Up and Ready

AutoCAD 2013 for Mac: Another splash screen disappears solution...

We recently has an interesting scenario when starting AutoCAD 2013 on a Mac, the splash screen would start then suddenly disappear.  In the console, the following error message would be displayed:

12-05-18 9:36:46.904 AM [0x0-0x92092].com.autodesk.AutoCAD_LT_2013: set SkipExisting to true

It appeared to be a symtom of a corrupted productinformation.pit or a adskflex_*_ .data file but it was NOT  the case.

FYI, the productinformation.pit file on the Mac is located here:

/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/ADLM/.config/

cd "/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/ADLM/.config/"
cd /Library/Application\ Support/Autodesk/ADLM/.config/

The adskflex_*_ .data file on the Mac is located here:

/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher/FLEXnet

cd "/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher/FLEXnet"
cd /Library/Preferences/FLEXnet\ Publisher/FLEXnet

The solution was quite interesting, in this case, if you are using Apple's Screen Sharing [Version 1.3.2 on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion] feature, you will need to make sure that a monitor is connected to the computer before launching the software. This made me think of the good old days of headless SGI computers.  SGI computers back then would not startup if you didn't have a mouse or keyboard connected to them*.

*http://software.majix.org/irix/admin-headless.shtml
http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#screensharing
http://mobilemeandering.com/screen-sharing-mac-osx-lion/

Reference:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/11/general-licensing-what-is-the-productinformationpit-file.html
http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/02/alias-design-2012-for-mac-the-case-of-the-symbol-time-machine-lmu-and-the-splash-screen.html

Thanks to James Litwin for sharing this tip with the community.

Autodesk Suites: Modifying a Building Design Suite 2013 fails at FBX

You have created a deployment for the Building Design Suite 2013 and  when you try to modify the deployment using this method:

Create & modify a deployment > Create a new deployment configuration using an existing configuration as a template

You will get this error:

The copy functions cannot be used.

At this time the only solution is to re-create the deployment with the updated changes. This issue has been reported to the Building Design Suite QA team.

Maya Entertainment Suite: Licensing Turtle with a Enterprise T1 Multi-flex license

Turtle is used to create high-quality baking.  It is used to easily create global illumination for your next-generation game levels and then bake into texture maps, vertex maps, or point clouds and this plug-in is only available for Maya that is in the Entertainment Creation Suites.

For customers that are using the Enterprise T1 Multi-flex license, please note the following when installing it:

Maya Creation Suite 2013:   Product Key 535E1  > Turtle will be licensed and will work.
Maya Creation Suite 2013:   Product key  775F1  > Turtle will not work.

Maya Creation Suite 2012:   Product key 535D1  > Turtle will not work.
Maya Creation Suite 2012:   Product key 775D1  > Turtle will not work.

The product key is very important when installing the software because it controls the cascading of the licensing of the product.

NOTE:  You will need to contact your GBS Premier Expert to generate a new [addtional] license include a Maya Entertainment Suite 2012 license in order to run Turtle.

Reference:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/03/autodesk-suites-installing-turtle-with-maya-creation-suite.html

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/04/autodesk-suites-installing-turtle-with-maya-creation-suite-2013.html

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/02/product-keys-getting-your-product-key-from-the-compressed-downloaded-file-via-subcenter.html

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/06/general-licensing-product-keys.html

Simulation CFD 2013: You only need to download it once!

Just a quick note for Autodesk Simulation CFD 2013 customers, you can purchase an a la carte license to connect to:

• PTC® Pro/ENGINEER®
• PTC® CoCreate®
• Siemens® NX™
• Siemens® Solid Edge®
• SolidWorks®
• SpaceClaim® 

In the Subscription Center > Downloads area, you will only need to download Autodesk Simulation CFD once!  

In this example, Autodesk Simulation CFD Connection for Parasold and Pro/Engineer are exactly the same.  Autodesk Simulation CFD has all the Connection "plug-ins" installed at the same time and the license will allow you to connect to the other vendors as necessary.   The downloads in the Subscription Center must have a download for each of your purchased items but because download for Autodesk Simulation CFD is all inclusive, it is not necessary to download all the other Connection "plug-ins".

General Licensing: WTFFFFFFFF ?

I found a great post for the dreaded MAC etherenet address is FFFFFFFF.  It's from our fellow blogger: Stephen Blair.

Just before the Christmas break, I had a case where LMTOOLS reported FFFFFFFF as the Ethernet address, even though ipconfig /all showed a valid Physical address for the network adapater. Because of this, the license server wouldn’t start.

FFFFFFFF (eight F’s) is the broadcast address.

Check out the post here:

http://xsisupport.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/wtffffffff/

Referemce:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/02/general-licensing-hostid-is-ffffffff-and-a-97-121-error.html

Simulation CFD 2013: The copy functions cannot be used.

When attempting to create a deployment for Simulatin CFD 2013, you wil get the following error:

The copy functions cannot be used.
Failed to copy the following files:
C:\Autodesk\Simulation_CFD_2013_Multilingual_Win_64bit\msi
to
\\path\of\deployment\AdminImage

NOTE:  The 'msi' folder does not exist and you can still install the software using the Install on this Computer option.

Please download the following script [ SimCFD2013_Deployment.zip]:

1. Setup a host machine which has a shared folder of the installation kit. 
2. Edit the batch file to point to Setup.exe on the shared folder, network settings, serial number, etc 
3. Execute batch script on client machine --> Installs 3rdParty, Fusion, and SimCFD2013 silently with progress bar.

Thanks to Royce Abel and the CFD team for providing this workaround.

Autodesk Moldflow 2013: Design Link licenses are not working

When you have a Subscription license for Moldflow 2013 Design Link, the INCREMENT part that is generated will not be correct.  The only way that you can tell if it is correct is if you use the license parser website.

Error message when using Moldflow to import a file:

Autodesk Simulation Moldflow Design Link import failed.  Autodesk Simulation Moldlflow Design Link license is not found, or the file type is not supported.

License Sample:

License file in license parser site:

Please log case in your Subscription account and manually request an INCREMENT (Non-Subscription) license and have them refer to this blog post.  Do not use RegisterOnce!

Thanks to David Owens and the Moldflow team for confirming this issue.

Epilogue

To ensure that you have access to the Design Link 2012 and 2013 at your site. your sample license will have an INCREMENT 2013 Design Link license and a PACKAGE Design Link 2012 for Catia/Parasolid/Pro/E license.

Epilogue II

As of May 30, 2012, this issue is resolved.  You may generate your licenses via RegisterOnce.

Windows: Explorer fails to restart after uninstalling an Autodesk product

Personally, Windows 7 has been a great experience compared to Windows Vista, here is an interesting issue/Technical Solution TS14898448  that I would like to share with the community:

During the final stage of uninstalling an Autodesk product in Windows 7, you were presented with a warning dialog that Windows Explorer needed to be closed and would attempt to be restarted after the uninstallation is complete.

However, after the uninstall process completes, Windows Explorer does not restart and you are left without a desktop environment.

Please note that we have reported this issue to Microsoft and I didn't know that you can restart Windows Explorer [explorer.exe]!

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS14898448

General Systems: Parallels on the Mac and Standalone licensing issues

When you are running a Mac with Parallels to run your Autodesk product [AutoCAD], we only support the default setup of Parallels and Windows.  The instructions for this default setup is noted here:

How to install Windows on Mac using Parallels Desktop?
http://kb.parallels.com/ca/4729

Setting Parallels Desktop to run Windows from the Boot Camp partition is not supported and the instructions for this setup is noted on Page 16 here:

Getting_Started_With_Parallels_Desktop.pdf

The reason for this is that the Autodesk product [AutoCAD], is registered to the Windows hard drive partition in Boot Camp.  When you install Parallels afterwards and try to run the Autodesk product , it is trying to read the registration information on the Mac hard drive partition and it will error out.

To resolve this issue, please follow the following instructions:

1.  Restart your Mac in Boot Camp so that you are running in the Windows partition.

2.  You will need to show hidden files on Windows.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Show-hidden-files

3.  Backup and then delete the following files:

Windows 7

C:\ProgramData\FLEXnet\adskflex_00691b00_tsf.data

C:\ProgramData\FLEXnet\adskflex_00691b00_tsf.data_backup.001

4.  Create a new user Administrator account called "Autodesk".

Select the Video:  My computer is in a Workgroup
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows7/Create-a-user-account

5.  Logout of the current account and login to "Autodesk".

6.  Launch AutoCAD and let it activate.  If it doesn't activate automatically, please check out this post:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/05/general-licensing-getting-an-activation-code-manually.html

7.  Please logout of the "Autodesk" account and log back into the orginal account and launch your Autodesk product [AutoCAD].

Quick Start: Tips and Tricks for the Autodesk Network License manager [lmtools.exe]

I have collected all the tips and tricks that I know of for the Autodesk Network License Manager  [lmtools.exe] as a Quick Start guide.  

1.  My personal favourite:  Edit > Clear Window...

Video:  Quick-Setup-lmtools

2.  Don't use the default name when creating service...

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/06/general-licensing-dont-use-the-default-name-when-configuring-lmtools.html

3.  Some additional check boxes in lmtools.exe and what they do...

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/06/general-licensing-additional-settings-in-lmtools.html

4.  Getting the status of license files that are really long...

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/05/general-licensing-getting-the-server-status-with-long-license-files.html