Tag: Defect

Scripting Bug in Fabrication Versions

7 Jul 2025 Darren Young

There’s a bug that crept into Autodesk Fabrication versions that prevent some COD scripts from running. Any Script that accesses the Item Product list [item.product / item/product.*] will likely fail in the initial shipping version of 2026 and any prior Fabrication version’s update that was released on May 21, 2025.

Here’s what that error looks like when you attempt to run one of my scripts. The code you run may be different but you’ll see a “Simple Variable Not Expected” error in the script and the highlighted line will likely have “item.product….” somewhere in there.

This affects the scripts I have on this site including….

  • WriteAllDatabaseIDs (Job).cod
  • WriteAllMiscProperties(Job).cod
  • Extract Product List Data (Library).cod
  • WriteAllDatabaseIDs (Library).cod
  • WriteAllMiscProperties(Library).cod

Here’s a list of versions that work vs have the bug…

VersionFabrication Bug
2026.0.0Yes
2025.0.2Yes
2025.0.1 & EarlierNo
2024.0.4Yes
2024.0.3 & EarlierNo
2023.0.5Yes
2023.0.4 & EarlierNo

Autodesk has confirmed this bug/defect and it should be fixed in an upcoming update. If you need to use COD scripts that accesses the product list data, I recommend using one of the versions without the bug until Autodesk releases a fix.

Thank you to my network for alerting me to this issue.

Scott Hendricks / Virtual Building Supply
Ken Taylor / Atlantic Constructors

Thanks also to Craig Farish at Autodesk for digging in and validating the defect and queueing up a future fix. I tend to beat up Autodesk a bit, but Craig is one of the good guys behind the scenes helping our industry.

ESTmep/CAMduct – Area/Weight Missing

18 Jul 2022 Darren Young

In ESTmep and CAMduct, if you use the 3d View and stretch duct to add pieces, you end up with duct that has zero Area & Weight. This also means you have zero cost for that material.

This is a confirmed issue that’s been around forever. I’ve tested from 2016 thru 2023 and can reproduce in all versions.

Here’s what that looks like…

The Fix

The good news is, there’s a quick fix (workaround) you can deploy to update the weight and area. Using Notepad, you can make a quick COD script that updates the ITM’s. Below is what your script should look like…

Once you create the COD script, it’s recommended you put it in the SCRIPTS folder of your Fabrication Configuration. From there, you can make a process that calls the script which will update all the ITM’s to their proper Area and Weight. The display on the Item Takeoff may not refresh. If so, just browse to another tab and back. Here’s what that looks like….

So, which this doesn’t “Fix” the issue, it does work around it fairly easily. Just run the process before running and reports or data exports.

Fabrication 2022 Bug – Configure Users

21 May 2021 Darren Young

If you run Autodesk Fabrication as a multi-user installation, there’s a defect in the Configure Users utility. When you run the utility from a 2022 installation, it won’t read any of the user accounts you have configured.

In fact, the only way to login, is to use the Default Administrator account Autodesk uses if there are no users configured. It won’t read your Administrative account regardless of what the login is. To see the issue, you can use the following to login and see the problem…

User Name: Administrator
Password:  Admin

Once logged in, there will be one account. You can make more but when you exit and come back in, those accounts don’t show up. IN fact, even the original Administrator account isn’t there, it’ll make a new one. The following image shoes the users accounts that were created in 2022 be repeatedly going into it. Next to it is the 2021 utility showing those same accounts. As you can see, they are there, its just 2022 won’t show them.

Note that all the other Fabrication products will read/honor the accounts properly. It only seems to be the Configure Users utility that had the issue.

How to Determine Which Version of Configure Users To Run

To make things ‘easy’, Autodesk chose not to add the version in the name of the shortcut. Simply looking for ‘Configure Users‘ shows a lot of indeterminate results.

To pick a particular version, Right-Click on one of the shortcuts and select ‘Open file location‘.

This will display a File Explorer window to the location of the shortcut you selected. As you can see below, the one I happened to pick was for CAMduct Components 2016. The product doesn’t matter, only the version, You can navigate back a folder then pick one of the Fabrication products for any version you want. 2021 and earlier will work.

Not sure if or when they’ll get around to fixing this. While 2022 has had a few issues fixed, they didn’t release any updates (yet) for 2021. Regardless if they fix it or not, it’s easy to work around by using any other version.