DWG Trueview 2009 Silent install including all dependencies

[Anonymous]

We are trying to create an unnatended installation, or silent installation of DWG TV 2k9 that also includes all dependencies. We will be using SMS to deploy this to our computers. The standard method of using the MSI is not very effective due to the fact this does not perform the instllation of all the dependencies. I believe you could create a vbs that might be able to pull this off however this seems like of sloppy if the setup.ini allready contains the installation of the dependencies. I would think with some slight modificaitons of the setup.ini you could call this, setup.exe setup.ini and it would be completly unnatended and also install all the dependencies similar to Acad 2k9 or other full products. Has anyone figured out how to do this? After looking at the setup.ini it does not look like existing TV ini files. THanks

[Anonymous]

This is really not a difficult question, either the product natively support this type of installation or not. In todays enterprise environment most applications that are intended for wide use will natively support this either through a command line or msi. I am really amazed that this is not well documented on how to perform this. Are we expected to perform manual installations on every computer that wants to view DWG Files? Simply deploying the MSI is not an option due to the dependencies required.

[Anonymous]

bzwart wrote:
> This is really not a difficult question, either the product natively support this type of installation or not. In todays enterprise environment most applications that are intended for wide use will natively support this either through a command line or msi. I am really amazed that this is not well documented on how to perform this. Are we expected to perform manual installations on every computer that wants to view DWG Files? Simply deploying the MSI is not an option due to the dependencies required.

IMO - Autodesk has enough problems right now and they don't
care and are not worried about "push" installation
problems/solutions for a FREE product.


--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

I agree that we should document this. Perhaps Volker could put an article on
his DWF blog? I know TrueView is associated with DWG, but we don't really
have a TrueView blog. Autodesk Design Review and Autodesk DWG TrueView are
related in that Autodesk DWG TrueView is used by Autodesk Design Review to
create a DWF on the fly. So it's not a huge stretch to talk about DWG
TrueView on the DWF blog.

wrote in message news:5900639@discussion.autodesk.com...
This is really not a difficult question, either the product natively support
this type of installation or not. In todays enterprise environment most
applications that are intended for wide use will natively support this
either through a command line or msi. I am really amazed that this is not
well documented on how to perform this. Are we expected to perform manual
installations on every computer that wants to view DWG Files? Simply
deploying the MSI is not an option due to the dependencies required.

[Anonymous]

Well this is a big deal to some businesses. We are a design company with over 5000 Autodesk licenses and most non-designers need to be able to view. We support 25,000 computers across over 1000 locations globally and require DWG and DWF viewing software on many of these computers. Since many smaller locations do not have Local IT Departments or Admin rights on their machines it’s up to the IT departments at Corporate to create unattended installations that install with tools like SMS, etc. Most software nowadays supports silent, unattended installations out of the box without heavy modification. More than likely DWG TV 2k9 supports this as well with some modifications of the setup.ini. I would think someone from Autodesk could easily answer this question or even better publish an article on how to do this. I can only imagine in the next few weeks more and more people will be requesting this. I would like to think Autodesk would also see the benefits in documenting this procedure and allowing IT departments to spend their time on better things like supporting AutoCAD 2k9 and Inventor 2k9 deployments rather than manually installing free viewers.

[Anonymous]

I fully agree. Even smaller companies I know by experience has quite a
hassle with this. As long as it's not the end user themself that handles the
installation it should be possible to do it the right way.

--
Jimmy Bergmark
JTB World - CAD software, development and consulting
Owner/Developer
http://www.jtbworld.com
http://blog.jtbworld.com

JTB FlexReport (FLEXnet / FLEXlm license report tool) -
www.jtbworld.com/jtbflexreport

AutoCAD 2009
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2009.htm


--
..

"bzwart" skrev i meddelandet news:5904772@discussion.autodesk.com...
> Well this is a big deal to some businesses. We are a design company with
> over 5000 Autodesk licenses and most non-designers need to be able to
> view. We support 25,000 computers across over 1000 locations globally and
> require DWG and DWF viewing software on many of these computers. Since
> many smaller locations do not have Local IT Departments or Admin rights on
> their machines it’s up to the IT departments at Corporate to create
> unattended installations that install with tools like SMS, etc. Most
> software nowadays supports silent, unattended installations out of the box
> without heavy modification. More than likely DWG TV 2k9 supports this as
> well with some modifications of the setup.ini. I would think someone from
> Autodesk could easily answer this question or even better publish an
> article on how to do this. I can only imagine in the next few weeks more
> and more people will be requesting this. I would like to think Autodesk
> would also see the benefits in documenting this procedure and allowing IT
> departments to spend their time on better things like supporting AutoCAD
> 2k9 and Inventor 2k9 deployments rather than manually installing free
> viewers.

[Anonymous]

bzwart wrote:
> Well this is a big deal to some businesses. We support 25,000
> computers across over 1000 locations globally and require
> DWG and DWF viewing software on many of these computers.

Just got back from out of town... Any new news on this
front? We are tiny compared to you but I still don't want to
go sit down in front of 50 machines to perform manual
installs....

Here is another problem.
We install new software while logged on as administrator.
The only way (beyond manually monkeying around in OPTIONS)
to control paths, etc. is to modify the registry where the
default profile is stored. Since this is stored in HKCU, you
have to import the REG file while logged on as the current
user (for each and every user on the machine).

There needs to be a way to set profile defaults AT INSTALL
TIME, that will apply to each user that logs on in the future.

--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT can be used for new users on a machine.
For existing users you really have to modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER but that
could be done via loginscript, GPO or the like.

Another hack is to modify the MSI with Orca so it works as expected.

See also
http://blog.shijaz.com/2007/06/modify-users-registry-hive-without.html

--
Jimmy Bergmark
JTB World - CAD software, development and consulting
Owner/Developer
http://www.jtbworld.com
http://blog.jtbworld.com

AutoCAD Automation Tools
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad_automation_tools.htm

AutoCAD 2009
http://www.jtbworld.com/autocad2009.htm


"R.K. McSwain" skrev i meddelandet
news:5907452@discussion.autodesk.com...
> bzwart wrote:
>> Well this is a big deal to some businesses. We support 25,000
>> computers across over 1000 locations globally and require
>> DWG and DWF viewing software on many of these computers.
>
> Just got back from out of town... Any new news on this
> front? We are tiny compared to you but I still don't want to
> go sit down in front of 50 machines to perform manual
> installs....
>
> Here is another problem.
> We install new software while logged on as administrator.
> The only way (beyond manually monkeying around in OPTIONS)
> to control paths, etc. is to modify the registry where the
> default profile is stored. Since this is stored in HKCU, you
> have to import the REG file while logged on as the current
> user (for each and every user on the machine).
>
> There needs to be a way to set profile defaults AT INSTALL
> TIME, that will apply to each user that logs on in the future.
>
> --
> R.K. McSwain
> http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

Jimmy Bergmark wrote:
> HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT can be used for new users on a machine.
> For existing users you really have to modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER but that
> could be done via loginscript, GPO or the like.
>
> Another hack is to modify the MSI with Orca so it works as expected.
>
> See also
> http://blog.shijaz.com/2007/06/modify-users-registry-hive-without.html
>

Thanks Jimmy, we will probably go with a logon script.

I just wish we didn't have to "hack" installs. I don't
believe the desire to push an install out with a few custom
settings in OPTIONS is so specialized that it isn't worth it
to Autodesk to add this capability.... Unless my earlier
statement was right, and they just don't want to waste the
time on a free product.

--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Anonymous]

These profile tricks sound interesting and could help us with Acad as well however we still need to figure out how to deploy TV2k9 with all dependencies. This really cant be that hard. We are testing creating Deployments of Inventor 2k9 and Acad 2k9 and reviewing the settings in the setup.ini that is created with these deployments since TV2k9 does deploy silently with these including all dependencies. We still have not been able to figure out what is needed in the setup.ini to make this occur. I am really suprised this is still not docuemented yet. Deploying the MSI silently just does not cut it since it does not include the dependencies.

[Anonymous]

I was able to deploy TrueView 2008 silently from the msi (I had to silently deploy dotnet2 and msxml6 dependencies first). But I have not been able to do the same with TrueView 2009. I get the following error on a test machine.

Product: DWG TrueView 2009 -- Error 1606. Could not access network location Autodesk\DWG TrueView 2009\R6\enu\.

I suspect that error message is misleading because that doesn't look like a network location. I don't think the directory it mentions would be installed by any of the prerequisites either, so I'm stuck.

On a positive note, DesignReview 2009 installs silently from the msi just fine.

Mark

[Anonymous]

There are quite a few dependencies with 2k9 and I dont really want to have to deploy all these first either manually or scripting. This is why I want the exe based installation using the ini which should be able to deploy all dependencies first. Sadly the error your getting I also experienced in 2k8 and eventually gave up. it has something to do with default profiles and esssentialy made it almost impossible to silenly push the program to any machine unless someone has logged into the machine at least once. In other if you use any type of modern OS deployment technologies that use thin imaging keeping the OS and applications seperate this program is almost impossible to deploy without including it inside of the image.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that information. I agree with you completely.

[Chuq]

FWIW, we deploy TrueView 2009 dependencies using a script like this one:

mkdir "c:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009"
xcopy "\\server\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\*.*" "c:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\" /s/y
msiexec /i "C:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\support\VCRedist\x86\vcredist.msi" /qn
"C:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\support\dotnetfx\dotnetfx.exe" /q
msiexec /i "C:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\support\msxml\msxml6.msi" /qn
msiexec /i "c:\Installs\DWGTrueView2009\DWGVIEWR.msi" /qn ALLUSERS=1

It's a bit of a pain but once set up it is easy enough to deploy.

The problem is we haven't deployed the .Net 3.0 Framework sitewide yet and it may delay our ability to deploy TrueView 2009. I'm baffled as to why a simple file viewer needs so many dependencies and is almost 200Mb. If only Autodesk created a "viewer lite" ...

[Anonymous]

If Autodesk created a "viewer lite," it wouldn't be AutoCAD. Even tiny
differences create problems. We tried this with Volo View and I even got
complaints on dash-dot line patterns as to where the dashes started. To
avoid all of this, DWG TrueView works exactly like AutoCAD because it is
AutoCAD.

wrote in message news:5916461@discussion.autodesk.com...

The problem is we haven't deployed the .Net 3.0 Framework sitewide yet and
it may delay our ability to deploy TrueView 2009. I'm baffled as to why a
simple file viewer needs so many dependencies and is almost 200Mb. If only
Autodesk created a "viewer lite" ...

[Anonymous]

Chuq wrote:
> I'm baffled as to why a simple file
> viewer needs so many dependencies and is almost 200Mb.
> If only Autodesk created a "viewer lite" ...

Like Scott said, TV is a stripped down version of AutoCAD so
it includes all the extra baggage. There are other "lite-er"
DWG viewers out there. Thanks for the install info.



--
R.K. McSwain
http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com

[Chuq]

Thanks Scott and R.K. for the replies, I see why the util is so large now!

I forgot a couple of things in the prior post:
1) I assumed DirectX is already installed (as it is with all the machines at my site), therefore not included in the dependencies.

2) It doesn't account for the registry settings which, as mentioned, are per-user and not per machine.

I've made a diff of the registry keys changed during first-time run, and have exported the HKCU\Software\Autodesk hive which is where all the relevant changes seem to be. However importing this using modifyprofile.exe doesn't seem to work - the import works fine but other users still go through the first-time "Please wait while Windows configures DWG TrueView 2009" error message.

I can find a few sites which explain usage of modifyprofile.exe - but has anyone here used in the context of TrueView 2009? Am I exporting the correct section or is there something else that I am missing?

[kb6jdq]

I was able to get it to install unattended by making the "UI_MODE=SILENT" change to the setup.ini file and then running it with the following command: "\\%INSTALLPATH%\setup.exe /i \\%INSTALLPATH%\setup.ini" (replace the %INSTALLPATH% with the location of your install files, of course).

[rkrumenacher]

After intense testing here's what I found out:
By default Setup.exe will NOT use Setup.ini to install TrueView. Instead Setup.exe uses a series of .dlls to check the system for the needed dependencies and displays us with the install screen. By using the /i switch to force Setup.exe to use the options set in Setup.ini (ex. \%INSTALLPATH%\Setup.exe /i \%INSTALLPATH%\Setup.ini) we get a “silent” install without having to change the Setup.ini. (You don’t even have to change UI_MODE= to UI_MODE=SILENT!) It will still use the .dlls to identify what’s on the system but will use the EXE_PARAM= set in Setup.ini to install “silently” what else is needed. Now I say “silent” because a dialog box will still pop up saying that “Setup is initializing” as well as a TrueView dialog box that displays the progress bar along with the cancel button. If you don’t want the cancel button to show add /qb! to EXE_PARAM= under the AOEM section.
*NOTE: A dialog box for DirectX may also pop up complete with progress bar and cancel button. /SILENT is set in Setup.ini by default and is the only command switch that DirectX uses, and it DOES work using a command prompt (ex. DXSETUP.exe /SILENT) for a silent install. But it does NOT seem to take in Setup.ini. I thought it could be that the DirectX setup wasn’t reading Setup.ini but using a command switch I knew wouldn’t work and rerunning Setup.exe with the new Setup.ini gave me a “Command switch not used” error, so I know it IS reading the Setup.ini.

This still doesn't help much for deployment though. Hope it helps somewhat though.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Everyone for your tips and Tricks! I was trying to install DWG2009 Silently on a Citrix Farm and struggled for days! Here is how I got it to work:

1. Copy the DWGTrueViewx86InstallImage folder to a TEMP location on the server. In my case it was D:\Apps\DWGTrueView\TEMP
2. I edited the EXE_PARAM attribute in setup.ini file under the DWG True View 2009 section. EXE_PARAM=/qn INSTALLDIR=D:\Apps\DWGTrueView ACAD_SILENT_LICENSE=YES (Make sure the InstallDir you specify already exists prior to install)
3. I also added UI_MODE=Silent just to be safe.
4. The CMD line I used was D:\Apps\DWGTrueView\TEMP\Setup.exe /i D:\Apps\DWGTrueView\TEMP\setup.ini
5. This command shows some dialogs while installing the prerequisites, expect .net 3.0 to take several minutes. But when its finished it is installed and working with no intervention!

Good Luck!