IMAGINiT Technologies Support Blog

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Our team enjoys providing tips and tricks, beyond what you read here on the blog. Check out our new home on the IMAGINiT Technologies Resource Center.

There you'll find many of our older posts, as well as on-demand webcasts, video tips, ideas for future improvement, and more. 

Content from our amazing technical team will continue! We hope you’ll join us: https://resources.imaginit.com/support-blog.

Vault Pro Client Add-in for MS Office 365 is continuously becoming disabled in Excel and Word

Issue:

The Vault Pro 2020 Add-in for Microsoft Office 365 apps for Excel and Word are being disabled as they load on a Windows 10 version 1909 workstation. Before version 1909 the add-ins launched normally. Also, the Outlook add-in works normally with version 1909.

Further, Excel cannot be closed after checking in a file into vault, after the add-in has been reloaded.

Causes:

This was tested on a domain that loaded Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint as well as Microsoft Azure Information Protection. The Excel 2016 was running from Office 365.

Solution:

What was found to interfere with the Vault add-in was a Microsoft application called "Microsoft Azure Information Protection" inside Excel's Options.

Microsoft Excel Options (shown on a workstation in the Netherlands)

The confirmed solution was to uninstall "Microsoft Azure Information Protection" that appears in the Program and Features like this:

Once uninstalled, then Excel and Word were able to retain the Autodesk Vault Addin for Office 2016 and also check out, check in and close Excel normally.

Why Train with IMAGINiT?

Inventor Material Editor Precision

By: Heath White | SR. MFG Support Specialist

 

Issue:
You want to change the precision of the Density (or another field) in the Inventor Material Editor interface.

Causes:
Currently the default display precision of each field in the Material Editor is not user editable.

Solution:
Just because the display is not editable, does not mean that the calculations performed by the software are not accurate.

For reference - Inventor’s Data Precision calculations: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2021/ENU/Inventor-Help/files/GUID-84623939-38A8-49BF-8D97-BB9DA3697056-htm.html

See the steps below for an example of how to test Inventor’s accuracy for yourself:

Steps:
1. Change the Unit precision in the document settings to 6 decimal places (or whatever you prefer, up to 8 decimal places).
2. Update the material library density to 0.123456 (or your preferred value). It will round to 0.123 for this example.
3. Create a 1x1x1 cube.
4. Open the iProperties and select the Physical tab.
5. The Mass does indeed show 0.123456.

So even though the Material Density only displays 3 decimal places, it does calculate out 6, based on the document unit settings.

See below for an illustration of the example above:

Inventor Default Material shown below

Document settings, Linear Dimension Display Precision setting changed to 6 decimal places for the purpose of demonstration. (see below)

Note: The limit on this display is 8 decimal places.

In the document’s material properties, input a density with a 6 decimal place value (show below).

Once you hit “Enter” the value is only displayed to 3 decimal places (shown below).

However, if you check the model’s iProperties, the calculated value displays  accurately, based on the precision set in the Document Settings – Units Tab (see below).

As you can see, the originally input precision is retained even though the display in the Material Editor may make it appear otherwise.

Special thanks to Kevin Keene and Chris Williams, who did the testing and confirmation for this article.

 

Adding AutoCAD Plot Style Tables for use with AutoCAD LT for Mac running in macOS Catalina and earlier

When you receive a drawing that was last saved in AutoCAD and you want to plot it in AutoCAD LT for Mac running in macOS, you will find that you can't locate the Plot Styles folder to add the acad.ctb color dependent plot style table.

With the acad.ctb available, then the plot settings dialog will use the line settings that the drawing last used. In AutoCAD LT, the default color dependent plot style table is named acadlt.ctb so it can't find acad.ctb.

Typically you would browse to the plot styles folder here to add any new plot style tables:

/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/roaming/AutoCAD LT 2013 Standalone/R19.0/enu/Plotters/Plot Styles

Note: You can also double click the Plot Style Table Search Path listed in Options/Preferences as shown here:

Starting with Lion, Apple has hidden the Library folder under the current user name, presumably for security reasons. To regain easy access to the subfolders, including AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT's support folders, you can either temporarily gain access to them using Apple's recommended method detailed here: 

 

Unhide the Library Folder, the Apple Way

1. With either the desktop or a Finder window as the frontmost application, hold down the option key and select the Go menu.

1. The Library folder will be listed as one of the items in the Go menu.

1. Select Library, and a Finder window will open showing the contents of the Library folder.
1. If you close the Library folder's Finder window, the folder will once again be hidden from view.

...or you can permanently turn on access to the Library folder using the Terminal application, which is the Mac equivalent of the CMD prompt for Windows. The Terminal app can be found in the Applications folder. If you enter the following command chflags nohidden ~/Library/ in the Terminal it will show the Library folder.

What are those yellow squares with an exclamation point next to dims in Plant 3D?

Recently an AutoCAD Plant 3D 2021 customer contacted us to remove the numerous instances of a small yellow box with an exclamation point in it next to all his dimensions in a drawing. His drawing had civil engineering information in it that was showing locations for the inclusion of the plant model information.

They looked like this:

A new feature called the Annotation Monitor was introduced in AutoCAD 2013-based products that is shared with AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 and later that shows dimensions and leaders that have lost their associativity.

When the geometry associated with the dimensions is moved or changed, the dimension values will update when associativity is enabled.

To quickly locate dimensions or leaders that have lost associativity with their geometry, the yellow 'badge alerts' will appear when the Annotation Monitor is turned on. If you hover the cursor over one of the yellow boxes, 'Disassociated Annotation' will appear at the cursor's location.

 

By default, the AutoCAD variable ANNOMONITOR that stores the response for the Annotation Monitor is turned off. But what makes it unexpectedly turn on is when a model documentation edit or update event occurs.

If you're confident the values for the dimensions and leaders are correct, you can turn the display of the yellow alert boxes off by clicking the Plus sign shown above. The yellow alert boxes will not plot when they are on, though.

You can easily locate the affected dimensions and reassociate them with their respective geometry points by click-dragging them to snap to one or both geometry points again, if necessary. If you click one of the exclamation points, that brings up a menu with two choices, Reassociate and Delete.

You can find more details about the Annotation Monitor and the ANNOMONITOR variable in the Help files at the links highlighted.

For more information about how to Reassociate Dimensions, click the highlighted link.

 

Help file for IMAGINiT Utilities for Vault Client

Occasionally we get asked about locating the documentation and help files for our IMAGINiT Utilities for Vault Client.

The Help is delivered as a locally installed binary file with the Microsoft Compiled HTML Help .chm extension. It contains a set of HTML files, a hyperlinked table of contents, and an index file.

By default, the compiled Help file is located on the Vault client workstation here:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Vault 2020\Extensions\IMAGINiT.VaultClientUtils\IMAGINiT_Utilities_for_Vault_Client.chm

To access help, though, you don't need to locate that file to open it directly, although you can.

But, if you are in the Vault Client, on a workstation, open one of the utilities under Tools/IMAGINiT Utilities and pick one, such as 'Template Folder:Admin'.

In that utility, click the Help button and help for that utility is shown. On the left side, you can also access Help for the other client utilities.

Note: For reference, here is a listing of the utilities included for Vault Client.

NEW in Utilities for Vault Client 2020:

Automated STEP File Creation: Create STEP files on-demand or automatically tie them to a lifecycle transition.

Update Folder from Template: Easily update your project templates to match a new set of folders, access control lists, and more.

IMAGINiT Utility Admin: Allows administrators to choose which utilities are shown and made available to users.

Other Tools Include:

Link Generator: Retrieve URL links to the Vault Thin Client for selected files or items, making it easy to send information to others.

Auto-Update Folder Properties to File Properties: Quickly synchronize properties applied at the folder level to corresponding properties at the file level.

Create Local Folders: Create folders in the Vault working folder hierarchy to match the Vault folders.

Visual Lifecycle Tab: Provide a visual description of the current file’s lifecycle definition, including its current state as well as the available transitions to other states.

Standard Folders: Enables the administrator to configure folders of standards that are updated whenever someone logs into Vault. Provides support for Administrative-only templates (when creating folders from templates) and for forcing a get-latest on single folders.

Lifecycle Change Notifier*: Provides an email notification when your project has lifecycle state changes and allows support for reporting properties in the Lifecycle Notification setup.

Create Folder from Template: Quickly and easily set up complex project folder structures with the click of a button. No more manually creating directories, sub-folders or clunky work-a-rounds. Setup multiple templates per your project and/or office standards and make use of this time saver.

Extract Bill of Materials (BOM): Create a BOM within Vault, based on your CAD data and export to Excel or CSV.

Create PDF/DWG/DXF: Generate PDFs from Inventor IDW and DWG files at the press of a button using the Job Processor. The PDFs can be stored in the Vault or published to an external folder. If you require additional automation, Utilities for Vault Client can also auto-generate jobs based on key lifecycle events (for example, releasing a file). PDFs can be created either on-demand or automatically as product lifecycles change. Includes new job types for making DWG and DXF files from IDW files and provides support for publishing PDFs on lifecycle changes outside of the Vault.

Batch Checkout of Files**: Simple method of checking out multiple files at once.

IMAGINiT Utilities for Vault Client is free to clients who have an annual Autodesk product subscription through IMAGINiT. Ask your representative for additional details.

* This utility only available in Utilities for Vault Client 2015 - 2020.

** This utility only available in Utilities for Vault Client 2014 - 2020.

 

Note: Click the link to request access to the IMAGINiT Utilities for Vault Client.

 

DWF Crash when viewed through Vault Preview or Design Review

Issue
Certain DWF files will cause the Vault Client or Design Review to crash. These files are still viewable through the Autodesk Web Viewer (https://viewer.autodesk.com/). You may see the error code "Unable to load DLL APIHelper.dll: The specified module could not be found." (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

Cause
The cause of this issue is currently under investigation by the Autodesk Development Team. Incident ID:27241

Solution
The following is a link to the current issue being tracked and investigated by Autodesk. Please refer to this link for the current status of the issue: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/vault-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Vault-Preview-crashes-with-error-message-HRESULT-0x8007007E.html

From Revit to Fabrication

How to pull systems out of Revit and into Fabrication MEP

1. Starting in Revit, isolate a specific service by hovering over it and hitting "Tab" until it’s all highlighted. Click on it to select all.

2. Go to the "Add-Ins" tab and click on "Store Design Line Elements" then click the "Out" button with the arrow.

3. It will ask where to save the ".RIF" file and what to name it.

4. Open Fabrication and type in "Processrun" then select the ".RIF" file you saved.

5. A window named "Mappings" will open. This is where you will select the Revit service and assign it to one of the Fabrication services on the "Services" tab. Right click on the line items one by one and "Edit" them to assign the correct service.

Note: The tab "Fitting Ignores" should be set to "NO." Hit "OK" once all settings are ok. 

6. The .RIF will load in the drawing. If you do not see it, do a Zoom extents and you will see everything that was brought in.

7. Double click on the design line to "activate" and work on it. From here, you can fix anything that didn't process correctly or switch out fittings if needed.

LoadLibrary Failed with Error 126 on Remote Desktop Connection

Issue:
Using Remote Desktop Connection(RDC) to connect to a remote machine give you LoadLibrary Error 126
(there can be other LoadLibrary Error codes for other AutoCAD vertical products, 126 is common for AutoCAD, 86 & 87 are common for Civil 3D, etc.)

Causes:
This is caused by the graphics engine on the local machine not being capable of handling the RDC connection to the machine with AutoCAD

Solution:
As we navigate new waters around here, I have run across this issue and want to inform you on the reason and provide a better answer than the Autodesk KB:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Error-LoadLibrary-failed-with-error-126-when-starting-AutoCAD.html

Here’s the actual issue, if a customer is trying to Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) from their home PC into their work PC, and an AutoCAD based product shows this, it may not be the ATI component. It’s how RDC works is it uses the host PC (user’s home PC) graphics engine to display what is on the remote PC. If they update the graphics drivers and still get that error, then they will need to investigate other options, since we cannot re-tune RDC or bypass it.

So, they will need to look at other screen sharing programs and cannot use RDC to accomplish their task. (like ConnectWise, LogMeIn Pro, Team Viewer, etc.) This generally only affects AutoCAD based programs.

You can investigate these options:
https://www.techradar.com/news/best-remote-desktop-software