C3D 2015 - Thoughts

[Cadguru42]

Installation took forever even with a solid state drive. Odd behavior such as not being able to uncheck BIM 360 from the installer. Can't install Raster Design without installing vanilla AutoCAD, which wastes an extra 1.5GB of space. 

C3D 2015 takes much longer to open than 2014 even after multiple restarts. I notice it hangs when loading the survey module from the AutoCAD 2015 directory. 

So far I have had 2015 crash on me four times today doing routine things. One of them was simply creating a new, blank drawing then closing it. Others were strange where I'd save and it'd crash. Just now I was editing a survey database and when I deleted a figure, all of C3D crashed. Also, many of the survey figures in this 2014 drawing opened with 2015 lost their link to the survey database. So the drawing had two identical figures on top of each other when I inserted from the database, but only one was linked to the survey database. I've had this happen before and it has something to do with having the survey database on a network drive. I was told once before by Autodesk didn't support having survey databases on a local network, except that their own help has an entire page dedicating to having a survey database on a network and then they responded that it was correct that they support survey databases on a network.

Just panning around a 2014 drawing with a GeoTIFF behind it causes the cursor to lag about a second. Extremely frustrating. 

The Geolocation ribbon keeps getting the focus whenever a contextual ribbon shows up due to an object being selected and then deselected. Why does the Geolocation ribbon have a special blue border on it, anyway? 

I like the new dark theme. I've always liked darker themes, but it's a little inconsistent. The toolspace contents and other areas are still a bright off-white compared to the dark gray borders.

The command line seems to be doing what happened when the new one first came out (can't remember which version). It won't remember it's width when C3D is closed and reopened. 

When I click the Lineweight button on the bottom bar the command line says strange things and isn't consistant, but the actual linewights are working correctly. Just now when I clicked the lineweight button the command line responsed with "<Lineweight Move>" and "<Lineweight Flip>". Before the last crash when the lineweight button was selected the command prompt responsed with "<Lineweight Left>" and "<Lineweight Middle">. 

Since 2013, Autodesk has decided that MAPIINSERT will reproject on the fly, but ignores the GeoTIFF header UNITS value. This has still not been fixed in 2015 and applies to every Autodesk product that uses GeoTIFFs since their 2013 releases. I do like how we can now save and print the aerials from Bing. 

So far I love the new look, but the amount of problems with 2015 is sad for a new release. Each one isn't a major issue, but they are annoying and add up to frustration. 

[ACADuser]

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@engrtech wrote:

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@ACADuser wrote:

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@engrtech wrote:

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@ACADuser wrote:

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@engrtech wrote:

Can't install Raster Design without installing vanilla AutoCAD, which wastes an extra 1.5GB of space.

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 Thats interesting.  We are currently on subscription and running Civil 3D 2012 with Raster Design.  We don't own any seats of vanilla AutoCAD and are planning the upgrade to 2015.  What was preventing the install?  Do you know if something changed with licensing of RD where you can no longer install on just C3D or is this something AutoDesk needs to fix with the RD installer?

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After I wrote this I found out that Autodesk is trying to make C3D like an addon to vanilla AutoCAD. With C3D 2015, the C3D files are installed to the AutoCAD folder under C3D. Raster Design must be installed to vanilla AutoCAD, but can be accessed when you opened C3D. That's why vanilla AutoCAD is required for Raster Design in 2015. We upgraded our plain C3D licenses to the IDSP licenses, so I'm not sure how just a C3D license upgrade would work with Raster Design.

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I would like to assume an IDSP license is the reason vanilla AutoCAD is required to be installed prior to installation of RD.  The reason I say that is because of a required order of installation for the various IDSP products.  In other words RD would need to be installed after any of the products that it compliments in order for it to work.  So it's quite possible the RD installer is looking at the product license type and if it sees "IDSP" it knows both C3D and AutoCAD must be installed first.  I could be totally wrong here but I'm just trying to wrap my head around this before requesting our IT department intall C3D 2015 & RD.

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I highly recommend against installing 2015 unless you're testing it. There are so many missing features and bugs that it's almost useless in a production environment. 

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No, not testing.  We usually upgrade every 2 years but are a bit behind schedule so were thinking of jumping all the way up to 2015.  I just checked and now realize a SP has not been released for the 2015 version.  I thought I had read somewhere that SP1 was out, must have been for AutoCAD or one of the other verticals.  Anyway I appreciate the advice.  We'll certainly look into this a bit more. Thanks.

[ACADuser]

After reading up on all the issues with 2015 (your other bugs/issues thread) I'm leaning heavily towards upgrading to the 2014 version.  I was hoping 2015 would be getting is fist SP soon but I have no crystal ball capable of affirming my hopes.  For what it's worth below is history of previous release cycles.

Product Version      AutoCAD SP1 Release Date      C3D SP1 Release Date     Duration between dates (rounded)

2015                      6/5/14                                      Not released                     Unknown

2014                      9/26/13                                    1/14/14                            16 weeks

2013                      9/25/12                                    11/29/12                           9 weeks

2012                      9/26/11                                    12/7/11                            10 weeks

2011                      9/15/10                                    9/27/10                            1 week

From this I would guess vanilla 2015 had some glaring issues given previous version release dates.  Anyone have one of those magic 8 balls and care to tell us what is says? 😉

[AllenJessup]

The best I can say is hopefully sooner than later. But even after the programmers are done with the Alpha there may be multiple rounds of Beta. It's kinda like Jenga. Sometimes you mess with one piece and other fail.

Allen

[AllenJessup]

This post talks a little about where they are on the SP.

Allen

[ACADuser]

Thanks Allen. Reading thru the thread, something along the lines of 4-6 weeks from AutoCAD SP1 (6/15) which would be early next week. We are on subscription which allows a choice from several versions to install (currently running 2012). I was really hoping for 2015 with the cool features it has like dynamically resizable MS viewports, and the dark themed interface. But with all the issues of 2015 we don't have the time to wait for fixes. I'm needing to get this update done soon so we are going ahead with 2014.

[AllenJessup]

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@ACADuser wrote:
 so we are going ahead with 2014.

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That seems reasonable. We're on 2014 and will probably stay there for the time being. You'll get the dark themed interface but not the resizable MS viewports. The resizable viewports is something I've hoped for for a long time. 2014 is a good product and you should not have much trouble with it.

Allen

[jalneal]

I have experienced this behavior as well in 2015. It seems that this error most freuqently has come up when I have edited a parcel and hit the undo command (especially if parcels were added or removed by the edit.)  

My solution has been to type -purge "r" and do not confirm purging the registered apps.  Once I do this, I can run audit and it doesn't have the message about all the selected objects.