RobiNZ CAD Blog

Autodesk University 2010 E-Badges & Twibbon

I’ll update my status as things evolve but currently “I’m Attending, Speaking, Exhibiting” don’t quite apply so had to make a slight adjustment!

Autodesk University - Autodesk University 2010 E-Badges

Spread the word about your participation in Autodesk University 2010. This set of AU 2010 e-badges can be added to your website, blog, or email blasts to colleagues and customers, then linked to the AU 2010 Conference or Exhibition page. Badges are available in three sizes…

Visit the AU 2010 Twibbon page now and add the AU Twibbon to your twitter avatar and Facebook account

Revit User Group Wellington - July Meeting Announcement

When: Wed 28 July 2010
Where: Productspec HQ, 14 Holland St, 5.30 - 7.30pm
Presentations:

• Scheduling linked files..?  We've solved it..!  Come along and find out how.
  We will take you through nested families, linking parameters, project parameters and the difference between component and annotation parameters.
  Then, just when you thought you were all parametered out Matt will take us through shared parameters and how to best manage them.
• Old Skool XP: We follow up with the batch renderer utility on an old skool XP.
• Q&A Session : Have your question answered in the open Q&A session..

Thanks Precision : )
Precision have sponsored this session and provided the delectable gastronomic treats - thanks guys.  Matt will also run though a demo of their new Revit content created by Productspec  and the Precision BIM Team.

New Zealand Places Third at Microsoft Imagine Cup

Congratulations to Team OneBeep!

New Zealand Places Third at Microsoft Imagine Cup - Communicado - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

“We’re all extremely proud here at Microsoft New Zealand today – Team OneBeep from the University of Auckland took out 3rd place at the worldwide finals in Poland for the Imagine Cup”

“Focusing on the One Laptop Per Child programme and its 1.4 million deployed laptops, Team One Beep came up with an inexpensive and robust method to solve the problem of sending educational content to these laptops, which are sent out to impoverished schools and communities in areas of the world where there are no phone lines, let alone internet services.”

Whacky Xref insert scaling? Check INSUNITS

Working in old files brings out some obscure problems. Items long since established, corrected, in templates/projects leap out of the past to confound you again. This time it was an ancient old site reference file that refused to insert correctly scaled.

That can happen if sites are drawn 1 Unit = 1 Metre, vs. buildings at 1 unit/mm, but that wasn’t the case. The factor was about 25.4 x larger and Imperial Units can trigger this. However, they were correctly set to metric.

It turned out to be the InsUnits setting which was set to 1 (imperial), not 4 (metric). This is saved in the drawing so must be checked/set in the file you are linking, not the destination file.

INSUNITS (at AutoCAD 2011 on-line help):

Type: Integer
Saved in:Drawing
Initial value: 1 (imperial) or 4 (metric)
Specifies a drawing-units value for automatic scaling of blocks, images, or xrefs inserted or attached to a drawing.

Revit User Group Auckland – July 2010 meeting announcement

At Jasmax, 2 Marston Street, Parnell, on Wednesday 21st July 2010

• 5.30pm : Join us from 5.30pm for Drinks and Nibbles ($5 donation-receipts available)
• 6:00pm : Welcome and Introduction
• 6:05pm : Presentation:
• Revit Architecture Case Studies with Steve Davis from Assemble (20mins or so)
• Panel Discussion: 'Structural Design and Documentation with Revit Structure' (40mins or so)
• Philip Kendall, BECA - Zane Priest, Buller George Turkington - Andrew McCabe, MSC
• Chaired by - Steve Davis, Assemble
• 7.00pm : Wrap up - Tips, Tricks & Open Forum

Please RSVP attendance by 5pm on Tuesday prior, for catering purposes, via the link at : http://www.rugakl.org/.
A Meeting Register is taken for NZIA CPD Points.

The new banner is where I live!

A view from the Waitakere Ranges of: Waitakere City, Auckland CBD, North Shore, Rangitoto (Volcanic cone) and, in the far distance, Coromandel Peninsular. I actually live 370m below this, in the foreground, so usually see this view, puffing, after cycling up the hill. The road is called "The Scenic Drive" and lives up to the name!

I write like…

I was happy with this analysis, from the text of a TAMOz related post, as the first one I tried said "Dan Brown"!

I write like
Isaac Asimov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I wish I did write like Isaac. I’ve certainly read many of his books, fiction and non-fiction, and the hefty autobiographical volumes: “In Memory” & “In Joy”. It was quite a while back as had to order at the local Library and remember struggling to fit them in my school bag. I doubt this analysis is reliable as Isaac was a genius, I’m just a blogger. Perhaps Dan Brown was a more honest… NO!

 

A simple fix to open the broken Outlook Window

I was on holiday today but a call from a friend had me in PC repair mode. The problem was Outlook 2007, on a home PC so no Exchange, refusing to start with the message:

"Cannot start MS Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window”

This one was new to me so I ran Office Diagnostics to check the install. That was clean so a bit more research was required to find this simple fix. Just fire up Outlook with the command:

Start > Run > Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

After that Outlook started normally from the icon, back to the holiday!

Learn about AutoCAD 2011 with Lynn Allen

Lynn Allen recently posted some awesome video tour/demo/training media. A series of short videos lead you through the new and improved features in AutoCAD 2011. Of particular interest to me were the enhanced 3D tools, especially as AutoCAD now offers surfacing tools more often seen in dedicated mechanical & modelling packages. For 2D work the “Parametric Constraints” and “Everyday Productivity Tools” sections are a must while Hatch & Transparency satisfies the artist that lurks inside every CAD user!

Together the videos form a concise, but complete, introduction and each topic is a separate “video chapter” making it easy to review them as you wish. One feature I liked on the player is the toggle to silence the, frankly rather annoying, background music.

AutoCAD 2011 Overview - www.adskmedia.com/autocad-2011

Thirteen years, where did they go?

According to Outlook, today marked thirteen years since I joined The Warehouse Limited. Coincidentally, yesterday a question regarding the area of a long closed store had me ferreting through an old plan* (below left) which represented TWL store design at about that time.

Since then we have evolved from 2D CAD to BIM with tools that seemed like science fiction not much more than a decade ago. Although technology, and the world, has changed the reasons I decided TWL would be a good place to work remain. So, it’s back to work tomorrow!

 

* This plan was a trace of a hand drawn building so old it was dimensioned in feet & inches!

Revit User Group Manawatu - Notice of July Meeting (tonight!)

When/Where

5.30pm, Wednesday 7th July 2010 @ Square edge fx2 theatre, Ground Floor to the rear of Square Edge Gallery, The Square, Palmerston North

What:

5:30pm - Drinks, nibbles and chit chat session.
6:00pm - Welcome and introductions
PRESENTATIONS:
6:05pm - View templates - Discussion on how to create and utilize view templates as a time saver by Daniel Thompson
6:25pm - Working with Roofs - Discussion on various methods to create roofs, add fascias and gutters by Sam Pradeep.
6:45pm - Annotation made easy - Discussion on how to use material tags to annotate your drawings in minutes at the click of a button by Scott Sellars
7:05pm - Filled regions - Discussion on how to edit and work with filled regions including being able to use your favourite AutoCAD hatch patterns in Revit by Matthew Argyle.
7:20pm - Discussion on next month’s topics
7:30pm - Close of meeting

10 NZIA CPD points available for Registered Architect's. Please bring your $2 donation as a contribution towards refreshments on the night. Please confirm attendance to RSVP@rugmana.org.nz

Solving the Snagit blackout and non-ActiveWords?

Something changed on my machine recently and impacted two of my favourite utilities.

Screen capture blues from the black, and non-ActiveWords

I went to take a screenshot and the capture looked like a photo taken in a coal mine with the lights out. You could see all the Snagit capture UI working perfectly (something like the faked image right) but the screen and resulting capture were solid black.

The Clues:

A quick trip to Techsmith support was in order but my ActiveWord “snagn”, which should launch the Snagit website, didn’t work. If the browser wasn’t running it launched and opened the site as expected but entering the ActiveWord in an existing browser had no effect. Then I found other ActiveWords didn’t work in the browser either. Strange?

I found this post regarding black/white/incomplete captures at Techsmith and it mentioned some security software blocking screen captures, including ZoneAlarm (which I use).

It recommended adding Snagit to the safe list which is found under Program Control>Programs in ZoneAlarm. However when I checked both Snagit and Snagit Editor were already listed and trusted to interact with other applications.

A trip to the ZoneAlarm forum revealed another clue from “ab-onguard”;

I am able to use SnagIt 9.1.3 by changing my Zonealarm Extreme Security suite 9.1.008's Forcefield's browser security settings/Advanced/Uncheck "block programs that secretly record your keystrokes". Without doing the above, SnagIt would not capture any "profile" settings. I have not had any SnagIt issues since !

The fixes;

Configure ZoneAlarm and fix ActiveWords:

I configured ZoneAlarm as suggested by disabling the “Anti-keylogger” section in the Browser Security (below). That restored ActiveWords functionality, which I guess does look like a key logger to AV software, but didn’t help Snagit even after a reboot.

Repair install Snagit and reboot;

I did a repair install of Snagit then restarted the machine and (as you can see from the screenshots in this post) all was good.

This also added a slew of other Techsmith related components to the ZoneAlarm trust settings and I wonder if that was a factor?

I can only presume some sort of ZoneAlarm update upset things but it was good to get these two applications back to normal!

100 AutoCAD Tips from CAD Notes

A while back Edwin, of CAD Notes blog, contacted me regarding a post he was compiling. He had the ambitious target of gathering 100 AutoCAD tips from his own and other blogs into one reference. If you’ve ever written a “tip post” you’ll have some idea of the amount of work involved in creating this one. I recommend it as even AutoCAD veterans may learn something new. I did!

The Best, the Rest, the Rare: 100 AutoCAD Tips You Should Know | CAD Notes

We all want to use AutoCAD better, more productive, and easily solve problem when we have one. So I compiled 100 AutoCAD tips in this article, and I hope can help you. Many of the tips were written by other great CAD bloggers, you may want to follow their blog/site as well…