RobiNZ CAD Blog

Listen to a CAD Blog Talk?

It’s an interesting idea, take a text article and have it read to you by the computer. Crucial would be the need for natural speech, not compu-speak, to retain interest. Well it’s been done and it’s surprisingly good. Talkr, take an RSS text feed and process it into a mp3 file using computer generated voice. It’s smart enough to cope with non-proper words (like CAD acronyms) and alters the pronunciation depending on context and punctuation. Clever, Clever? and Clever! are pronounced differently. Numeric dates are converted to spoken words – 31/08/2005 becomes Thirty First, August, Two Thousand & Five Free... Read more →

What's in Store... What will WinFS mean for CAD & BIM?

The Autodesk CAD/BIM products I use run on Windows. BIM requires integrating many information sources to create a graphic and data model of a project so it’s probably worth keeping an eye on anything that will change the way Windows manages data. The WinFS team have just launched a new blog to go with their products beta release and it’s worth a look if you currently use files and folders to store stuff… I suspect you do but first; what is WinFS? Microsoft’s description is: WinFS is the new relational file system for Windows. As an essential piece of Microsoft’s... Read more →

Adobe Blogs

Adobe released a bunch of blogs recently. You can access them all via the home-page but each also has it’s own home-page and feed. Adobe Blogs Home-page Adobe Blogs Index Via Scoble Read more →

ActiveWords and Wikipedia....

Buzz posted a cool script which allows rapid searching of Wikipedia. It uses ActiveWords to enter the search term into the Wikipedia search engine for immediate results. buzznovation: ActiveWords and Wikipedia.... The fastest way to find out what a smoot is…. Read more →

Approximately a Smoot

I was using Google Earth the other day and noticed in addition to the usual Kilometers, Miles, Feet there was the unit “Smoots”. What is a Smoot? According to Wikipedia the Smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. In 1958 Oliver R. Smoot was rolled head over heels by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. The smoot is equal to his height; five feet and seven inches or 1.70 m. Oliver R. Smoot later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President of the... Read more →

Architectural Desktop User Feedback

If you use Autodesk Architectural Desktop you probably have some opinions you think worth sharing and ideas to improve it. Autodesk are setting up a new forum for ADT customers to feedback their thoughts on the application via on-line surveys. The Autodesk Architectural Desktop Customer Council registration process involves a survey on your current and past use of ADT and other CAD products and will create an account for future surveys. To join: Refresh the Communication Center in ADT. Click on the ‘Join the Autodesk® Architectural Desktop Customer Council today’… Want more detail? See ADTCC FAQ via Between The Walls Read more →

Autodesk User Group International AutoCAD Wish List Ballot

Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) have posted the AutoCAD Wish-list candidates. The wish-list is presented to Autodesk during the AUGI AGM held at Autodesk University. It’s your chance to vote and make your wishes known! AutoCAD Wish List Ballot - Autodesk User Group International (Requires free AUGI registration) UPDATE: Shaan has a great post on the new AUGI wishlist format. Read more →

Isn't this a CAD blog?

It may appear that this “CAD Blog” has been taken over by an ActiveWords meme. The articles started as one short post. Over time the draft grew to be too large for a single post so I decided to break it up. I was going to release them over a few days/weeks but decided to get them all posted to tell the full story. I like ActiveWords so much it goes into the “Life Changing Software List” and even earns a category of it’s own on the side-bar. There is a 60 day free trial, I purchased after 14 days... Read more →

More for less with ActiveWords - Part 5 - The Results

Continued from ActiveWords Part 4 So far ActiveWords has saved me about 3.7 hours work in 78 days. How do I know? ActiveWords keeps a log of it’s use and gives a productivity report. Maybe 3.7 hours doesn’t sound a huge amount but this is while I learnt the product & changed my habits to use it more. It’s not hard to use but does take some time to bed in as you un-learn the hard way you used to do things. Imagine sitting down for nearly four hours solid of typing and mousing. Imagine achieving the same, or better,... Read more →

More for less with ActiveWords - Part 4 - Living with words that are active

Continued from ActiveWords Part 3 ActiveWords watches your actions and prompts you to create an active word for repetitive tasks. It means your productivity increases as your wordbase grows. Using ActiveWords soon becomes so effortless that you really miss not having it available. It’s a good thing that the ActiveWords Pro licence allows you to run it on three other computers you use (e.g. work, home, laptop). It’s easy to move the database between machines. My ActiveWords database travels between home & work on my USB Drive (it’s about 6 Mb). You transfer by making a copy on the primary... Read more →