RobiNZ CAD Blog

Revit Technology Conference 2008 - Revit User Group Sydney

The Revit Technology Conference is happening in Sydney, late June. I attended the NZ event last year & it was a great Revit focused “Mini Autodesk University”. It’s a chance to hear about the latest in BIM technology, see how others are applying it (in real projects), learn new techniques and meet fellow Revit users. I know several from the Revit User Group of New Zealand are attending. See the link below for more information on the event & registration:

Revit User Group Sydney :: RTC 2008 - www.rugsyd.com.au/rtc2008
Following the success of our Roadshow in 2007 (Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland, Melbourne, and Perth), the RTC Committee have pleasure in inviting you and your team to attend the Annual Conference to be held in Brighton Beach, Sydney. The Conference aims to draw attendees from throughout Australia and New Zealand, as well as other Asia Pacific regions.
The 2008 Annual Conference is to be held Thursday 26 June – Saturday 28 June at the Novotel Brighton Beach, Sydney.

Tags: rugsyd

Cosmic connections

Today’s space news and too long spent playing with blog design* this weekend made this cosmic blog‘toon seem rather relevant.

From the excellent xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

* Only some of which made it to the published blogs

Technical illustration, demonstration and art with Silverlight

Michael Scherotter created the impressive illustration, and functional demo, below with Microsoft’s Silverlight & Expression tools. His post details the creation process, how it’s hosted and shared. It’s embedded here with a Windows Live Gadget.

Nice work, Michael! Now I’d like to see a cut-away view showing the internal mechanism….

Synergist : Beauty with Silverlight

I used Expression Design, to convert the logo to XAML, then set out to recreate the timepiece in Silverlight.
Here's what I came up with:

Weblog design changes - Work in progress

If you’re reading the feed you won’t have noticed but visitors to the weblog page will see some layout changes. I’ve changed the side-bars to a right hand layout and “de-cluttered” them:

• The media “I’m reading, watching, listening” side-bar lists are now only on my Personal Blog.
• The TypePad Photo Album links are gone:
  • I’ve uploaded all the existing images, and over 4000 others, to Flickr Collections & Sets which can be accessed via the Flickr “badge” in the "My Blogs" section of the R/H side-bar.
  • My future photo content will be on Flickr but if you want to see the old albums the links will remain on my Personal Blog.

Hopefully this should make things look a little cleaner and load a little faster. I welcome comment on these changes, better or not?, and any suggestions for more!

Rod Drury has a plan to fix Microsoft

Rod, Xero, Drury has an 18 point plan to “fix” Microsoft. It’s ambitious (there's a few points below) and it’s radical but I suspect, with the $50 billion not spent on Yahoo!, they could do it. 

Rod Drury > If I was in charge at Microsoft

1. A lightweight operating system. Forget backward compatibility.

7. Buy a big Services company. Maybe HP

8. SilverLight has to win, or buy Adobe.  Don’t let Apple get them or you’re done.

Global "BIMStorm" Forecast to hit London

A reader emailed me about BIMStorm London which is happening in June (details in the extended post). BIMStorm aims to raise the awareness of BIM and how the AEC industry is, or should be, using collaborative tools for projects. Teams will compete, using BIM platform(s) of their choice, to create a master plan for a site in London. If you want to participate in, or watch, the BIMStorm events read on…

An Aussie Tablet PC Blog!

It’s good to see some, reasonably, local Tablet PC resources.

Tablet PC Blog - blog.tabletpc.com.au
Australian Tablet PC information resource

via www.gottabemobile.com/

Mindjet acquire JCVGantt - Syncronised Mindmaps and Gantt Charts

I depend on MindManager to aggregate and manage project information from many sources into a “dashboard”. It’s also a great planning tool providing rich, but simple to edit, task, process and resource information. For me a project, of any type, generally starts with a MindManager Map.

The downside is, for most people, in our business one expected project plan deliverable is a Gantt Chart. I actually despise the mythical linear view of projects promoted by Gantt Charts. It’s so far from the “churn” of my project reality as to be nearly useless as a reference. That’s why I prefer maps with their relational, hierarchical, but not linear presentation. Before today I’ve used the “Export to MPX/Project” feature in MindManager to satisfy the demand for a Gantt Views. Sometimes I tweak the results but the downside is it’s an export so any changes in Project do not update the source map.

One add-on I’ve tested, and seriously considered buying, in the past is JCVGantt. It was, yes was, a 3^rd party application which offered powerful project planning tools – including Gantt Charts, Resource Allocation and Costing – with a bi-directional link to MindManager. The only reason I didn’t get it was cost and I had little need to maintain, as opposed to create, this sort of project planning.

That has changed so I was pleasantly surprised, actually shocked, to see an announcement that "Mindjet have acquired JCVGantt" appear in my feed-reader today. JCVGantt was always a seriously good product and there are currently some great add-on, bundle and upgrade deals on offer from Mindjet. If you want to try it first, like MindManager, there is a free trial but I won’t need it. They just sold a copy to me…

Above is my first attempt after installing JCVGantt. I’d seen the web demo and read the first 2 pages of the “5 Minute Quick Start”, which showed how to sync a branch in MindManager to JCVGantt, then just leapt in. Whether you edit the Map or JCVGantt/Project views changes are sync’ed to the other application. Adding task info, dependencies, resources, costs in JCVGantt views would be familiar to anyone using “that other Project software”. In fact I think it’s easier and more powerful for the average user. Then you have the added delight of having all that data in a Map view which can be edited knowing the “Project” is being updated as you do it.

I’ve still got a lot to learn in JCVGantt but so far I’m impressed. Who knows, I might even get to like Gantt charts…

MindManager Pro 7 with Mindjet JCVGantt for Visualizing and Managing Information
Provides effective project time management, helping executives, project managers and event organizers improve the accuracy of their time and cost estimating while decreasing the time it takes to plan a new project.

• Quickly calculates the total project cost
• Instantly identifies the project’s critical path
• Create charts in minutes with drag-and-drop GanttParts^™, designed to let you think through a project schedule once, and then use it again.
• Easily assign the same resources to multiple projects.
• Full ink support enables hand-written projects on Tablet PCs
• Instantly synchronizes data in both the JCVGantt and MindManager for increased productivity throughout the full project life cycle from business analysis, gathering requirements, planning and execution

Tags: JCVGantt

Microsoft is cloud building, with lots of servers...

There seems to be plenty of news about clouds, even when the weather is fine! 

It’s not about stormy weather, but rather “Cloud Computing”. It featured in Microsoft’s presentation at Autodesk University Technology Mainstage, just last December.

Since then they’ve released “Cloud” related technologies like SkyDrive, Mesh and a Silverlight update. None of that is news but this line, from an article on Exchange email hosting in the cloud, caught my attention:

“Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it continues to build up its infrastructure, adding roughly 10,000 powerful computer servers a month to its data centres.”
Microsoft braces for major email shift - Stuff.co.nz

Of course, they are chasing Google while still flirting with Yahoo!…

Tags: Microsoft

David's Design ReForm

David Fano’s Design ReForm is a blog with tutorials and explorations in parametric modelling using applications like 3ds Max, Revit, Maya, and Rhino. I hadn’t found it, until he emailed me, so I’m really glad he did.

Go have a look, I’ve subscribed!

Web: http://designreform.net/       Feed: http://designreform.net/feed/

Sony's HD Foam

Sony are at it again! After Balls, Paint and Play-Doh Rabbits it’s Foam!

470 Million Litres of foam, shot in the streets of Miami!

From http://www.sony.co.uk/images via Sony NZ

Why New Zealand needs a new flag!

I’m not picking on Corel but the image (left) is from an email upgrade offer for Corel X4. Since it’s distributed in both Australia and New Zealand by the same company you just have to pick the correct button for each country to place your order in local currency.

Can you tell?

When I was on holiday in Viet Nam we found, in a rather remote place, a cafe (below) which made quite a feature of selling “X Cream” New Zealand ice cream. It was very nice and even came with free broadband access. The thing was, and I didn’t notice when I took the photo, the shop sign featured an Australian Flag!

Did they know? If a Kiwi didn’t why should they?

  

That’s why we need this:

NZ Flag.com Website - www.nzflag.com
This site is intended to stimulate debate about the New Zealand Flag. We want all New Zealanders to ask whether the current flag represents our country as we see ourselves today? Can we improve it?
Does it portray the image we want to give of New Zealand internationally?
Most importantly, does it inspire us?

Revit User Group of New Zealand - Notice of May Meeting

The next RUGNZ meeting is to be held on 21^st May at Jasmax's Offices - Level 4, 65 Upper Queen Street.

The agenda includes a presentation by Melanie Tristram on Revit Architecture 2009, discussion and a chance to share your work (if you wish).

Full details & RSVP at http://www.rugnz.co.nz/

Novedge Pulse, a CAD blog'gregator

I suspect, hope, I’m not the only blogger who uses a “vanity search” to see who’s linking/mentioning his content*. When I got back from holiday the feed showed a bunch of links coming from a new site. Pulse is Franco Folini’s, of Novedge, aggregation site which gathers a bunch of blog content (extracts only with links to the full post) into one “CAD, AEC & DCC Super site & RSS Feed”.

In addition to providing an overview of a wide range of content it also allows readers to vote on the worth, or otherwise, of content by registering a “Beat” (keeping the Pulse going I guess) or a “Burn”. Click on the “Bloggers” button and you’ll see a gallery with thumbnail portraits of all the contributing bloggers. Thankfully there’s no  vote on that page

Novedge Pulse™ Today - www.novedge.com/Pulse
The Pulse of the Graphics & Design Community

* If you're considering blog names having a "non-word" made up name, RobiNZ, makes this a lot easier!

Tags: Novedge

HP Marketing the Tablet PC!?

It’s great to see Tablet PCs getting some promotion in the Aussie Education market. There is little sign of them in retail outlets in New Zealand, even specialist computer stores. I’m still convinced if  the benefits were better marketed more people would pay the Tablet premium. My experience is that people are amazed when they actually use a Tablet, it’s just that they [still] don’t know about them!

This HP Promo video does show a couple of tests I’d probably avoid with the Tablet (same model) we have at work…

via GottaBeMobile

Stunning street animation

This is off-topic but I couldn't resist sharing it. Blu's streetscape based animation is amazing.


via DRAWN!

Microsoft Office Labs open for experiments

Microsoft Office have opened a “Labs” with previews, a blog and more.

Microsoft Office Labs
We're a group of designers and developers that collect ideas from all over Microsoft (but mostly from Office and other products related to 'getting stuff done' - what we call 'productivity'). We build working prototypes of the most promising of these ideas to see if they work as well as we hope they might…

Foxit PDF Reader 2.3 not foxed by PDF drawings with hatch

Foxit’s remarkable little free PDF reader was always good for documents – better than Adobe’s I reckon – but sometimes choked on drawing PDFs with dense hatch patterns. This was seen as an endless draw/re-draw refresh loop as it struggled to render the line-work.

Since we use DWF for drawings it really didn’t concern me but I’ve found it seems to be fixed in the latest 2.3 update. I’ve tried PDFs up to 40–50mb with very dense hatch patterns and images and they render fine.

Foxit is a free PDF Reader that is a tiny download (2.55mb), loads really fast, doesn’t run updaters that crash or nag me to download unrelated junk software I don’t want. It just views & prints PDFs quickly, which is all I need. 

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/

Tags: foxit

A memorable holiday

They now have a Kiwi Cap
Originally uploaded by RobiNZ

I've been off-line while cycling around Viet Nam but I'm now back in New Zealand and catching up with things*.

Will be sharing more of my holiday but, by far, the overwhelming memories I have of Viet Nam are of wonderful people and scooters!

Everywhere you go there are happy smiling faces and the ever present hum, beep beep, of small engined scooters carrying the most incredible loads...

Some of the holiday snaps are now on Flickr


* Have released some comments which were being held and turned off moderation. If you posted/emailed a question will be in touch as I get the chance.

LinkedIn via RSS

I do LinkedIn but I don’t Facebook. However, thanks to this post on LinkedIn Vs Facebook I found out LinkedIn have added a personal RSS feed to the startup page. That’s cool!

Log into LinkedIn and click on the RSS icon by “Network Updates”. It will generate a feed link to add to your RSS Reader.

LinkedIn vs. Facebook 6 Months Later - ReadWriteWeb
“LinkedIn now provides an RSS feed into my start page, so I can quickly scan what my contacts are doing, adding a touch of serendipity as well as pure curiosity.“