[Solved]

Sometimes software has a critical failure and you are better off (or forced to) reinstalling. It could be AutoCad, Office or even Windows. Just in case, it pays off to have the product information and serial keys saved or written down somewhere. Autocad You can access Autocad product and serial info via the about command: Hit the downward arrow next to the help button then click "About..." to bring up the serial info. Either write down the info or screen capture it is a image file and put it in a safe place. Windows & Office For Windows and Office product keys, you can hunt them down through the registry key. A better solution though, is to use a free utility to do it for you. A good key finder currently is Magical Jelly Bean . It installs clean, works quickly and is free. System Restore Points  If you have not checked recently, be sure to check you operating system and make sure you have a recent system restore point. Having a good restore point can save you...

The question came up at my workplace: Will we benefit from having a workstation computer setup? The computers we tested had the following specs: Machine 1 CPU: Xeon E5 1650 V2 (3.5ghz) Video Card: Quadro K2000 (later upgraded to K4000) Hard Drive: SSD  Ram: ECC ram Machine 2 CPU:  i7-3820 (3.6ghz)  Video Card:  Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost Hard Drive:  WD2500HHTZ HD (single; not raided) Ram: Non-ECC ram The test we ran was the CADalyst benchmarks (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test). The results were surprising. The following were the findings (please excuse the loss of the graphs; images were lost from this blog): There was no 2d graphics index difference between any of the video cards. There was no CPU score difference between the CPUs as well. There was a slight difference in the single loop test for file loading speeds. However, over several loops, difference evaporated. ECC Ram did not seem to have any impact in any of the indices....

On July 13, 2013, Ishka Voiculescu posted a nice video on YouTube on how to bring in geo-referenced images of Google/Bing map (among other map sources) into AutoCad. What follows is step by step guide that you can follow at your own pace. The steps do not mirror what Ishka does in the video exactly but it's the same thing in the end. Step 1: Create a Geo-Referenced Image. Download Terra Incognita here. The nice thing is that it is portable; you can stick it in a usb key or in a network drive and run it from any computer without having to install it. Run Terra Incognita (simply referred to as "Terra" from now on). Choose a map source. Locate the area that you want and select the desired area. Choose the zoom level. This will determine the resolution of the image. Save the image by saving as an ArcView map. Step 2: Bring in the Image into AutoCad In AutoCad, set the coordinate system that you want the image to be brought into (e.g. using t...

Autocad 2014 has an annoying tendency to print the navbar on every viewport. I thought they solved this problem with Service Pack 2 but it showed up again the other day. The problem is intermittent so I know I will forget about it until it happens again. I always plot by exporting to PDF first so I just created a custom command called "Export to PDF (Navbar Off)" and stuck "navbar;off;" in it. Hopefully it will keep me from forgetting about it, missing it and having a client staring at it wondering what the heck it is. But the Problem Isn't Over The major problem with the Navbar  plot issue is that when it's turned off, it can interfere with correct plotting of line weights. So you end up having to choose between line weights plotting right but navbar showing in the plot as well, or preventing navbar plotting but line weights also being messed up. Problem Doesn't Affect All Machines I don't know if it's a problem with .net files or w...

Usually, a block can be distorted (scale changed on one axis more/less than another axis) by just changing the scale value on the property window. But a lot of blocks are created with "uniform scale" option on. The method that is traditionally used most often is to explode the block and recreate it with uniform scale off. Autocad, however, a pretty simple way to do this: the BSCALE command. You can change the scale absolutely or relatively. "Absolute" option scales the block relative to its block definition size. "Relative" option scales the block relative to its current size. So if you do a BSCALE/Absolute/1/0.5 twice on a 1m x 1m block, the final size will be 1m x 0.5 m. If you do a BSCALE/Relative/1/0.5 twice on the same block, the final size will be 1m x 0.25. To reset the block to its original size, just type in "1" in the "Scale X" box in the Properties window.