AutoCAD 2008 Customer Involvement Program

With the release of the Autodesk 2008 family of products, Autodesk offers a new Customer Involvement Program (CIP). The CIP enables you to help guide the direction of Autodesk design software by automatically sending Autodesk information about how you use the software. This sounds a little scary and, if you’re like me, you probably dismissed the CIP dialog box (which displays automatically when you first run AutoCAD 2008), without even reading the information. No worries! Here is some of the information you missed:

The Customer Involvement Program (CIP) is a program that dramatically improves the way Autodesk designs software and measures performance and quality. It lets customers be involved in helping make Autodesk products better meet their needs and the needs of the larger community of users.
Included in nearly all of Autodesk’s latest product releases, CIP automatically collects information about software features usage, system configuration and software errors from those customers that choose to participate. About once a day, a small file containing CIP information is sent to Autodesk’s servers.

Autodesk software designers and developers use this information to:

• Identify typical usage patterns
• Learn how new and experienced customers discover and use new features
• Learn how customers use multiple Autodesk products in concert to accomplish tasks
• Understand how features behave in complex, real-world configurations
• Learn more about error conditions that may be caused by software defects or configuration issues

The Customer Involvement Program collects the following types of information:

• Autodesk product commands used
• Name and version of your Autodesk products
• Operating system name and version
• System configuration information like processor, memory, and graphics card
• Errors conditions
• Format of data imported or exported from your Autodesk product
• IP address (used to estimate your country of origin)

The CIP program DOES NOT send actual design information to Autodesk so it is not possible for Autodesk to replicate your actual drawings or design information using the CIP information.

So what do you think? Are you ready to help define the future of AutoCAD? You can start or stop your participation in this program at any time.

To join the Customer Involvement Program:

1. Select Customer Involvement Program from the Help menu.
   


2. In the CIP dialog box, simply select Yes and choose OK. To discontinue participation in the CIP program, access the CIP dialog box again, and select No.
   

That's it! If you participate in the Customer Involvement Program, AutoCAD automatically sends the specified information to Autodesk. You don't have to do a thing!