RobiNZ CAD Blog

End of an era, as Autodesk leaves Shaan Hurley

On Tuesday 30 March 2004, I posted this on TypePad: Getting Started This is the first post to see how it all works. Read other weblogs, thought I'd have a go myself. RobiNZ CAD Blog The reason I chose TypePad, then a new'ish (public launch October 2003) hosted platform, is one of the most influential 'other weblogs' was Shaan Hurley's Between The Lines ~ AutoCAD Blog. I'd been thinking about blogging but had no interest in coding or self-hosting. When Shaan told me his pioneering CAD Blog was hosted, authored, on TypePad it was enough to spur me into action,... Read more →

March 2023 - 19th Anniversary!

March 31st means it is blog’iversary time. Nineteen years since that first tentative post! I really appreciate the connections blogging, and more recently on Mastodon (since I abandoned Twitter) & Facebook, have enabled. @robincapper on Twitter Won't delete this account but I've made it private and migrated most of my social media attention away from Twitter. See you on the other platforms if you are there. 7:06 PM · Nov 22, 2022 While the other platforms have taken over much of the day-to-day activity, I still prefer having the content I really value, in terms of wanting to retain, on... Read more →

2022 Blogging Highlights

Happy New Year! I usually begin this post with "Another year has flown by..." but 2022 was a strange mix of COVID-19 impacted lockdown time dilation—where it both flew and dragged simultaneously—and a (temporary) change of lifestyle for me. I spent most of it—January to August—travelling New Zealand and then started a new job (still design software related) in a different industry! Time to look back from a bloggy/social media (not just CAD blog) perspective at year: Best social media related event(s): While riding I've been contributing, in a small way, to a few episodes of Walk The Pod podcast.... Read more →

upFront.eZine CAD industry legend Ralph Grabowski retires

The final upFront.eZine #1.138 This email, the final upFront.eZine #1,138, marks a significant event in the history of the CAD industry and media. I don't remember when I first read Ralph Grabowski's eZine but it long pre-dates meeting him in 2003. He presented at a CAD Productivity Conference in Auckland NZ and I have stayed connected, as a reader/commenter and meeting occasionally at US cad conferences, ever since. Ralph's in-depth coverage and straight talk about the CAD industry, often deep into the core technologies sitting under the end user products we know so well, is second to none. I was... Read more →

March 2022 - 18th Anniversary!

March 31st means it is blog’iversary time. Eighteen years since that first tentative post! I really appreciate the connections blogging, and more recently Twitter & Facebook, have enabled. While the other platforms have taken over much of the day-to-day activity, I still prefer having the content I really value, in terms of wanting to retain, on my ‘own’ platform. It has been a quiet year, especially for the CAD Blog, but that's OK because I have been mostly cycling! To everyone, everywhere, thanks for visiting, reading, and subscribing both here and the other platforms! Photo taken March 31 2022 on... Read more →

2021 Blogging Highlights

Happy New Year! I usually begin this post with "Another year has flown by..." but 2021 was a strange mix of COVID-19 impacted lockdown time dilation—where it both flew and dragged simultaneously—and a (temporary) change of lifestyle for me. Time to look back from a bloggy/social media (not just CAD blog) perspective at another strange year: Best social media related event(s): With so much going on-line this year, including work for about 3 months, it is hard to single out one event but these come to mind: Richard Herring's RHLSTP video live recordings | For a modest fee, which supports... Read more →

March 2020 - 16th Anniversary!

March 31st means it is blog’iversary time. Sixteen years since that first tentative post! New Zealand is a long way from everywhere and social media eliminates that gap. What makes this anniversary strange is due to the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown even connections with local family, friends, colleagues are virtual. I usually put a blog related photo from the year in these posts but this is a favourite view, just 20km away on Auckland’s West Coast, which currently might as well be on the other side of the globe! I really appreciate the connections blogging, and more recently Twitter & Facebook,... Read more →

2019 Blogging Highlights

Another year has flown by and it is nearly 2020. Time to look back at 2019 from a bloggy/social media (not just CAD blog) perspective: Best social media related event(s): It wasn’t really a social media event but a podcast took me somewhere I didn’t think I would ever go. Dr Karl’s Podcast is a regular on my playlist. Finding out he was leading an expedition cruise to Antarctica this year made it a ‘must go’. After being back a few weeks I have only just sorted out the photos worth keeping (2800) and still have much to write about... Read more →

The power of community and connection

I was looking to schedule the insert location and rotation of a Multiview Block in AutoCAD Architecture. They have location properties for x,y,z and rotation in the Properties Palette but, strangely, rotation is not an available MV Block property when creating a property set. I tried the Block and MInsert rotation properties (both have them) but they do not report the MV Block rotation. Some Properties in ACA are linked (one value used for multiple object types) but not those. Pondered for a bit, searched the web, surely someone in the past couple of decades had solved this before? But... Read more →

An unexpected Autodesk encounter, with myself!

Autodesk have released a new learning hub offering focused training with topics across all their Arch/MEP platforms (Revit, AutoCAD & FormIt): AUTODESK CUSTOMER SUCCESS LEARNING HUB / ARCHITECT LEARNING CENTER While looking at the article "Collaborating in AutoCAD with Specialized Toolsets”* I had the odd experience of seeing myself looking back. They've used a short YouTube I made way back in 2007, for this blog post, and it was my YouTube profile photo staring at me! It was odd timing as I haven't created an ACA theme for a long time (but our projects still use them) but had been... Read more →