Let us observe on May 25th

Towel Day!




Don't Panic! Just join many around the world in celebrating the life and literary art of one hoopy frood, Douglas Adams. I'm sure not everyone fully appreciates the linguistic gymnastics performed by this verbal olympian, but, he is an entertaining writer who plays wildly with his words... which amuses some of us endlessly.

I've been a fan since my harley-riding computer-geek uncle gave me the first of the six books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. I've since obtained the books in hardback as well as the original cheesy movie on vhs. I somewhat enjoyed the newer version of the movie, but, it doesn't quite do justice to his written words.
http://www.paramountcomedy.com/shows/show.aspx?id=123





So, grab your towel and show your support for the late Douglas Adams.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. :-)

Happy Birthday, Dear Hubby!

WAKE UP! It's your Birthday!

Yep, DH turns another year older today. He blames the gray hairs on me, I tell him it's just his advanced age.

Join with me as I wish my wonderful husband a wonderful day!

Happy Birthday, Darling!

Two Free Apps I couldn't work without

I know it's not CAD, but, there are other programs that we need to make it through our days.

My husband is always checking out new applications... sometimes installing them on my pc when I'm not looking and making me an unwitting guinea pig.
BUT! at work, where I am the only one choosing programs for my pc, I keep these two old favorites that he recommended to me awhile ago.

Gadwin Printscreen -
Options! There are options! (but, not too many! like some applications)
You can hit printscreen, select your area, hit enter... and you're done! You've set up a directory and these screenshots are sent right there, naming themselves in a sequence. If you're working along, you can quickly capture each step, and collect the images later.

Before Gadwin, I'd Prnt Scrn, open my photo editor, paste as new image, make selection, choose crop to selection, then save. WAY too many steps there.

Try out this freebie, I think you'll like it (if not, check out the hyperlink in the second paragraph of this post, to a BLAUG entry by my Dear Hubby and see what else he mentions).

Ditto clipboard extension -
You can copy multiple bits of text, etc at a time, and paste to your heart's content. There are a million ways that I use this at work and at home.

One that sticks out in my brain is the AUGI Annual Salary Survey. I calculate those numbers using excel. There are just reams and reams and reams of data, I've got some formulas that count up/average out/total, etc. But, those just aren't very pretty spreadsheets to look at, so I use simple forms to report the results that are posted on the website. I used to copy, switch files, paste, switch back, copy, switch files, paste, etc, etc, etc. UG! That took forever. Now, I can just go through and grab each result I need and paste them in as I need them.

Another thing would be answering questions in discussion groups... you find a few websites that could help and copy the URL's and perhaps a snippet of pertinent information (applicable text, or a knowledge base ID number for when someone does a site redesign, invalidating your URL's). Take everything you need from one page and paste, paste, paste the information much more quickly.



I hope you find these great FREE applications as handy as I do. I appreciate all of the work that developers put into these freebies for all of us to benefit from.


Oh, another cool freebie that I was just using today; this one is a lisp routine from Dotsoft's FREE STUFF page which "Exports TEXT objects to an ASCII file in the order they are selected."

National BIM Conference

Saw a notification about it today through a CADalyst magazine email...
The conference is being held May 15th through 17th in Anaheim, CA. Looks like registration is under $600.
It is sponsored by National Institute of Building Sciences, Facilities Information Council, National BIM Standard, AECnews and CADalyst; the site for the event is www.bimconference.com

I'm not exactly sure what the AEC-ST exhibit is, but with the description in the CADalyst announcement makes it sound like it's something that would affect FMers:
"The National BIM Conference is part of AEC-ST - the only event addressing the IT needs of the entire facilities and construction team and covering the entire lifecycle of the built environment. AEC-ST is co-located with Ecobuild America which covers green and sustainable building. For more information on AEC-ST, visit http://www.aecst.com."

I'd love to hear from anyone who attends. What type of 'now' and 'future' projects others are doing, recommended resources, etc.


For the past two years at my Facility and Corporate 'Planning Conference', I've presented briefly on BIM as applied to our field (Facilities and MEP design planning, building, maintenance) to plant the idea in the heads of the executives and get them to start thinking about it as momentum grows with BIM adoption and education.

This year I won't be formally presenting, but, I believe I'll be speaking at least a little on CAFM again, as I've just gotten approval to roll out a pilot program for a small portion of my facility with the FMDesktop suite.
I've turned over a list of the information I intend to gather over the next few months.

I'm waiting for a purchase order number and then I will be ready to roll. I know that the FMD install is pretty simple already, and I can't wait to actually have 'work' time to fully explore it. I really hope there are some hands-on classes at Autodesk University 2007 for FM Desktop/Facility Manager/Facility Web, etc. I had some good FMDesktop classes last year, but, they were all lecture courses, and I learn better with my hands than with my ears. ;)

Wish me luck as I break some new ground, moving from CADD Coordinator to CAFM Technician (well, in skills only, not like my job or pay is actually changing, I'm honestly wondering how the !*$% I'm going to squeeze this work in with my normal duties :-o)

MISSING POSTS

edit: all of my posts have been restored and the remainder of my blogs migrated thanks to the Blogger team. Woohoo! I love blogger. ~does snoopy dance~


IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR MISSING POSTS...
If you've found an article via google search, I recommend checking out the 'cache' link where you can see a saved image of the missing post (see below image)...

Still no word from Blogger support on why all of the posts since I migrated to the 'new' blogger have disappeared... ~grumbling~

If you are looking for a post, and the cache in google search doesn't help, please feel free to email me, and I will send you the contents of the post you're looking for... I do not have time to repost every article yet, although I intend to if the Blogger employees don't come through for me.
I apologize for any inconvenience resulting from broken links. :-(

It will be a couple of weeks before I can get to all of the reposting, I'm afraid; I am working on (technically editing) another book right now and have deadlines to meet.

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Alright... my blog was fine last night... (I think)... it was most certainly fine after I made my last post, as I saw DH reading it later...

I came to search for a link this morning and I see that my blog has been magically rolled back to January! So... all of my posts and my links and my lovely new colour scheme has gone POOF... I've got a question in with blogger support, hopefully they'll be able to fix whatever went wrong.

If they can't, I've got archives, and will hopefully be able to back up most of what I've lost.

~sigh~ Sorry if you're looking for something specific I've posted since then.

Cheers and have a lovely weekend.

Free and Updated Autodesk Products

Where to start? This has been a busy few weeks for Autodesk announcements and I know I haven't kept you up to date, so be prepared for this little deluge below:

Design Review - View, measure, markup and print 2D and 3D designs for FREE.

DWG True View - View and plot DWG's and DWF's... PLUS now you can convert between different releases from R14 through 2008! (this functionality was previously offered in a different free download called True Convert)

Units Converter - don't forget about this nifty online tool.

ScriptPro - Easy interface for scripting (apply a set of commands to many drawings).

AutoLisp Compatibility Analyzer - searches for known compatibility issues in lisp files created for versions prior to r2004.

Approved Grapics Card List - See if your card is Certified, Supported and Recommended, Supported and Not Recommended or Not Supported. (if you're ordering a new pc, send your IT guy up here first when selecting a card, they'll find their favorite brands and be able to tell which models will work)

AutoCAD LT 2007 SP2 - I believe this is the service pack that helps LT07 work with Vista. Don't forget to read the notes. Still install even if you're not using Vista... there are a lot of other fixes in here as well that you won't want to miss.

AutoCAD 2007 SP2 and other updates - Check out the whole list here and make sure you've got everything you need. From Vista to Copy/Paste bug, to Activation Errors, OLE errors, Regenerating Text, Fatal Error During Save, Closing Drawings, etc...


FMDesktop - There are a few updates here, but, I wanted to point out some recent compatibility discussions:
Facility Link with AutoCAD 2008 - Installation problem, patch is not yet available.
FM Desktop with MS Access 2007 - Some bugs with saves in forms, does not affect the data; patch is not yet available (I'm sticking with Office 2003 for now, just to be on the safe side).
FMDesktop with Revit Systems 2 (Revit MEP) - Cannot import spaces or plan views from RSys (RMEP) into Facility Manager at this point. Product teams communicating and working on future compatibility.

AUGI Forums Updated for Autodesk 2008 Products

Well, there have been some updates going on over at AUGI.com discussion group, thanks to the tireless work of the Forum Manager, Mike Perry.

The AutoCAD Community Team had a little hand in our corner of the world.
That would include Kris Keller, the AutoCAD Community Chair, along with Ed Jobe and myself as the AutoCAD Community Forum Managers.

You can check out BLAUGI for a short list of the changes that have been made.

*****
There have also been some changes with the Media and Entertainment forums (aka, the Design and Visualization forums), so be sure to check those areas out, too.

A note on AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP 2008 forums... they will be updated once the products are officially released. ;) So, don't feel left out if you don't see anything new in there quite yet, you haven't been forgotten, the ADT/ABS (erm, ACA/AMEP) team is hard at work.
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One thing definitely worth mentioning about the AutoCAD Community forums is the expanded coverage of Dynamic Blocks!!! We've recently added two new moderators to the team, Chris and Rico (aka, Dynamic Blockheads) who've done A LOT of work to organize all of the free AutoCAD Dynamic Blocks that the amazing augi community has been making and collecting.

You can ask your dynamic block questions here.

And you can download blocks from this forum, an extensive library well classified (search the labels for Annotation, Architectural, Civil, Electrical, Manufacturing, Mechanical (hvac), Plumbing, Structural and Miscellaneous.).

Be sure to pop up there to check them out, download some blocks and give them a try; heck, you might even want to post one or two nifty creations of your own.

Report from the Gateway AUG Tips and Tricks Meeting

Tuesday, March 20th, another quarterly meeting of the Gateway AUG.

We gathered again for some pizza, tips and tricks, and good nerdy discussions. We spoke about the new product naming schemes for '2008' Autodesk software and talked about some of the changes in the Autocad-based product line. You've already read about my highlights from this version in a previous post, so I'm going to share the AutoCAD Tips and Tricks (applicable to earlier versions). Some of these tips have already been posted on this site, but, I hope you won't mind reading them again.


To dock and 'stack' your palettes and your dashboard in a collapsed state, just right click on the palette or panel title and select the option to 'Dock Left' or 'Dock Right'. You can put as many as you want on one side and still be able to access them.

To Prevent Docking, move your palette while holding down the Ctrl key.

Keyboard Navigation
Use Alt-Tab to switch between open files and programs
Use Ctrl-Tab to switch between open AutoCAD files
Use Ctrl-PageUp or PageDwn to cycle between layouts/modelspace (PageDown to move right, PageUp to move left)
Use Ctrl-R to cycle through active viewports

Making a missing toolbar reappear
You know that toolbar is on, you just can't quite find it and suspect it has been drug offscreen. Command: -toolbar (note the '-' hyphen before the command name)
Toolbar name (or ALL): "toolbar name" (eg. "Properties" <-use quotations around name) Show/Hide/Left/Right/Top/Bottom/Float: : f (to show it in the middle of your screen somewhere) Position <0,0>: 300,300
Rows <1>: 1 and voila'!

OOPS, I undid it again...
OOPS looks for the last entities erased and restores them (without undoing any pans, zooms, other edits done since the erase).

A Clean Background Check
WMFBKGND from AutoCAD Help:
This System Variable controls the background display when objects are inserted in Windows metafile (WMF) format. The objects may be inserted using any of the following methods:
• Output to a Windows metafile using WMFOUT
• Copied to the Clipboard and pasted as a Windows metafile
• Dragged as a Windows metafile Off The background color is transparent.
The foreground color depends on the setting of WMFFOREGND. On
The background color is the same as the current background color in the drawing, whether in model space or in a layout.
The foreground color remains unchanged.

Turn it up… or sideways
Did you know that you can type “R” when using “Paste” to pre-select the rotation angle of the objects to be pasted?

Leggo my Design Center
Do you know you’ve created a block, but, just can’t remember where you put it? You can use the Search option in Design Center to locate it.
That’s not all you can Search for… try it with BLOCKS, DIMSTYLES, DRAWINGS, HATCH PATTERNS, LAYERS, LAYOUTS, LINETYPES, TEXTSTYLES and XREFS.
Say, for example, that you just want to find out where your drawing is being referenced, you can use this method to find where it shows up as an XREF.

Super Freak-y Hatches!
Check out the Express Menu (Express Tools are a separate exe file from AutoCAD, so make sure you’ve installed them!), under Draw and Superhatch! You can make a hatch from images and blocks, which could be a cool way to apply your company logo to objects in your drawing.

Mind the Gap
HPGAPTOL System Variable sets the allowable distance between objects that are accepted as a hatch boundary. You can find the “Gap tolerance” on the “Advanced” tab of the BHATCH dialog box.
From AutoCAD Help:
Treats a set of objects that almost enclose an area as a closed hatch boundary. The default value, 0, specifies that the objects enclose the area, with no gaps.
Enter a value, in drawing units, from 0 to 5000 to set the maximum size of gaps that can be ignored when the objects serve as a hatch boundary.

Attached to your method of Xref’ing?
A variable was introduced in r2005 that allows you to set your default XREFTYPE.
Set it to “0” for a default of “Attach” or set it to “1” for a default to “Overlay” your XREF’s.

Take your Drawings to Task
Command entry: TASKBAR
Enter new value for Taskbar <0>:
Enter 1 to display multiple open drawings as separate items on the Windows taskbar
The default setting, 0, displays only the name of the current drawing on the Windows taskbar.

A Layer by any other Name
Would not be according to standard. Don’t forget about the nifty RENAME command, which allows you to easily change the names of blocks, layers, textstyles, etc.

Quick Draw…
f you want to be quick on the draw, don’t forget the QSELECT command… you can pick out many entities from a certain layer, or a certain block, no matter which layer it is on, text or mtext objects, etc to create a selection set for editing and applying properties.

If you're only selecting one object with QSELECT (such as a room number, parcel number, underlay ~dwg, dwf, dgn~), you can then, with that new selection set active zoom in to that object with a simple Z E <>.

We also mentioned the fact that, starting with AutoCAD 2007, the nifty LAYMRG (that's sort for Layer Merge) command was moved from the Express tools menu to core autocad and can now be used with a dialog.

We reviewed the LAYISO/LAYUNISO (layer isolate/layer unisolate) tools (both the legacy on/off behaviour and the newer lock and fade behavior).

We published a DWF with! the publish options set to include layer information.

The attendees all asked great questions that opened up new discussions and demonstrations that were really cool. We had the pleasure of meeting new people and of seeing regulars.

We did have enough swag, so that every attendee was able to leave with a little something. The handouts, food and drink were sponsored by Seiler Instrument, two software packages and some cool toys were donated by www.gatewayaug.com website hosts CADopolis, t-shirts, hats, laptop bags and various tech toys were collected by Mike Perry (Civil/Structural CAD Tech extraordinaire'), handouts and tips/tricks booklets provided by Melanie Perry, President (yours truly).
We also had a chuckle with a user who had won a mini Red Swingline stapler (ala Milton from Office Space) at the last meeting.

Registration for the St. Louis CAD Camp in September is not yet open. The CAD Camp website lists a date of September 18th, so check there for final confirmation of when it is... but! prepare your budget now, because you won't want to miss it.
You can also see a listing on Autodesk's website, and that of local CAD Camp sponsors, Hagerman. According to the Adesk website, the event will be held at St. Louis University in Busch Student Center on North Grand.

Microsoft Event In St. Louis

This product launch event actually took place in late February, and I'm just a big slacker for taking so long to share it with you. (you can find microsoft events here)

This 'tour' of theirs was called Microsoft Across America Launch Event. Registration was free. You could sign up for different 'tracks'. DH chose IT, and I chose Small Business. There were two four-hour demonstrations, but, we only took the morning tracks.
The Small Business track was dedicated to showing tools in the new Office 2007 and how they could improve the day to day office tasks.

It was held at the Adam's Mark Hotel. Lovely.
PARKING WAS A NIGHTMARE. Of course the hotel's parking lot was full, so we were directed to a nearby parking garage... which had THE. MOST. CONVOLUTED. design and the most inadequate signage ever. We finally found a spot and found our way out of this strangely long and twisted building, and walked back a couple of blocks to the hotel. Once inside the Adams Mark, there were clear signs directing us up a couple of levels to where the meetings were taking place.

There were some lovely pastries and fruit out for breakfast, as well as coffee and soda. There was plenty for everyone, despite the warning during registration that it was first come first served, so don't count on being able to get any.

Things were getting started a couple of minutes late, I'm sure because we were NOT the only ones who'd had hassles with the parking, so many of the attendees got there after the designated start time.

There were some vendors with booths scattered around, flanking the registration desk; but, nothing too in-your-face.

Registration was quick and painless, we were given a bag with a t-shirt, product and event flyers, and a small token which we could exchange after class for... a free copy of MS Office. Not demo mode, not 90 days only... but, as long as it resides on that hard drive, it's free to you. (believe it or not, I heard many people whining about the fact that you couldn't reinstall if you wiped your hard drive. boohoo, it's free, be happy for the time you've got it! I will be... I haven't installed yet because I knew I was wiping my pc soon... likely next weekend.)

There were A LOT of people there, a couple hundred per class, with three classes running concurrently. During the four hour class, we broke about 3 times, and they staggered it nicely so there wasn't a huge rush on the restrooms and beverage stations.

So, seeing Windows Vista in action during this MS Office Demonstration, I am impressed by the improved search. I use Windows search A LOT in XP, and while it is MUCH better than 2000, it's still a pain at times. Very, very nice search, previewing, etc.

I've been reading a lot about 'ribbons' over the past few months and had just assumed it to be a marketing buzzword, that, quite frankly, I was tired of hearing. I had no need to tie up my hair.
But, once I saw what they were talking about (basically, context sensitive tabs with commands and options), I thought it was a good thing. Heck, ANYTHING has to be better than those annoying cascading menus in Office 2003.

You can find tips for navigating the ribbon in Access, Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Outlook on this page.

Overall, a decent use of half a day and a decent way to see the new OS and Office Suite. The speaker was really good. There were a couple of glitches, but, he made them work and got a few laughs out of us ('Well, I think NOW would be a good time to demonstrate file recovery!')
Note, if I wanted the presentation powerpoint, we were expecting a link via email, but, I never got one, and evidently others didn't either, so you can download the file here.

The speaker, Greg, did mention a couple of free software applications from Microsoft; which can be upgraded to paying versions, if necessary. One of the programs I was familiar with, as I downloaded it last fall and taught myself the ins and outs, all the while being impressed at the extensive tutorials and help files and forum activities... and that program would be SQL Server Express. He also mentioned Office Accounting Express, which I hadn't heard of. I haven't tried this one out myself, as I really haven't had the time lately, but, I'd like to. Given my background in Accounting, I think it wouldn't hurt to keep myself apprised of related programs (back when I worked as an Account Temp in high school, we didn't use computer programs, everything was handwritten and calculated).

Reminder: Gateway AUG Tips and Tricks Meeting in St. Louis

Just wanted to remind those in the St. Louis/Metro area that there will be an AutoCAD Tips and Tricks meeting on Tuesday the 20th, starting between 6 and 6:30pm.
This is general stuff, not discipline-specific, so hopefully there will be something for everyone. Seiler Instrument is buying us pizza, drinks and meeting handouts (we like to take those tips and tricks home, don't we?).
We'll also be giving away plenty of door prizes, from toys, to tech, to t-shirts and software. Come on down and try your luck.

The meeting is at Vatterott Technical College.

We're in the midst of planning our next meeting. It will be a panel discussion on Building Information Modeling, which promises to be pretty stimulating conversation.
Thanks to the efforts of the amazing Rudy Beuc, we already have a date and a location scheduled!

June 19, 6:00 - 8:30 (as always, we start congregating at 6:00, but, might wait until 6:30 to get started, we know how it is getting away from work at that time of day)
the Masonry Institute

1429 S Big Bend
St. Louis MO 63117

As usual, we will provide food and drinks, so come straight from the office if you need to.
Hope to see you there!

And, to all of the Irish (and those that celebrate with us), Happy St. Patrick's day...

I leave you with a shot of Ty this morning in his straight-from-Eire gear...