The Foundation For a Streamlined Design Environment

While at a software conference last year that happened to be at a casino, I chose to partake in a little card playing. I am not an experienced gamer but a friend had recommended that I try Pai Gow poker. This game offers some flexibility in how you can play your hand depending on how aggressive you want to be. I found myself faced with a particularly tricky hand that could be played a few different ways. The dealer, noticing my indecision suggested a basic rule and informed me that this is what "the house" would do. The rule seemed simple and my initial reaction was that more thought should be put into it. But, I glanced around at the thousand dollar chandeliers hanging above each table and said, "well, the house seems to be doing pretty good".

The point being - simple can be effective and when it seems a situation should have more thought or effort put into it, ask yourself if there really is a benefit or is unnecessary complexity being added?

Laying down a simple "out-of-the-box" foundation is a great start to building an AutoCAD based network environment. Don't get bogged down trying to figure out how to deploy a specific menu, profile, or custom app - this (and more) can all be added later and if you have a stable, robust foundation in place it will be much smoother to work with.

Having a network deployment image for out-of-the-box AutoCAD local at each office is one of the most helpful and basic tools for maintaining a streamlined design environment. To create a network deployment image refer to the AutoCAD Network Administrator's Guide.

There are several options that can be built into the network deployment image. I always leave it as a silent install and out-of-the-box (except for licensing, see below). This will provide a flexible base platform that will allow for customizations to be added post-install. So instead of maintaining multiple network deployment images, start with a common base that can be used as a starting point for everyone.

Depending on how your AutoCAD license agreement is setup you may want to add the license server as a Windows Environment Variable in your network deployment image. You can use a batch file (and reg.exe) to modify the Environment Variables later on (i.e. for different offices or if your license servers change).

I will share some techniques that I use to deploy (and maintain) different user profiles in upcoming posts.