CADBlockStudio for AutoCAD LT — Beta Quick Start

Ten minutes, start to finish. You need AutoCAD LT 2024 or later on Windows, and the beta code you were issued. LT 2023 and earlier cannot run this — those releases have no AutoLISP, and nothing we can do changes that.

1. Install

Close AutoCAD LT first. The plug-in files are locked while a session is open, and installing underneath one leaves a half-applied build that looks broken.

Run CADFlow-Beta-Setup-LT.exe.

Windows SmartScreen will warn you — click More info → Run anyway. The beta build is unsigned, and that warning is exactly what an unsigned installer is supposed to produce. It goes away when we buy a signing certificate.

Setup shows you which AutoCAD products it found before it copies anything. If it lists your LT and says -> CADBlockStudio, you are in the right place.

If this computer has never had AutoCAD LT started on it, LT may ask once, on first launch, to approve the plug-in files. Approve it; you will not be asked again. (On a machine where LT has run before, the installer registers the approval for you and you see nothing.)

2. First run

Start AutoCAD LT. You should see a CADBlockStudio tab on the ribbon.

No tab? Type CBS at the command line — it opens the same thing. If *that* does nothing, skip to When something is wrong.

3. Sign in

Click Sign In on the ribbon (or type CBSLOGIN) and enter your beta code.

The same code works in AutoCAD and in AutoCAD LT, and one computer uses one seat — if you run both products on this machine, you are not burning two.

You can browse the catalog without signing in, but inserting a block asks for the code.

4. Insert a block

1. Click Block Library on the ribbon (or type CBS).
2. Pick a category on the left, then a block on the right. The preview draws in the panel.
3. Click Insert.
4. Answer the prompts — insertion point, scale, rotation — and the block lands in your drawing.

The first time you insert a given block it is downloaded, so there is a pause with a progress message on the command line and in the status bar. The same block again comes from the local cache and is effectively instant.

A note on the progress bar in the dialog: on a long download it animates for about five seconds and then sits still until the download finishes. That is a Windows limitation, not a freeze — the command line keeps counting, and it is the honest place to look.

Other things worth trying:

5. When something is wrong

Run CBSDIAG first, and send us what it prints. It reports the installed version, where the bundle loaded from, whether the menu registered, the trusted-path state, licence status, cache size and the last catalog error. Nine out of ten questions we would ask you are answered by that output.

Two self-repair commands before you give up on it:

• CBSREPAIRMENU — the ribbon tab is missing or duplicated.
• CBSREPAIR — general: re-registers the menu, re-checks the trusted location, reports what it fixed.

Then send us the report:

• the tickets page on the beta portal, or reply to the mail that carried your code;
• include the CBSDIAG output, your LT version, and what you were doing;
• a screenshot helps more than a description, particularly for anything visual.

The log file is at %APPDATA%\CADBlockStudio\Logs\ — one file per day. Attach the current one for anything that looks like a crash or a hang.

6. What we most want to hear about

This is a beta, so the honest list of what has *not* been proven by us:

• Insertion by hand. Every insert path is tested by script; you clicking a point is the one we most want confirmed.
• LT 2024, 2025 and 2026. We have tested on LT 2027. The earlier releases are expected to work and have not been measured. If you are on one of those, your install is genuinely useful data.
• Attributed and dynamic blocks. Handled in code, never exercised against a real one.
• Slow or filtered networks. Every cloud call goes through a helper with a timeout; we would like to know what a corporate proxy does to it.

And anything that made you hesitate, even briefly. A confusing label is a bug.