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Autodesk AutoCAD 2016 / 2017 critical hotfix for Citrix customers using NVIDIA or INTEL GPUs

Earlier this year I have seen several customers having issues with AutoCAD in Citrix not defaulting to the primary display adapter, so the GPU wouldn be fully functioning and Autodesk AutoCAD 2016/2017 would turn off hardware acceleration. This issue have been seen on NVIDIA Gpus such as GRID, NVIDIA also have a official KB on this http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4092/ and issue is also seen with INTEL gpu such as Iris Pro Graphics more specific on solutions with HPE Moonshot 710p and 710x.

Issue is identified on both Citrix XenApp 7.x (Windows Server OSs) and Citrix XenDesktop 7.x (Workstation OSs)

“The primary display adapter is not shown as the default in a Citrix environment.”

autocad_issue

I am happy to share that Autodesk have finally fixed this “bug” with Citrix and now the GPUs will work correctly with Autodesk AutoCAD 2016 and Autodesk AutoCAD 2017 when you apply below hot fix for the product you have.

Accumulated hotfix 4 for AutoCAD 2016 based applies to:

This hotfix for citrix applies to the following releases with the AutoCAD 2016 Service Pack 1 already installed:

  • Autodesk AutoCAD 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Electrical 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Map 3D 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Mechanical 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD MEP 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD P&ID 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Plant 3D 2016
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Utility Design 2016

Issues Resolved by This Hotfix for citrix

  • There is a security vulnerability with ATIL image files within a drawing.
  • The primary display adapter is not shown as the default in a Citrix environment.
  • Opening an Excel hyperlink resizes the AutoCAD application window to match the Excel sheet size.
  • Locked objects can be edited by Matchprop command.
  • Publish borders are cut off with certain sheet sizes.
  • Background masks are not ignoring the Xrefoverride setting.
  • Can crash when panning transparently in multiple viewports.
  • Performance problem opening files containing specific objects in AutoCAD 2016 may appear as if files cannot be opened.
  • Use of the LISP (command) function within the (mapcar) function results in VVC Internal Error.
  • Grip stretch doesn’t work correctly when DYNMODE equals value other than 2 or 3.
  • acedCallBackOnCancel is not detected for Lispcallable Functions.
  • Certain VBA Macros throw an execution error.
  • DWG file fails to insert into another DWG file.
  • Can crash when Copy/Paste a block by Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
  • Can crash when opening AutoCAD in Windows 10.
  • AcSettingSync.exe launched when running OPTIONS command.
  • Annotations in Architectural units format are changing to Decimal format.

Accumulated hotfix 4 for AutoCAD LT 2016 applies to:

this hotfix for citrix applies to the following release:

  • Autodesk AutoCAD LT 2016 with the AutoCAD LT Service Pack 1 already installed

Issues Resolved by This Hotfix for citrix

  • There is a security vulnerability with ATIL image files within a drawing.
  • The primary display adapter is not shown as the default in a Citrix environment.
  • Opening an Excel hyperlink resizes the AutoCAD LT application window to match the Excel sheet size.
  • Locked objects can be edited by Matchprop command.
  • Publish borders are cut off with certain sheet sizes.
  • Background masks are not ignoring the Xrefoverride setting.
  • May crash when panning transparently in multiple viewports.
  • Performance problem opening files containing specific objects in AutoCAD LT 2016 may appear as if files cannot be opened.
  • Grip stretch doesn’t work correctly when DYNMODE equals value other than 2 or 3.
  • DWG file fails to insert into another DWG file.
  • Can crash when Copy/Paste a block by Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
  • Can crash when opening AutoCAD LT in Windows 10.
  • AcSettingSync.exe launched when running OPTIONS command.
  • Annotations in Architectural units format are changing to Decimal format.

Who Should Install This Service Pack for AutoCAD 2017?

Apply this Service Pack to the following Autodesk products running on all supported operating systems and languages. Be sure to install the correct Service Pack.

This Service Pack can be applied to AutoCAD 2017 installed as a standalone application, AutoCAD-based Vertical products, and the Autodesk Design Suites listed below.

AutoCAD and Verticals Products:

  • AutoCAD 2017
  • AutoCAD LT 2017
  • AutoCAD Architecture 2017
  • AutoCAD Civil 3D 2017
  • AutoCAD Electrical 2017
  • AutoCAD Map 3D 2017
  • AutoCAD Mechanical 2017
  • AutoCAD MEP 2017
  • AutoCAD P&ID 2017
  • AutoCAD Plant 3D 2017
  • AutoCAD Utility Design 2017

Autodesk Design Suites:

  • Autodesk AutoCAD Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Inventor LT Suite 2017
  • Autodesk AutoCAD Revit LT Suite 2017
  • Autodesk AutoCAD with Advance Steel 2017
  • Autodesk Building Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk Factory Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk Plant Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk Product Design Suite 2017
  • Autodesk Revit Collaboration Suite 2017

Issues Resolved by This Service Pack

Display

  • Xrefs on a frozen viewport layer would still be plotted
  • AutoCAD in Citrix might not default to the primary display adapter.

 

Open and Save

  • Opening a drawing file using an Excel hyperlink was repositioning the AutoCAD application window.

PDF Import

  • Importing a PDF Underlay that was attached with relative path could fail.

Xref

  • The Xref status incorrectly displays the “Needs reloading” message when the dataset is opened from a UNC path to a shared folder.

General

  • When opening drawings created with AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD might crash if the drawing was saved again.
  • Plotting with certain visual styles might produce incorrect results.
  • Migrating custom settings might fail.

 

Source

Download the Autodesk AutoCAD 2017 Service Pack 1 here

Download Accumulated hotfix 4 for AutoCAD 2016 based products here

Download Accumulated hot fix 4 for AutoCAD 2016 here

NVIDIA GRID – AppGuide (AutoCAD)

Hi All.

I want to share this with you all, Luke Wignall and his team from NVIDIA have created some great AppGuides, that helps with understanding how many users can you put on a NVIDIA GRID system with either K1/K2 in a VMware environment. These guides are made together with vendors such as Autodesk. The guides focus on following apps Autodesk AutoCAD.

In this blogpost my goal is to highlight the great work NVIDIA have done creating the scalability app guides and these guides helps you if you want to virtualize Autodesk AutoCAD 2015 with NVIDIA GRID and VMware Horizon. The guides are great – cause they give an idea what you would require in a virtualized environment and these can be reused for other virtualized platforms such as Citrix and Microsoft – keep in mind that results might be different. If you would like to get more informations about how the setup is configured and which methodology i recommend you read the AppGuide, you can download it in under source in the end of this article.

The appguides gives a great idea to understand the impact of CPU and how the GPU are giving value.

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AutoCAD_2016

About AutoCAD 2015

Autodesk AutoCAD is one of the most globally used software platforms for CAD design and documentation.  AutoCAD leverages both CPU and GPU to deliver a high quality user experience, and as a result, there are several things that need to be considered in architecting your GRID vGPU solution: the size of your map data, the concurrency of your users, and the level of interaction with primary 2D and some 3D data.

Results NVIDIA Appguide for Autodesk AutoCAD 2015

autodesk-nvidia-vmware

The following are results of our testing, looking for the greatest scalability while still within performance expectations.  It’s important to note that your users, your data, and your hardware will impact these results, and you may decide a different level of performance or scalability is required to meet your individual business needs. As the Catalyst benchmark does not push AutoCAD’s GPU capabilities, and was built to push the limits of dedicated hardware versus the shared resources of VDI, the decision was made to stop testing once the CPU was approaching 100% utilized and test times had climbed past twice what we were finding on the a single physical workstation with dedicated resources.  We then met with the Autodesk AutoCAD team, discussed the results, reviewed the tests in action, and physically verified that this was still within what a typical user would deem acceptable and usable. When running AutoCAD, anything higher than 20 FPS is awesome, but users generally don’t notice the difference once you exceed 30 FPS.  However, once you drop below 10 FPS, the software is going to feel very sluggish and become unusable by the time you hit 5 FPS. • 20 fps above is good • Below 10fps – sluggish • 5 fps – unusable

  • 32VM : K220Q perform better than K120Q but K120Q is still maintain avg 31FPS. 
  • 40VM : Due to vGPU configuration, need K120Q, avg FPS is 24 FPS
  • 48VM : one you hit 40 VM running, avg FPS is dropping below 10 FPS. 

AutoCAD requires significant CPU resources, so investing in higher CPU speeds and more cores will pay off on performance and scalability.  For medium to large models, K240Q performance might be better for a real use scenario. Since your own situation is different, you must test with your own models to ensure the most accurate results. The chart below shows a comparison between two different sets of VDI guests, one using the K2 and its K220Q profile, the other a K1 and its similarly sized frame buffer profile, the K120Q:

äutocad2015_scaling-01

Notice that as scale, the number of concurrent VM’s increases, there is an obvious drop in performance, and logs will show this is the CPU becoming 100% utilized.  This is a “peak workload” test as all sessions are started in unison, we would expect humans to be more staggered in their workflow.

The next chart shows results when we add that synthetic human behavior, we delay the launching of each session by 5 seconds, this offsets the tests and prevents all tests hitting the same function and impacting the CPU in unison.

äutocad2015_scaling-02
Notice that with delayed launching, or staggered starts, the performance remains high to a much greater scale of concurrent sessions.

Additional findings from this testing:
• vCPU –  2 vCPU are sufficient for this benchmark, however increasing model size and complexity will change this. 
• Virtual System Memory – 2 GB is sufficient for this benchmark, however increasing model size and complexity will change this.  
• K220Q/K120Q  : both show capped FPS caused by frame rate limiting (FRL) 
• vGPU has 45 fps frame limiter for performance balancing across multiple VM

AutoCAD 2015 Users per server

Based on the NVIDIA GRID™ Performance Engineering Lab (GRID P.E.L.) findings, NVIDIA GRID provides the following performance and scalability metrics for Autodesk AutoCAD 2015. These metrics are based on tests with the lab equipment shown in the graphic below, using the Cadalyst benchmark, and in working with Autodesk and their emphasis on end user usability.  Of course, your usage will depend on your models and equipment, so this Application Guide is intended to be used as a starting point for your implementation.

autocad-users-per-server

 

Source

Download the NVIDIA GRID vGPU APPLICATION GUIDE FOR AUTODESK AUTOCAD 2015 ON VMWARE HORIZON here

 

AutoCAD mouse pointer issues with Citrix XenApp 7.6

Citrix have released a limited hotfix for Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 and XenApp 7.6 that fixes an issue with Autodesk AutoCAD & AutoCAD Civil 3D where the  mouse pointer permanently displays as an hour glass. By applying this hotfix this fixes the issue for AutoCAD.

Source

Download the ICATS760WX64039 – For VDA Core Services 7.6 for Windows Server OS (64-bit) for Citrix XenApp 7.6 here