Last post from the apartment-dweller

Well, the past... I don't know, couple of years and then some... I've been living the relatively anchor-free life of an apartment-dweller.

It's had it's ups and downs, believe me. Prior to my last move, I'd thought about buying a small house within the city limits (near where I am right now), so that all of these monthly payments wouldn't be 'wasted'.

But, I'm glad that I didn't. The housing market today is quite a bit less... robust than it was 2 1/2 - 3 years ago when I was looking.

Life in this apartment has been relatively quiet... lots of older couples on our street, with a church to one side of us.

But, no painting walls... no aerobics on the thin, wooden floors, no counterspace or enough electrical outlets in the kitchen. ~shrug~

Tomorrow, we move from our spacious one-bedroom (two, if you count the living room, where the little guy has his bedroom) apartment, to a slightly-smaller-roomed 3 bedroom house out in the county.

I do love the huge high-ceilings and very large rooms with gorgeous old 120 year old wood trim everywhere! THIS is what St. Louis is all about in these lovely older brick homes...

But, I will certainly enjoy our home in the burbs. Ty will be starting school soon, and I've been planning since before he was born to flee the troubled school districts of the city. While I love St. Louis, I can't make my son live that loyalty, I am happy that we can provide him better alternatives for education.

We met one of our neighbors today, and she was super-nice. The family who sold us our home left us a lovely notecard saying what a great neighborhood this is and how they hope that we'll be as happy there as they were. Very sweet. (They're moving out of state for the husband's job)

So, this will be the last blog post from me here in our apartment... as I sit here at the kitchen table with my laptop, I think how nice it will be to have some proper office space that doesn't interfere with eating.

I'll have to get on DH to get him to put our (matching... awww) desks together as soon as possible.

Oh yes, and I believe we financed an entire year's operating budget for our new local Lowe's store. :-) ~crying at burned hole in pocket~

I'm excited to be out in the burbs, even though I'll miss the city a little. Of course, since I still work in the city (until I find a way to let my boss allow me to telecommute 4 days a week ~shifty~ ~not holding my breath~), I suppose the missing won't be too painful.

We'll even be downtown celebrating my sister's 29th birthday this week, as is our custom.

So, we've had our confirmations from the utility companies, the appliance deliveries, the moving company and one of the furniture deliveries. So, we'll see if the last furniture company will get off their tushie and call us first thing in the morning to let us know when they'll be delivering our bedroom set and kitchen table.

It promises to be a loooooong weekend.

I will be logging back on soon from our new home. I might take a photo of my new workspace and post it, just to brag about my spacious desk and built-in bookshelves. ;)

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend as much as I'll be enjoying mine.

Register for St. Louis CAD Camp Now, Save on AU costs!

Alright, Gateway AUG members, and any other CAD Geeks in the area looking for some good training and networking:
Registration is open and courses are listed for the St. Louis AUGI CAD Camp!

And, as you can see, AUGI and Autodesk are working together to again offer the $150 discount to Autodesk University if you attend a CAD Camp.
While at CAD Camp this year, you will be given a card with a passcode on it to enter in when you register for AU.

So, who is going to be St. Louis's best drafter? Long-time Gateway AUG member, Mark Mosby took the honor last year and showed us all up! You'll notice other Gateway AUG members up there, too.

By the way, remember that AUGI members get to start registering for AU a week before the rest of the CAD world, so, remember your login details.

AND! AUGI and Autodesk are again working together to do a repeat of last year's special program... user groups who send at least three members to AU will get one free pass to give away. When you register for AU, put in "Gateway AUG" as your user group and send me an email letting me know you've done it, once I've sent off those three names to our contact, I will be given a special code and do an email drawing like we did last year.

Tim Roberts of KPFF Consulting won the free conference pass last in last year's drawing, and Marianna Tripp and Mike Kindle won consolation prizes.

Please, members, look for my mailing sometime this fall, once I've gotten those three registrations confirmed. If you're not getting mail from me, add mstone@gatewayaug.com (alias for mstonegatewayaug@yahoo.com) to your 'safe list' or update your email address with me.

I hope to see many of you at CAD Camp and AU.

AU Courses / Design Tool / St. Louis CAD Camp

Looks like Joseph Wurcher has his blog up and is telling us what we've got in store course-wise for this year's AU. I'm particularly interested in the 13 Facilities Management classes and the 23 MEP design classes. Oh, if only I could attend them all. Looking back, you can see which courses had the highest rated speakers last year. Very cool. Thanks to Shaan Hurley for keeping us up to date. We've also got a peek at Autodesk Project Showroom from his site. Check out the sample project here. 'DWF-guy' Scott Sheppard now blogs over on 'It's Alive at the Labs!' For those who aren't familiar with the newish Autodesk Labs, it's a place for Autodesk's test projects to be played around with by... us! So, go take a peek at the newest geek-pleaser. Don't forget, there's also a discussion group for the labs, to chat over what you've seen. Oh, and a reminder to the St. Louis folks. Don't forget the upcoming CAD Camp on September 18th. We're also planning a user group meeting the evening beforehand, a joint session with GAUG and SLAMSUG (the local mechanical users group headed up by Mark Roberts, who previously served on the board of the Gateway AUG). Looks like the location will be the Orlando Gardens Banquet Center, not SLU as reported on the Autodesk website. Looks like the fee for the one day training is $149 for AUGI members and non-members $159 and students $89 (with valid student ID). You'll have five classes throughout the day, lunch is provided. I don't know about you, but, I need to get off my tushie and request some class fees the day off work (registration is NOT open yet, and classes are NOT posted yet, but, still, make your request now, so you are prepared).

Melanie Simpson

Alright, Scott and Robin have started a little Simpson's love and created their virtual Springfield selves (and Scott also did one for Shaan).

You can go to the Simpson's movie website and create your own.

And my DH says that his personal heroes are Homer Simpson and Al Bundy, so, of course, I've got to jump in on the action here.

Where have I been? Wandering, of course.

I just wanted to give a rundown of what I've been doing and what I will be doing in the near future so the curious faithful readers (yes, both of you) can have some insight.

It all started last fall. I was working on the Salary Survey, which takes up more than enough of my time anyway, when I had the opportunity to work for one of my personal heroes in writing a little for her book. This was intimidating. This was also A LOT of work. I didn't know that writing could be so hard. Deadlines and 'voice' and explanations of new topics that hadn't been covered before. It was a lot of work, but, it was well worth it and I'm so thankful for the experience. And, no, I won't get any royalties, so feel free to purchase this wonderful AutoCAD reference, without fear of lining my pockets. ;)

1. I had an action-packed week at AU with AUGI and the FM team
2. finished up the CAD/Design Salary Survey, which was published in the January/February 2007 issue of AUGIWorld Magazine as well as preparing additional documents with more information, for download from the survey channel
3. finished my part on the autocad and autocad lt 2008 bible
4. then I had my spring quarterly Gateway AUG meeting next, for which I was presenting both segments (AutoCAD 2008 features, as well as general CAD tips and tricks for any version)
5. and started planning the following meeting for the summer quarter with Rudy and Tomislav, which was about BIM
6. sat on another industry advisory board meeting to discuss the state and needs of the local design community
7. wrote an AUGI HotNews article: TIPniques: Dashboard Customization
8. started doing a 'Technical Edit' on the 2008 version of the 'Applying AutoCAD' text. I also ended up editing and writing exam questions to match, I finished up my work in this book very recently.
9.10. prepared for and attended our company's annual Planning, Design and Educational conference with corporate, which is always two days just PACKED full of learning and new appreciation for the expertise of my coworkers, and a chance to connect with those from other facilities and hear about their triumphs and frustrations. Not only was I an attendee, but, I also handled all of the a/v needs (one cool part was that I could control the lighting in the room with a remote control... if someone started to ramble before a break, I'd turn the lights back on as a big hint to wrap it up. ;) )
11. lost a family member very close to me. :-(
12. wrote an AUGI HotNews article: TIPniques: Using Referenced Files
13. was mentioned in CADalyst magazine by my new friend, Kenneth Wong.
14.15. finally ordered and installed FMDesktop for a pilot project. it's an attempt to gain more widespread support by showing off the software. I have wanted to do some CAFM at my Facility for awhile now, obviously, and took every FMDesktop class at AU last year and learned from the BEST (not only the best, but, also the creator, Bob, whom I had met at previous AU's when he was still hawking his wares on the exhibit hall floor with the rest of the 3rd party software guys ;) ).
16. ordered and installed AutoCAD Architecture to assist in space preparation (ie, prevent me from having to polyline every single area. SpaceAutoGenerate works a little differently in AutoCAD Architecture 2008 than it did back in Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2007. I'll try to make a post outlining the new steps (it's controlled via the properties palette now, rather than a dialog). Thanks to Jimmy for pointing me in the right direction.
17. bought a house
18. started working with a 'Women in Design' initiative with a nearby college. their administration is attempting to recruit more talented young women for their design curriculum. We've just been emailing so far, but, will have our first sit-down planning session this Friday. I'm very excited about meeting more talented local ladies in various disciplines, and I'm thrilled to see the instructors taking initiative on this. I've asked for a writeup to give an outline/details/goals, etc to share here, I'll post it as soon as I receive something.
19. began planning the fall quarterly meeting of the Gateway Autodesk User Group. It will be a joint meeting with SLAMSUG the evening before the St. Louis AUGI CAD Camp. Clear your calendars and be ready to come and learn and have fun at both events!
20. moved from my role as Forums Co-Manager of the AutoCAD Community, to the duty of Community Chair.
21. wrote an AUGI HotNews article: TIPniques: AutoCAD 2008 Odds and Ends
22. had my blazer in the garage because some dingbat t-boned us
23. had my blazer in the garage again because of... what the heck is dex-cool anyway?
24. started talks with corporate about the future of BIM deliverables (who cares about architectural models? I'm only interested if we've got MEPFP's to go inside of them), and we've got some meetings coming up about it. It's nice to not be the only one paying attention to this and to hear other people finally starting to talk about it. (You might remember me mentioning two past Planning and Educational conferences where I've mentioned it in my own presentations.)

~pause~

So, yep, the Wanderer is wandering again. It seems like just yesterday, but, I know it was really a few years ago, that I posted to you that I was in the middle of, yet another, move.
We're fleeing (sort of) the bright lights of the city and the conveniences inherent therein to the cozier feel of the suburbs.
The much longer commute will stink to high heavens, without a doubt, but, our little angel will be starting school in 2008, and we want to make sure he's got closer to the best of what this region has to offer in public schools.

So, I'm busy packing up now. We've ordered most of the necessities and will be moving in a couple of week's time.

edit:
25. Oh, and as if it weren't enough to be moving houses, my office will also be moving.
So.. yeah, NOT a big deal... for the rest of the Engineering dept. Offices all under 150 sq ft.
Desks, computers, file cabinets.

Now, me, on the other hand. My office space is one thing. BUT, I also have a blueprint room, an O&M manual room and a copy room that need to fit in somewhere. ~sigh~ So... 2,340sq ft of stuff for me to move... and I don't think we'll be able to put it on the same floor that we'll be moving to. I'm already 3 floors up from my copy/blueprint rooms, and it's a pain... if I have to do that in a larger, busier building than the teeny, quiet one we're in now? Lord, help me!
So, we'll be vacating our current spaces by the end of the year. ~taking a deep breath~ eep.

We're also planning on a little jaunt across the puddle to visit family and friends in England and Ireland not long after that. My Mom's big 5-0 this year demands a decent celebration, too. ;) Next thing I know it will be time to run the Annual Salary Survey again.

Anywho, wish me luck!

Look forward to future postings from me on the Women in Design Interview Series I've been conducting. I've got a Civil Engineer in the wings and I'm not afraid to introduce her! And I hope to see you locals at upcoming meetings of GAUG.

Video: Autodesk University 2006

I know it's well past, but, I finally got around to throwing together a little video from AU2006. Skip over the first third if you don't want to see our side trip to the Grand Canyon. ;)

And, no, there is no soundtrack on this bad boy. I don't have much by ways of a music library on this computer yet. Enjoy!



URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC7M-znfL4k

St. Louis Meeting on BIM and Model Ownership/Contract Issues

Just a reminder to our St. Louis metro area readers:

The Gateway AUG will be hosting another quarterly meeting at the Masonry Institute on Tuesday the 19th. Attendees will start arriving between 6 and 6:30. We will have food and drink available, we make time before the meeting and during a break for eating. Our discussion will get rolling around 6:30 pm (but, as always, don't worry if you're running a few minutes late, you can slip in and join us).

This meeting will be a panel discussion on Building Information Modeling, which promises to be a very stimulating conversation. Regional experts will discuss their own projects and the benefits/real world applications of BIM in practice (with yours truly providing some opinion on what the client wants/needs/expects/is willing to pay for).

And, as always, you don't have to be a Gateway AUG member to attend our meetings! Come along, bring friends, we are really looking forward to a lot of good discussion.
Hope to see you there!


(and mark on your calendar the September meeting the night before the AUGI CAD Camp!)

Creating a Tool Palette Group

I have spent some time customizing Dashboard Panels with AutoCAD 2008 in the past ~mumble~ months or so, which includes the linking of individuals panels to Tool Palette Groups (see fourth screenshot, toward bottom of article). NOW, this results in an observant user calling me out to clarify... just what IS a tool palette Group anyway?

Well. Okay. I'm not sure how to succinctly describe it, aside from saying that It is a way to group related tool palettes together for easier access and navigation amongst palettes. :-/

To create a Tool Palette Group, right-click on the TP title bar. Here you can see the ‘out of the box’ tool palette groups, and access the ‘Customize Palettes…’ area.

From there, all you have to do is name your group and drag the appropriate palettes into it.

TPNAVIGATE is a command which will bring up a specified tool palette or tool palette group (and if the tool palettes are closed, this will bring them up and navigate to the appropriate one).

I don't believe there is a concise definition here, but, if you'd like to explore the uses and methods of tool palette groups, check out the AutoCAD help file for more details on various topics.

BIM and the Property Manager Process

I haven’t had a guest writer in quite awhile, but, I’d like to share the below with you.

Brian Myers serves on the Board for the Gateway AUG (he and I founded this group together, and he was the first President) and since our next meeting, the evening of June 19^th, at the Masonry Institute, is about BIM and model ownership, benefits, end-user needs, some of us have been brain-storming quite a bit. I liked some of Brian’s ideas and asked him to write an article to post here so that I could share them with you (and hopefully inspire some locals to come and join in our Panel discussion next Tuesday).

Building blocks toward the facilitation of the property management process.

We are an industry dominated by the bottom line. If we buy into the conventional marketing and industry slant of the Architectural community, both from the AIA (architects) and architectural software vendors, then the future is today in terms of maximizing profits by controlling data with the software we have at our fingertips. The “industry Buzz” tells us that this software (often called BIM software) will be interoperable with a variety of software platforms and the information provided will save you thousands of dollars each year while driving extra deliverables that Architects can provide to their clientele. Architects will be happy for seeing extra profits due to extra deliverables, facilities management and owners will be happy for the luxury of tools that directly impact (positively) on their operational costs.

Bull...

Actually, not total bull, just that it won’t be the architects that will (in most cases) be seeing the extra profits, they are simply being used to drive this market today as the technology is yet to travel downstream to the hands of those that will really benefit from it, the owners and the facilities managers. So we’ll step back and analyze where these profits will really come from, who will really see them, and most importantly who will really control this development and revenue. I propose that the real power that will facilitate technological development is with the facilities management where new jobs will be created and will evolve even as many positions within the architectural profession will be wiped away due to workload and pressure on the bottom line.

Analyzing the Deliverables and Duties:

When discussing Deliverables and Duties, a division needs to be put into place between the involved professions. As a result of this, I’ll break this discussion into the following divisions:

1) Architectural

2) Construction Management

3) Contractors

4) Owners

5) Government

6) Suppliers

7) Technology Vendors

8) Facilities Management

1) Architectural

The Architectural Industry is often marketed as being the driving force behind BIM technology. While historically BIM has stood for Building Information Modeling the real thing they are being paid for isn’t a building. It’s creating and communicating the design intent so that a building can be built. As a result of this they need to Manage the design data required to build a building appropriately, not simply managing a building model (which they are not paid to do). As a result of this they are really in the business of Building Information Management (BIM) and creation and their deliverable is a set of documents for which the information can be managed by them as well as others. So the duties of Architects (in the form of a deliverable) are to produce a design that meets the design intent, needs of the client & community, and the criteria for public safety, legal, and environmental concerns. This deliverable must be communicated in the form of information that can be built from, analyzed, and used by the other professions that need this information to do their jobs effectively. No where in this description do I hear words that suggest “added deliverable potential”. Those words describe deliverables that will be expected downstream by others in the profession to do their jobs effectively and by the nature of the software will be produced automatically. As a result, I see little in the realm of extra revenue opportunities and instead see different deliverables which happen to contain information on design intent and acceptable parameters, not an extra set of deliverables that can be billed.

Architectural firms as they adopt this technology will realize that for them more product will be completed in the design phase and less work will be needed in the CD phase. As the technology evolves we’ll see the software detailing more construction/material conditions than it has been able to do in the past and this will create less work for “drafters” downstream. We will then see more “project architects” (those individuals that figure out the complex details and handle the more complex code related issues) doing less detail work as they check the work of their draftsman (aka the software program). The resultant: Less hours (and need) for drafters as the “project architect”/software combo has more time to do the work typically assigned to them. With quicker project turn-around time and less billable hours there will be less need for extra staff in the bodies of “drafters”… thus staffing will slim down. End result: Same billing (due to the higher cost/more hours billed toward the project architects) but quicker turn-around time which means firms may be able to take on more projects (if the work exists). This is good business for busy firms, but creates less jobs and a more competitive market place as larger firms take on the extra work.

Yes, this is long term, but since this entire process is a long term concept we need to grasp its ultimate impact 10-15 or more years down the road.

2.) Construction Management

If architects and their deliverables don’t bring in the extra money then the construction industry should see extra profits… correct? Well, only if you are the right person in the right job. Construction managers have always managed data, just now they will need to be trained to do it electronically and manage more of it. Many of these individuals will be the “front end” data managers on a project. Swapping of materials in and out will need to be managed electronically along with the scheduling of contractors, etc. Ultimately, the entire construction “data set” of the project will need to be controlled inside the parameters of the BIM deliverable the architect originally created…and some individual(s) will need to be in charge of managing it. Notice I didn’t say inside the BIM model (created by the architect) itself, but inside a model that references the parameters specified in the BIM model that other individuals can access and reference. As a result, the Architect’s work will be strictly followed and used as a guide/base for all the data that follows… but not modified itself to protect the liability of the architectural team. The makeup of the Construction Management team will likely be a “facilities minded” group that understands how the downstream product needs to be delivered to the facilities management/owner in order to manage costs, understand data, and ultimately have a grasp on the total value/cost of the scope of the project. Those that fit into this role will see the real financial gains of BIM in their checks as their efforts will be essential to keeping the bottom line of any project manageable.

3) Contractors

They will handle bidding and scheduling largely electronically. While they won’t see a major “profit” increase in this system, they will have an easier time managing their deliverables and bidding on projects, perhaps in an environment that will be more competitive with jobs becoming easier to bid on and manage. They will see other minor benefits as well related to suppliers, etc. that we won’t mention in this article, but benefits none the less.

4.) Owners.

Financial gains, less liability, projects closer to on schedule, real estate that is easier to manage. There is no downside and they see the most return for their buck as well as have all the project info at their fingertips. They won’t know what “BIM” is, but they’ll know, appreciate, and eventually demand the results of it as BIM is a smaller part of Project Lifecycle Management… part of their financial lifeblood which this technology will really make flow in a positive manner.

5.) Government.

Simply put: Organization and liability. The government will enjoy and push for this data deliverable as it will create an easier to manage system for review. The result: less man-hours, less mistakes, easier to place liability, quicker project turn-around, and a more centristic document management system.

6.) Suppliers.

Electronically getting your products specified has many advantages which I won’t list in full in this document, but it could lead to many financial gains. One advantage suppliers would realize would be the “ease” of product specifying on the fly into projects and the generation of automatic bids/costs (or place a request for bid on the fly). This will revolutionize the way products are delivered, priced, and marketed in the eyes of a supplier.

7) Technology Vendors

While profits will still be made from the architectural industry for many years to come they are small in comparison to the profits the deliverables in other fields will produce. Each group listed above will have their own needs to manage the vast amount of data required to make this work. As a result, expect custom products specifically designed for each of the above fields. In this multi-trillion dollar market (real estate makes up over half the value of the world), technology vendors have barely touched one percent of the individuals that will eventually use their products to manage the huge pool of data to be created.

8.) Facilities Management.

Simply put: They control the data. As the ultimate downstream stop for all this available data, Facilities Managers (planning, operations, maintenance, etc) will help their owners understand this flood of data and manage the data deluge during the lifecycle of the project. While the “FM type” individual may have managed this data during the initial construction phase for the Construction Managers, there will be FM companies/individuals that manage it after construction completion. For a fee (or salary) these data managers will ultimately save owners many times this amount by helping them budget for future expenses, manage rentable space, create energy calculations, forecast expected profits, and many more things. Yes, these individuals currently can do this, but not with the “on the fly” abilities and accuracy that this system will create. Individuals/firms will be able to more efficiently manage multiple sites/clients and provide several times the deliverable value they can today. As a result of this, expect new technology-savvy CAFM individuals, positions, and companies to be emerging in the industry.

Summary:

Facilities Management will ultimately realize the greatest benefits and drive the creation of true lifecycle management systems. Suppliers will push to get their products specified; technology vendors will sell more products; the government will demand the data in this deliverable; contractors will have an easier time managing their projects and bidding; construction management will provide much greater value; Owners will see greater profits and have more control; and Architects will be able to reduce overhead and minimize their liability. But it will be FM, with total control over this data and as the go-between and ultimate keeper of this data that will have the most to gain. Perhaps not in dollars but in job creation, the ability to expand and market their services, and in ability to provide extra value added services. So for Architects, this BIM technology is just part of your normal deliverable process and an improvement to your existing methods, but it’s the FM profession as a whole that will see the extra value added services and jobs created by the availability of a new flood of data at their fingertips.

This brings up an interesting thought, what if you want to break into this construction market? Look at the FM industry (or the management of data in the construction management side) as it is this final, managed deliverable that will provide good long term job security in a field that will be ready to explode over the next 10 years. A construction management or facilities management degree with an MBA might be the best career advice I could provide for long term job security and financial benefits… it’s all about managing the data and managing those that provide that deliverable.

- Brian Myers is an Applications Specialist at Seiler Instruments with a background in Architecture and CAD Management.

Collective Memory Technologies

Check out this post with video over on BLAUGI showing a technology demonstration by Microsoft Labs.

The poster (otherwise known as Dear Hubby) showed me this video last night and I was blown away by the amount of detail, effortless movement from one type of media to the other, as well as the combination of many types and origins of media into a single model. Very, very, very cool stuff, check it out and let me know what you think or if you've seen some other impressive displays of technology.