Sunday, July 3, 2016

ACA & Windows 10 FREE ??

I would guess I am not the only one who is starting a mild panic as they feel pressured to upgrade their machine to Windows 10 (from W7 and above) because the FREE upgrade is ending soon (July 25?) Upgrading Autocad versions is enough stress for me wondering what is going to go wrong this time. (2017 version is no longer usable for rendering at this point with numerous bugs).  

So when it comes to less important issues such as the operating system upgrade when you have Windows 7 and it just works and blue screens of death are a distant memory.  I am largely self taught and something of a Systems Manager in my office and home and have taken care of systems over many years including building systems from scratch and overclocking them to get the best performance.  But I am not a natural and I have just accepted Windows 7 as it is and my current machine is not overclocked, despite a boost I would get in performance, particularly in rendering.  BUT a deadline is a deadline and Microsoft is threatening to withdraw their very kind offer to upgrade me to the latest and greatest Windows 10 for FREE and who can ignore Free Stuff?  Not any electorate I know.

So I am now staring at Autodesk's page for Windows 10 and in that style that only Autodesk can do I read.   Under the heading "
Solution:" 

"Windows 10 is not yet an officially supported operating system across the Autodesk product line."

The issues seems to revolve around the workings and version of NET framework.

Now since Windows 10 has been out for almost a year (since July 29 2015) I would have expected Autodesk, who would have had pre-release versions to work with for some time, to be on the ball.  Ah, perhaps it is just my ignorance of the deep dark issues of programming and software architecture.  Anyway, perhaps I might update this post as I go but I am intending to wade the waters and progress to having Windows 10 installed on my machine. From what I understand (little) I can download an ISO file, place it on a DVD or bootable thumb drive and make a clean install from there or you could just allow your machine to download and upgrade itself as my sister's did without really asking (happens if you have auto updates turned on).


So for now we are between the rock and the place that's hard.  If you do upgrade, you are without Autocad's recommended OS and if you don't upgrade you will miss out on the free upgrade.  Windows 7 is a very stable platform and W10 has a new interface designed for touch screens on phones and tablets. I believe you can restore a more sensible desktop but that is learning and time/effort I will have to traverse.

If you have upgraded or already using Acad on W10 I'd love to hear from you.
If I never post again on this, you could probably presume I died in the process.  My heart could just not take the strain.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

ACA Roof Object finally gets an update!!

Seeing that I have been too busy (or too lazy and distracted) to make a big noise about this fantastic update I will have to direct you to David Koch's great article on the New and Improved Roof Object.

Not mentioned there, because it occurred in an earlier release (2016 I think) is the ability to add one (yes only one) schedulable property for the roof object.  It's the area of the Roof Object or surface area.  I would prefer plan view area or footprint since that is how the local industry measures and documents it but at least it's something.  If it's useful to you, you will find it in the normal place of adding properties to any aec object.  If you have yet to explore scheduling, well David Koch also has THE collection of information on the Scheduling Features of ACA (ADT). 

If you have missed it (the unveiling of the century) my expose on the Roof Object and everything you didn't know about it,  it is blogged here and on my youtube channel here.
Can't watch youtube?  They are imbedded in a blog page here.

A couple of points on what David shows you.  You can still create more complex roofs than this method will allow.  Sometimes you still have to trim a corner to create an extra vertex. At times when the Roof Object (RO) becomes complex, it refuses to be adjusted.  If this new method fails, you can still TRIM CORNERS for another vertex and you can also use the stretch command over a vertex to get it to move. 


My method now for trimming a corner is using a circle as the trimming device over using a line because it also retains the oiginal point (centre point of the circle using your osnaps). You will see this demonstrated in my video's above.

Anyway, onto David's great blog on my favourite aecObject.

Enjoy,