Raster Design

Steve Johnson over at blog nauseam is reporting that Raster Design 2011 appears to be set to ship on July 20, 2010, some four months after AutoCAD 2011 started shipping. The Raster Design 2011 Object Enabler was released about a month ago.

Click here to view Steve's post for more information, including a link to a PDF with even more data on ARD2011.

Is this affecting you? Have you needed Raster Design and/or the Object Enabler? Has this prevented you from upgrading your AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map, or Civil 3D?

Almost five years ago, I ran across an issue where the SHIFT key was not working as expected, specifically when trying to "hot grip" multiple grips. At the time, I found that Raster Design had hijacked the shift key to allow for image selection. Read more »

The Raster Design Object Enabler for the 2011 versions of AutoCAD, AutoCAD Map, Civil 3D, and other AutoCAD based applications is now available. Click the link below.

Raster Design 2011 Object Enabler | Readme File

Be sure and grab the correct version for your O/S (32-bit vs. 64-bit). Read more »

If you have Civil 3D 2011 and need to import raster images like MrSid and ECW format (who doesn't?), then you will need the Raster Design Object Enabler since there is no Raster Design 2011 yet. But wait, there is no Raster Design Object Enabler for 2011 either. Oops.

Fortunately, someone figured out how to hack the 2010 RD Object Enabler so that it will work with Civil 3D 2011, and the resident MAP guru, Murph himself, posted the solution over a month ago (AutoCAD Map 2011 needs this hack too...). Since the 2010 version works for 2011, I'm not sure why Autodesk has not written an installer for it. IMO, support for these image types should be built into Civil 3D and Map anyway.

I do not have any information on when to expect a 2011 version of Raster Design or the RD Object Enabler.

UPDATE (31 JUN 2010): The Raster Design 2011 Object Enabler has been released. Read more »

If you are using Raster Design (ARD), take a few minutes and explore the ARD Options dialog (command name IOPTIONS).

We frequently edit raster images using Raster Design (ARD) by merging vector linework back into the raster image. In almost every case, we wish to discard the vector entities after performing the merge. Read more »

I have ran into this problem a few times now so thought I would write it up...

If you have AutoCAD or a vertical installed along with Raster Design, and your Shift key stops working for things like "Shift+Pick" to remove objects from selection sets, or "Shift+Pick" to make mutiple grips hot, then this might be the solution.

Run the command IOPTIONS
Go to the User Preferences tab Read more »