Good reading about BIM, IPD, LOD, MPS, etc

Building Information Modelling (BIM), Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), Level of Detail (LOD), Model Progression Specification (MPS) are discussed in this article on AECbytes about Organizing the Development of a Building Information Model.

Representations of building elements in a BIM, though, are exact, whether they’re intended to be or not, and can give a false indication of the precision actually known at a given point in the design process. … The need for a framework for defining a BIM’s precision and suitability for specific uses becomes obvious.

AIACC IPD Task Force Technology Subcommittee has developed the broad-based consensus around this process:

Paul Audsley, NBBJ Architects
Jim Awe, Autodesk
Jim Bedrick, Webcor Builders (chair)
Dan Gonzales, Swinerton Builders
Mario Guttman, HOK Architects
Atul Khanzode, DPR Construction
Greg Luth, GPLA Engineers
Tony Rinella, Anshen + Allen Architects
John Wynne, Lucasfilm (owner)

Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide - a 62 pages PDF file can be downloaded for free.

100% Anti-Virus protection with application whitelisting

Seems like an interesting product in a company environment that have strict rules on what to install and run.

new anti-virus product from a company called CoreTrace. The product, called BOUNCER, takes an entirely different approach to blocking unwanted malware. Instead of using a blacklist like today’s anti-virus products do, the software does application whitelisting. This type of security is so effective that at the recent DEFCON conference, CoreTrace’s app stopped 100% of the computer viruses during the ‘Race to Zero” competition.

I also like this feature. I understand it could make it easier for beta testers, CAD managers and the like.

Higher employee productivity due to NEW “Trusted Change” (patent pending) that allows users to install and upgrade applications from trusted sources without involving IT staff each time.

Via on10

SOM trick the viewer

I like the optical effect of this skyscraper by Skidmore Owings and Merrill that you will be able to see from E 57th St in New York.

When it is ready you will find it here.

 

More images from other angles at Urbanity

Issue Tracking Anywhere now works fine with IE8 B2

I had a problem attaching images within Issue Tracking Anywhere after I started using IE8 B2. When I click on Upload I got “File’s path unavailable!”. That is now solved so it works with IE8 B2 as well as Firefox 3. Notice though that it does not work with “Compatibility View” activated in IE8 B2.

Restore missing Bound Spaces Property for Boundary Objects

This previous post describes the tip to make boundaries valid for SpaceUpdateSelectedSpaces command but some found that there was no way to do it, the Bound Spaces property was missing from the Properties Palette.

Thanks to Dean Tidwell, J. M. Waller Associates, Inc. for finding how to add the missing Bound Spaces option on the Properties palette that might not show up for you in AutoCAD Architecture 2009 if you migrated the settings from an earlier ACA version.

The command is AecSpaceDisplayBoundSpacesProperty and let you turn it on or off.

Command: AecSpaceDisplayBoundSpacesProperty
Display bound spaces property on Properties palette for AutoCAD entities [Yes/No]

Here are a bit more from the help file:

Setting the Bound Spaces Property for Boundary Objects

The objects designed to form the boundary of an associative space must have their Bound Spaces property set to Yes before generating the space. You can set the Bound Spaces property on the object, or, for objects that use styles, you can set it in the object style.

Tip! Before setting the Bound Spaces property of a boundary object to Yes, verify that this type of object is a valid boundary object for the space you want to generate. For example, a roof or roof slab is a valid boundary object only for 3D freeform spaces; you cannot use it to generate an extruded 3D space or a 2D space, even if the slab’s Bound Spaces property is set to Yes.

The following overview graphic shows how the setting of the Bound Spaces property on the boundary object affects the generation of associative spaces. For detailed information on how to set the Bound Spaces property for a boundary object, consult the sections following below.

Note that the term “AutoCAD object” in the graphic below refers to AutoCAD linework (lines, arcs, circles, and polylines etc.)

Migrating Profiles from Previous Versions of the Software

Beginning with AutoCAD Architecture 2009, the mechanism by which objects are defined as boundary objects for spaces has changed. In previous versions, objects were selected by applying an object filter during the space generation. In AutoCAD Architecture 2009, each object has its own Bound Spaces property on the Properties palette or in the object style and is there defined as a boundary object.

When you import a profile (ARG file) from a previous release, the Bound spaces property in the Properties palette is not displayed for AutoCAD linework (lines, arcs, circles, polylines) in the imported profile. In order to display that property for AutoCAD linework, run the AecSpaceDisplayBoundSpacesProperty command on the command line. This will enable the display of the Bound Spaces property for AutoCAD linework in the Properties palette.

Post # 1000

The title says it all. This marks that there are 1000 blog posts including this one with the first post back in November 2004.

From the statistics I have in Google Analytics since Dec 2005 until yesterday:
542,562 Visits
759,456 Pageviews
437,350 Visitors
Visits from 211 countries/territories

The spots with zero visits so far are Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and possibly some of the really small countries not to be seen easily on the maps.

It seems everyone uses Google as search engine as 94.41% of the hits that came from search engines (organic traffic) came via Google. Yahoo was on second place with 3.46%. Microsoft’s search is really after with 1,05% and if I just look on the latest months I find that Google has increased to 94.89% of the traffic. Does this mean that searches on say Live Search does not show up this blog or does no one use anything else than Google? I think most are actually using Google as I found that several times I rank higher on Live Search than on Google.

When it comes to browsers Internet Explorer (63.04% last 30 days) is still ahead of Firefox even though Firefox (31.34% last 30 days) has increased more and more. Below is Opera in Red, Chrome in yellow (increasing) and Safari in Cyan.

Vista users are now 26% of the visitors compared to 21% 6 months ago.

First post using another Windows Live Writer Beta

I used a pre-release of this Windows Live Wave 3 so I have been able to center images, crop and tile them as well as the additional border styles for images like reflection, drop shadows and more. But now it’s more publicly available. No question about it. Go get it.

Download Windows Live Writer Beta (14.0.5025.904) and you have the chance to get a lot of other goodies like new versions of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker (should rather be called alpha because of the limited functionality and feature set, I first thought the installation was broken), Writer, Toolbar, and Family Safety. I also was asked to install Microsoft Office Outlook Connector.

With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free.

Here are the news in Live Writer:

Image and video publishing enhancements

• Insert videos from Soapbox and YouTube
• Upload videos to Soapbox and YouTube
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles for images (such as reflection and rounded corners)
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Blog authoring enhancements

• Spell Checking in more languages: Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Serbian-Cyrillic, Serbian-Latin, Spanish, and Swedish
• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

Experience improvements

• New toolbar makes more commands – like Font formatting - readily available
• Tabs for view switching
• Improved category control with search and type-down filtering
• New look and feel

I had a problem with the installation. “Writer Beta couldn’t be installed. Code 0x80004005 (Source: install)” To solve this I had to uninstall Writer and the try again. Notice that all drafts and settings are still there after a reinstall.

More about Building Windows Live

Download the new betas from http://download.live.com.

JTB FlexReport 5 alpha 2

Several fixes has been done. If you’re interested in the new version contact me to get access to JTB FlexReport 5 alpha 2.

Post on alpha 1.

WAN acceleration hotfix for AutoCAD products and DWG files

This hotfix improves performance of save to 2007 DWG format when running in a WAN Acceleration environment.

This is great news after the problems earlier described:

• Riverbed and DWG 2007 file format workaround
• Silver Peak still significant performance gains with DWG 2007
• AutoCAD 2007, WDS and Deduplication - What is the truth?

Description of Problem

WAN acceleration technology typically relies on data-deduplication as a significant part of accelerating data transfer. The 2007 DWG format is written to disk with a type of error-checking that has the side-effect of nearly every byte of the file changing during full-save, even if little was changed. WAN accelerators fail to deduplicate the 2007 DWG data and must transfer nearly all bytes in the 2007 DWG file. This results in a slow-down during full-save when working over a slow WAN.

The Solution

This hotfix will make a small change in the way the 2007 format DWG files are written to disk such that WAN acceleration hardware will be better able to deduplicate the 2007 DWG data; this will provide some performance gains for SAVE operations when users are saving across a WAN acceleration environment. The resulting 2007 DWG file will be readable whether or not others have this hotfix, but to achieve the best performance everyone working on the same DWG should install this hotfix.

After installing the hotfix, you must set the Windows environment variable, ACADCOMPRESSIONMODE to 1 for it to have effect.

Note: For AutoCAD, you can often get performance gains in QSAVE operations by setting the ISAVEPERCENT system variable to 100. Using a value of 100 will maximize the chance that a QSAVE operation will use incremental-save rather than full-save. (WAN accelerator technology is able to show good performance in deduplication of 2007 DWG format files when incremental save takes place.)

Download

• WAN acceleration hotfix for the AutoCAD 2009 family
• WAN acceleration hotfix for the AutoCAD 2008 family
• WAN acceleration hotfix for the AutoCAD 2007 family

Make sure to read the Readme on how to install acdb17.dll and AcSignCore16.dll and set the ACADCOMPRESSIONMODE environment variable.

Some Autodesk sites unavailable Monday, September 22

News from Autodesk:

Autodesk is working to consolidate multiple user accounts, simplify the sign in process, and provide a single User ID and Password for accessing several Autodesk web sites. Access to register or edit your existing account information will be restricted during the September 18-21 launch window. Additionally, the sites affected will be unavailable Monday, September 22.

To help ensure a smooth transition, we recommend that you review your current account information for accuracy before September 19, especially first name, last name, and e-mail address. Please note: If you have multiple User IDs with the same email address and want to keep those User IDs, you’ll need to assign a unique email address for each User ID.

Sites affected:

Autodesk Subscription

Product Activation

Autodesk Discussion Groups

Autodesk University

Autodesk Labs

Alias Design Community

Civil Engineering Community

Impression Community

Manufacturing Community

More on this previous post.

JTB FlexReport 5 alpha 1

If you want to get a  sneak peek on the next big release of the network license report application JTB FlexReport just contact me for a document describing what’s in it and if you want there is also a demo report application that you can run on your PC or server that does not interfere with existing installation of other versions of JTB FlexReport. Excel is no longer needed for the reports. I would love to get your feedback.

AutoCAD Architecture Formula Property Definition tip

Notice how the Number 00 is not visible in the Sample Result as well as how the dot “.” is change to a comma “,” due to the Windows Regional and Language Options settings. I have it set to Swedish format and this can be a problem for other languages as well. If you don't want this to happen you need to change the formula to look like this instead by enclosing the properties with double quotes and combine them with “&”.

Sheet Set Manager tutorial, tips and tricks

The SHEETS HAPPEN! document by Heidi Hewett is an Introduction to the drawing organization tool Sheet Set Manager (aka SSM) that is really useful if you are about to start using SSM or use it more to its full.
Learn the steps how to create a new sheet set, assign sheet set properties and create fields.

Covered subjects are:
Create new sheet set: Organize sheets, Access sheets, Import existing layouts, Plot using default page setups, Publish to DWG, Create archive/transmittal sets, Using named sheet selections.

Assign sheet set properties: Plot using any page setup, Create new sheets, Create sheet views, Add view labels.

Create fields: Automate view label data, Automate callout data, Create custom properties, Automate titleblock data.

 

Here is a popular post on the subject: AutoCAD Sheet Set Manager properties shows '----' when you don't want to.

 

One thing that can take a lot of time is when you edit sheet properties and you want to do the same edit on more than one sheet. SSMPropEditor is the solution for this as you can select multiple sheets and then edit the sheet properties on all at once.

See my page on Sheet Set Manager for more info

Kean Walmsley interview with John Walker

Interesting reading on Kean’s meeting with John Walker, one of Autodesk's founders and its former CEO. Look forward reading the rest.

Part 1 - Autodesk's early history

Part 2 - AutoCAD's architecture & APIs

Part 3 - Autodesk's eco-system and strategy

Part 4 - Past and future opportunities