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This
Month
 News
Technical Conference Update
Request Inventor software on CD format
New training course - Inventor
Administration
New Bulletin Format - Feedback &
Contributions Required - Rewards Available
Autodesk & Triple Eight Press Story
Tips & Tricks
New Technical Document
-
Get the most out of 2D with AutoCAD
Mechanical Structure
Inventor Tips -
Open GL or Direct3D?,
Rendered Image Display Quality in IDW,
How to reset
image when icon displayed instead of bitmap
image, Installation Error 1406
AutoCAD
Mechanical Tips - Error Creating
Deployment
AutoCAD Tips -
Zoom Direction, AutoCAD Time Saving Tips
Vault Tips - Slow
Operation of Office Applications,
AutoCAD
crashes when you try to open a folder from
Vault, Error on Backup Validation
Downloads,
Hotfixes and Service Packs
Inventor Tools for Inventor 11, DWG TrueView
2007, DWF Writer 3, Inventor Graphics
hardware registry file update, 2 Vault 4
hotfixes, 1 Vault 5 hotfix, 1 Productstream
5 hotfix, 1 AutoCAD Electrical 2007 hotfix,
1 AutoCAD 2007 hotfix.
Tea Break
With the upcoming Technical Conferences,
this month's Tea Break link is to one of
British Engineering's most successful
designs that you will find examples of on
exhibition at IWM Duxford.
News
Technical
Conference Update
The Agenda
for the Technical Conference is now
finalised and can be found on the
Conference area on the website. Our
first conference is fully booked on both
days and the Update Day on May 16th is also
fully booked. Places are still available for
the Update Days on May 12th and June 21st
and also the Overview days on May 11th and
May 15th. To be eligible to receive full
support on Inventor 11 it is mandatory that
you attend one of the Update days or attend
AOTC Inventor 11 upgrade training which can
be purchased via your account manager.
Request Inventor Software
on CD Format
All subscription customers should have by
now received delivery of their new versions
of the Autodesk software. Inventor 11 is
shipped in DVD format. If you still require
your Inventor on CD format it is possible to
request this free of charge via the
following website
www.autodeskstore.com.
Inventor
Administration Training
Inventor is now a multi facetted application
with many different software elements and
different configuration options suited to
various implementation scenarios. To help
software installers and implementers
understand the importance and relevance of
each element and how best to setup for their
own particular situation we have devised a
new training course. Covering installation,
configuration, licensing, performance tuning
and file and data management this course
conveys the years of experience and
knowledge our Technical Support Team have
gained from carrying out customer
implementations. The course description can
be found on our website
here. You can also find our new look
training schedule on the website
here.
Give us Your Feedback on the
 New Bulletin Format
This month we've altered the format of the
technical bulletin so it is once again in
printable form. We would really appreciate
your feedback on whether you prefer this new
format and the content we include. We will
be giving out a prize to the best and most
helpful feedback. Send your feedback to
graham.harrison@microconcepts.co.uk and
tell us at least one thing you prefer with
the new format and one thing that you think
is worse.
We will be giving out prizes on an ongoing
basis for anybody contributing articles to
the bulletin and you will also be credited
on the bulletin. Send your articles and tips
to
graham.harrison@microconcepts.co.uk. If
you've found a tip or a link that you've
found useful, there's a good chance other
users will too so please share it with us.
Micro Concepts in The Press
 No
direct Micro Concepts published features
this month, but plenty of new published
articles on the way in May.
However here's a link to an Autodesk
published news feature, about a top British
Motor sport company extending it's use of
Inventor.
CIMTALK - Autodesk and Triple Eight - A
Winning Team
Engineering Talk- Autodesk Raring to Go In
Touring Car Season
Tips and Tricks
New Technical Documents
Get the best out of 2D with AutoCAD Mechanical
Structures
This month we bring you a white paper from
Autodesk on best practice for use of
Mechanical Structure tools within AutoCAD
Mechanical. The document, entitled best
practices for AutoCAD Mechanical structures,
can be found on our website
here.
Many other documents can be found in the
Technical Documents section of the
Members area.
Autodesk Inventor Tips
OpenGL Or Direct3D?
With Inventor 11 you now have the choice of
using OpenGL or DirectX for your graphics
hardware driver type but which should you
choose?
The answer will depend on your graphics
card. As a general summation OpenGL
will give better performance however certain
cards and drivers are less stable than when
using their Direct3D equivalent. Direct3D
tends to be supported on a wider range of
cards and will be the format supported under
the next generation of windows, Windows
Vista, which is currently in beta. The
default on installation is Direct3D. Our
recommendation would be to switch
back to OpenGL as performance is superior.
However if you experience any problems our first
suggestion would be to try the Direct3D
driver to see if the problem is then
resolved.
Rendered Image Display Quality In IDW
Inventor 11
introduces a new option that by default
increases the performance of rendered views
in IDWs but lowers the on screen visual
quality. Print quality however is not
greatly affected. In the document settings
is the option to use Bitmap for shaded
views. BY default this is set to Always
which means a bitmap representation of the
shaded view is shown instead of a rendered
model. If you set this to Offline only a
more accurate representation will be shown
but performance opening, editing and
updating views will be the same as for
Inventor 10.
Icon displayed instead of bitmap image
If when you insert an image into Inventor,
all you see is an icon with the file name,
instead of the image displaying, it is
likely a program
incapable of rendering images as an OLE
Server is registered in the Windows registry
to handle images (for example, Adobe
Photoshop).
To resolve this problem try the following
procedure:
On the Windows Start menu, select Run.
In the Open box, enter regedit.
In the Registry Editor, navigate to the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.bmp
key.
In the Name column, right-click (Default)
and click Modify on the shortcut menu.
In the Edit String dialog box, enter
Paint.Picture in the Value Data text box.
Installation Error 1406
when attempting to install Inventor
This tip was
recently published by Autodesk:
When you tried to install Inventor, you received the
following error message:
Error 1406. Could not write value to key
\Software\Classes\CLSID\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\Programmable.
Verify that you have sufficient access to
that key, or contact your support personnel.
This error occurs if you have Macromedia
Flash Player 8a installed on your system.
This version of Flash Player is newer than
the version that is installed when you
install Inventor. Before you install
Inventor, you should check to see what
version of Flash Player you have installed
on your computer. If you have version 8a
installed, you should uninstall it before
you install
Inventor. Because Flash Player 8 is
installed during the Inventor
installation, you will have a working
version. Future Flash Player upgrades should
not adversely affect your Autodesk Inventor
environment.
AutoCAD
Mechanical Tips
Error creating
deployment
When you try to create an administrative
image of AutoCAD Mechanical or AutoCAD
Electrical, you can sometimes receive the
following error message:
Error 1304: Error writing to file: Verify
that you have access to that directory.
This error will only appear during either
the creation of an administrative image or a
deployment to required workstations. The
error occurs because files utilized in the
creation of the administrative image are
detected as a security threat by Antivirus
and Desktop Protection Software even though
they are harmless. There are two ways you
can resolve this issue:
Disable all Antivirus, Desktop protection
and Local Firewall protection through
Windows Service Management. This is only
necessary at the time of the creation of
administrative images and deployments to
required workstations.
or Configure your Antivirus, Desktop
protection and Local Firewall protection to
temporarily “trust” files that produce the
1304 Error. This is not a recommended
procedure. However, you can use this method
as a temporary workaround should the first
method fail.
AutoCAD Tips
Zoom Direction
It is now possible in AutoCAD 2007 to
alter the zoom direction for the middle
wheel mouse button so it is identical to
the default behaviour in Inventor. You
will find this on the 3D Modeling Tab in
the AutoCAD options as shown below.
AutoCAD Time Saving
Tips
AutoCAD 2006 introduced new
functionality but also added additional
options and shortcuts for some of the
traditional commands. Here are just a
few:
Undo options have been added to Copy,
Offset, Fillet, Chamfer, Trim, and
Extend.
The Fillet and Chamfer commands now let
you quickly trim corners by using the
Shift key to force a zero radius or
distance. Select the first object, then
hold down the Shift key to select the
second object.
Trim and Extend have some new options:
Crossing/Fence options are new selection
options for the objects you intend to
trim/extend
Erase option in Trim function
The Stretch command now supports
multiple crossing windows and standard
object selection. Only those objects
selected with a crossing window or
crossing polygon will be stretched; all
other objects will be moved.
The Offset command now allows you to
erase the source object.
The new Multiple option lets you
continue offsetting a specific distance
without reselecting a source object.
The Rectangle command has two additional
options, a Rotate option and an Area
option, where you define the length of
one side and then total area.
Vault Tips
Slow Operation of Office Applications
After installing Inventor 11 you may
notice a slow down in the operation of
Microsoft Office applications, Word and
Excel for example. This can be
attributed to the Autodesk Vault Client
for Office which is now installed by
default when you install the Vault
client. This can only be uninstalled
after installation of the Vault Client
through the Windows Control Panel, add
remove software applet. If you want to
use the Office Vault client then ensure
you have the latest patches and service
packs applied to your Office
installation prior to installation of
the Vault client.
AutoCAD crashes when you try to open a
folder from Vault
When you logged into Vault from
AutoCAD (or an AutoCAD-based product),
selected Open from Vault, and then
selected a folder, AutoCAD crashed. This issue occurs when a file has
been dragged and dropped into the Vault
with no file extension. For example, if
you drag and drop a folder of AutoCAD .dwg
files that also includes some temporary
files into the Vault, you may have
placed files in the Vault with no
associated file extension. To resolve this issue
in Vault Explorer, open the specific
folder and check for any files that do
not have file extensions. Rename these
files if you want to keep in the Vault.
If they are temporary files that do not
need to be in the Vault, you should
delete them. You should now be able to
access this folder when using the Open
from Vault functionality.
Error On Backup
Validation
During the validation of the filestore,
after the backup of your Vault or
Productstream server was complete, you
may receive the following error message:
Value cannot be null. Parameter name:
Path
The problem does not occur during the
backup, it occurs during the validation
of the backup. This error happens
because you have a Vault attached during
the backup that has no corresponding
filestore. If you do not detach your
Content Center libraries before
performing the backup, you will see this
error message during validation because
the Content Center libraries have no
filestore.
There are two workarounds you can use to
avoid this issue:
You can disable the backup validation.
Then you can back up the vaults or
Content Center libraries without an
issue.
If you leave the backup
validation on, you will need to detach
the Content Center libraries as well as
any attached Vaults without data prior
to doing your backup. However, you will
not have your Content Center libraries
backed up. If you are not publishing or
customizing the library content then you
do not need to back up this data. You
can easily restore this data with a
simple reinstall of the Content Center
library on the server.
Downloads, Service Packs & Updates
New Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released
this Month.
Major service packs in bold.
A full list of current service packs can
be found in the members area on the
website
here
.
Inventor
Tools
Inventor Tools 10.1 to 10.11 update
This patch allows existing installations
of Inventor Tools version 10.1 to
operate with Inventor 11. For new installations install Inventor Tools
10.1 prior to installing the patch.
Viewers &
Translators
DWG TrueView 2007 Version
A new version of the DWG Viewer has been
released which supports AutoCAD 2007
format DWG files.
DWF Writer 3
Publish 2D & 3D DWF files from non
Autodesk applications.
Inventor
Inventor Series 11
Graphics
Hardware Library File (April
17th 2006)
Inventor Series 10
Graphics
Hardware Library File (April
17th 2006)
Inventor Professional
 Inventor Professional
11
Graphics
Hardware Library File
(April 17th 2006)
Inventor Professional
10
Graphics
Hardware Library File (March 20th 2006)
Autodesk
Vault
Vault 5
HTML Hotfix for Vault 5 -
Adding HTML files to Vault 5 may cause
IIS to stop
Vault 4
Hotfix - "Object Reference Not Set To An
Instance Of An Object" Error Occurs on
Checkout
Hotfix - Error Getting Relative Resource
Path during checkin of Inventor files
Autodesk
Productstream
Productstream 5
HTML Hotfix for Autodesk Productstream 5
- Adding HTML files to Productstream 5
may cause IIS to stop
AutoCAD
Electrical
AutoCAD Electrical 2007
Hotfix - Component Retag May Crash
AutoCAD Electrical if File is Checked
Out
AutoCAD
AutoCAD 2007
Hotfix - New Features Workshop Update
Tea Break
With the upcoming Technical Conferences,
this month's Tea Break link is to one of
British Engineering's most successful
designs that you will find examples of on
exhibition at IWM Duxford. The
Supermarine Spitfire is one of the most
famous aircraft in history and on this site,
http://www.supermarine-spitfire.co.uk,
you will find all the information you could
ever want to know.
You'll also
find information about the Spitfire's
designer at
http://www.supermarine-spitfire.co.uk/
designer.html
along with photos from the Supermarine
production factory at Woolston, Southampton.
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