I have been asking this question/wish list for about 3-4 years in a row now on the Autodesk support site and with our Autodesk Reseller.
Autodesk could you please put back in "Create custom desktop shortcuts" in the network deployment for Civil 3D like it is for ADT, Autocad, Map, and MEP. All Autocad based products have this option except Civil 3D and if I remember correctly it was in Civil 3D 2009 but later removed. I use profiles for all the Autocad based programs and it would be nice to have the deployment create the custom shortcut that points to the network profile. This would also then make all the network deployments consistant.
I have included a word document that shows snapshots of what I'm talking about in the ADT, Autocad, Map, and MEP network deployements.
Could you also update the discussion groups to allow uploading *.docx format.
Thanks
Brent Morris
IT/CADD Manager
I just checked and I agree that there is no option to deploy a shortcut within the Installation Framework. I have alerted the Civil Team of the issue.
Can you also add your feedback request here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794
You may also reference this forum post as it has the 'attachment' to it.
On a side note, you can 'hack' and copy a shortcut 'manually' as well.
1. Create/Copy shortcut (after installng Civil 3D).
2. Put it a folder and zip it.
3. Add a post copy command i.e. cp \\network\civilshortcuts\ %userprofile%\desktop
4. You will need to extract the shortcut as you can't really zip a shortcut. {I haven't tried...}
5. You maybe able to deploy a batch file to copy the shortcuts as well.
6. Replace .arg with .zip (via your shortcut)
Thanks for the comments on how to manually create a shortcut.
Right now what we do to have the users launch the Civil 3D 2013 installer from our Intranet site which is basically running a script and within that script the first thing we do is have it copy the custom shortcut that I created and stored on our server onto their desktop so we have figured a way to solve it.
Now I can only hope that the create custom shortcut can just be added back into the Network deployment like it was and like it is for all other Autocad based network deployments.
Thanks
Brent Morris