Random AutoCAD hot fix addresses unrelated issue….

I was going through my list of bugs/problems with Civil 3D 2008 and checking 2009 to see if they had been addressed.  One issue i had was with AutoCAD tables in 2008.  The table row and column headings (you know, A, B, C & 1, 2, 3) did not appear.  That has been addressed, sort of…

Inserting a table gives you those headings now.  But yuck, the default shade of white background just hurts my eyes so back to black it goes. OK, let’s edit the table now. Oh crap, now where did those headers go?

It seems as though the table headers, which normally have a gray background are really transparent for me.  So what’s different? Video card? Installed apps? After much comparison internally, my initial finding seemed to imply that people with Civil 3D have the problem. Contacting Autodesk confirmed that is NOT Civil 3D but that they would effort to find out what might be the issue.

That was a few weeks ago. Every month, we get an AEC bulletin showing recent hot fixes, resolved issues and workarounds that seem to be relevant to the larger community. In that bulletin was news of a hot fix for Raster Design 2009; “Solid Filled Object Hotfix.” Hhmm, could this somehow be related? Here’s the description:

This hot fix addressed problems with displaying solid filled objects in AutoCAD drawings.
While opening drawings with solid filled objects such as dimension arrows, the solid filled objects may not appear when AutoCAD Raster Design 2009 is installed.

 

I thought to myself, those headers are solid filled. I do have Raster Design installed. Maybe this will resolve the problem.  So I download the hot fix, which is merely a replacement for a DLL in the Raster Design folder. I then restart Civil 3D and insert a table – It’s fixed!