own bad hair experiences.
Pictures compulsory obviously. We promise we won't publish them
on next months bulletin. Well maybe only the best ones. |
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Published by Micro Concepts Ltd Copyright 2006 Micro Concepts Ltd. All rights reserved. This Newsletter is provided by Micro Concepts and may be used exclusively for informational purposes by the addressee only.
www.microconcepts.co.uk I 01223 716200 |
