If you install Plant 3D 64-bit after Civil 3D 2010, Plant 3D may not run properly. How I got it to work correctly was to delete the files in the image below and then reinstall Plant 3D.
It appears that the 32-bit Autodesk.AutoCAD.Interop doesn’t play well with the 64-bit AutoCAD. Since Civil 3D 2011 will come in a 64-bit version I suspect this step won’t be required.
A high school friend had a scaling question and asked me this question. Heck I don’t even understand everything on this blog. Take for instance error catching. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time exploring it. I’m more interested in solving the civil design portion of the solution than making sure it works for all cases. A user of the Civil 3D Reminders Pack came across this warning message when attempting to utilize the swap parts command.
Pressing continue will allow the user to return to Civil 3D, but the message is a bit cryptic, but it’s basically saying the programmer didn’t do proper error catching. .NET is smart enough to recognize something went wrong and to try to continue on. To Catch portion would need to be revised to Catch an error instead of Catch ex as Exception. The error wasn’t an exception so it wasn’t being caught properly. A message probably be added to prompt the user to audit the drawing before trying again.
In this case of this error in the code, the drawing database became broken. An audit of the drawing removed this error from popping up.
Earl Kubaskie provided a comment, on my 2nd Annual Distract Pat Dearborn from doing actual work post (also known as an April Fool’s post), that got me thinking. Does Autodesk want customers who would react negatively to a new and improved civil design product? Based on Autodesk’s reaction to the post it would seem that they covet those users.
2009 April Fool’s post caused quite a commotion within the users of the program. It was definitely a feature they wanted to stay in the program and the post was forwarded onto others and posted on a discussion group (DG), providing a bump in traffic to the post (the DG thread was removed by Autodesk, so you won’t be able to find it). That year a total of 15 Autodesk visitors visited the site to read the post. This year the post spread within Autodesk for a total of 65 visits from coast to coast, providing the majority of the traffic bump to the site this year. Without the Autodesk bump I’d have to say the traffic to the blog would have been slightly above average instead of the most traffic ever for a Civil 3D related post. Thanks Autodesk for providing the motivation to do another April Fool’s post next year! I’m sure I would have stopped the April Fool’s tomfoolery without a bump in traffic.
Autodesk’s reaction appeared to be one of concern of the post causing fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). I even heard they were/are contemplating legal action against me (or it could have been their attempt at an April Fool’s joke on me).
Based on the reaction to this year’s post I’d have to say unscientifically the readers of this blog are forward looking and want to use the best technology available and didn’t cause much FUD. Earl called my post heartless because he would really want the features contained in the post in a Civil Design product. I’d have to agree with him. All of the new features in the fictitious product I’d want incorporated within Civil 3D. But what was Autodesk worried about? The people who have moved to Civil 3D want, as a whole, the best technology available. While the people who don’t are still using Land Desktop, or really late adopters of Civil 3D, and tend to be stuck in their ways. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of the late adopters stay on the first version of Civil 3D they learned on. Assuming its Civil 3D 2010 they probably have a fairly stable program that will do the work required for a long time. Personally I think Autodesk shouldn’t worry about the people stuck in their ways, I’d wish they’d worry more about providing a quality feature laden product, with most of my suggestions included of course.
As of today it’s been four years since the first post of this blog. I’ve found that most people aren’t interested in the same things that I am, but a couple of people read the blog when I post. The majority of the people come once or twice from Topeka (formerly known as Google). It’s kind of hard to believe that I started with this post:
TEXTTOFRONT
Brings all text and dimensions to the front of all the other objects in a drawing.
I’ve definitely gone a ways away from command posts. I’ve also learned how little traffic my site gets from my experience with the Digg.com affect. Over 2,500 hits from a post that wasn’t even on Digg, but was a comment in a on a popular article on Digg.
It’s also interesting to note that the most popular post is one that only conveys information regarding something that isn’t available (until Civil 3D 2011). If I thought this blog would have lasted this long I probably would have chosen a shorter name.
Well thanks for reading, even if you just come through Google.
I didn’t notice it until today, but where is the pipe on the Civil 3D 2008 splash screen supposed to go? It appears that a pipe is already in the trench awaiting backfill. I haven’t done many large diameter steel pipe projects; but usually when I drive by they are welding them together by the trench and then putting them into the same trench. Maybe photoshopping of the photo was done?
Maybe Pat Dearborn can shed some light on this.
