Monday, May 16, 2016

My Ongoing Saga of Autodesk Desktop Application

This poor half blind, lame in one-leg, incontinent piece of software continues to amuse and aggravate me. Twice in the last two weeks it has let me know I'm missing some updates.

Amusingly and aggravatingly ... they've all been installed already.

So I indulge it and try to install them again thinking that will help it see better. Nope ... sure enough ...the application that needs the update figures out it is installed already.


Typical response for all four items...

8 comments:

William Sutherland said...

Thanks for posting this Steve - I thought it was just me that this happened to :)

Matt Taylor said...

Hi Steve,
I wonder whether it doesn't recognise the difference between a single user install and an all user install?
I've not had any issues (but I can install as admin).
I have noticed that there's the occasional addin that doesn't like being installed using elevated rights while a (standard) user is logged in. It wants the admin to be logged in properly.

Just throwing that out there!

Paul F. Aubin said...

Same here

Matthew said...

Yep. "Aggravating" is putting it nicely.

Aside from the general brain-deadness of the app - e.g., sometimes forgetting which components are installed, downloads which do not complete, installs which do not complete, updates advertised which do not apply to your system, etc. - there are a couple of other irritants:

1. Say you don't want to install a component, such as the Revit 2016 Extensions, which caused our lab machines to become very unstable. In the older App Manager you could tell it to ignore the component and problem solved. Not so with the Desktop App. The only way I can get it to ignore a component is to download it, start the install, then cancel it. Mediocre!

2. Try to find the download link for the Desktop App and you likely won't find it anywhere. You may have to download an entire 2017-based product to find it buried in the installation files.

kenk said...

I have been having the same problem, in fact it says I have an update for AutoCAD MEP 2017 and it's not installed.

Dave Baldacchino said...

Suggestion to all out there: make sure to disable it in your deployments. I installed it on just my machine (responsible for most ADSK deployments) just so that I have a way to get notified of updates to some ADSK software. Then I either initiate the install from the notification just so I can collect the installer and then cancel the actual install (why they didn't give us a simple "download" button in addition is beyond me), or head over to the Autodesk Account (another downer) to download from there.

Things were much simpler and worked way better years ago with a simple feed that Autodesk curated and we all subscribed to, but no, let's kill something that workd properly and give our clients this additional POC software that has so much more added-value...(*turn sarcasm off*)

Anonymous said...

This example is a republish of the revit extension. They “almost” have the same name. The second one has an extra “v1”.
The readme should have asked you to uninstall the older one.

Anonymous said...

All, for the Revit 2017 versions of Batch Print, DB Link and Model Review we re-released them with a v1 designation since the original version was not signed properly. In the description and readme for the new v1 posting, we clearly state that the previous version would need to be uninstalled.

If you have direct feedback on the Autodesk Desktop Application (ADA) please provide such information within the Feedback dialog inside of ADA. All feedback submitted is being closely monitored and is being used to set the direction for future enhancements.

Sorry for the confusion,
Gerry Huot
BIM SQA Manager
Autodesk, Inc.