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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

DEVELOP3D LIVE, Warwick, 31March 2016

develop3dlive

Hi all, if you are looking for an event that is all about CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM, Rendering, 3D technologies, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3D printing then is FREE!! then DEVELOP3D LIVE is the event to  join. Rachel Berry opened my eyes going there last year 2015 and she made me come all the way from Denmark to Warwick and it was worth the long trip 🙂 If you are looking for travel advice Hotels and such I recommend you read Rachel Berry blogpost, I use myself Kayak.com 🙂 that always saves my life when i am traveling around the world and if you want it cheap use Airbnb.com.

My things learned from DEVELOP3D LIVE 2015

I went there and had high expectations and I was in for a surprise. It was all about above and much more  I saw for the first time Carl Bass the CEO of Autodesk, Gian Paolo Bassi the CEO of SolidWorks, Jon Hirschtick the CEO of Onshore and the founder of SolidWorks, Nikola Bozinovic the Founder and CEO of FRAME, and many many more.

I got my hands on the HP Zvr for the second time, I saw the unit for the first time at NVIDIA GTC in 2013 and HP have acquired the company. I also saw another favorite Augmented Device the HP Sprout, which is an amazing unit. 3Dconnexion was off course also there so all my favorite CAD peripherals and next gen tools.

Below is the picture of Carl Bass CEO of Autodesk talking at DEVELOP3D LIVE last year and Rachel Berry trying Fra.me solution

Carl Bass CEO AutodeskRachel Berry trying out Fra.me

Meet the Speakers of DEVELOP3D LIVE 2016

I am looking very much forward meeting a good friend of mine Adam Jull from IMSCAD Global.
Adam and his team have been early adapters of HDX 3D Pro like myself, so its great to see a pioneer talking at Develop3DLive.

d3dlivespeakers1

d3dlivespeakers

I am also looking very much forward meeting the NVIDIA team + my favorite CAD genius Rachel Berry and also see if AMD have something interesting to show like the Multiuser gpu if its ready for that time.

 

Get your ticket for free here for joining the awesome CAD event in beautiful Warwick. If you never been to UK well this is your reason to go, learn from the best and brightest people on CAD and see the beautiful country side of England. Two awesome things.

Citrix XenServer (next release) Tech Preview 2

Citrix have release Tech Preview 2 of Citrix XenServer (next release). Great news for customers, partners, cloud providers using Citrix XenServer. The XenServer team have improved again the Dom0 and made the hypervisor even faster, this will be interesting to see if XenServer will be faster than the competitor VMware vSphere. Intel GPU virtualisation is now part of the hypervisor and again Citrix is leading the GPU virtualisation space as nr 1 compared to Microsoft and VMware. If you have a server with Intel Iris Pro graphics on Broadwell and Haswell processors equipped with the C226 chipset you can now virtualise the GPU to a VDI/XenApp. Software thin provisioning for SAN is now available in this release so XenServer better can utilise storage and not consume lots of space with “block based” as previously releases, a lot of customers is going to love this feature + a lot of new awesome features…

Important information before testing this release.

Known Issues and Advisories in this Tech Preview 

ï‚· NVIDIA vGPU cannot be used in conjunction with this Tech Preview. GPU Pass Through is supported. So if you have NVIDIA GRID vGPU running in your environment and you upgrade with this technical preview, I advise you not to do this.

Why Citrix XenServer Tech Preview 2

As a core component of the Citrix portfolio of products, Citrix continually strive to ensure that XenServer remains the best possible platform for hosting Citrix solutions, and for fulfilling the needs of server virtualization and Cloud customers.

This Technical Preview 2 offers enhanced features and functionality for application, desktop and server virtualization use cases. In addition to improved support for large-scale Microsoft Active Directory infrastructures and enhancements to XenServer control domain responsiveness, the Tech Preview includes:

  • Improved heterogeneous pool support
  • Support for software-boot-from-iSCSI for Cisco UCS
  • Support for hardware-accelerated graphics processing
  • Enhanced block and file based storage features
  • Increased scalability

Terms of access and use

  • The Tech Preview 2 is only available to existing customers, and requires a Tech Preview license key. The license key is available from this page and needs to be installed on a Citrix License Server.
  • This preview is intended only for existing Citrix XenServer, XenApp or XenDesktop customers.
  • The previewed features and enhancements are being considered for inclusion in future versions of XenServer.  They have not yet been fully integrated or productized, and there may be debugging code in place.
  • This is not a fully featured release, is not intended for use in any environment other than test or development, and should not be used for production workloads. Citrix does not guarantee that any preview features or functionality described here or within the downloadable product will be made available in a future releases.

Providing feedback and reporting bugs

To help us produce the best quality product and improve future releases, please report any issues you encounter at https://tracker.citrix.com/projects/XSB/

Whats next in Tech Preview 2

Simplified Heterogeneous Pool Support 

Enables new hosts to be added to existing resource pools, irrespective of the underlying CPU type (as long as the CPU is from the same vendor family).

VMs can now freely migrate within and across pools, irrespective of the particular CPU features the VM may be using.

These enhanced agilities are delivered without recourse to any command line expressions and do not require any hosts to be rebooted. Page 2 Copyright © 2016 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix XenServer Tech Preview TP2: Release Notes v2.0 January 2016

Software-boot-from-iSCSI for Cisco UCS 

ï‚· Enables XenServer to boot from SAN via iSCSI, complimenting existing FC boot capabilities.

ï‚· XenServer can be installed to, booted from, and run from a LUN provided by an iSCSI target, which is specified in the iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT).

ï‚· Helps reduce infrastructure costs by removing the need for expensive Fibre Channel HBAs.

To use this feature, see Enabling Software-boot-from-iSCSI later in this document.

Intel GVT-g virtual GPU for Windows 

We continue to collaborate with our partners, in driving innovation in the virtualized-graphics domain. Within this Tech Preview, we showcase Intel’s virtual GPU; a graphics acceleration solution that requires no additional hardware:

ï‚· Uses the Intel Iris Pro functionality on Broadwell and Haswell processors equipped with the C226 chipset

ï‚· Utilizes a standard Intel GPU driver, installed within the VM

ï‚· Experience the benefit; simply RDP into a Windows 10 or a Windows 8.1 VM and run a graphically demanding application

Software Thin Provisioning for SAN 

With thin provisioning, a small amount of space is allocated initially to VDIs, which grows on demand, leading to far more efficient utilization of storage space. This will enable a significant reduction in the cost of ownership for the storage component of a SAN-based (LVMoiSCSI and LVMoHBA) XenServer environment.

This contrasts with previous versions of XenServer which only supported fully provisioned storage for block storage.

Support for SMB Storage 

XenServer is now able to use SMB1 storage as an SR type.

1 SMB is sometimes referred to as CIFS.

2 Press F10 when the installer boots to enable boot-from-SAN and to configure Open-FCoE settings.

Customers with existing SMB storage (ubiquitous in many Microsoft environments) can now utilize SMB as their XenServer SR, and therefore may need no additional storage for their XenServer environment, enabling significant potential cost savings.

Support for Offline Storage Migration 

Enables storage migrations to be undertaken with the VM in a stopped or suspended state. Currently customers are only able to migrate the storage of a VM, if the VM is actually running.

Support for NFSv4 

Adds support for the current version of the NFS standard and complements the existing NFSv3 support, delivering additional performance improvements.

Support for Open-FCoE 

Supports software FCoE, which can be configured easily using the XenServer installation program. Software-based FCoE delivers the same benefits as hardware-based FCoE. It alleviates the need for using expensive HBAs, but does so using less-expensive network adapters, in an entirely software-defined manner.

This Tech Preview also supports boot-from-SAN from Open-FCoE and includes an updated installer2 to assist with the configuration of Open-FCoE.

Improved Performance & Scale 

We continue to deliver ever greater performance and scale, enabling customers to realize economies of scale and processing efficiencies.

Increased Host Memory 

Support for up to 5 TB of system memory, accommodating even the largest workloads.

Support for up to 1.5 TB of Memory per VM 

For memory-hungry VMs3, such as those running databases, we now support up to 1.5 TB of memory.

Improved Dom0 Responsiveness 

The responsiveness of Dom0 has been significantly improved when subjected to heavy VM load.

Support for 256 CPUs 

Support for up to 256 physical CPUs, accommodating even the most powerful servers.

Increased number of VBDs 

Maximum number of VBDs per VM has increased to 255

Increased number of VBDs 

Maximum number of VBDs per host has increased to 4096

Enhanced Active Directory Support 

Delivering improvements for customers with large numbers of objects within their Active Directory, including improved login times.

Increased Size of Dom0 Disk Partitions 

By moving log files to a larger, separate partition, we enable more detailed logs to be held, over a longer period of time, improving the ability to diagnose issues. Simultaneously, this alleviates demands on Dom0’s root disk, which can sometimes lead to out of space issues, due to log file disk space consumption.

Single-threaded Storage IO 

Customers should notice significant improvements when using high performance/low latency storage.

Networking and Storage IO 

Higher throughput for Networking and Storage IO in aggregate usage scenarios.

Support for New Guests 

Introduction of the following new guests:

ï‚· SLED 11.3

ï‚· SLED 12

ï‚· Debian Jessie 8.0

Platform Improvements 

This Tech Preview also incorporates the following platform improvements:

ï‚· Latest Xen hypervisor v4.6

ï‚· Dom0 now uses Centos v7.1 for user space

ï‚· Support for booting hosts using UEFI, anticipating the eventual retirement of BIOS configured servers

XenCenter Improvements 

Customers are now able to initiate SSH console sessions direct from XenCenter.

Citrix Health Check 

Customers are now able to automate the process of uploading Server Status Reports to Citrix Insight Services and receive notifications in XenCenter, regarding the health of their systems, based on CIS-generated reports.

Source

Download Tech Preview 2 here

Poppelgaard Professional Services :

Citrix technology professional – CTP, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional MVP, Thomas Poppelgaard provides professional services. Write to me on my email thomas@poppelgaard.com or call on my cell +45 53540356

thomas poppelgaard CTP & MVP