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Visual Studio 2010 shipped today accompanied by .NET Framework 4.0. I blogged before about the switch to using the MSBuild build system, and how that theoretically could be helpful in targeting multiple AutoCAD versions from the same solution. The shipping VS 2010 does not support non-Unicode response files, so out-of-the-box it cannot target VC 7.0 (for AutoCAD 2006 and earlier). When time permits, I’m planning to see if I can find a workaround; in the meantime, I’ll continue to use VS 2008 for ObjectARX.

There have been rumblings and rumors for a while now about a native Mac OS X port of AutoCAD. The ObjectARX 2011 SDK header files contain clear evidence of a native Mac port in the works. The evidence comes in the form of code comments and changes made to the files so that they work with the GCC compiler and the Mac OS X libraries. ...

Thanks to Google’s decision to eliminate FTP publishing as of May 1, I’ve moved my blog to Wordpress. I’ve tried to make the transition as seamless as possible by ensuring that the permalink URL for every post remains unchanged. Unfortunately the RSS feed reader URL has changed, so make sure you visit the blog home page and update your feed URL (this will be the last post at the old URL): ...

I saw in the March 8 edition of the TenLinks Daily newsletter that Alan Kalameja passed away at age 55. Condolences to his family. Alan hired me to write test questions for an AutoCAD certification exam in the early ’90s (I don’t recall which version, but probably either R12 or R13). That was one of my first real contracting jobs. Although it wasn’t very glamorous, it made me feel important, and undoubtedly helped focus my fledgling consulting business on AutoCAD. Thanks, Alan, for giving me that opportunity.

A lot of you are probably having to cut back on your expenses to make ends meet in this economic downturn. I’ve drastically reduced my discretionary spending, postponed the purchase of new office equipment, and investigated less expensive alternatives to a lot of my monthly expense items. I’ve also been streamlining and reorganizing my finances, which inevitably involves a lot of contact with banks. Kean Walmsley’s post about his recent bank customer service issue motivated me to post about one of my recent bank experiences. First of all, I’m here to tell you that banks do make mistakes. I’m sure that the vast majority of the time when your check book doesn’t balance, it was you that made a mistake, and not the bank. But if you are cursed like I am, then banks delight in creating phantom overdrafts and charging you exorbitant overdraft fees, then, when confronted with their error, apologizing and refunding the fees (after the damage is done and all those bounced checks have caused you to incur returned check charges from your creditors). That has happened twice to me in the past two months, with two different banks and two completely unrelated accounts. In both cases, the bank eventually fixed the error, but I’m still out the returned check charges and whatever damage that has done to my credit rating. One of the “returned” payments was a credit card payment. Of course, I did not get notified about this until the day after the payment due date, so it was too late to fix the problem in time to prevent another exorbitant late fee from being charged by the credit card bank. Obviously the returned check triggered some alarms at the credit card bank, because I started receiving phone calls begging me to make a payment immediately. Irritated, I decided to make the credit card bank wait until the next due date before making the replacement payment. I figured my late fee bought me that extra time, so I might as well use it. My patience paid off: after a few futile attempts at collecting their late payment, the bank offered to refund the late fee if I made an immediate payment. That’s what I’m talking about!

Bruce Schneier argues that data is the pollution of the information age, and “just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we’re ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.” ...

Many years ago, I worked for the small town where I grew up. My title was Street Commissioner. This is a very small town, and I was a part time employee with one helper. Basically, I was the guy what fixed things. We had a very old network of water pipes that supplied water from several wells. The water system leaked in many places. Occasionally, a small leak turned into a big leak, and something had to be done about it. You might think that the first response to a big water leak would be to close the water valves in order to isolate the leak and prevent the loss of valuable water. Not so fast! First of all, in an interconnected network that had been upgraded and patched by piecework for many decades, it wasn’t always possible for small localized segments to be isolated, and turning off the water for a large area would inevitably lead to discord. Second, closing even a single valve caused pressures throughout the system to change. Any pressure change anywhere in the system had the potential to cause new failures at weak points, which would just compound the problem. Furthermore, at some point repairs could be counterproductive and completely replacing parts of the network would be the best option. This would require time for the town council to approve the funds, and for contractors to be hired, and for the work to be scheduled and completed – all while the leaking water is causing collateral damage to the roadway and inconveniencing the affected residents with low water pressure. Eventually the big leak had to be repaired, and the water had to be turned off somewhere before the repair could be completed. The decision about where and how to accomplish this was not a simple decision, due to the competing factors involved, and the practical realities a small town is faced with. I call this problem the Petcock Problem. Imagine petcock valves scattered throughout a network of pipes. I call this the Petcock Problem because petcock valves typically have three positions, analogous to the notion of closing, opening, or redirecting connections on the network in order to isolate a fault. The Petcock Problem would apply in many situations involving complex networks, such as when a tree knocks down a power line or when an internet router dies. Sometimes the best solution is to isolate the fault to the most localized part of the network possible, thereby inconveniencing the least number of people at the expense of putting the larger network at greater risk of a much larger catastrophe. Sometimes the best solution is to shut down the entire network temporarily, thereby inconveniencing everybody that relies on the network, but removing any risk of further degradation while repairs are completed. Most of the time the best solution is somewhere in between these extremes. As the network ages and faults become more commonplace, at some point the best solution is to scrap the entire network and build a new one. This is the Petcock Problem, or “How do you stop the bleeding?”. The solution involves balancing several variables, some of which are known quantities, some of which are wild guesses, and some of which are potentially very chaotic (in that a small change in value could have an unpredictable impact on the outcome). [Disclaimer: I’m sure that the study of network topologies has its own terms of art and well researched algorithms for describing and solving these types of problems. I’m not claiming to have some new revelation about networks here. This is just my own little custom worldview.] In a future post I will explain how the Petcock Problem applies to something as diverse as the Vernor lawsuit.

Did you ever wonder what press release writers do in their spare time? Given Autodesk's recent trademark litigation with SolidWorks and related efforts by Autodesk to trademark "DWG", and given the fact that US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademark examiners are known to use Wikipedia during their research, it doesn't take an evil genius to realize that a little subversive editing here and there might be helpful to the corporate cause. So, I decided to use Wikiscanner to go spelunking through the labyrinth of Wikipedia editing history to see if I could unearth any nuggets. ...

InfoWorld columnist and legendary consumer advocate Ed Foster died over the weekend. Ed was a tireless crusader for consumer rights in the digital age, and he will certainly be missed. For many years Ed has authored GripeLine, where he called companies and politicians to task for abusive anti-consumer practices. I’ve written before about how Ed exposed and publicised shamefully lopsided software license agreements, including Autodesk’s and Adobe’s. Recently, Ed commented about the May, 2008 Vernor decision (see my CAD/Court web site for more information about the Vernor case). It will be no easy task to fill Ed’s shoes. We can be certain, though, that his work must go on.

Steve Johnson asks “where have all the developers gone?”, and Deelip Menezes wonders in a comment whether Autodesk’s annual release cycle for AutoCAD is part of the problem. I’ve always said that an annual release cycle is untenable. The annual release cycle is motivated by Autodesk’s desire to make the subscription program look attractive. Has it worked? Based on what I’ve read and heard through the grapevine, it has definitely worked. More customers than ever are choosing the subscription model. In many cases, the annual subscription business model actually works well for software like AutoCAD, providing benefits for both Autodesk and their customers. But subscription is not for everyone. In typical greedy big corporate fashion, Autodesk have overplayed their hand. Instead of concentrating on those customers for whom subscription makes sense and leaving the others to choose a different model, the “more is always better” marketing machine kicked in. Ergo, the annual release cycle carrot and the AutoCAD retirement program stick were invented. [Oh sorry, it’s called the Autodesk Loyalty Program.] I am already seeing the beginnings of a movement of discontent among Autodesk customers, and I expect the annual release cycle to collapse under its own weight within another year or two. In the meantime, tremendous damage is being done. Customers, third party developers, authors, and consultants all suffer under the strain of the annual release cycle, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. To pull off annual releases, Autodesk have to be working on multiple versions of AutoCAD in parallel. While AutoCAD 2006 was being beta tested, AutoCAD 2007 and 2008 were already under development, and AutoCAD 2009 was already in the planning stages. When CUI was first introduced to the public, the new ribbon UI was likely already in the planning stages. Is it any wonder that the angry feedback about CUI was ignored? When you have an annual release cycle with 3 or 4 future releases on parallel tracks, you can’t just stop and fix a fundamental design flaw. All you can do is increase your public relations budget. The harm done to third party developers is substantial, but the inability to shift gears and correct fundamental design flaws is the real travesty of the annual release cycle.

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.

This Autodsys press release made me chuckle. Their IntelliCAD based AcceliCAD now supports custom entities, announces the press release. “Instead of creating custom objects as is necessary in some other CAD packages the application developer can instead use the primitives already built into the program such as LINEs, ARCs, CIRCLEs, and POLYLINEs.” Hmmm, that sounds an awful lot like blocks in AutoCAD – a feature AcceliCAD has surely supported since its inception. The press release continues, “That means there is no need to define grip points or editing operations for the entities because those functions are already built into AcceliCAD." ObjectARX programmers have been able to create custom objects in AutoCAD for years. One of the most common reasons for creating a custom object is to “define grip points or editing operations”. Otherwise, blocks work just fine in most cases.