AutoCAD IdeaStation

[troma]

To all the AutoCAD people at AutoDesk:

Please would you consider setting up and supporting an IdeaStation dedicated to AutoCAD. I see a few of the questions already posted here for the Answer Day are product ideas and suggestions for improvements. An IdeaStation is a great format for these posts.

Other software has IdeaStations set up, including Civil 3D and Inventor. But there are many things that could also be improved in vanilla AutoCAD. The IdeaStation is a great way for the end users to contribute to the future development by informing the team of what they see needs improving or adding to the program. Other users vote on the Idea, and it becomes clear which Ideas are widely supported and requested. People like me using Civil 3D also have ideas to contribute that don't fit in the Civil 3D IdeaStation because the function is a basic CAD command.

I hope you can see the importance of having an IdeaStation set up focused on vanilla AutoCAD. Please review the other IdeaStations here to see what I'm talking about.

Thanks! 

[Jon.Dean]

Hi troma,

I was surprised to see the question but you are absolutely correct; no IdeaStation for AutoCAD.

I will ask the moderator to consider this on your behalf.

Jon.

[rob.maguire · Accepted solution]

Hi Troma,

Customer feedback is obviously invaluable to us and the only reason we don’t have an IdeaStation is that we already have several other sources of customer feedback that serve a similar purpose.

Principally, there is the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) wishlist (https://www.augi.com/wishlist/). The AutoCAD team has administrative access to the lists and specifically targets development of these wishlist items. Specifically in AutoCAD 2016 we developed things like the “Revcloud Edit” and “Sysvar Monitor” items which were both AUGI Wishes. This service is very similar to the IdeaStation concept and many of our customers look to it for historical significance and precedence. If we have two similar communities there will likely be some adverse effects such as having similar but different ideas and splitting votes across voting systems.

For those who are not members of AUGI, we also monitor the product feedback links which are directly available in all Autodesk products as well as on autodesk.com (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794). Comments from this site result in everything from questions, to defect reports to feature suggestions. The downside of this service is that others can’t see the suggestions or responses as they go direct to the customer who provided the comment.

And for those who want to put in a little more effort and engage the product team directly, we spend quite a bit of time on our Alpha/Beta forums. Customers can actually download the pre-release product and give us direct feedback on it which we can try and incorporate prior to shipping the updates. Customer and employee comments are visible to everyone in the community and we have some really good discussions. The only downside of this is that participating requires a non-disclosure agreement for legal reasons until the product is released. Anyone can register at http://beta.autodesk.com and we typically pull in users from this site to our beta programs as they come and go.

That all being said, its admittedly a bit odd we don’t have an IdeaStation similar to the other Autodesk products. We are constantly evaluating and improving our customer engagement plans and we’ll reexamine this to see if there is a better way for us to manage all of this.

Thank you for your feedback,

[troma]

Jon & Rob,
Thank you. I appreciate your responses.

It most certainly is odd that there's an IdeaStation for products built on top of AutoCAD (such as Civil 3D) but not for AutoCAD itself. This situation is leading to Ideas being posted in the Civil 3D IdeaStation that the Civil 3D development team have no way of working on.

It also seems odd to me to be posting on an Autodesk website about submitting feedback to Autodesk, and the best option is to go through a third party! The argument about duplication doesn't really hold water; Civil 3D and Inventor are both represented on the Augi wishlist, and both also have IdeaStations right here at home on the Autodesk website. When we are posting in these forums and someone says "I wish I could do this" or "Why can't I do that" we tell them "go post an Idea" or "go vote for this Idea". We can't do this if the wish is on a different site, with a different login etc. It should exist within the ecosystem of these very forums, like the other IdeaStations.

Thanks for reading.
I look forward to the outcome of your ongoing evaluations.

[m_rogoff]

I have posted to the AUGI Wishlist and my suggestion got voted on as top 10 for 2010. 5 years later, this has not been implemented. I have also seen some very good ideas that have never come to fruition. 

I contacted AUGI, and they said, "that just because AUGI puts together a wish list doesn’t mean that AutoDesk is going to implement the change. Two different organizations; we can only recommend what users want, not dictate what gets added to the program."

Seems like a lot of wasted time on eveyone's part, IMO

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I also suggested to add AutoCAD IdeaStation and in a reply to a specific feature request I got the following reply from an AutoCAD employee: "I would also encourage you to submit feature requests such as this at our Product Feedback page. The more requests the product team receives the greater the consideration for that feature."

(If the link doesn't work: "http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Raising...

This is a way to submit an idea, but I also think AutoCAD IdeaStation would be the best solution to keep it well organized and easy to access here on the forum.

[troma]

I was surprised to get 10 kudos for this post.
To everyone who gave kudos, why not go vote for this idea here:
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/community-ideastation/autcad-comunity-ideastation/idi-p/5535766

It's not my idea over there, but I'm the only one who has voted for it so far.

[KarenMason]

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@m_rogoff wrote:

I have posted to the AUGI Wishlist and my suggestion got voted on as top 10 for 2010. 5 years later, this has not been implemented. I have also seen some very good ideas that have never come to fruition. 

---

Hi,

Just curious.  What suggestion did you create on the AUGI wishlist that made it to the Top 10 back in 2010?  Or what are some other good ideas from the AUGI wishlist that you were hoping to see in AutoCAD?

We've implemented quite a number of AUGI requests in the last few releases.

Thanks,

Karen

[Cadmanto]

I am surprised that there is not an Autocad Idea station as well.  I have an idea and there is no where to post it.  AUGI is not an option because I don't have an account and have no interest in creating one.  I have all I can do to manage the accounts I do have.

My idea (and see if this goes anywhere) is when one publishes in Autocad or Mechanical, how come when you set the location under "Publish Options" it does not trickle down to the location to add more sheets.  This is a royal pain.  I always have to set the location twice when once should certifies.

A one stop shop and click is my suggestion.

If this solved your issue please mark this posting "Accept as Solution".

Or if you like something that was said and it was helpful, Kudos are appreciated. Thanks!!!! 

     

[KimBrunz]

I agree with the AutoCAD dedicated Ideastation. Plus it would make sense just to have one place to input ideas rather than multiple locations.

On another note, I was looking over the AutoCAD 2017 Preview Guide and I'll tell you I appreciate the changes to PDF's and some of the other changes, but 16 of the 36 pages were dedicated to resizing, updating, modifying various Dialog Boxes.  Now I am happy some of these Dialog Boxes were updated, resized but my question is why didn't they just update all the Dialog Boxes?  It seems that the changes that were made to the Dialog Boxes couldv'e been done in a day or so. I'm a programmer and modifying Dialog Boxes is no big deal. 

Why not just do them all?  Specifically they didn't mention the Modify MLine Style  Dialog Box and the Elements Listbox contained within.  The Element Listbox gets crowded after 3 Elements are created.

Also, as a suggestion, why not put a command button next to the Help Button in Dialog Boxes that would invoke a suggestion and send it to the Ideastation. eg.  If I'm in the Modify Mulitline Style Dialog I would push the Suggestion Button, an edit box would pop up that I would enter my suggestion and possibly have Redline Pencils available that I could circle items and take a snapshot of the dialog box or the AutoCAD Editor marked up. Then hit OK, and the suggestion would be sent to the Ideastation with the snapshot attached.

Thanks for listening.

Kim

[KarenMason]

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@Cadmanto wrote:

My idea (and see if this goes anywhere) is when one publishes in Autocad or Mechanical, how come when you set the location under "Publish Options" it does not trickle down to the location to add more sheets.  This is a royal pain.  I always have to set the location twice when once should certifies.

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Hi Scott,

Thanks for taking the time to write in your suggestion.  Each File Navigation dialog box retains it's own last used folder.  So that way different commands can save different default folders.

That said I can understand why you think it would be helpful if both these Publish dialogs used the same folder.

I wonder if there are other users that would prefer their PDF files were written to a different folder than the folder where their files are stored?

Thanks.

[KarenMason]

Hi Kim,

Thanks for taking the time to post.  I'm not in a position to comment on whether or not AutoCAD will get an IdeaStation.  Rob Maguire has already responded to this request.  I love your suggestion of a button next to the Help Button in Dialog Boxes that would invoke a suggestion and send it to the Ideastation. 

As far as the dialogs, I'm sorry you're unhappy that we weren't able to update all the dialogs.  I'm not a developer, so I don't know all that is involved, but it wasn't "that" simple to modify these dialogs.  We asked people to provide us with a list of dialogs that they needed to be able to resize, and we targeted them for AutoCAD 2017.  Hopefully we'll be able to continue that effort in future releases.  Thanks for providing a list of other dialogs that you'd like to see be made resizeable.

Thanks,

Karen

[troma]

@m_rogoff you may not have noticed that this conversation was continuing.

I thought it may interest you to know that @KarenMason would like more information on your ideas from the AUGI wishlist.

[rkmcswain]

KarenMason wrote:

Just curious. What suggestion did you create on the AUGI wishlist that made it to the Top 10 back in 2010?

Hi Karen!

I know you were not asking me, but since the topic came up, I'd just like to point out a wish I made there 10-1/2 years ago, that still has not been implemented, and it still continues to be an issue for users today. 

Seems like it would be pretty easy to implement too, without negatively affecting other parts of the application.

[rkmcswain]

rob.maguire wrote:

Customer feedback is obviously invaluable to us and the only reason we don’t have an IdeaStation is that we already have several other sources of customer feedback that serve a similar purpose.

Principally, there is the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) wishlist (https://www.augi.com/wishlist/).

But.....there is a Civil 3D Ideastation in addition to the AUGI Wishlist for Civil 3D.

Why does this product get both?

Given a choice, the UI/UX of the Ideastation is preferable over the Augi process, IMO.

[jack_foster1]

I also had an idea that was in the top 10 of the wishlist over 10 years ago and it got nowhere.  I still think it is a good idea which I belive was as follows.  For doing details of parts in model space you could then create a title block in PS so you could print it to a PDF or paper.  The main idea was that all of the layers that are in paperspace do not come with the drawing when it may be xref'd into another drawing.  When you xref in dwgs that contain entities in paperspace those entities are ignored but the layers that are only used in paperspace still come into the drawing.  You can end up with a lot of layers that are never going to be used and make your work more difficult.  I just happened to stumble onto this post and thought I would comment about my experience.  

[KarenMason]

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@rkmcswain wrote:

@KarenMason wrote:

Just curious. What suggestion did you create on the AUGI wishlist that made it to the Top 10 back in 2010?

Hi Karen!

I know you were not asking me, but since the topic came up, I'd just like to point out a wish I made there 10-1/2 years ago, that still has not been implemented, and it still continues to be an issue for users today. 

Seems like it would be pretty easy to implement too, without negatively affecting other parts of the application.

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Hi R.K.,

I know about your suggestion.  We did add the System Variable monitor in AutoCAD 2016 (SYSVARMONITOR).  It will notify the users if ANY system variables get changed from their preferred setting.  A Status Bar button is displayed when this happens.  Clicking on the status bar button allows you to reset system variables (like FILEDIA). 

Hope that helps,

Karen

[KarenMason]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I also had an idea that was in the top 10 of the wishlist over 10 years ago and it got nowhere.  I still think it is a good idea which I belive was as follows.  For doing details of parts in model space you could then create a title block in PS so you could print it to a PDF or paper.  The main idea was that all of the layers that are in paperspace do not come with the drawing when it may be xref'd into another drawing.  When you xref in dwgs that contain entities in paperspace those entities are ignored but the layers that are only used in paperspace still come into the drawing.  You can end up with a lot of layers that are never going to be used and make your work more difficult.  I just happened to stumble onto this post and thought I would comment about my experience.  

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Hi Jack,

Thanks for posting your request.  I believe you are asking for a way to xref drawings with only the layers used in modelspace, and ignore the layers that only have paperspace objects.  Is that correct?

Interesting.  I never had paperspace specific layers so hadn't run into this issue before.

Thanks,

Karen

[rkmcswain]

KarenMason wrote:

We did add the System Variable monitor in AutoCAD 2016 (SYSVARMONITOR).  It will notify the users if ANY system variables get changed from their preferred setting.  A Status Bar button is displayed when this happens.  Clicking on the status bar button allows you to reset system variables (like FILEDIA). 

It ~helps~, but it's not the best solution IMO.

Suppose a new user does something that causes FILEDIA to be set to 0. The sysvarmonitor will warn them, and they MAY see it, but they MAY not.

Then they run the OPEN command and of course there will not be a dialog box.

Boom ~~~ there they are with no idea how to fix it or even a clue as to what might have happened.

Here is what the command line looks like AFTER the sysvar monitor warning, and then starting the LINE command.

In other words, the warning is hidden.

IF the user has more lines visible, or presses F2, he/she may see this:

Also, if the user has the balloon notification enabled, it helps.

It would even be better if sysvarmonitor included an option to automatically restore a sysvar when it's change (effectively LOCKING its value)

Or just do what I suggested 10+ years ago 🙂

Thanks for your reply!

[KarenMason]

Hi R.K.,

Yep- I know that the Sysvar Monitor messaging can be overlooked in the command line.  Perhaps we should have turned on balloon alert notification by default, but we didn't want to bug all users.  Set SYSMON to 2, if you would like balloon alert notification when sysvars get changed from their preferred setting.

We did also consider an option to automatically restore a sysvar when it gets changed.  Maybe if more people ask for enhancements to the Sysvar Monitor, we'll include in the future.

You and I have talked a few times about FILEDIA.  I have liked your suggestions.  We were hoping to do something more generic that would help the multitude of sysvars that get changed unintentionally.  One of your FILEDIA suggestions might make it in...  Just like we did a specific solution for using the Delete key when the PICKFIRST setting is turned off (in AutoCAD 2017).

BTW, I know you know about some of this.  Just adding here for the benefit of other readers. 

Thanks,

Karen