texupport

Missing Language Pack – ACAD.VLX Virus?

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:57:30 +0000

In an office full of US English seats of Civil 3D, our users frequently see a dialog which reports a missing language pack when opening DWG files. I can only assume that at one time a drawing file did contain an object which was worked on in a non-english version of AutoCAD or Civil 3D. Since we’re seeting this more frequently, I’m a little concerned this might turn out to be yet another piece of contagious “CAD Debris” (such as Named Layer Filters [2000-2002], Scale Lists [2008], and unused RegApps [ongoing]). According to Matt’s post in this thread, which details Autodesk’s explanation of this issue, it sounds like it’s fairly benign and the user can feel comfortable by checking the “don’t show me this again” checkbox (or, alternately, actually installing the Windows language pack).

However, it has recently come to my attention there there is also an AutoCAD specific virus being distributed in a file called ACAD.VLX which also causes the Missing Language Pack dialog. Autodesk recently posted an article about the virus. After following the steps outlined in the article, I determined that we do not have the infected acad.vlx file so my Missing Language Pack dialog is likely caused by an actual object in the drawing file(s).

What bothers me about Autodesk’s article about the ACAD.VLX virus is that there isn’t much information and I still have plenty of questions:

What is the method of infection and how is the evil ACAD.VLX being distributed?
Other than the “Missing Language Pack” dialog, is there any additional payload?
What can users do to prevent infection?
Do over the counter virus scanners catch this virus?

Clicking links in Outlook 2007 generates “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer”

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:57:00 +0000

For doing the things that I do and visiting the webpages that I routinely go to, I have recently come to the conclusion that Firefox and IE, for all intents and purposes, really aren’t all that different. At this point in my career (and life), I simply don’t have the time or desire to be devoted to a cause (Firefox) or to a brand (Apple). I simply use my computer as a tool to complete tasks. That’s it. At any rate, since Firefox 3.0 was having some well documented trouble with Flickr on my system, I decided to save the space and abandon it completely in favor of IE7.

After uninstalling Firefox, I noticed that links no longer worked within Outlook 2007. Clicking on any link produced an error which stated, “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.” As with any error, I turned to Google. I was able to find numerous blogs and pages which simply restated Microsoft’s solution of respecifying IE as the default browser. For every time somebody posted that procedure, there were dozens of, “Thanks, that worked.” replies, so I figured that it would work for me as well.

I followed the instructions in Microsoft’s help document Q310049 while logged in as myself (user permissions), but my links still produced the warning. I then tried making the same changes while logged in as administrator, but I still had no luck. Eventually, I solved the problem by making a SWAG: All I had to do was temporarily add my normal account to the administrators group, follow Microsoft’s instructions from Q310049, and then remove myself from administrators.

I’m not sure which registry keys are directly manipulated by the steps outlined in Q310049. If you are indeed required to have administrative privelages to edit them, then it’s scary to think of how many people run as admin 100% of the time. (Judging by the volume of “Thanks, that worked” responses I encountered when reading blogs which rehashed Q310049).

Norton Antivirus 2009 (finally) delivers

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:39:00 +0000

I first began using Norton products in the early 90s, with Norton Advanced Utilities version 4.5, and I was a huge fan of their products for a number of years. For well over a decade, though, Symantec’s Norton line of products has been extremely bloated and every one of them that I have run has added a very noticable system lag. I’ve always found it a little ironic since many of their products are supposed to enhance or monitor system performance. For many years, running Norton System Monitor was analagous to adding a 500 pound fuel guage, a 1000 pound spedometer, and a 1500 pound odometer to your car. The last version of NAV that I ran, which was either 2004 or 2005, was about the same. After installing NAV, even doing something as simple as opening notepad was executed with a bit of hesitation and a lot of grinding. (Note: I’ve never had problems with Symantec’s corporate line of products, such as SAV.)

With that said, now that I have a newer notebook, I had to find an Antivirus program which would run on Vista x64. Over the years, Norton, despite its bloated footprint, has consistently scored at or near the top in all of the virus scanner reviews that I’ve read. Since they offer a version which will run on x64, I decided to give it a shot. I’m extremely pleased with my system performance since installing it – which is to say that I don’t notice that it’s there. Without being able to quantify it, I can simply state that there is no noticable difference in overall system performance with NAV 2009 installed or without it.

Since the license allows me to install it on up to three home computers, I installed it on my older XP Pro (32) system, and I’m happy to report that the results are about the same: NAV 2009 is installed but there is no noticable lag.

This is exactly how system utilities such as antivirus software should work. Since the work that we all do is predominantly productive work (right?), then we shouldn’t know any utilities are there until we need them.

Disclaimers:

Yes, I’m aware that there are free versions of Avast and AVG. I’ve used them before on some systems and I’m likely to use them again in the future.
Yes, I’m aware that as of this post, MacOS and Linux are less susceptible to viruses. I also can’t run any of my applications on them so it’s a moot point.

Surfaces which should yield one single minor contour don’t show any contours

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:55:00 +0000

In Civil 3D 2009, any surface which uses a style under which only one minor contour would show for the entire surface, no contours are shown.

This is very difficult to explain verbally, but the image below illustrates the problem.

Workarounds:
Create a temporary style which shows major contours at the interval that you would typically show minor coutours with. Make those major contours the same color/layer/linetype as your regular style’s minor contours. Apply the new temporary style to the problematic surface.

First Appeared: Civil 3D 200x?
Status as of Civil 3D 2009 version 2: Still reproducible
Status as of Civil 3D 2010: Resolved

2d solids do not observe fillmode withinin certain layouts

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:36:00 +0000

Since rolling out 2009 to a large userbase, we have encountered several drawing files which contain specific layouts within which any viewport will not show filled 2d solids properly. This behavior seems to be specific to AutoCAD 2009. The same drawing files behave as expected in AutoCAD 2008 (and, presumably, earlier releases).

Although fillmode is turned on, a viewport within an affected layout will show 2d solids like so:

Of note:

fillmode is set to 1
All viewports are set to 2d wireframe / hideplot is turned off in all of the viewports
I do have raster design 2009 installed. Neither the “filled object hotfix” nor SP1 corrected the problem
An example drawing can be found here: http://www.texupport.net/acad_examples/fillmode.dwg

Workarounds: Recreate the entire layout, including the viewports and any paperspace annotation.
First Appeared: AutoCAD 2009
Status as of AutoCAD 2009 version 3.1: Still reproducible.

Most Recently Used Documents fills up with DST files

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:38:32 +0000

Starting with AutoCAD 2009, the most recently used files list is designed to list both DWG and DST files. Unfortunately, once nine (cumulative) DST files have been opened by one user, then the most recently used documents list will no longer contain drawing files.

Workarounds:
I wrote this command to completely reset the MRUF list. This will remove all entries from the list. Over time, be prepared for it to be populated by nine DST files again. When that happens and it gets to be too annoying, simply re-run the command. (Note: I’ll add the LSP file to the downloads section ASAP.)

;;Reset Most Recently Used Files
;;This utility can be used to clean out the mess that 2009 and 2009v2 leaves in
;;the Most Recently Used Document list after opening nine or more DST files
;;absolutely no warranty
;;feel free to modify as necessary
;;I use this only periodically. I run it manually when my Recently Used Files list gets filled up with DST files.
;;v2008.12.01
(PRINC “Reset Most Recently Used Files (rmruf) v2008.12.01 – www.texupport.net“)
(DEFUN c:rmruf (/ regkey mruf)
(SETQ mruf (GETENV “MRUFilesToList”))
(SETENV “MRUFilesToList” “0″)
(SETQ regkey (STRCAT “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\” (VLAX-PRODUCT-KEY) “\\Recent File List”))
(VL-REGISTRY-DELETE regkey)
(SETENV “MRUFilesToList” mruf)
(PRINC “\nMost Recently used files list has been reset.”)
(PRINC)
) ;_ end-defun

First Appeared: AutoCAD 2009
Status as of AutoCAD 2009, version 2: Still reproducible

Hacking the Nvidia performance driver (powerdraft) into Civil 3D

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:53:00 +0000

Several months ago, Nvidia released a performance driver for AutoCAD 2009. Unfortunately, using the included installer, this driver can only be installed on AutoCAD. When you only have Civil 3D installed, you get an error which reads, “Setup was unable to find an installed version of AutoCAD 2009.”

I was able to hack the driver in to my Civil 3D 2009 installation on an XP (32) system by doing the following:

Download Powerdraft2009_XP_Vista_32_64.exe from nvidia’s website.
Run the install program and let it error out as noted above.
At this point the install program has actually unpacked the archive to a directory called C:\04-28-2008-0710\ navigate to C:\04-28-2008-0710\Disk1\win32 and copy all of the files from that location to C:\Program Files\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009\Drv
Finally, back in Civil 3D, run 3DCONFIG and select the new Nvidia specific driver for either Direct3D or OpenGL.

Unfortunately, since I don’t have a supported video card on my notebook, I haven’t had the opportunity to test this workaround with Civil 3D 2009 (a 32 bit application) on Vista x64.

RegappID cleanup utility

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:47:00 +0000

It just came to my attention that Autodesk quietly released their own RegApp cleaner a couple of months ago. This still doesn’t do anything to prevent Registered Application IDs from propagating through xrefs and inserts so unless you clean everything that your file might come into contact with, you can count on getting infected with AppIDs over and over again. Still, along with the -purge R option that was reintroduced in 2005 or 2006 (after a very long absense), it’s a step in the right direction.

Autodesk’s CleanupRegApp tool isn’t any more or less effective than cadthinking’s PurgeIDs, and in fact, its interface is lacking compared to PurgeIDs. Still, it’s nice to know that this is an Autodesk developed (and, presumably, Autodesk supported) tool to address a problem that has been swept under the rug for far too long.

Importing color images from Google Earth into Civil 3D

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:38:00 +0000

Since Civil 3D added the ability to import georeferenced imagery from Google Earth, I regularly get comments from users who would prefer the image to appear in color. While it doesn’t appear to be a feature, with a little hacking this is actually very easy to do.

First, open your Civil 3D drawing file and make sure to set the coordinate system properly.

Then open Google Earth and navigate to the area that you’d like to import. Once you’ve centered on your project area, go back to Civil 3D and go to File -> Import -> Google Earth Image. When prompted, specify coordinate system for the image location. At this point, the georeferenced image is dropped in at the appropriate northing and easting coordinates. Unfortunately, it is in black and white.

To create a color image file, go back to Google Earth, and being careful not to reorient the display, hit CTRL-ALT-S to save the image. Save this jpg to your relevant project location.

Back in Civil 3D, open the xref palette and find the Google Earth image. Hit the “found at” button to respecify the image file location.

Point the image reference to the color jpg by selecting the file that you saved earlier. Finally, perform a regen and the color image will appear in the proper location.

Sheet set templates must have have all lowercase dst extension

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:34:16 +0000

When creating a sheet set template by placing a DST file in the SheetSetTemplatePath location, the file must absolutely have an extension of .dst (case sensitive).

If an uppercase character exists in the extension, the sheetset template appears with the extension in the listbox and the system will then search for YourTemplateName.DST.dst.

When it doesn’t find the template, a “File Not Found” dialog reports “Cannot find the specified sheet set data (DST) file.”

Workarond:
Create sheet set templates with a lowercase dst extension.

First Appeared: Unknown
Status as of AutoCAD 2009 version 3: Still Reproducible.