IMAGINiT Technologies Support Blog

AutoCAD: Start page is truncated or skewed

 

When you launch AutoCAD you see that the Start page is truncated or skewed.

  

I've had several calls on this now and they also typically mention that the monitor flashes black during some commands too.  This typically indicates a graphics/video card/driver type of problem.

 We have resolved it successfully by changing a Windows setting.

1. Right click on your desktop and select "Personalize"
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. In the lower left corner select "Display"
   
   
   
   
3. Select "Smaller"
4. Click "OK"
5. Reboot the computer.

 You should be fine now.

 

 

 

AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT on Mac Parallels no longer opens files on the network

This is for users who are running parallels on a Mac machine.

When trying to open a file that is saved to a shared network location you get the following error message:

Network error: Windows cannot access\\..dwg Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network
problems, click Diagnose.

If you get this Network Error message then you need to shut down the OS and the parallels and restart it.

Inventor 2016: Make a component transparent in drawing view

In Inventor 2016 you can now easily make a component transparent in a drawing view.

Right-click on a part and there's a new 'Transparent' option:

The option makes the component 'transparent' and it no longer hides components behind it in the view.

For  Inventor 2015 and previous versions you can try the following options to make the component transparent:

 

1-Assign a translucent material such as 'Polycarbonate' to the part and make the view shaded in the drawing.

 

2-Make the part a 'Reference' part: Tools>Document Settings>Bill of Materials>Default BOM Structure>switch to 'Reference'.

Edit the drawing view on the Model State Tab, set Reference Data to 'As Parts' and Hidden Line Calculation to 'All Bodies'. 

You might need to increase the 'Margin' value if all the parts are not included. 

This will show the reference part as Wireframe and the others as shaded if you use a shaded view.

Automatically add View scale to Inventor drawing text or titleblock

In Inventor 2016, it's now possible to add the initial drawing view scale to text or the titleblock.

 

The new Initial View Scale property has been added to the Sheet Properties.  You can select it in the Format Text dialog box and add it to text.

 

 

 

 

This adds the <Initial View Scale> property to the text:

 

 

 

If you delete the first view, the next view's scale in the Model Browser will populate the 'Initial View Scale' property.

 

For Inventor 2015 and older you can use the iLogic code supplied by Autodesk.

 

AutoCAD Architecture/AutoCAD MEP: Cannot change view when placing a detail

When placing a detail from the detail component manager and trying to change the view in properties it starts to visually glitching or rapidly blink. This is not an issue with your cursor or your graphics card. This is something with the software.

What you will need to do is click on the view and then use your keyboard arrows to change the selection by clicking up or down arrows. 

Cannot associate a dwg file to any Autodesk software

When double clicking on a dwg from windows explorer or from your desktop it doesn't launch the Autodesk software.

Follow these steps to fix the DWG Launcher registry settings https://designandmotion.net/autodesk/mfg-pages/inventor/autodesk-dwg-launcher-wigged-out-fix/

AutoCAD: Error: Cannot find specified drawing file. Please verify that the file exists

This happens when opening a file by double clicking. Although Autodesk does say to open the program and then open the file. many do use this method and this error can be troublesome. This error can be caused by a number of issues.

 

-Registry issues Corruption, Permissions, User Account Control set to high.

 

To correct these issues you may try

 

- Installing DWG True View

- Right click AutoCAD and run as administrator

- Turn off User Access Control

 

For more information about Autodesk products please visit

www.imaginit.com

"Copy function cannot be used" error creating deployments for Fab CADmep, ESTmep and CAMduct 2016

When creating a deployment for Fabrication CADmep 2016, Fabrication ESTmep 2016 and Fabrication CAMduct 2016 I received the error "The copy functions cannot be used".  

Which typically means we have a permissions problem or a bad download sometimes.  Not this time.  This time the problem is with the setup.ini file itself!

You can manually fix the ini files, save them and it should create the deployment just fine.  However, I didn't take any chances, Autodesk has a kb article with each of the 2016 setup.ini files attached that you could download.  I downloaded the CADmep ini file and tested.  It Worked!

Copied the other 2 and created the deployments without a hitch.

Here's the Autodesk kb article:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fabrication-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Installation-The-copy-functions-cannot-be-used.html

I created a backup of the original before pasting the fixed version in. 

 

Clarity: Specific Scheduled Task not Running

If you have a task that you can launch manually and have it run successfully, and other scheduled tasks are running fine, you may want to make sure that the task isn't disabled.

When you start a task from scratch, the default value is set to yes.  If you copied a task, it will carry over the settings of the original task, so you may not notice that it was set to No.

Normally when a task fails you can see something in the journal or log as to why...but since this one just gets skipped entirely, you won't find anything helpful in the diagnostics.

If you look at the tasks for your project you will see the task and it's scheduled time to run

 

However if you look at completed tasks you won't see the task show up because it never got claimed.

Revit Sections: How to Condense a Section

I'm certain that we have all cut a wall section and wanted to get rid of some non-critical information between the floors...and there is a handy way to deal with this in Revit that doesn't require duplicating views and cropping or creating call-outs.

You can condense the section so that it goes from looking like this (I rotated it to save on space)

To looking like this (I left the crop boundary on in this example)

 

I did a quick video on how to accomplish this!

Video on Process

http://screencast.com/t/Hsl4czhCXM5c