Getting in contact with support

As the holidays are closing in we would like to give you a few reminders.

Our offices are closed during public holidays as well as de facto holidays in Sweden; December 24, December 25, December 26, December 31, January 1, January 6.

The first choice when trying to get in contact with support should be using our common support details as found at www.ides.se/support. For matters that are more than a short question we prefer that you raise a case via customer.idesglobal.com.

Manning may be reduced on working days between holidays. The support is covered during our opening hours but individuals might be out of office, on vacation or sick. Support requests that are sent to specific personnel can not be expected to be read until that person is back on duty.

External application

When opening a document there are two approaches to configuring in what application the file should be opened and if any scripts should be ran upon opening the document. This does not include features like document property mapping, pdf plot settings and such that are common for both approaches.

The approach using Windows Scripting Host have been around the longest but is also the slowest and if there is a malconfiguration it has less informative error messages. Using vbs is getting out of date and sometimes security software blocks it or causes long delays causing opening documents to fail or feel slow.

Support for using External application was introduced in version 11.2 and is both quicker and more stable. Latest release at the moment is 19.0 and though both approaches are still supported we have for years been referring new customers to using Extenal application. Support for vbs in document start have not been discontinued but we recommend that customers still using vbs-approach document starts to change to external application for faster and more reliable performance.

Further reading about Document start is found in MasterExplorer > Help. If you have any questions please contact our support team.

Language settings and AutoCAD

It has been brought to our attention there is another problem with AutoCAD and Windows language settings. There is a new language setting in Windows and AutoCAD does not support having it activated.

Symptom

AutoCAD is unable to start. The following error message appears.

Exception in vl.crx ARX command

Exception in vl.crx ARX command

Solution

To solve this problem go to Windows settings for Region and Change system locale…

In the Region Settings dialogue you uncheck the option Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support.

Further reading

The vl.crx-problem is described in short above. In Autodesk Knowledgebase there is a full description.

Recently we wrote about AutoCAD crashing upon start with error “VLISP internal error: Unhandled exception on init”. Our solution was to rearrange the Windows language priority so that there no longer was a red warning icon showing. Autodesk posted a workaround to that problem. The same/similiar problem also have a another article in their knowledgebase with solution same as above.

In short you should be wary about changing language settings as it might break things.

HTTP-Activation

A recent Windows Update in regard to .Net have disabled a setting that used to be enabled per default and is required for the product suite to run properly. If you experience strange behavior probably already at initializing the product there is reason to suspect you might have received this update.

Solution is to reconfigure your system so that required feature is Enabled.

 

.Net > WCF > HTTP-Activation

This setting must be enabled.

Note that up to date single license users do not need to rectify this as systems that have Internet Information Services (IIS) installed support HTTP-Activation even if the feature is disabled.

In case your version of Windows does not show this feature in the Windows-features dialogue one can use PowerShell to check if it is enabled with a command such as the following.

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -online -featurename *http-activation* | format-table -AutoSize

Named Pipe Activation

Few customers have come upon that a Windows setting that used to default active have been switched off in connection with patching .NET Framework 4.7 or installing Windows updates. Communication in between our applications use netpipe and as a result the product suite will not operate properly as the support is inactivated.

If you encounter behaviour out of the ordinary after uppdating your system make certain that .NET Framework > WCF Services > Named Pipe Activation is still checked, in other words activated.

Named Pipe Activation

Named Pipe Activation must be Enabled

Edit: Note that this screenshot is taken from a machine with IIS installed which is why HTTP-Activation is supported despite the .Net feature is not enabled.

Edit: Same applies if .Net Framework 4.8 is installed.

Designation Configuration

In version 19.0 it is possible to control in more detail which settings you want. Not just by standard and main folder, but also by structure and part of plant. The different settings format, category structure and letter codes have their own dialogs where you create the different configurations. In the new designation configuration dialog, you choose which configurations should apply to which structures.

DesConfig

Designation Format

In version 19.0 we have improved the possibility to configure the object designations in the system. You can now in detail control what designations are allowed for each level and designation structure.

For each level of the designation you can specify a mask that controls what is a permitted designation and what prefix is ​​to be used before the level (or none). The mask is described with a simplified syntax A for letters and n for numbers. If needed, it is also possible to describe the allowed designation  with a Regular Expressions.

Each level is also described with a prompt and a help text.

It is possible to have several different formats / prefixes at the same level but for different object categories.

The edit designation dialog is improved so that you can edit the complete designation and the program will automatically verify the designation and add prefixes if needed. You will also get sub-rows for the designation with one row for each level, with prompt and tooltip. When creating new object you will get one extra sub-row for the new object, but it is still possible to create many levels at one time if you have the complete designation by typing it in the designation row.

DesignationFormat

 

In the designation format dialog, you create the named designation formats. The named Designation formats is then used in the new designation configuration dialog to select what designation format to use in the different designation structures.

The settings are stored on the standard and are included in the export / import functionality. You can also export the settings so that you can edit the designations offline in elMaster Design and get the same visual result.

If not you will need to save/update the drawing to get the correct format of the designations on the drawing.

Category Structures

In Master Concept it is possible to specify how your plant should be structured.

In Category settings you can specify that a category is an End Category. That means that no objects are allowed under an object with a category that is specified as an End Category.

Form version 19.0 you can also create named category structures that can be used in different objects designation structures.

In the Category Structure dialog, you create the category structure trees and store them as a named category structure. In the new designation configuration dialog you can specify what category structure should be used for what designation structure. It is also possible to set if it is mandatory to follow the structure or if users should get a warning when trying to create something that does not comply with the specified category structure.

CatStruct

 

Letter Codes

Letter codes are used to create new designations or set object categories for objects with a new designation. New for version 19.0 is that you can specify a filter for the upper designation that limits the number of proposed designations. There is also a new description field that is used if there is more than one available alternative when creating a new objects. The description text is also stored on the created objects Denom1 field.

In version 19.0 it is possible to create designations that are only numbers, [none] is used as letter code for that purpose. Designations without counter, with only letters is also possible to create if you set the length number part to 0.

letterCodes

Version 19.0 has been released

Key Features

  • Designation Format
  • Redlining
  • Better Document Document Relation Handling
  • Save Text from CAD using Cad Driver on non true type fonts