When you see the “Unreconciled New Layers” notification on the bottom right corner of your drawing screen it is always a good idea to view the unreconciled new layers in layer properties manager and fix the layer otherwise this will surely bug you when you plot your drawings. Believe me! because if you are going to plot the drawing without reconciling the layers, the plot notification dialog box about the unreconciled object will pop up many times. If you have 50 unreconciled layers you have to act on 50 popup box before you complete your plot command. The friendly Ctrl+alt+del will come to the rescue, should you find yourself in a hard situation like this (boss is standing behind you, waiting for the print out of drawing )

So you know what to do the next time you see the layer notification as illustrated above. But what if upon clickng the wonderful “View unreconciled new layers in Layer Properties Manager” link you were welcome by the famous “MEP 2008 Fatal Error Notification box” what will you do then?

My advise, AUDIT & PURGE your drawing. This will remove the unused Autocad Blocks and layers in your drawing. Reconcile the drawing – if the error still persist then most probably the affected acad drawing may have exceeded the number of layer filters that could have been causing the fatal error. We have to delete these layer filters inorder to save drawing. I once encountered this error and when I look at the layer management I observed that layer names with different symbols and characters are present in my drawing. To workaround layer reconciliation without the encouter of autocad mep fatal error , reconcile the affected drawing by accessing layer manager (default shortcut command = LA). Delete the excess & erroneous layer filter by clicking the “yes” in the dialog box that will appear. Reconcile all the layers and you are done!

Should you have a nicer way to fix this problem please share by commenting on this post.

That’s all for today, I hope this help you in anyway.

Autocad MEP Fatal Error on Unreconciled New Layer is a post from: Free Cad Software

Its’ latest sighting is yesterday when an Electrical Autocad Technician is trying to convert an MEP2 2008 drawing to plain Autocad. Engineers from site requested him an Autocad version of one of the Electrical drawings of the project which we created in Autocad MEP (Previously ABS 2007.1) for their reference. For them to open the drawings properly the cad operator should convert it first to plain cad version otherwise the objects in the requested drawing will just appear like a series of rectangles and N/A. This problem has been mentioned in this post Autocad MEP Problems / Bugs.

So back to the simple file conversion task, normally to convert the MEP 2008 drawings to a plain Autocad version. Here are the common ways to make it happen.

• by envoking the command: “etransmit”
• by exporting to autocad, command: “_AecExportToAutoCAD2004“
• by converting to dxf via command: “dxfout”

He chose the second and to his surprise the friendly Unhandled Access Fatal Error showed. So this is the case where I have to enter the CADD scene to act like Mr. Cadd Inspector. I have to find a way to export the problematic MEP 2008 file to Autocad and the same time explore the problem.

The MEP 2008 Problem: Fatal Error occured while converting the AutocadMEP 2008 drawings to normal Autocad (any versions)

Actions Taken that didn’t work out:

• Export to Autocad version 2007
• Export to Autocad version 2004
• Copied all the objects of the affecetd drawings and paste it in new drawing, then run the export command
• Removed all the xref files, purge, building sytem purge (BldSysPurge) then export
• Unfroze, unthawed, unlocked and reconcilled all the layers

All of the above actions didn’t give positive outcome. All of them just resulted to the stubborn “fatal error” box. Of course, recreating the whole drawing is not an option

the MEP 2008 drawing loaded with electrical device, custom wire styles and tags

The Work Around

Actually, to workaround this problem, all we have to do is run a series simple and common commands. Here are the four steps to deal with it.

1. Select all the MEP objects in the drawing
2. Explode (Only once so as not to disarray the device and annotation symbols)
3. Bind the xref files
4. Saveas to required Autocad version

Exploding an MEP object will convert it to autocad block. Exploding it again will make the block separate lines or arcs.

Another observation for this workaround is that after exploding, the colors will be changed according the original color setting assigned on block of the device. It will not retain the color as set by the MEP 2008 layer keys.

Screenshot before exploding . Note the device and drawing object colors.

Screenshot after exploding . Note the device and drawing object colors.

I observe the changing color as follows:

• If the drawing block color is set to “bylayer”, after exploding the color become the default color which is white
• If the drawing block color is set to “green” (or any other color), after exploding the color will become “green” (or any other color).

This is not the perfect solution but atleast I can can now the converted Autocad drawings which is needed urgently by our people on site. As to why the error occurs, I still don’t know. Errors such as this is really unpredictable in this software and requires indepth knowledge of the software.  Afterall Autodesk has a well experienced team that can deal with it extensively.  Should they need error reference to start debugging where the error originates I’m sure they have plenty of error files to start,  I’ve sent them bunch these using Autocad MEP 2008 auto-generated error report.

I wish this problem will not be around on the Autocad MEP 2009.

Fatal Error: Unhandled Access while exporting to Autocad MEP 2008 to Autocad is a post from: Free Cad Software

Here is the list. When I receive the upgrade I’m going to return in this post to see if Autodesk take it into consideration, a bug fix or improvement nonetheless.

MEP file format change. ABS 2007.1 can’t read MEP 2008 drawings properly. Actually this is not a bug, this is in fact a backward compatibility issue which I believe the software developer are aware of. I just wish they will allow introduce a way to enable the older MEP versions to read the Autocad MEP 2008 and above properly. Not a square or rectangle of acad proxies and the pesky N/A for the tags/annotations.

Saving takes too long. Yes, that’s right. In comparison to ABS2007.1, file saving in Autocad MEP 2008 is longer than the time it takes to save the same file in ABS2007.1 I recorded the time it takes and surprisingly, each file takes around 2 minutes saving time. While doing our MEP drafting work, how many time you think you are saving? I’m saving my drawing more than often, and with MEP 2008 it mean 2 minutes downtime.

Instability Issues and Crashes. Well, this is really the most annoying feature ever incorporated in MEP 2008 . Hold the annotation, the software will crash, zoom in and out your MEP 2008 will crash, print preview you will be prompted with the popular “fatal error” dialog box. As I’ve said, the this error I receive is unpredictable. With 50 workstations using the MEP 2008 imagine how much headache this problem is giving me. If this problem will be solved in MEP 2009 I will be the happiest man in our department.

Dialog box are slow to appear. In MEP 2008, each discipline has its own property pallettes assigned. A very cool improvement from ABS 2007.1 but don’t rejoice yet. There is a slight problem. Whenever I’m adding a pipe or a duct for example (commnd=pipeadd or ductadd) the pipe add dialog box or the duct add dialog box takes time to appear.

So there goes the major problems I encountered. Of course there are minor issues but I those things I can tolerate.

Let see if Autocad MEP 2009 considered this problems – my cadd software miseries…

Revisiting Autocad MEP 2008 Bugs / Problem is a post from: Free Cad Software

Here are the new features other than what mentioned in the product brochure. Thanks Toby (autodesk) for sharing this info to us.

Interference Detection
This is a new tool to check for collisions between objects in AutoCAD MEP. The tool allows you to find hard and soft collisions (such as clearances), zoom into the problem area, resolve the issue and navigate to the next one. Check boxes allow you to select which MEP objects to check as well as different building elements to check against.

Part Numbering
This is a new annotation tool used to number Duct and Pipe parts for scheduling. This replaces the Pipe and Duct Fabrication tag tools formerly found only in the UK profile. You can number individual objects or a system of connected objects. As items are added or deleted, you can update the numbering or re-number the entire run. There is also an option to use the same part number for identical parts.

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Electrical Enhancements
There have been major improvements in this area. Load Categories have been added for all devices with Power & Lighting connectors. These Load Categories determine which Demand Factor value to use in the panel load calculations. Demand Factors have been revised to allow for changes based on quantity of objects or ranges of loads. Also, the largest motor is automatically determined and a different Demand Factor can be set for it. Demand Factors are now applied to each panel calculated load instead of individual circuit loads.

Circuit Manager is now a modeless palette, similar to the Properties Palette or the Tool Palettes. Circuit Manager can be docked on the side of the screen (or a second monitor) and will roll-up out of the way when not needed. New header and footer sections have been added to display panel properties as well as overall panel load totals, spare capacity and phase balance.

The Electrical Project Database is now a separate file with .EPD extension. Any drawing linked to an EPD file will be able to utilize any panel and circuit linked to the same EPD file. Multiple files can be linked to the same EPD file to share loads across your drawing files.
Panels can now be linked to other panels so loads can be accurately transferred across an entire electrical distribution system. Panels in the current drawing can be connected to any panel in the same drawing or to any panel in the linked EPD file. Panel-to-panel connections are shown in an offset manner in Circuit Manager (similar to Windows folder structure).

Panel Schedules are now based on AutoCAD tables instead of Visual Basic code. Table style “templates” can be created to match company-standard panel schedules. A few schedules have been created as examples and these are found in a Panel Schedule Table Styles drawing in the Styles directory.

Multiple Catalog Selection
Multiple part catalogs can now be used for each discipline. It is now much easier to keep custom content separate from the default content that ships with AutoCAD MEP. When adding parts, the different catalogs are identified to allow you to select the proper part from the desired catalog.

User Interface and Tools
Pipe and Pipe Fitting Add and Modify are now based in the Properties Palette. All of the options for changing properties while adding or editing pipe objects can now be found in one location. The Nominal Size field only displays sizes available from the selected Routing Preference. The Elevation control has been updated to allow selection of predefined elevations (from Options setting) as well as accepting typed values directly. Routing Preferences are also now stored on Pipe and Fittings.

External drawings can be utilized for Routing Preferences and System styles so these no longer need to be stored in the templates. Styles will only be brought in when an object is added. The ModifyRun command replaces PipeModify. Also, graphical one-line rise drop styles have been improved.

Plumbing Line and Plumbing Fitting Add and Modify are also now based in the Properties Palette. All of the options for changing properties while adding or modifying plumbing objects can be found in one location.

The selection dialog for devices, panels, schematic symbols and plumbing fittings has been enhanced. In the past, the tiny “worksheet” button had to be selected. Now, the Properties Palette displays an image of the part. Just click on the picture to bring up the dialog box to select a different part.

When you select a pipe, duct, conduit or cable tray object, you now have a quick way to select all of the objects in the same system, system group, domain (i.e. all piping objects or all duct objects) or connected branches. This can be found on the Edit menu or on the right-click context menu for each object.

Schematic Lines and Fittings
Drawing and editing schematic layouts is much easier with new grips to add, lengthen, move, flip and rotate objects. Associate moving (also called “sticky move”) is utilized to connected schematic lines and fittings know how to move in relation to each other.

Solution Tips
The former defect marker has been replaced by solution tips. A yellow triangle with an exclamation point will display a tool tip indicating the problem as well as possible solutions. The solution tips can be turned on and off as needed – this is now a user setting, not a drawing setting as before.

Export to AutoCAD
In the past, using Export to AutoCAD in Model view would result in some items being exported as 3D solids while others were exported as 3D faces. Everything is now converted to 3D solids.

Hmm.. looks like there are quite a few enhancements and fixes on the new release. Among the features mentioned, I’m more then excited to see electrical panel schedule enhancement in MEP 2009. In MEP 2008 and previous release the electrical panel schedule is not easy to modify. For company based in Middle-East, the panel schedule feature of out of the box MEP 2008 and older version don’t give that much benefit!.

I hope that customization of Electrical Panel Schedule Format is easy as promised on this year’s Autocad MEP release.

NCS!! – where is our software upgrade? can’t wait to have it..

New Features of Autocad MEP 2009 is a post from: Free Cad Software