Product Support

These are the latest updates to Design Manager V7. They can only be used to update an existing Version 5/6/7 and are intended only for Service Agreement Holders. A password is required to install this update, eligible customers can telephone or email for the password. When you have downloaded the file just run it to start the installation.

AutoCAD 2010/11 no longer ships with Visual Basic Support which Design Manager requires to function fully. You must download and install this separately. Please visit http://www.autodesk.com/vba-download to download the required software.

The patch password has also changed for V7.6 and you will also need new release codes, please call us on 01954-251222.

As usual all changes are detailed in the ReadMe file.

Note: The Update option on the DmDbMaint application may be required, the installation will now run this program after it completes if appropriate.

AutoDesk has finally issued a service pack that fixes the crashing problem when the Menu Browser button is selected. Follow this link to obtain the patch.

We recommend that the default installation folder of C:\desman is used and NOT a Program Files location.

Windows 7 appears to add security to mapped drives which can stop Design Manager working, the symptoms are that Design Manager reports it cannot open some files. One option is to select the network share and then add the user/group to the security settings giving them "Full Control". The other solution is to use a UNC path when setting up Design Manager. This can be done in the Design Manager Database Management application on the "General Settings" tab. Change the General Database path and the Saved Search Path. The UNC path will be of the form \\servername\share. DmBase.ini in your database folder will also need editing, the section you require in this file is below [Database]. The setting will probably be of the form "main=f:\dmdata" and would be changed to "main=\\servername\dmdata" where "Servername" is the name of your server.

If Design Manager seems slow, particularly when making changes to data, try the following:

If you are experiencing data and index corruption or speed problems (duplicate Document Ids is a common problem) it may be because your workstations and server are set to use OpportunisticLocking. This is known to cause problems with any Multi-user database application. Please download OpLocks.Exe and run it on all workstations and your server, press the Disable button, then re-boot all machines and the server.

This also partially solves slowdowns that occur when NT Service Pack 6 is installed, our recommendation is to NOT install this service pack unless you have other problems that it is known to solve. 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'.

If you change any of the standard fields such as Sheet Size, Doc. Type, Scale on the Title Block or Application properties tabs you should then check that the field order is OK. From the Tabs page on properties check the 'Order' box and then press 'Save'. If an error occurs refer to the panel that pops out on the right of the dialog and make the corrections required. If this is not done it will lead to errors when editing existing and creating new document records.