3rd Party Prep - Bluebeam Revu

Many use third party add-ons like Bluebeam, AutoTURN and others within their CAD production workflow. I will share some helpful insight into these products.

Bluebeam 11 will be releasing update 11.1 this week in support of the 2014 CAD products. Previous versions will not support the 2014 CAD products.

Bluebeam Enterprise deployment link: Bluebeam Enterprise Configuration

When deploying the bluebeam client in a mass setting. You can do so easily by modifying the .msi file with orca (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255905).

Open the .msi installer with orca, then go to the property table, then edit the following values.

BB_DEFAULTVIEWER 0 - I don't use bluebeam as the default pdf viewer
BB_DESKSHORTCUT 1 - I add a desktop shortcut
BB_PRODUCTKEY xxxxx-xxxxxxx - enter your prod key
BB_SERIALNUMBER xxxxxxx - enter your serial number

Save and close the .msi installer from orca. Now you can easily deploy Bluebeam to clients, via script, group policy, or sccm package.

A great way to keep track of your installed clients, is by using Bluebeam's reg look up page. http://www.bluebeam.com/us/support/reglookup.asp
Just plug in your license info and it will return detailed info on the number of licenses installed.

Autodesk License file parser

When working with network license files, provided by Autodesk, we must trust the license file is accurate. No more will we have to leave this up to chance, as Autodesk offers a license file parser.

Using the license parser link: http://www.licenseparser.com/

We can now see exactly what products and versions our license file(s) include. This is a nice way to see what our license files have, as well as seeing what older license files have. Very helpful!

2014 Products are here!

With the recent release of the Autodesk 2014 product line. Many people will begin testing and standardizing this release into their current workflow, for a potential upgrade. I will be exploring the deployment and technical side of this release as I move forward.

I currently support an engineering firm with approx. 400 staff. I hope to help others in their deployment, as I prepare my firm.

Here is Autodesk's official link covering Civil 3D 2014. Full of useful information.
http://docs.autodesk.com/CIV3D/2014/ENU/index.html