RobiNZ CAD Blog

Share edit, review AutoCAD files in the cloud - Butterfly

NOTE 2010-10-02: This partial article was lurking unpublished in my drafts folder. I have posted it, backdated to when it was written, for reference now the AutoCAD WS application is live. If nothing else will show how the app & service have evolved

Butterfly is a preview of a cloud based AutoCAD DWG editor

Looks like a bit like AutoCAD, except…

Butterfly has a simplified ribbon UX. The home ribbon combines the basics of file open, save modify and display. The Draw, Edit and View ribbons elaborate on this. Share and Timeline are unique to Butterfly to allow collaboration and tracking of changes.

Importing & Managing Files:

The files you edit must be uploaded to the Butterfly servers. Importing & Uploading files to Butterfly is simple and supports a variety of formats, including drawing related AutoCAD support files (CTB/STB etc)

Once imported drawings are managed in the Drawings panel

A home panel shows an overview of recent files & activity

  

Editing, feels like AutoCAD:

Actions like adding, selecting creating content are very AutoCAD’like although Butterfly doesn’t have a command window. Direct entry is like the cursor entry in AutoCAD.

Butterfly supports AutoCAD blocks and displays AEC object proxy objects

Incorporate Web Content

Place your project in context with the map features in Butterfly. It’s not exactly AutoCAD Map (or AutoCAD Civil 3D!) but allows aerial photo or street view maps to be placed in the project edit space.

Share and Review, better than AutoCAD:

One benefit of being cloudy, server based, is collaboration. Butterfly supports an edit workflow and timeline history to track drawing reviews.

 

Even on a Mac:

I sent an invite to a colleague who uses those computers with an Apple. The current implementation of Butterfly uses Flash and will run fine on a Mac, if not it’s iPhone/iPad cousins. That may change as Autodesk investigate HTML5 and other alternatives as the technology serving Butterfly is not Flash dependent.

 

See it in action:

Try it: Project Butterfly - butterfly.autodesk.com 

Read the blog: The Project Butterfly Blog - autodeskbutterfly.wordpress.com

Special Webcast on Autodesk Design Application updates

Be sure to register for a webcast with Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and Senior VP Amar Hanspal coming up this week. Last year I had the privilege of seeing a similar event live (a webcast without the web!) and the effort that goes into production was amazing. This year I’ll get to see the webcast from the other end of the wire (or is it fibre?).

Special Event Next Week - Between the Lines

We have invited some blog, discussion group, and social media participants to visit with the AutoCAD Teams next week in the Autodesk San Francisco office. The webcast is available for registration now. http://www.autodesk.com/webcast

Pacific Fibre, a new pipe for those big downloads?

I wonder if Stephen knew I’ll need to download GB of cad software in the future?

Pacific Fibre – It Had to Happen at diversity.net.nz

“Anyone that follows the New Zealand domestic web space will have noticed a crescendo about international bandwidth…”

“Announced this morning is Pacific Fibre, an early stage international fibre venture founded by a group including Stephen Tindall, [Sam] Morgan and [Rod] Drury. Hell even the blogosphere gets a look-in with local boy Lance Wiggs having a role…”

Internet Explorer “Website found. Waiting for reply” forever?

I had a weird Internet Explorer problem the other night. It would load some sites fine but others connected, then got no further than this message: “Website found. Waiting for reply”. The Waiting eventually timed out with a connection timeout error.

It wasn’t the connection (other sites worked), the browser (IE on other machines in the network worked fine) or the site (other browsers worked). This wouldn’t have been too bad except among the sites that wouldn’t load were my TypePad blogs! A web search revealed answers of varying complexity from browser patches, security settings changes and router resets which all seemed a bit drastic. It seemed odd the problem was machine/browser/network specific so I tried the most basic of repair.

A clean up using Internet Options>Delete Browsing History with Preserve Favourites Website Data, Temporary Internet Files, and Cookies selected was all it took. While there can be many reasons for this error try the simple fix first. It may work and save you a lot of hassle!

The end of the disks, I mean discs? Now it’s download!

I must be getting old…

Remember when AutoCAD came on a few floppy disks?

Then a handful of CDs, or a DVD?

I just finished building CAD application deployments that would require about 26,624 floppy disks. Admittedly it was AutoCAD Architecture/MEP, Revit Arch/MEP and 3DS Max (plus some 64 & 32 bit duplication) so a little more capable than the floppy disk era application.

 

And soon, the end of discs!

This arrived in the email yesterday:

“Please read this important notice about how you will receive your future Autodesk® software upgrades. In 2010 Autodesk is making download the default method for delivering your software upgrades.”

Yes, unless you really want the physical media your new application will be just a download away. Autodesk Beta releases have been delivered this way for several years and, given a reasonable broadband connection, I haven’t minded a bit. There is someone else who’ll welcome it. Gordie, who does the mail at work, will be relieved not to have me asking “are my presents are here yet?” every time I see him between the “it’s shipping” email and delivery!

Google New Zealand

Love today's www.google.co.nz look

UPDATE 2010-02-03: And here is the story behind it:

Kiwi Doodler’s work displayed for millions to see

Today we're celebrating Kiwi kids’ return to school on the Google New Zealand homepage - with New Zealand’s inaugural Doodle 4 Google winning image replacing the Google logo for the day.
Last year, for the first time, Google asked New Zealand students to give the Google logo a uniquely Kiwi makeover by creating a doodle to reflect the theme of ‘My New Zealand’. Eight-year-old Amelia Abbott of Nelson won the competition with her entry, ‘Green and Gorgeous’, and today's it's proudly on our home page for all to see….

Twitter connections in a map

Regulars here will know I like the map format for visualising information relationships. Thus, it is interesting to see this summary of my Twitter activity and relationships. The static image below was captured not long after Autodesk University  thus the #AU2009 tag featuring! It doesn’t convey the dynamics of the presentation but you can experience that by making your own by making a map at:

Mentionmap - apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap

Via your.flowingdata.com and Asterisq.com/blog/

Is Microsoft's Live Mesh Ray Ozzie’s lost child?

Since about mid 2008 most of the articles you’ve seen on this blog were created with the help of Microsoft Live Mesh. Often a screen capture grabbed, and dropped in a Live Mesh Folder, during the day would become the basis for a post written at home with the content being synced there via the Mesh. You could do this with a USB Key, I used Briefcase and it worked fine, but the web sync is certainly much slicker. The main feature I like about Mesh is your data is still local and not dependent on a connection to the cloud. It’s not that I don’t trust the cloud, I just don’t trust my connection.

There hasn’t been a great deal of change to Live Mesh since support was extended to OS/X and many have asked where it’s going. There has certainly been no evidence of Mesh appearing in Microsoft products to date yet it’s been public for over a year. It’s frustrating that Live Writer - Microsoft's offline blog editor - can’t use Mesh because you can’t choose where it saves drafts. Unless you have the same logon on all devices the Writer path will differ and different locations on different devices can not be synced to the same Mesh folder.

In this article Mary Jo Foley asks “When will Live Mesh Matter”? I’ve been using it for more than a year but wonder; if not at the core of Microsoft platforms like Windows, Office, Live and Windows Mobile (and iPhone/Android) will it ever matter? You’ve had more than a year, I’ve liked what I’ve seen, what next for Live Mesh?

When will Microsoft's Live Mesh matter? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

This week, I asked some of the executives and teams participating in Microsoft’s consumer open-house showcase in New York about how and when they planned to start making use of Live Mesh. The stammers and blank stares said a lot to me…

Spring clean your browser bookmarks - AM-DeadLink

OK, it's a bit late for spring cleaning up North but not for my southern hemisphere readers. I find this utility handy for cleaning out obsolete favourites/bookmarks and AM-DeadLink is Freeware!

AM-DeadLink - Download FavIcons and detect dead links in your browser bookmarks
AM-DeadLink detects dead links and duplicates in browser bookmarks and text files. If a bookmark has become unavailable you can verify and delete it permanently. Additionally you can download FavIcons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks.

Carol Bartz Interviewed by Forbes.com

Can Carol save Yahoo!? Does anyone care?

I should since my ISP is partnered with them but my “care if it’s there” factor extends to only one Yahoo! service. I’d miss Flickr but search, email and other Yahoo! services can be easily done elsewhere. I’ve never used their homepage (or Microsoft, Google or the ISPs own) or search (mostly Google but lately Bing for images).

If anyone can save Yahoo! it’s Carol, but can she make me care?

Can Yahoo's Carol Bartz Outsmart Microsoft And Google? - Forbes.com

“She is one of the few people I have worked for who has no problem telling you that you're full of shit--and afterward, you don't mind," says William Coleman, who joined Sun in 1985

Technorati Tags: bartz,yahoo!,xtra