August 30, 2013

Release Notes - Readme file
Autodesk, Inc.

In a continuing effort to provide high quality products, this Service Pack 2 for Autodesk Alias 2014 fixes or addresses a variety of issues. This file highlights how to install the service pack and what has been fixed.

Contents

• Summary of Issues Addressed by this Service Pack

• Installation Instructions

• Legal Notice

Summary of Issues Addressed by this Service Pack

The following list contains descriptions for issues fixed in this Service Pack. For your convenience, the list is separated into distinct feature areas.

Modeling

• Turning on the "Minimum Radius of Curvature" option inside the Check Model tool may cause the check to fail or cause a crash.

• The Offset tool was failing to orient the normals of adjacent surfaces if the gap between the surfaces was less than the maximum gap distance but greater than the topology distance.

• New enhancements to form factor in Alias 2014 made it difficult to create true circular fillets, as could be done in Alias 2013. This problem was fixed in Service Pack 1 by adding a new section type to the Fillet tool, "G1 Circular", to make it easy to create circular fillets without affecting the form factor enhancements. In Service Pack 2, we added the "G1 Circular" section type to the Tube Flange, Fillet Flange, and Panel Gap tools to correct the problem in those tools.

• Adding the new "G1 Circular" section type to the Panel Gap tool caused a regression for centered gaps.

• The Align history could become corrupted and cause a crash on subsequent operations on the master surface, like Extend. In Service Pack 2, the invalid history is removed at first chance, without warning.

User Interface

• When opening a file/stage, the file browser was not initialized with the name of current stage.

• When deleting image planes from the Camera Editor, a crash sometimes occurred.

• When moving the cursor from one attached window to another with Auto Hide turned on, the Auto Hide feature was hiding the group.

• Sometimes the color grab tool grabbed the wrong color.

Render

• When the Multi-lister shader ball is drawn, the shader option "Use Environment" was not being respected. When this option was selected, the shader ball was drawn without considering environmental effects such as image-based lighting.

Miscellaneous

• The Save Layers plug-in failed to correctly separate layers when exporting to the EDF file format.

• The Hidden Line option did not produce a hidden line result in the Plot mode of File > Print.

• The environment variable ALIAS_ALT_HELP failed to redirect the help file location when General Preferences > System > Help Location was set to "Autodesk WikiHelp".

• Alias 2014 MacOS installations will now include a Makefile in the /Resources/ODS/OpenAlias/Examples/ directory which can be used as an example for how to build plugins.

Installation Instructions - Windows

• You must have administrator privileges on your local machine.

• Autodesk Alias 2014 must be installed.

• This Service Pack can be applied to Alias 2014 directly as it includes the SP1 update. If you have already installed Service Pack 1, there is no need to uninstall it before installing Service Pack 2.

• If you get an "Unable to initialize adlm" error after uninstalling a Service Pack, please read the following knowledge base article: Unable to initialize adlm error after uninstalling a Service Pack for 2014 products.

• If you have Alias Automotive 2014 with SP1 and/or SP2 installed, and you attempt to install Alias Surface 2014, you are blocked from installing at the configuration page with a message that newer version of that product already exists.

  Similarly, you are blocked if you have Alias Surface 2014 with SP1 and/or SP2 installed, and you attempt to install Alias Automotive 2014.

  This issue occurs only in the combination of Alias Automotive and Alias Surface. A combination of Alias Automotive and Alias Design OR a combination of Alias Design and Alias Surface is unaffected by this issue.

  Workaround

  Option 1

  1. Uninstall the Service Pack(s).
  2. Install the Alias that was blocked from installing (either Surface or Automotive).
  3. Install the Service Pack(s) again.

  Option 2

  1. Use the command line to install the Alias that was blocked from installing (Surface or Automotive).

     Msiexec /i <path to the MSI> /qb

     Where the path to the MSI from the DVD or download root directory is: /x64(or x86)/Alias/Alias20.0.msi

• If you are creating deployments and need to use the merge feature for service packs, then we recommend using the merge feature for all service packs. If you merge one service pack, then append a subsequent service pack, the second service pack will not be visible as an installed update and you will have difficulty uninstalling the appended service pack.

To install the Alias Service Pack 2 on Windows

1.    Download the Service Pack 2 to a temporary directory on the workstation.

2.    Double-click to install the Service Pack 2.

3.    The Windows SP2 Patch installer will "loop" through the install process several times, once for each of the Alias 2014 (Automotive, Surface, Design) products present on the client system. You will be required to click on "Install" once, for each of those loops, as applicable.

Installation Instructions - Mac

• You must have administrator privileges on your local machine.

• Note: There is now a SP2 patch available for Mac.

To install the Alias 2014 with Service Pack 2 on Mac

1.    Download the Service Pack 2 patch to a temporary directory on the workstation.

2.    Double-click the Service Pack dmg file to open the install folder.

3.    Right-click on the Alias 2014 Service Pack icon and choose Open With > Installer.

4.    If the message ""AliasAutomotive2014ForMacSP2.mpkg" is from an unidentified developer. Are you sure you want to open it?" appears, click Open.

5.    Install the Alias 2014 Service Pack 2 by selecting the relevant drive containing the Alias product.

Legal Notice

Autodesk, Alias, Maya, and Sketchbook are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other Countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may app