This Month

News
Inventor Tools 11 - Beta
Seminar - DWF Extension & Inventor Tools 11

Tips & Tricks
Inventor Tips - Frame Generator Tip, Angle Dimension Tip
Inventor Tools Tooltip of the Month - View Scales & Sheet Size, Memory leak
Vault Tips - Backup to a Remote Drive
AutoCAD Tips - Layout tabs missing
Miscellaneous Tips - FLEXlm features codes, Network licensing Maximum Borrow time.

Downloads, Hotfixes, Service Packs & Other Issues
Inventor View 11 SP1, McAfee issue, Dell M70 blue screen error fix, Vault Client Microsoft Word Slowdown fix, 10 Inventor Hotfixes

Tea Break
This month we have been developing the new version of Inventor tools so this month's link gives Microsoft's insight in to the strange world of programmers.

 News

Inventor Tools 11 - Beta

A new version of Inventor Tools is in the process of being completed. It is a complete rewrite of the existing version using the latest .net tools. The familiar utilities and tools now provide more features, and are more robust and streamlined. There are also some additional tools added which we hope you'll find useful. We are in the process of completing the help and documentation for the tools before they are released but if you would be interested in seeing and testing a beta copy of the new version prior to the release please email me at graham.harrison@microconcepts.co.uk to request a copy.
It is not recommended to use the beta copy on production drawings and full support for the new version will only be available when it is officially released. The beta copy will be fully functional other than it will not contain the help file for the new release.

Inventor Tools & Inventor DWF Extension Seminar

We will be holding a seminar at our offices in Great Shelford, for our existing contract holders, to show you the tools in the new version of Inventor Tools 11 and also the Inventor DWF extension edition.

Agenda:

09:30 - 10:00 Registration
10:00 - 11:00 Inventor Tools 11
11:00 - 11:20 Coffee Break
11:20 - 12:30 Inventor DWF Extension
12:30 End

Autodesk Inventor 11 DWF Extension provides significant DWF publishing enhancements including

Publish positional representations, design views, and presentation file animations.
Publish presentation file assembly instructions.
Publish Inventor BOM.
Roundtrip DWF mark-ups to/from Autodesk Design Review.
Improved security with disable measure & print.
Publish active Level Of Detail.
Publish FEA results.

Places at this event will be extremely limited. Priority will be assigned according to support contract level and will be limited to 1 person per company.

Platinum Support Contract Holders can register for this event from 31st July 2006
Gold Support Contract Holders can register for this event from 14th August 2006
Silver Support Contract Holders can register for this event from 28th August 2006
Any remaining places will be made available from 14th September 2006

 Tips and Tricks

  Autodesk Inventor Tips

Frame Generator - Identifying Beams Requiring Trimming

Using Frame Generator you can trim beams quickly and easily to obtain the correct part shapes for your frame. However in a large Frame assembly you can easily lose tracks of which beams have been trimmed and which areas still require further trimming.
In this situation you can use Analyse Interference to highlight corners within frame generator that still require trimming.

Unwanted Angle Shown When Text Dragged

In Inventor you place an angle dimension and the text appears between the dimension lines showing the desired angle, as below.

If you try to change the position of the text by dragging outside the dimension lines the angle changes to give you a different angle, as shown below, which may often be an undesired effect.

You can change this behaviour by turning off the use quadrant option, prior to dragging the text to the new location. Select the dimension and in the options in the context menu toggle off the use quadrant option.

Then when you drag the text to the new location the angle being dimensioned remains the same and just the dimension line is extended to the new text position.

  Inventor Tools Tooltip Of The Month

View Scales & Sheet Size

On a drawing do you show the scale and/or the paper size on your title block? How often is the title block scale out of sync with the view scale on the drawing and how much time do you waste manually updating it?
If you do there is an extremely useful function in the Inventor Tools just for you. In the tools options, available from the MC General pulldown menu go to the drawing tab. Here you can enable the option to copy the first view scale, and first sheet size to custom iProperties.

Every time the drawing file is saved the first view scale and the sheet size values will be copied over to custom iProperties. If the iProperties do not already exist in the drawing they are automatically created and their values updated. With the values in iProperties you can link the iProperties to your title block. You're title block is then updated automatically every time your drawing is saved.

Memory Leak

A memory leak has been identified in the Inventor API that can cause Inventor to crash woth the Inventor Tools loaded. This can be avoided by disabling the Inventor Tools library browser feature. This can be disabled through the Inventor Tools Options, assembly options tab.

Vault Tips

Backing Up to a Remote Drive

When you try to perform a Vault Manager backup to a remote share on a another server, the backup fails and you see the following error message in the VaultManager log file:

"Cannot open backup device 'RemoteServerBackup'. Device error or device off-line. See the SQL Server error log for more details."

This error occurs because the MSSQL$AUTODESKVAULT instance is running under the Local System account on the Vault server machine. This account does not have the proper permissions to the remote share where the backup will be created.

To solve this issue, run the MSSQL$AUTODESKVAULT instance under a domain user account and give this account Full Control permissions to the remote backup directory.

For more information regarding this procedure, refer to the following Microsoft Knowledgebase article:

You cannot back up databases to a network drive if your account have not sufficient permissions to access the network drive

AutoCAD Tips

Layout Tabs Missing

You may notice that when you open an AutoCAD 2007 based product, you do not see the tabs of all page layouts in the file and you're not able to switch to a paperspace layout. The ability to hide or show layout tabs has been added to AutoCAD 2007 based products. The hidden or visible status of the tabs is controlled in the CUI. This setting can be set from either the CUI dialog box or the main drawing screen.
To modify the setting in the CUI:

• At the command prompt, enter CUI
• Select the workspace you want to change
• In the Customize User Interface dialog box, under Properties, set the value of the Model/Layout tabs in the Display section as required

To modify the setting from the status bar, right-click near the icons on the status bar (graphic below).
Select Display Layout and Model Tabs.

 Miscellaneous Tips

FLEXlm Feature Codes

 When you start a network version of an Autodesk product, a request is made to the network for a license. The Network License Manager controls the licenses that are issued and handles license requests through feature codes. Each network version of an Autodesk product having a specific FLEXlm feature code. Feature codes are necessary because the Network License Manager is designed to administer licenses for multiple Autodesk applications. The feature codes for Autodesk applications are listed below:

Network Licensing Maximum Borrow time

 With network licenses you are able to borrow licenses when you need to disconnect from the network and continue working elsewhere. There is a maximum period that licenses can be borrowed before the borrowed license expires. The maximum borrowing period for network licenses is as follows:

Inventor 8, 9 & AutoCAD 2004, 2005: The maximum borrowing period is 720 hours (30 days).
Inventor 10, 11 & AutoCAD 2006, 2007: The maximum borrowing period is 4320 hours (180 days).

The absolute maximum borrowing period is determined by the BORROW=statement in the license file increment for the product. This cannot be amended.

However, it is possible to reduce the maximum borrowing period allowed.

For AutoCAD 2004 and Inventor 8 this can be achieved using the ADLM_BORROWMAX environment variable configured on each AutoCAD client.

For Example: Variable Name: ADLM_BORROWMAX, Variable Value: 24

This will set the maximum borrowing period to 24 days.

For AutoCAD 2005, 2006 and 2007 and Inventor 9, 10, 11, this can be achieved using the MAX_BORROW_HOURS statement in the Network License Manager Options file.

For Example: MAX_BORROW_HOURS 48800ACD_2006_0F 720

This will set the maximum borrowing period for AutoCAD 2006 to 720 hours.

Further information on configuring MAX_BORROW_HOURS and the Options File is in the Network Licensing Guide which is accessible from the Product DVD Documentation tab.

  Downloads, Service Packs & Updates

New Downloads, Service Packs & Updates released this Month. Major service packs and fixes in bold.
A full list of current service packs can be found in the members area on the website here . 

 Miscellaneous

Autodesk Inventor View 11 Service Pack 1

McAfee Enterprise edition may cause applications to crash

 Inventor

Inventor Series/Professional 11
Hotfix - Content Center Filter Performance Improvement
Hotfix - Inventor Crashes When Placing Data from Content Center Via AutoDrop or on Copy Design View to Level of Detail
Hotfix - Cannot Place Origin Indicator on Virtual Sharp on Hole Table (SelectionType)
Hotfix - Balloons Attached to Migrated Assembly Views Lose Associativity When Detached and Reattached to Another Component Hotfix - Unable to Sort Parts List by Part Number Column
Hotfix - Inventor Presentation Files (IPN) Fail to Open or Migrate in Inventor 11
Hotfix - Some Content Center Components are Not Updated After Refreshing Standard Components
Hotfix - Cannot Specify Origin Point for Ordinate Dimension Sets and Cannot Create a Bisector Centerline on Concentric Arcs
Hotfix - Inventor Becomes Unstable when Copying Design View to Level of Detail
Hotfix - Instability When Attempting to Place a New Subassembly into an Existing Assembly

Graphics
Hardware Library File (July 17th 2006)
Dell M70 Blue Screen Error|

Vault

Vault 5
Microsoft Word Slow After Vault Add-In Installation

Productstream

Productstream 5
Hotfix - Effectivity Error Occurs when Trying to Release an Item
Microsoft Word Slow After Vault Add-In Installation

 Tea Break

We've been programming the new Inventor Tools 11 this month using the latest Microsoft Visual Studio Tools and we came across this Microsoft Visual Studio site which has some short videos of the behaviour of the typical programmer.

It's supposed to highlight how the 400+ differences in Visual Studio 2005 help to overcome typical issues in the life of a programmer.

My favourite is the the sword wielding programmer at this link:
http://www.400plusdifferences.com/index.aspx?diff=156
 

 Contact Details

Helpdesk Direct Telephone Line: 01223 716214

email: support@microconcepts.co.uk

Fax: 01223 841861

Members web area

 

For all contract queries, including subscription queries, please contact our Customer Services representatives

Tel: 01223 716200

email customerservices@microconcepts.co.uk