New Technical Documents

Updated Data Management 2008 Backup - including incremental backup option

Last month we had a new Technical Document for you explaining how to setup your Vault backup with the new Autodesk Data Management Server 2008. The new version includes an option for creating incremental backups. However this document has now been updated to remove the requirement for IIS to be disabled to create a backup.

The updated document can be downloaded from the following location:

http://www.microconcepts.co.uk/docs/td0118-data_management_2008_server_backup.pdf

Inventor 2008 Network and Standalone Installation Guides

Inventor 11 to 2008 Migration guide

This document is a guide to updating your Inventor Templates, Styles and Standards to the latest format. This is necessary to take advantage of some of the new functionality in Inventor 2008 and avoid warning messages.

Migrating Inventor 11 Design and Styles Data to Inventor 2008

 Autodesk Inventor Tips

Hidden Edge  Display -  Hidden Lines Displayed As Dashed

When using hidden edge display mode in Inventor there is now an option to make all hidden lines or edges dashed. This will vastly improve the usability of the hidden edge display mode as it will prevent the model appearing as the optical illusion that it has turned inside out.

The setting to change this can be found in Tools > Application Options in the lower left area of the Display tab.

Rotate Drawing View By Any Angle

In an Inventor drawing (either IDW or DWG) you can select a view and rotate this view by any specified angle. In previous releases you could only rotate by 90° or an absolute angle. Now you can rotate by a relative angle from the current view position. To do this right click on a view and select Rotate in the right click menu. From here you will have the option to rotate by an Edge, an Absolute angle or a Relative angle. With the Edge option you will need to choose an edge and select if it should be vertical or horizontal. The Relative and Absolute options will require an angular input to determine the amount it will rotate by. The difference between the Relative and Absolute is with Relative it will rotate the view by the angle specified from its current position, where as the Absolute will rotate by the specified angle from the original position. With both of these options the rotation direction can be changed.

Hole Notes and Hole Table Descriptions

The description in a Hole Table is the same as the details displayed on a Hole Note. These details can be changed manually by right clicking on the note and selecting text or double clicking on the description in the hole table.

The information displayed by these notes or description can be changed in the Dimension Styles on the Notes and Leaders tab.

Inventor Start Up Options

When opening Inventor 2008 there is now an option as to what dialog box is displayed. In previous versions you could choose whether or not to show the start up dialog box but in 2008 there are a few more option as to what to show.

There is now options to show the help file on Inventor start up and an option of what topic area of the help to show. There is still the option to not show any dialog by removing the tick from Start-up action, however you can now choose from other start up options - File Open dialog, File New dialog or to start a new file with a preferred template and project.

Reverse Mouse Wheel Zoom Direction

As with AutoCAD options the mouse wheel zoom direction can now be reversed in Inventor 2008. To reverse the zoom direction check the box on the Display tab in the Application Options.

Differences between exporting Drawings As AutoCAD DWGs and AutoCAD Mechanical DWGs

If you are exporting drawing views as DWG files with the intention of manipulating the created file within AutoCAD, there are a couple of options for the file format to export as. When saving as an AutoCAD DWG you should click the Options button in the save as dialog box. This will open the DWG file export options dialog box. From here you have options for the file version to save as. If you export as an AutoCAD Mechanical file it will automatically create individual AutoCAD groups for each of the parts in the drawing, whereas if you save as a standard AutoCAD file each line will be an individual ungrouped line in the AutoCAD DWG.

If the Mechanical option is selected you will need to turn off the grouping options within AutoCAD Mechanical before you can manipulate individual lines. A tip for turning off grouping can be found in the tips section for AutoCAD Mechanical.

Micro Concepts Inventor Tools Tips

Inventor Tools 2008 AutoSnapshot Command

Inventor Tools 2008 introduces a new command named Auto Snapshot.

The auto snapshot command allows you to quickly create a dwf from your current file. The file is created according to options preset in the MCTools options dialogue. These options are used to typically control the filename and directory location. The current revision property value can also be automatically appended to the filename.

The autosnapshot created from the drawing environment can alternatively be created as a pdf file. For a dwf there is also an option to include the 3D model automatically.

 

The autosnapshot command allows you to quickly create dwf snapshots from your Inventor data with a consistent naming and directory structure, thus giving non Inventor users free access to your Inventor models and data. You can also turn on the Inventor tools options to automatically create the dwf snapshot on every save, or to prompt you every time you save.
If you use vault you are also able to automatically create a dwf on every check in through the vault add in functionality.

AutoCAD Tips

Restoring and Resetting the ACAD.cui

If you have been customising your user interface (CUI) in AutoCAD and would now like to roll back to a previous state of customisation or reset the CUI to standard settings use one of the two following processes:

To restore or reset the ACAD.CUI file to a previous version open the Customize User Interface, right click on the ACAD part of the tree view and select Restore or Reset ACAD.CUI

Restoring will use the ACAD.BAK.CUI which is created when you customise the user interface.

Resetting will revert back to the original default ACAD.CUI of the installation.

Sharing Tool Palettes

If you have created custom tool palette groups and would like to share these with other users or computers. Tool palette groups are saved in the profile.aws file. You can copy this file and transfer it to the computer that you want to update.
Follow these steps:

Browse to the folder that contains the profile.aws file: 
AutoCAD 2007
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2007\R17.0\enu\Support\Profiles\Unnamed Profile
AutoCAD 2006
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2006\R16.2\enu\Support\Profiles\Unnamed Profile
AutoCAD 2005
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2005\R16.1\enu\Support\Profiles\ Unnamed Profile

Copy the profile.aws file to a network location. On the target computer, browse to the Unnamed Profile folder and overwrite the existing profile.aws file with the version you saved to the network location.
When AutoCAD is started the tool palette groups will be available to users running the default Unnamed Profile. Note: Users with a custom profile rather than the Unnamed Profile (AutoCAD only) will need to overwrite the profile.aws file contained in the appropriate profile folder. For example: \Support\Profiles\

The profile.aws file does not include the path to where the actual tool palettes are found. You should specify the file path to the tool palette files (ATC files) in Options dialog box.

AutoCAD Mechanical Tips

Group Selection Toggle

To toggle all groups on and off within AutoCAD Mechanical you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl and H at the same time. This will toggle off the groups allowing lines or geometry to be moved and or manipulated individually. You can toggle the groups back on again to manipulate the items in their groups.
You can also still toggle individual groups on and off via the group dialogue box

 Vault/Productstream Tips

File Checked Out to Another User and/or Workspace

You have checked out a file successfully, but when you tried to edit it you get the following error message:

The file is checked out to another user and/or workspace. You will not be able to save your changes to it unless it is checked out to you.

To resolve this locate the file in the working folder and check the File Status in the iProperties. If this was set to Checked Out By Another User then the file was checked out by a semi-isolated project prior to being added to the Vault, and is now reserved by the user of that project.

To unreserve the file, use the following method:

1. Check out the file.

2. Open the file in Inventor, and save it under a new name.

3. Delete the original file.

4. Rename the saved file, using the original file name.

5. Check in the renamed file.

Hotfix - Unable to Use Add DWG Files to ADMS 2008

Hotfix - Copy Design Browser and Link to Item Column

Hotfix - Unable to Use Add DWG Files to ADMS 2008

3d Connexions driver 3.3.2