Up and Ready

Over 1 million customers [page views] served...

When we first started the blog just over 2 years ago, we really didn’t know how to benchmark our impact to the Autodesk Community.  In this case, we used the Revit Clinic’s 1 millionth blog post as reference because it was the same year we started our blog.

It took about 3 years and 2 weeks to get there for them.  Our rather modest goal was to at least match them to their 1 millionth page view.

One of the interesting things about installing, licensing, configuring & deploying our software is that it may not be too exciting.  What our customers do with our software is extremely exciting!

  

We are happy to announce that as of July 30th at 4:52 pm EST.  We got over 1 million page views!  In fact, if anyone is triskaidekaphobic, we were actually at 1000013, so please accept our apologies.

We like to thank everyone in the community that visits our site,  everyone on the Product Support Team that helped with a post, Autodesk Management that sponsored our vision, the Development & the Quality Assurance Teams that gave us deep insights on the Install & Licensing Framework.

Please boldly install, configure & deploy Autodesk software to boldly go where no man [or woman] has gone before.

Best regards,

The Up and Ready Blog Team

3DS Max Design will not run with Virtu Software installed

Here is an interesting issue that came into Product Support, a user had the Building Design Suite Premium 2014 installed and the only software that did not run was 3DS Max Design.

In this case, there was a 3rd party application installed by the motherboard manufacturer called Virtu Software. Once that was uninstalled, 3DS Max Design ran correctly.

For more information on Virtu Software and the AS Rock motherboard, check it out here:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Pro4/

Thanks to Dhafir Jajjoka for sharing this tip with the community.

Autodesk ReCap 1.0: Error installing Service Pack 1 [SP1]

Step 1: Check your ReCap version installed.

Click on the ? button, then the i button to get the About Box for Autodesk ReCap. From the screenshot below, it’s 1.0.43.24 which is installed with Infrastructure Design Suites.

Step 2: Check the ReCap version written in your system registry and update it to match the version found in Step 1.

Go to Windows Registry Editor by typing regedit from Windows Start Menu and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\Autodesk ReCap\R1.0\ProductSpecific

Check the BuildVersion value. If the Data doesn’t match the build version which you got in Step 1, please update it by right click on “BuildVersion” and “Modify”. Input the correct build version.

Step 3: Close Registry Editor and restart your computer. Launch ReCap and open update page. Download and install the update.

Thanks to Byron Morales for sharing this tip with the community.

The Installation that will never complete...

In this scenario, the installation never completes but also never errors out.  When we checked the event log and found a bad sector error and there was a hard drive popping sound every few seconds as the installer tried to access the bad part of the drive over and over again.

The solution: Try a chkdsk and if that doesn’t work, you may need to replace the drive.

Thanks to the guru, Jeffry Asbury again to this tip.

Education Master Suite 2014 + Revit 2014 + Error 0.0.0

If you launch a product and you get a Error: 0.0.0, it means that the server is working correctly but there isn't a license on the server for the product.

In this case, we have been getting a lot of educational sites have an error with Revit [Architecture] 2014. The Education Master Suite 2014 supports Revit 2014 (aka Revit One Box) and the information is noted here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=13163166

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS21379174

The problem is the portal to download the software is for Revit Architecture 2014.  This is only a single discipline of Revit. Revit 2014 (aka Revit One Box) has Architecture, MEP, and Structural combined and this is technically a different product.

Please download Revit 2014 from our Virtual Agent (Step 3) here and install it using the Master Suite Serial Number and Product Key [651F1] here:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2013/01/quick-start-downloads.html

At this time, we are working with the Education Team to resolve the Revit download in the portal.

If you have already deployed Revit Architecture 2014, the fastest way to uninstall it is to use our Uninstall Tool.

Reference

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2013/06/the-legendary-quick-uninstall-utility-for-autodesk-2014-products.html

Modifying Deployments and freezing....

When modifying a deployment, in this case it was the Infrastructure Design Suite Preimum 2014, it will basically freeze. i.e. Tools > Create & Modify a deployment.  The only way to get your control of your computer is to use the Task Manager exit out of the deployment.

In this particular scenario, the deployment was created on COMPUTER A and the deployment files were on COMPUTER B.  When modifying the deployment on COMPUTER A, it would freeze.  

In this case, the workaround was to use Windows Remote Desktop from COMPUTER A to COMPUTER B to modify the deployment locally.

Bonus Tip:  Defeating the 256 character limit when creating a deployment!

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/08/defeating-the-256-character-limit-when-creating-a-deployment.html

Thanks to Andrew Demerchant for confirming that this trick worked.

Where is AutoCAD 2014 in the Product Design Suite 2014?

So where is AutoCAD 2014 in the Product Design Suite 2014?  The answer is actually noted in this older post:

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2012/08/where-is-autocad-in-the-product-design-suite-1.html

Just an FYI, the AutoCAD 2014 shortcut is still an shortcut item AutoCAD Mechanical 2014's start menu. 

By using the default Suite installer, you are actually saving drive space because you are not installing AutoCAD 2014 again.

Just a note, you can still indeed download AutoCAD 2014 from the Subscription Center if necessary and it is noted in the Installation wizard.

AutoCAD for Mac 2013 SP1 + Corrupted Fonts = CER Crash

The root cause of this interesting Mac issue is a corrupted font file/files that are being loaded via the font engine.  The Autodesk CER report was pointing to Free Type Font Engine [Font Book] that was causing the problem and AutoCAD for Mac didn't like the corrupted font being loaded by the Font Book.

To solve this issue, we will need to validate all the fonts on the Mac:

1.  Log in as an Administrator user, if you want to use the "Remove Checked" button described below. Non-Admin users can also validate fonts, but only remove ones in their home folder.
2.  Open Font Book (Found in Applications).
3.  Click "All Fonts" in the Collection column.
4.  Choose Validate Fonts from the File menu.
5.  If Font Book identifies an issue with fonts, you can click the alert icon at the bottom of the window, then click the "Remove Checked" button to remove problematic font(s).
6.  Launch AutoCAD. 

Thanks to the tenacious troubleshooting skills of Jeffry Asbury for solving this interesting problem.

Reference

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2509

Laws: Disabling User Access Control (UAC) when installing 2014 Autodesk products

It is a GOOD idea to disable User Access Control (UAC) when installing 2014 Autodesk products:

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Installation_Help/enu/2014/Help/0161-Product_161/0547-Vault547/0548-Vault_In548/0549-Install_549/0554-Vault_In554/0563-Disable_563

It is also a BETTER idea to turn it back on after you are done installing  the 2014 Autodesk products.

http://upandready.typepad.com/up_and_ready/2011/05/windows-user-access-control.html

Building Design Suite 2013 Serial + Revit Architecture 2013 + Standalone = License Status [1.1.0]

If you try to install Revit Achitecture 2013 with a Building Design Suite 2013 serial number, when you try to activate your software, there will be the following error:

License Status [1.1.0]

NOTE:  You can see the problem by checking out the red underlined parts of the image above.

The software will not even allow you to run it in trial mode.  The only solution is to uninstall the software and to reinstall it using the correct Revit Architecture Suite serial number and product key.

Thanks to Byron Morales for sharing this tip with the community.