AutoCAD Support Clinic

SHAWN NILES: Hello, everyone. Welcome. How you all doing today?

AUDIENCE: Good.

SHAWN NILES: So this is the AutoCAD support clinic. I do recognize some of you. This is a class we've been doing four or five years now. It's a unique class because it's one of the only classes I know of at AU where the content is really driven by you guys as the audience. So we'll do a brief presentation just on a little bit about us and some of the support options you guys have through Autodesk. And then, we essentially turn it over to you and do our best to answer your questions.

So I'm Shawn. I'm a technical support man at Autodesk. I'm based in Manchester, New Hampshire. Actually, I think I have a-- get into that in a minute. But the class is essentially, like I just mentioned, we're answering your questions. So mainly focused on AutoCAD.

Each year, we do get a few questions on other products as well. Some of us do have some experience with other products, but we are all AutoCAD experts here. So if we can try and keep it to AutoCAD, that's where our expertise is. Having said that, if there's others, we'll do our best to answer them. If we can't, we can probably get your name and email afterwards and get those answers to you.

But it's an open discussion forum. It's a back and forth. We'll have Jeffrey, who we'll introduce in a minute, will be moving onto open microphone. If you could wait, because the class is recorded. So for the recording session, that way, we can make sure anybody who listens after the fact will hear those questions.

The intent of the class is to help you guys with any problems that you may be struggling with at your office. Maybe things you're running into on a daily basis, questions around maybe better ways to do things that you're doing now. Again, I'll explain a little bit about how to get in touch with support if you want to. And of course, you get to meet us, which is the highlight, right?

So little bit about us. As I mentioned, I am Shawn. So I'm based in Manchester. I worked as a CAD manager at an engineering firm in Boston for about eight years. And then, I was also a CAD manager at an MEP firm in Boston for eight years before joining Autodesk. Ironically enough, about eight years ago. So it seems that I'm at my limit for my job. But we'll see how that goes.

But I've just passed my eighth year at Autodesk. Joined as a member of the technical support team, supporting AutoCAD. And did that in various roles for about five or six years. I was one of the technical leads on the team for a little while. I've taught at AU several times. And about a year ago, year and a half ago, I took one of the technical support manager position. So I'm still involved in AutoCAD, but I also now manage the Revit and some of the BIM 360 teams. So I have a few different roles now. So that's a little bit about me. And we'll go to Mr. Volker Cocco.

VOLKER COCCO: Hi. I'm Volker Cocco. I am a technical support specialist for AutoCAD working in the Lake Oswego office. I'm relatively new to Autodesk, about five years now, just past five years I guess. And I've been in the industry since 1990 doing drafting, CAD management, and working on resellers, working for resellers. I've taught at AU a few times. Is that better?

SHAWN NILES: Yeah, I don't think your mic is working. Sometimes there's an on--

VOLKER COCCO: Test, test, test.

SHAWN NILES: Did you try the on switch?

PRESENTER: Yeah.

VOLKER COCCO: Test [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN NILES: All right, well, while he is figuring that out--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN NILES: That's right. Did you log a case?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VOLKER COCCO: Test.

[LAUGHTER]

SHAWN NILES: Got it, Volker?

VOLKER COCCO: All right. So as I was saying, where was I?

OK, so now I am in technical support. Basically, I have a role called the KDE, or knowledge domain expert, which basically means I'm a funnel for our teams. If we have questions that we need some additional assistance from our product group, I funnel that information to this guy, Dan Kuhmann.

DAN KUHMANN: What a great segue.

PRESENTER: [INAUDIBLE]

DAN KUHMANN: I'm Dan Kuhmann. I am out of the San Francisco office, as it says there. I am the head of the AutoCAD QA team. And I've been in that role for about a year now. I am a registered civil engineer in the state of California. I've been using AutoCAD since R10, roughly 1994. I know I don't look that old. I apologize for that.

I am your advocate on the leadership team for AutoCAD. And so typically, I get a lot of information from the customers. I work closely with Volker. When you push that button that says Send Feedback on AutoCAD, it doesn't actually go into a black hole. It goes into my email inbox, which may be a black hole. I was on vacation the last few weeks. So if you sent anything recently, I didn't get it. Yeah.

DAVID DEMBKOSKI: Hello? Great. I'm David Dembkoski. I'm a technical support manager in the Manchester, New Hampshire office. I'm with the installation and licensing team. So if somebody is having trouble installing the software, getting a deployment to run, that's where my team would come into play. I've been with Autodesk for eight years now. I started as a technical support representative, supporting Navis Works and Quantity Takeoff, and then moving to the management position for the installation licensing team just over a year ago.

I passed my eight years in June, I believe, not too long after Shawn.

SHAWN NILES: And Jeffrey is also with us. He's not on the board, but he joined us last minute.

JEFFREY ASBURY: I'm not on the list. I just showed up. My name is Jeffrey Asbury. I'm a project manager for the installation and licensing team. So what I've been working on a lot this last year has to do with our new license types, our new offerings, like Industry Collection, and bringing that kind of stuff to market.

SHAWN NILES: Perfect. And Jeffrey is also in San Francisco.

JEFFREY ASBURY: San Rafael, headquarters.

SHAWN NILES: San Rafael. It's the same thing.

VOLKER COCCO: I [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN NILES: You should feel special that you still can't get your microphone to work.

[INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN NILES: Equipment failure!

I do want to touch on something Dan said real quick before we move on. So we hear over and over again the feedback links in the product, the CER reports, when you unexpectedly exit the program. Crash, right? Whatever you want to call it. All those reports do actually get submitted. We do see those. So we hear sometimes people saying, you know, no one's actually ever going to see that. We do get to read your CER comments. So we know what you were feeling in that moment. So those are sometimes fun to read. Somehow, goats usually get involved in one way or another.

But all that feedback does come to us. We do use that. Our teams use it. And it does really help in terms of diagnosing what caused the crash, what happened there. And also, just general feedback suggestions, wish list items. We do read all that. And we like that feedback. So all that stuff actually does go to people who read it. We don't respond to all of them just because simply the volume of it is too much. We'd need a whole team of people just constantly replying all day. So you may not get a response. Sometimes, you may, depending on what it is. But we do actually see those and read those.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN NILES: We could. Maybe Dan will do that. There's enough of it.

But for just a little bit about support, we have 151 support specialists located in seven countries around the globe. That's for all products. That's not just AutoCAD. But that's AutoCAD specifically. Many of you might work for our partners or our resellers. Or if you haven't, you might work with them from time to time. They also do a lot of support for us. So they also have their own teams. And there's quite a few people that do that, as well. So quite a few folks out there that are ready and willing to assist when you guys have trouble.

A lot of the members of the team also do other things besides just interacting with customers. We have our blogs. We have our Autodesk knowledge network. Most of the content on there comes from the Autodesk team creating those, writing those articles as we see issues and find solutions to them. So we contribute to those.

Some of us teach at AU. There are also webinar programs. Are you guys all familiar with the webinar program that we do? Have any of you guys joined those? So very few hands. So Volker is actually involved in that. We do them for AutoCAD, Revit, simulation products, and we're about to start on BIM. But do you guys still do weekly or bi-weekly for AutoCAD?

VOLKER COCCO: Weekly.

SHAWN NILES: So there are free weekly webinars that are held. They're on Thursdays. I believe at 2 o'clock Eastern, right? 11 o'clock out here. But they cover a variety of subjects. There's a different subject each week. They last an hour. They are free for you guys. Volker runs a lot of those, and we get guest speakers for different things. So it's something that we've tried our best to broadcast those out. But still, it's not really widely known.

But if you go to our website and search for those, it's a really nice free thing for you guys that you can join weekly if you wanted to, to learn different subjects.

AUDIENCE: They're Thursdays?

SHAWN NILES: Thursdays, yup.

VOLKER COCCO: Yeah.

SHAWN NILES: Thursdays at 11 o'clock Pacific.

AUDIENCE: Are they recorded [INAUDIBLE]?

SHAWN NILES: Yeah, they are.

VOLKER COCCO: They're on YouTube. And if we use data sets in the webinars as well as the scripts, we make those available.

SHAWN NILES: Also just curious how many subscription customers we have in the room? All right, so maybe half, maybe a little less than half. So there are other advantages you get to subscription. I'm not a sales person. I'd actually be the worst sales person ever. So that's not my point. But you do get expedited support, quicker support, different ways of support. So one of the things in the handout that was put on the website, if you took a look at that, I did the link to all the different support options. So you may want to take a look at those and just see-- you might see if maybe there's a different one that fits better for what you're doing.

There are three different levels of support. That is changing soon. But that is still currently what it is. And the only other thing I wanted to say is about logging cases. Very few people log cases that have subscription. And we're not really sure why that is. We're trying to get people to use that more. It is a feature you guys have as a subscription customer. There's not a limited number of cases you can log. You can do as many as you want on whatever you want. But it seems to be the last thing that people do when they're having an issue.

So that is something that's available to you guys as subscription customers. And like I mentioned, we have many specialists around the globe that are willing to help. And then, I put up dice just to remind you of all the money you lost at roulette last night and how much more fun this is than that. So no other reason.

JEFFREY ASBURY: Isn't it craps that has dice? Roulette is the wheel--

SHAWN NILES: That shows my knowledge on gambling, I guess. So we're going to get into the questions now here in a minute. But I just want to mention that hopefully I explained what this class is well. If it's not what you thought it was, you will not hurt our feelings by going. We obviously would like you to stay. You're welcome to stay. But we know that there's many, many different classes that go on at any given time. So feel free to join whatever classes are best for you, but hopefully we explained what this class is.

So having said all that, and without any further ado, because no one likes ado, we can jump in. So who wants to start us off? And like I said, Jeffrey will be going around with the microphone. So if you have a question, you can hopefully wait for that. All right, we'll start there in the back row.

AUDIENCE: Yes. We're using 2015 currently. We're going upgrade next year. We're on Citrix. And we've had a lot of issues with speed issues. And I know Autodesk has recommendations about changing a bunch of settings. But some of those settings aren't-- nobody likes, right? So is the newest version coming out, or already out, better?

DAN KUHMANN: Do you want me to answer that?

SHAWN NILES: Where's Dave? Sure, go ahead, Dan.

DAN KUHMANN: So I can only speak in generalities about the future of AutoCAD. I can say that typically, the Citrix experience depends on the settings. And I know that's tough. I know that, you know, you can't have the fastest Citrix server to be able to drive your Citrix experience. And some other companies do. And they have a better Citrix experience.

I do know our certification team has been working with Citrix, trying to make Citrix work a little better with AutoCAD. There are some improvements to where the 3D experience might be better. And I don't know your exact situation, whether it's 2D or 3D. Typically, our product experience is better not on Citrix, obviously. And we continue to focus on that with GPU improvements, and focusing more on your graphics processor. So we're not using your CPU as much.

But there is one setting that you might find extremely beneficial we added in 2017. It's cursor type. The AutoCAD cursor actually uses a ton of your Citrix processing just to draw the cursor. So you're moving the mouse around, and the cursor is drawing. You can change your cursor type to be the Windows cursor. That's a huge improvement. But you don't get the crosshair. And so that's probably one of those things you're talking about, right? People hate not having their crosshairs because they've had them around forever.

But really, if you're on the Windows cursor, it'll draw so much faster. And it'll make the whole experience feel a lot faster. Other than that, though, a lot of times, it's just the settings in Citrix and being able to use it.

AUDIENCE: OK. We also noticed some problems with Citrix as far as-- it might be local to Citrix, or the way it's set up. But the AutoCAD loses its profile. And when I bring it up, it's like starting from scratch. And we actually had to reset the Citrix profile and get all that-- I mean, AutoCAD profile-- and get all that set back up. And it's kind of a pain for the users because all the settings aren't saved in a workspace.

DAN KUHMANN: Right.

AUDIENCE: So that makes it kind of difficult a little bit to--

DAN KUHMANN: Volker, do you have any suggestions on that one?

VOLKER COCCO: Not for Citrix.

DAN KUHMANN: I mean, I can talk a little bit in generalities for Citrix. But in general, we do a couple of days worth of testing on Citrix. And the certification program does most of the testing because it's a platform and not so much the product itself. So in terms of the product team testing it, we just make sure that all the functionality works correctly.

I do know that it's recommended that you use like a global CUI, so one that's stored on the server, rather than using one that's stored on the profile.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I mean settings, personal settings that people-- workspace, it doesn't save in a workspace.

DAN KUHMANN: Right.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. People personalize even if you've got an enterprise CUI, they still want to customize their own workspace, you know?

DAN KUHMANN: Yeah. It's tough because the Citrix server will tend to clear those out. You could have them export their profile and just save it on a flash drive or something, and carry it around with them. You could use A360. I know the profile settings in that sometimes can get lost, also. So if it's frustrating you on Citrix, it would probably be as frustrating on A360. But that is one option is to save them out on A360. But I know a lot of people just save them on a flash drive. And if they get lost, you import the profile really quickly.

AUDIENCE: OK, thanks.

SHAWN NILES: Yup, we have a question up here. Jeffrey?

AUDIENCE: Related to the profile, the issue that you were just talking about, 2014 was really bad. '15, I didn't notice it as much. But in 2016, it will just drop your customized path things that you put in there. So like, for your support paths for all your company standards, they just disappear from your profile randomly.

DAN KUHMANN: So yes, absolutely. So there was a problem. I'm trying to remember the exact details on it. But essentially, someone had made an assumption in that code that was not very correct. And so yeah, whenever you would like undock your laptop, it would be like, oh, there's no network here. Drop all the network profile settings, and clear out. And you probably spent like an hour putting all those network drives in there. And now, it's cleared them all out. And you've got to put them back again.

We fixed that in 2017. It took a lot of work to fix that because it was down deep in the code, and it was a very small assumption that was incorrect. But that's one of the exact reasons why you're here, or why you want to send feedback. Because I knew about that from last year at AU. And I went back and just fought, fought, fought until we got it fixed for the 2017 release so that nobody had to deal with that again. Because that's kind of crazy, right? You undock your laptop, and you lose all of your network paths? Not a great experience.

SHAWN NILES: Yup?

DAVID DEMBKOSKI: I'd give you my mic, but then we would have to get close. It would have been weird.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAN KUHMANN: I believe yes. And like I said, the problem is gone in 2017. So if you're using 2017, then you haven't noticed it. But in 2016, I believe anything that was through the bundler or through enterprise CUI or anything like that would stay. It was just that they were individually created.

AUDIENCE: Yes, in my office, we use AutoCAD 2015. And we were-- I was having problems before I came this week over here. I was crashing a lot. And I connected to support. And the first thing they told me was, you gotta download Service Pack 2. And at the office, nobody wanted it because it was causing so many problems. But I started searching and looking, and I found a couple of hot fixes. There is something more than the big font and the X reffing and all that stuff. There are more hot fixes that need to be-- have to be looking for it in order to not have so many continuous crashes.

DAN KUHMANN: You're saying there were hot fixes that fixed the problem that the update didn't?

AUDIENCE: Like for instance, one of the problems was that some of the fonts will get out of place. And that was the reason we took Service Pack out. But then, I was trying to get the computer to work and [INAUDIBLE]. When I first called support, [INAUDIBLE] told me, you gotta have Service Pack 2. So I installed it. But now, I'm looking. I started adding all the hot fixes that I could find.

DAVID DEMBKOSKI: Yeah. So the way it works is-- and Dan, you can correct me. But the way it works is the hot fixes come out if we find a big enough problem that is really affecting a lot of people. And we're still a ways off from the update, right? We release the hot fix to get that particular problem fixed. When that update comes, out any of the previous hot fixes that were there go into that update.

So if you install the update, you shouldn't need to go back and install any of the hot fixes. But if there are hot fixes that came out after the update, then those, you'd still have to install, because they won't be rolled into the program until the next release or the next major update that comes out. So that's why-- I think that was your question. But that's why you may have to install both. It depends on if the hot fix was there before or after the last major update as to whether or not they'll be included.

VOLKER COCCO: Typically, it's going to tell you that it's a hot fix on top of the service pack. So hot fix so-and-so for Service Pack 2.

DAN KUHMANN: So I can give you a little insight on this one. So 2015 was the first year that I started with managing the AutoCAD QA team. Before then, I was a tester. But in 2015, I can remember we decided we wanted to make about 20 fixes. And we wanted to get those out to customers quickly.

I kind of have this personal motto that we don't hold on to fixes. We're not in the business of holding onto the fixes until the next service pack. It's a little different from what maybe you've experienced in the past before 2015. So we put it out in May, put it out earlier than we had in the past. And that was Service Pack 1.

When we got to Service Pack 2, time frame around, I think it was September, we put that one out, as well. And there was a regression in the big fonts that I remember. And so within about a week, we put out the hot fix with big fonts to fix that problem. And then, there was also an extra mapping problem that I think we put out a fix a couple weeks after that.

So I know exactly what you're talking about. With 2015, it was unfortunate. We didn't have all the infrastructure in place to just push out fixes and people know about those fixes. And so that's the hard part for us, right? You have to go and pull them. And I would much rather push them so that you're constantly seeing them. And so 2016 and 2017 experience, anyone who is on those two releases, we can actually push out hot fixes now through the application manager.

And so any time that I push to the point where we have a fix and we're ready to release it, our team gets it up there on to the application manager. It pops up. So you know about the hot fixes. Whereas in 2015, unfortunately, you gotta go to knowledge and ask. Or you have to ask these guys, which is fine. But I hate having all of our customers call them to find out about those hot fixes. And so we've really driven towards this, putting everything into the updates as soon as possible, hot fixes as soon as possible.

You'll find on 2017, we put out I think four hot fixes. Then, we did a service pack. Then, we did two more hot fixes. Then, we did an update. And then, I think we have about four hot fixes that are in the works right now that are going to-- and so, it's not this time period where you're just sitting there waiting for your fix for six months, or till the next release, or until you get to upgrade. You can download it as soon as we have it. So little bit of a difference. But I know with 2015, that's hard because we didn't have the full infrastructure in place.

AUDIENCE: I had a question. For the hot fix, do I need admin rights for installation?

DAN KUHMANN: That's a good question.

SHAWN NILES: Can you repeat the question?

AUDIENCE: Do I need admin rights for installation for hot fixes?

DAN KUHMANN: So it depends on your security set up somewhat. I know that CAD managers don't like people to install the updates. So they may block your application manager from being installed. Or they may not allow you to install things from the application manager.

And then sometimes, yes, you have to be an admin on your own computer to install them. I think typically-- I think recently we changed this so that an AutoCAD hot fix doesn't need admin rights. Because it used to be that you had to go and find the file, find where the file went, delete the old file, put the new file in. And yeah, you've got to have admin rights to access C:, right? But now, we're shipping them all out as EXEs, and so they're all executables. And so it just depends on whether you have the ability to run--

SHAWN NILES: Do you know that, Dave? The hot fixes, do you need admin rights to install hot fixes?

DAVID DEMBKOSKI: I believe. So my understanding is any time it's going to be overwriting files, you'll probably still need admin rights. If people have different power user or things like that [INAUDIBLE] overwriting files and program funnels, it's going to need admin rights. And our recommendation in general is just any installation, you want to have admin rights. Because most of the time, there's already a file there that has to be [INAUDIBLE].

SHAWN NILES: Yeah. I mean, what we recommend is-- and like Dan said, you know, CAD managers, IT managers sometimes limit that. And it's understandable why. But what we recommend is to have them, if there is any type of installation or anything, just have them temporarily turn them on, do all the installs, do the updates that you need, and then they can turn them back off, and you're good. But it's always-- you may be fine without it. But to be certain, you want that on when you're doing those installations.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. I have one more question. I've seen that while doing installation, if it gets interrupted while doing a re-installation, I'm not able to install it. So I need to remove the files from-- I mean, folder files from the registry. So do you have any suggestion for that?

SHAWN NILES: I think that's a great David question. We'll go to one of the installation guys for that one.

DAVID DEMBKOSKI: Yeah. I mean, at the moment, the solution is a manual one, which is just like you said. Going through the registry, deleting the entry that is making the installer think that the installation is still there. That being said, that is a really common and repeating problem, that clean uninstall problem. Because an uninstall has been interrupted, or an install has been interrupted. And you end up with this kind of partial state.

We have an Autodesk uninstall tool that does not do clean uninstalls right now, or does not know how to interpret a partial install. So it is definitely on our radar to fix this problem with some kind of automated tool. And we're starting to explore that realm more of creating specific tools to solve specific problems.

I don't have any time frame on that. But we've definitely heard a lot of feedback on that specific issue. And we know all about it.

SHAWN NILES: All right.

AUDIENCE: Talking about these updates, we had quite a lot of serious [INAUDIBLE] in Revit 2015. I think we had 14 now, right?

DAN KUHMANN: I don't represent Revit, but I do know quite a bit about Revit.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAN KUHMANN: I know there were at least nine.

SHAWN NILES: Yeah, Revit's had a lot this year.

DAN KUHMANN: Last time I talked to them. So they're up to 14 now?

AUDIENCE: At least now, in the company, we have 14. I was just wondering if there's a possibility to get like a subscription or something for products you want to know about the updates? Because now, with this Autodesk application manager, it's really good when you have it installed. But from the IT side, if you're responsible for like five different products, and you have like four or five years of versions of these products, you have to have them all installed to be aware of the updates. Is this somewhere in someone's mind to--

DAN KUHMANN: So I know we had a similar question to this last year, kind of a dashboard to help you get those sorts of things. And unfortunately, I know that they put that sort of a dashboard into the application manager. But like you said, not everyone wants to install it. And I can understand.

The other place that it is somewhat is your accounts.autodesk.com. The same dashboard that's in the wingman is also-- sorry, not wingman. Can't say that. Application manager. The same thing that's in there is also in your accounts portal, the same kind of dashboard sort of feed. I'm not sure if you've looked at that.

AUDIENCE: You have to go in and check it.

DAN KUHMANN: Yeah, you have to go in and check it manually. You don't get an RSS feed or anything like that, yeah. So yeah, I can see the forward direction on that. I can pass that information on, too. Unfortunately, it used to be my boss that was responsible for that part. And now, it's shifted out a little bit. But I can pass that information on.

JEFFREY ASBURY: I meet quite a bit with the team that develops that.

DAN KUHMANN: Oh, then you pass it on to them.

JEFFREY ASBURY: Yeah, so I can pass it on. Yeah, there's a lot of feedback from a management point of view going into the Autodesk account. And clicking on updates, you see everything, but you see everything, right? Every language, every version. And it's really hard to zoom in on what you want. So that feedback is really valuable. And we'll definitely make sure that they're aware.

SHAWN NILES: Let's go here, and then against the wall next, please.

AUDIENCE: Yes, we've been using 2016 since it came out. And we've noticed-- I do a lot of archiving and working drawings into the folders so that people can't change them. But eight out of ten times when we try to archive files, we have to ask the users to go shut their entire computer down because we can't move the file because it says they still have it open. But it's closed. Is that because of the new menu that it comes up with, or what's going on there?

VOLKER COCCO: So it's leaving the file locked?

AUDIENCE: Yeah. It says the file's open. But the user's closed the file. And we can't move it in Windows from the working through the archive folder.

DAN KUHMANN: Do you have all the service packs installed for 2016?

AUDIENCE: Yeah, our company has a huge IT. We've got probably 500 designers. But in my group, it's about 10. And we have that problem all the time.

DAN KUHMANN: I know there was a concern in A360 in that area. So I don't know if you save your drawings up to the cloud or not.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. We have an individual server. We've a government contractor, so gotta keep it in house.

AUDIENCE: I have the same problem. [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: Yeah, we have to shutdown. Sometimes, you can just close AutoCAD. But most times, it's the whole computer.

VOLKER COCCO: What kind of a server? Is it a NAS server, or DFS?

AUDIENCE: It's just a company server that we have dedicated just to AutoCAD files?

VOLKER COCCO: Do you know what kind of operating system on it?

AUDIENCE: We just use Windows.

VOLKER COCCO: That's one thing I'd check. A lot of the SMB servers, or any NAS server, they're all going to be running a little bit of a different operating system, or protocols on it, that will lock the DWL files and DWK files. And it actually keeps it open.

So what I would do is test, if you're having that happen a lot, take one of the problematic workstations that it's happening on, and just see what happens if those files are being worked on for that workstation. And then, archive them. If so, that there's something happening on the server locking those files.

AUDIENCE: Right. Because they get--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AUDIENCE: Have to shut the whole computer down. They've got everything open.

VOLKER COCCO: What's that?

AUDIENCE: I said, they get mad when they've got all their files open, other things. You got to shut the whole system down.

SHAWN NILES: If you want to actually, after the session, if you want to come up, I'll take your info. And someone in the back said you had the same thing?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SHAWN NILES: Yeah. If you guys want to give me your info afterwards, I know we have some extra stuff on this, but I don't want to take up the whole time here because this could get really extensive. But if you want to give me your info afterwards, I can send you guys some stuff that talks about this. We have a lot of documents on this problem. All right, we had a question against the wall next? Please, microphone up here.

AUDIENCE: I have kind of just a short, easy question, I hope.

SHAWN NILES: By the way, when someone says short and easy, it's never short and easy, by the way.

AUDIENCE: It can either be really weird or short. But sorry, my company is in 2016. And we each have admin rights on our machine. So whatever, and I go in, and I always customize my aliases to a certain degree. And I found the one that's the newer one, where there's an interface, it's its own dialogue. It's not the text editing one. But the text editing one, I've also found that later because that was the one that I was used to. And it was nice and not clunky.

But the other one is horrible. And it doesn't seem to save.

VOLKER COCCO: The other one is an express tool.

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

VOLKER COCCO: Those were introduced back in-- well, with Release 14. And they were never officially supported, although we do. Because a lot of them were written by Autodesk employees maybe on their own time to introduce to the customers, or even just an end user having written a very cool tool. And at that time, they functioned perfectly.

But over the years, they have been modified a little to allow them to run on the current version of AutoCAD. But the ones that have been integrated into the application, they're up to date. They work fine. But the older Express Tools, some of them could use some updating.

AUDIENCE: I don't remember. I think that the Express Tools one is the one that has the--

VOLKER COCCO: The dialogue? Yeah.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. I just- just like, I felt really stupid because there was some kind of learning curve going in. I tried it a few times. And sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. And I went, oh, the hell with it. I'll just go to the text editor. That's what I've been doing in it.

VOLKER COCCO: I haven't used it in a long time, the Express Tool. The text editor works best for me.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, because I'm a big see, copy guy. [INAUDIBLE] and I do some of those things, and it helps.

VOLKER COCCO: Something to look into. And maybe a feature request that we can put in with the team.

SHAWN NILES: Yeah, the same thing happens with a lot of the-- we call them the third party applications. Other companies, they can create tools that work on top of AutoCAD and that sort of thing. Yeah, and we release our product each year. And then, they get to see it. And then, they can upgrade. And some of the companies, whether they go out of business or stop doing it, and people try and use those tools on the newer versions.

And at some point, they stop working, right? Because it no longer matches with the newer code in AutoCAD. So that's sometimes what happens on those older ones. If somebody is not keeping that tool up to date with the latest AutoCAD version, that's not going to work at some point because those are not things that we-- yeah.

VOLKER COCCO: But they were written last century.

SHAWN NILES: Some of them. Some of them were, yeah, you're right. Some of them were. All right. Dave, we have one right here next to you.

AUDIENCE: So our company uses 2016. We're using AutoCAD, Revit, and Vault. And one of the things we've noticed is in Vault that our drawings, the speed is cut in half. It's become really slow. Also, we're seeing size increases. And we're finding that we're getting about anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 reg apps out of them. But they don't stay out. As soon as I open that drawing back up again with the [INAUDIBLE] that are there, it pulls all those reg apps back in. Have you seen any of that?

DAN KUHMANN: I know what you're talking about. I'm hoping product support has some more info on this one?

SHAWN NILES: You're talking only when you're involving Vault into the scenario?

AUDIENCE: Yeah. We tested it outside of that. We still get the reg apps. It doesn't slow them down. And so [INAUDIBLE] Vault somewhere. And we're working with the Vault team, as well. But I thought I'd bring it up with you guys because we need some help with that. But those reg apps, they're there. I don't know how to get rid of them.

DAN KUHMANN: So this question has driven the request for being able to purge reg apps because it's gotten so bad.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAN KUHMANN: You can delete them, yeah. But at the same time, you kind of can't because they won't stay out. There's been some work being done on that. And I'm not sure if it's in 2017 or not. I know there is continuous work ongoing on that. And I'm not sure where the problem was coming from. So I was hoping product support might--

VOLKER COCCO: So typically, that would have been handled by the Vault team, Vault support. We haven't seen anything with the Vault issue coming across our queue. Just because if it says Vault in the support request, it's going to go to the Vault support team. Unless they need to work with us to collaborate on a particular issue.

DAN KUHMANN: So I'll make a shameless plug, then. The answer bar, the Vault team is over there. And go talk to them.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

DAN KUHMANN: Dangit.

SHAWN NILES: If you want to give me your info afterwards, I actually sit right near a few members of the Vault support team. So I'd be happy to pass your info on and have one of them get in touch with you.

VOLKER COCCO: And so we've had someone up here for a while. Wanting to ask a question.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm using MEP 2016. And I draw electrical conduits often. And sometimes, I want to do-- I've been using the bill of materials, BOM, to select it all. And it gives me the full length, including [INAUDIBLE] bands and [INAUDIBLE].

But when I go to conduit and [INAUDIBLE] and try to do the same thing, it gives me the straight lengths, not the bends or 90s. I was wondering if anything's happening with that for 2017, where we can manipulate or filter the BOM table.

DAN KUHMANN: I know that-- no. I know not for 2017 and also not for 2018. If I'm understanding your question correctly. Just because I know the MEP team fairly well. I'm not sure the product support guys are going to know what's going on with that. Also, I should say future AutoCAD team. You guys all signed NDAs, right?

AUDIENCE: So yeah, I tried to get into the BOM table and manipulate it, and filter it, and add support.

DAN KUHMANN: Yeah, I know they haven't done any work on that part.

AUDIENCE: OK. That means I have to go in and get every piece and [INAUDIBLE] whole length, and then bring it in.

DAN KUHMANN: In terms of getting that request into the pipeline to get done, that same Send Feedback email, click on that. Send feedback. That goes to my boss. He sits right next to me. If I hear him cursing, I'll let him know.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. Because right now, I have to isolate whatever system [INAUDIBLE]. I have to separate them individually to get that one length from point A to point B. But I'd like to select the whole building of all the conduits I have and filter it to the system in length, giving me a subtotal if possible. So I'd like to see that in the next [INAUDIBLE].

VOLKER COCCO: Product feedback.

DAN KUHMANN: I mean, it makes sense. I just know we have to get it to the product team. So make sure to send that feedback to them.

SHAWN NILES: We had a question I think back here.

AUDIENCE: Hi. 2016 is great. It never crashes.

SHAWN NILES: All right! Next.

[LAUGHTER]

SHAWN NILES: There's a reason for that.

AUDIENCE: But, when I'm closing-- let's say I've got five drawings open. I close all of them. When I close the last drawing, the window comes up, five, six times a day. AutoCAD has encountered a problem and will close now. I only get it when I'm closing, not when I'm opening. And it's on there. And then, it goes away. All day long. So is that a bug in there?

SHAWN NILES: It's a feature!

[LAUGHTER]

DAN KUHMANN: So that problem is a conflict between Windows and AutoCAD. We worked with Microsoft on it. We were able to resolve it. I'm not sure if we ever put together a hot fix on that, or if it was too difficult. I think if we did make a hot fix, I believe it was just blocking the message from coming up. So it still crashes. You just don't know.

But we were sending like 16 million crash reports to Windows every day over this one. And it's no impact to the AutoCAD users. But it was something that changed in Windows. And we had to correct it. But yeah, you just get this message. I mean, it doesn't have any harm to you. It kind of crashes.

It was crashing so far out of AutoCAD that it doesn't even crash AutoCAD. It just-- Windows is just like, hey, a crash happened. And I don't know what happened. And AutoCAD is like, it didn't happen to us! But we did correct it in 2017 and beyond. It was just a Windows conflict that we were able to get to the bottom of. But something that's kind of architectural and low level in Windows.

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

DAN KUHMANN: But if it's really bugging you, there should be a fix out there that just turns off the message so you don't know about it.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: I've got 2016 and '17 on our office computers. And I also have it personally at home. The only difference is office has the third party software embedded. But I've run into two issues that I've seen on both. And it's inconsistent.

One is the [INAUDIBLE] layer control. Everything's blank. You have to click on the layer for it to show up all of a sudden.

DAN KUHMANN: Right, all the layers are missing?

AUDIENCE: It'll be fine. That drawing will be blank. It just randomly changes. Sometimes, that drawing comes up fine. And it comes up blank again.

DAN KUHMANN: Yeah. I know of this problem. And it's something in the graphics display. So it's a little weird. It's something that we fixed. But I don't believe we fixed it in 2017.

AUDIENCE: Is that the accelerator, the graphics accelerator?

DAN KUHMANN: It's specific to certain graphics accelerators, certain cards. But it's not something that you could change by updating the drivers or something like that.