DraftSight Advisory (Rant)

Update from OP:

After much gnashing of teeth, and even trying to get the $300 DraftSight purchase price removed my credit card, I decided to pony up the additional $100 for phone support.

We were able to find an apparent bug that would occur when trying to launch DraftSight from a desktop shortcut vs an icon in the task bar at the bottom of the screen. In other words, the graphics anomaly occurs when launching from a desktop shortcut, and does not occur when launching from an icon in the task bar at the bottom of the screen.

It has been reported to the developers as a bug, and they will apparently inform me if/when a resolution is found. I will report here if I find that it is not the fix I'm hoping for.

So while I'm annoyed I had to pay an additional $100 for the phone support, I'm happy that we "may have" fixed the problem.

As you were men.
 
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jmarkwolf said:
It has been reported to the developers as a bug, and they will apparently inform me if/when a resolution is found. I will report here if I find that it is not the fix I'm hoping for.

So while I'm annoyed I had to pay an additional $100 for the phone support
Click to expand...

Not a bad business model: Charge the customers for bug fixes. I guess I've been doing it wrong all these years o_O
 
Yep-yep. Great biz model for sure. Look at how many years that has been going on. -hehe
That's the only way I managed to get it to run. I drilled into their folder/sub-directory, and opened/executed the application directly from there.
They ought to pony something up for that type of P.P.P. bug and the fact that you had to pay $100 for phone support.
 
It gets better.

I have a two-screen system.

I just discovered that what has been preventing my software from running since I bought it three months ago, is the fact that the desktop shortcut was on a different screen than the screen that the software opens up on!!!!!

If the shortcut resides on the same screen that the software opens up on, then the software runs fine. If they're on seperate screens, then no go.

It appears to be utterly repeatable. I've tried mixing and matching the locations of the shortcut and the software a dozen times. The software always runs fine if I launch it with a shortcut that is on the same screen!

I don't know if this is somehow unique to my computer, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else can recreate this issue on their computer.
 
jmarkwolf said:
It gets better.

I have a two-screen system.

I just discovered that what has been preventing my software from running since I bought it three months ago, is the fact that the desktop shortcut was on a different screen than the screen that the software opens up on!!!!!

If the shortcut resides on the same screen that the software opens up on, then the software runs fine. If they're on seperate screens, then no go.

It appears to be utterly repeatable. I've tried mixing and matching the locations of the shortcut and the software a dozen times. The software always runs fine if I launch it with a shortcut that is on the same screen!

I don't know if this is somehow unique to my computer, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else can recreate this issue on their computer.
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You have got to be kidding! Seriously? That is some really poor programming. . .
I've got a Quad-Screen setup. I'll try later this evening and see what happens.

*Edit*: Decided to try this and then head out to the shop for a bit. And I'm sorry I'm running v2017.
I did go ahead and tried creating a new shortcut on the desktop and then launching it from the icon placed on each screen. No problems, FWIW.
For grins&giggles I clicked on the "BUY PROFESSIONAL NOW" in the right hand window.
Doesn't say what version they're offering, and for $149 'annual subscription' and $299 'One time purchase', what are you getting if you've got to spend another $100 for phone support?
 
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$100 buys a phone number that at least you can ***** at somebody! :)

The current version is 2018 SP1. I updated my SP0 to it today hoping that it would be the fix, but alas.

Since I get many years of use on my mechanical CAD software (currently running ACAD LT 2010) so I don't mind paying $299 for a "perpetual" license. ACAD LT is now $400 each and every year under the new licensing program.

But at least it's working now and I can load the newer file versions I'm getting from clients.
 
jmarkwolf said:
$100 buys a phone number that at least you can ***** at somebody! :)

The current version is 2018 SP1. I updated my SP0 to it today hoping that it would be the fix, but alas.

Since I get many years of use on my mechanical CAD software (currently running ACAD LT 2010) so I don't mind paying $299 for a "perpetual" license. ACAD LT is now $400 each and every year under the new licensing program.

But at least it's working now and I can load the newer file versions I'm getting from clients.
Click to expand...
So you are back on track and functioning?
 
middle.road said:
So you are back on track and functioning?
Click to expand...

Well, the software ran all day yesterday without mishap, so... maybe.

My video card is not on the "approved list" so there may still be some surprises. Keeping my fingers crossed (and it's not easy to type that way). :)
 
My video card is a Radeon HD6570 w/1GB memory, and it is not on their very lengthy approved video card list. None of my other CAD software packages have any problem with this video card.

The Minimum Requirements list indicated that the video card should be "3D Graphics Accelerator with OpenGL version 3.2 or better".

They recommended the Nvidia Quadro 400, 410, 2000, 2000D, or 4000, which is apparently the series that the developers use. The cheapest of which is $130.

They are the same people that produce SolidWorks which is the high-end 3D mechanical design software. I imagine that software requires some high-end performance graphics. They're not gonna swap out the graphics cards when switching back and forth between developing DraftSight and SolidWorks.

I also had an issue where DraftSight wouldn't print out the window I specified. It would print a "different" window, but not the one I selected, even though all the Print Previews showed correctly. That turned out to be a printer driver issue. I updated the driver and it worked fine.

The support guy suggested that even if my video card works for DraftSight, it may have issues with SolidWorks. I did indeed have some corrupted graphic artifacts the little bit that I ran SolidWorks, so...

This software is QUIRKY. Probably just jinxed it by saying that! :)
 
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