When a customer reports a drawing-specific issue, the next stage in simplifying the problem is to eliminate all drawing content that has no bearing on the problem. Unless the drawing object that causes the problem is obvious and can be immediately ascertained, I use the divide-and-conquer method to zero in on the cause. ...
One type of support request that I occasionally receive from CADVault users goes something like “when I create a vault, AutoCAD crashes”. I’ve learned that problems like this are usually drawing-specific, so before going any further in simplifying the problem I ask the customer to check whether the problem occurs in an empty drawing. But there’s a trick to this. ...
One of the most important skills in resolving technical problems is not problem solving, but problem definition. Stripping a problem down to its essence often makes the solution obvious. I think this is generally true, but especially true in my experience with software tech support and tracking down software bugs. ...
One of my many complaints about about the CUI system introduced in AutoCAD 2006 is that it's not very friendly to third party developers. In my opinion, it's not very friendly to end users either, but I digress... One example of the unfriendly CUI is the case where a third party application installs a partial menu. In the pre-CUI days, adding a partial menu was an easy way to add an application specific menu to AutoCAD without making any changes to the end user's existing menu files. If the application was later uninstalled, the uninstall script could remove its menu and clean up the registry, leaving no trace behind. CUI breaks that scenario. ...
QuikPik and Periscope are now available for AutoCAD 2009, and SuperPurge will be available later this week. QuikPik users, note that the quick buttons feature does not work with buttons on the new ribbon UI.
If you use of any of these ManuSoft products, preliminary AutoCAD 2008 support has been available for several weeks at the Download Center for registered users. The QuikPik and Periscope updates are now officially released, and the shareware versions of QuikPik and Periscope are now available as well. SuperPurge will be officially released in the next week or so. My free AcadStatusBarButton library has also been updated for AutoCAD 2008, and is now available for download on the Freebies page. The only change is the addition of a blank status bar pane beneath your floating buttons so that the new annotation scale buttons in AutoCAD 2008 don’t get covered up (the blank panes force the annotation scale buttons to the left of your custom buttons). If your button position is fixed (i.e. not floating), the blank pane will not be used. As always, if you encounter any problems, please let me know!