Guest post by Christian Barrett Senior Civil Applications Specialist at CADTECHS  and of course on Twitter at @Civil3Dguide  Be a Guest Author on Between the Lines

If you have used any Autodesk product, especially some of the AutoCAD vertical products, such as AutoCAD Civil 3D  you may have likely seen the pop-up box shown below. Yes, the dreaded error report or known by Autodesk as the CER report!

You know, that annoying box that you close, while you complain about the software crashing once again. Possibly saying something like this, “I’ll be glad when this bug gets fixed”! Here is a news flash for everyone that has ever just closed that error report, Autodesk® may not know about your issue, because you keep choosing not to report the error.

For your benefit and the benefit of all users, we should always, submit our error reports. If Autodesk doesn’t know about your issue, and possibly the same issue that others are having, then the odds of the issue must be reduced when no or at fewer error reports or being submitted.

Would you not agree? In my attempt to increase the number of error reports Autodesk receives form all of us users, I am going to explain how I believe the error reports work. For more information click on the links on the error report next time, you manage to crash your software. Also, read the benefits listed on the error report.

The first thing that usually happens when we get an error is, a pop-up box showing the error in a coded format. Most of these errors are simply listing a Windows® error, it is not the magical code that pinpoints exactly what has went wrong, as many perceive. There is no master list containing each error code that the Autodesk staff can look at and determine, the issue, or how to correct it sometimes the codes are directly useful.

Next, you get the error report shown above. This is what you need to do. Put your email addressee in the box. You will only have to do this once, and if you ever contact Autodesk support for help, they can pull all of your error reports based on your email address used in your reports. Then, give a description of what steps you were taking when the error occurred, more is better, but a simple sentence is better than no information. I sometimes add a funny phase or something of that nature, hopefully get my report a little more attention, or just to give the technical staff a giggle.

After you submit your report, you will automatically be connected to the Autodesk server to check for any updates or service packs that may correct your issue. I have been helping many people when the error report pops-up and about as quickly the user closes the report. When if they had only submitted it, even with no information in the boxes, they would have been informed of the available update. If there is not an update that may correct your issue, you will receive a message like the one below.

Now that all of us are reporting all of our errors, Autodesk has many more error reports, allowing them to know exactly how many times an issue is causing a problem, and how many users are experiencing that or other issues. If we do not report the issue, crash, bug, etc…, then how can we expect the issue to be corrected?

Do yourself and all of us users a favor, and never click that little red box in the upper right corner again, always submit your error reports!

Thank you Christian!

Shaan>
When your issue is fixed if you provided a valid email you will be notified of the update of your issues fixed by email.Also all error reports  are immediately submitted into the system and reviewed by a real product QA person and researched for trends and where the code failed. Of course Autodesk cannot fix issues that occur outside the products like system related but most products updates have a high priority of error reporting reported fixes. Also be sure to mention in the comments what you were doing as that may provide a key clue as to how the failure occurred. These error reports have significantly resulted in the increase in product quality for all users.

Bottom line report error reports and tell others otherwise the issue may never be known to Autodesk and fixed.

Cheers,
Shaan

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