EKlectiCAD Blog

AUGI BoD Election Results sre in!

Voting is closed and tabulated, notifications are made and receipted, and the winner announced.

Results are posted at:

http://augi.typepad.com/augi_news/2010/12/augi-2010-election-results-are-in.html

Congrats to our new BoD member and I hope for a chance to meet you next AU! And keep trying, Assis, and I will keep rooting for you.

AUGI BoD Election: Vote!

In some ways, AU2010 is already ancient history, even though some of us (like me) are still trying to wrap the whole thing up into a coherent post. Maybe I should settle for incoherent - or just blame work. The pile was deeper when I got back than the pile I "disappeared" the week before AU!

Anyway... one aspect of AU isn't finished yet. The annual election for new/returning members of the AUGI Board of Directors starts each year during AU, and this time around, it ends on December 16th - so there's still time to get your vote in!

And there's still time for me to pimp my friend Assis Haubert.

If you met him yourself, or if you follow his incredibly prolific run of Twitter postings, you probably already voted for him. If not, check the candidate information and interviews on the AUGI website and see what you think.

I know what I think - Assis is a pretty good guy, and deeply interested in all things CAD. I don't know where he gets all his energy, but energy is what AUGI needs in a board member.

The overall situation is a but different than last year. We had something like 9 candidates for 8 seats then, this time we have 3 running for a single seat. That calls for a bit more thought in your voting, so click the link above and check out the candidates. Then vote for the one you think will do us the most good.

My vote is in. Let's add yours!

Prophecy - Earl's Style

If something can go wrong, it will happen to me. That's what I wrote in that last post just before I headed back downstairs for a late but tasty dinner... and ~5 hours later I was riding in the guest seat of an ambulance, headed for Valley Medical Center's emergency room.

Food poisoning, the doc said.

The human body is a pretty amazing thing. Creatures so tiny we can't see them are having a party inside you, noshing on whatever they find, and pooping out chemicals that don't belong inside us. Our bodies can detect this, and fire up mechanisms to eject the undesirable party-crashers.

Eject. Good word for it. Eject I did, both ways, again and again, violently enough that my abs were still hurting four days later. I was rapidly dehydrating, getting weaker by the heave, and starting to occasionally choke on bits of a meal that tasted much better the first time... my need to breathe fought a side battle with the need to eject and the waning strength TO eject. Things were getting kind of scary and I figured it was time to call for help.  Even that was difficult as I was disorientated and somehow it was becoming a challenge to form words and put together a coherent sentence.

I have no idea why so many, but next I knew there were 8 guys in my room. At least 4 were paramedics and a couple were hotel security. I suppose it might take several to lift my big butt onto the gurney, but luckily for them I was able to mount up under my own power.  The guys were great, though, asking all the pertinent questions, getting down info on all my meds, what I ate, drank & such, and finally making sure I left behind a secure situation. Rolling through the hotel, I did a quick call to friend and AUGI board member Jane Smith, so that at least SOMEBODY at AU would know where I was, and then off we went for a lights & siren run across Las Vegas at 3 or so in the morning.

Valley Medical Center has some pretty good people, too. They took care of me, starting an IV through which eventually passed a couple 2-liter bags of plain old water (don't ever again complain about the price of water at the airport) and miscellaneous shots of anti-nausea drugs and morphine as they gradually got me under control.

Forward 4 or 5 hours, and the major discomfort is my sore butt from the hours of half-sitting on the narrow gurney. Communication was still a problem, but I managed to satisfy their main requirement for discharge by dribbling an inch or so into one of their plastic pee-bottles and they ran a couple more tests. They decided while they waited for the results to put another shot of everything into me, and since morphine tends to make me sick we were surprised to discover that I DID still have some dinner left inside. I guess if they needed some samples to test that took care of it.

Word came back that the lab guys were happy with my dribble, and I could finally get dressed and ready to go. Be it experience or foresight, due to the advice from the paramedics I had my bankcard in hand and there is an ATM at the emergency room's lobby. Yay, cash to to cover the cab ride home to the hotel!

A wheelchair ride from security, and as the rest of the hotel guests start to get up and/or head down for breakfast and a day of gambling, sightseeing, greeting new arrivals for AU, for me it's hit the bed for another 8 or 9 hours, with only 11 hours until the Blogger's Social!

Not that things were finished, but I made it, all showered and shaved and in fresh clothes, to the social, where I went right to hard-party mode with club-soda and strawberries!

As awful as it was, it could have been worse, and I avoided actually missing any part of AU. I continued in a pretty wobbly state, with a very touchy system, until Thursday morning when breakfast was again fun. What I did miss, though was the chance to blog the AU as it happened. I just didn't have the energy to do much more than soak up the info best I could from my classes and sessions. I guess I'll have to do AU in wrap-up form again this time. Stay tuned for that, and oh, yeah...

Next comes the bill. Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum...

Murphy's Law - Earl Style

If something can go wrong, it will happen to me. AU registration took about 2 hrs to get straightened out. Badge didn't print, when they finaaly got one printed I wasn't listed for the things I do: Subscribe, Feedback Community, Customer Council, Testing, nada zip except AUGI. The kiosks would not accept my login - an absolute MUST when it comes time to do class surveys, because they enter you in a drawing for a free pass for next year!

And  of course, all the registration minions do their job correctly by assuming that we all lie about that stuff. But that should not be taken as meaning that they aren't helpful and nice. Or deserve nice back. Anyway, we finally got it all worked out, and I have the appropriate con badge and series of ribbons attached. Thanks, Bob. (I think it was Bob. I'm awful with names, sorry, but thanks for all the help.)

I got my bag and my mouse. Itty bitty travel mouse, and it works. In fact, it's a pretty good combo with this HP Mini. The bag is very nice, but sorry gang, it is not a good con bag - no strap. A must when standing in a reception or the hallway with drink, food, and bag! I suspect I will use it regularly, but have Pillow work her magic adding straps.

Speaking of food!! My Friday night's dinner was, of course, a repeat of last year's fabulous treat at the Burger Bar. The Rossini Burger: Kobe beef, fois gras, truffles, a wonderful truffle sauce that goes well on the burger OR the fries, and one of their cute and VERY tasty dessert burgers. This year I had my sister and her fiance along, giving Sharon her first taste of the original Kobe Wagyu, while her intended had the American Wagyu.

The Burger Bar gets my hearty endorsement, and they excell at pleasing your tastebuds whether you spend ten bucks or a hundred.

Then last night I hit Stripsteak. Awesomely good. But you aren't going to go there and spend ten bucks. For two, you will probably go over a hundred. Maybe even for one, and you CAN go far beyond, alone. They offer some great prime steaks, American Kobe*, and the real thing. No listed price for the true Kobe, just an abbreviation for market price. Meaning, of course, that if you have to ask...

Stripsteak also has some appetizers that are an adventure. I had the crispy duck thigh with a duck egg placed atop a frisee salad with a touch of fenell. They also list Kobe Shabu-Shabu and Kobe Tartare, and I was told that both are a bit of a theatrical production. A nice surprise was a triple treat of french fries, 3 little baskets each spiced differently, with 3 dipping sauces. not mentioned that I noticed on the menu - just brought out and presented with flair. Otherwise I went for a rather ordinary rib eye - except it wasn't ordinary, it was mighty tasty and the leftover part was absolutely delicious later - cold. So was the truffled mac and cheese side dish with brocolli, excellent hot; the test of a really good M&C is whether it tastes good cold.

Service at both places rates high with me. I don't like to treat servers as servants. I treat them as pros and friends, and that seemed to work well either place.

So there's our traditional (twice) AU food review, and it's time to go downstairs and get some more! Tomorrow the action starts ramping up big. A lot today, actually - people have been rolling in all day, and seeing each other again after a year is one of the treats that make up AU. Those you miss in the halls & casino turn up in registration and the wifi area, including several co-workers and the AUGI gang, and friends among the Autodesk crew. More people & action tomorrow, and still AU won't be actually started! Tuesday the mad machine takes off.

More tomorrow, I hope. We'll see how I come through the blogger's social (yes, I was invited! Thank you Sean and the crew. Assuming there is a crew? I sometimes think Sean takes on too much stuff himself.)

Ta...

*Properly, and legally in France, referred to as American Wagyu, Kobe refers to the place in Japan - kind of like sparkling wine shouldn't be called champaigne unless it comes from the Champaigne region in France. But the Japanese don't really abide by that "rule" themselves, nor regarding "Scotch."

Let's Get Ready To Fumble!

I don't know why, but I'm having a heck of a time with gravity today. I keep dropping stuff. So I guess I'll not carry to much electronic stuff around all day.

Like this little goodie! Last year I tried to do all my emails and posts at AU on my iPod. Ouch. But carting a laptop around all day is not a great answer, and I'm just not impressed with the iPad. So I picked up a new Netbook, the HP Mini. It runs a 1.65 GHz Atom 645, with 1G RAM and a 250drive. Nearly a full-size screen, a proper keyboard, and it runs all my REAL windoze apps except AutoCAD. (It might, but has Windoze 7 Starter for now.) With USB ports, I can hook up a prtable drive or my camera. Or the camera's memory card can just pop into the media slot. It's light enough to carry around, especially in the neat little case Pillow made for me from an old pair of jeans - complete with pocket!

So, AU is so close now you can smell it. Not really, that's the carp they spray in the air at the casino! Yup, I'm there, getting in a couple days of fun before the show, and so far getting out dollars. Once AU starts you don't really have time to gamble.

The Mandalay bay is doing us well again - better even - as last year. In-room WIFI is in the new $15 "Resort Fee" that everybody in Vegas decided to charge us out-of-towners, but the MB is comping us the fee. All us nerd should be a lot less grumpy with our full complement of web-fixes each day.

AU tip: The MB puts a long, thin, pillow on your bed. Goofy to lie your head on, but it is the PERFECT size to block out the gap under the door to the hallway. Cut down the noise AND light entering your room at 3am.

Today the crowd starts to arrive. Blads & the Saint should show soon, Jeff later, and the Sunday a flood. The AU area will be taking shape, too, with registration and WIFI outside the room. That means the Mini goes in my carry-bag, the "cheap, f---ing bag" from AU2006 that has been my favorite because it is just a simple murse.

Well, time to go out there and see if those dollars are still unidirectional. Later...

Something New for CAD Monkeys - from ESRI?

That's right, from ESRI!

We recently made the move from ArcMap 9.3.1 to 10, and darned if there isn't something in there a lot of us will like!

Formerly available only with the high-priced arc seats, ArcInfo and ArcEdit, the Export to CAD function is now part of the ArcMAP package.

 

Right-click a layer in your project's table of contents, or in ArcCatalog, and select Data, then Export to CAD, and up pops the Export to CAD tool. Note that the dialog allows you to continue selecting layers in your project, or even feature classes in geodatabases, even shapefiles (yuk) to include in the output drawing.

And that's drawing, not just DWG, because the command will also save to Microstation DGN format.

The function may be called programmatically (from your own code, dude!) where it actually offers more capability - like indluding the feature class definitions, attribute data, and even the coordinate system.

I'll be playing with this a lot in the near future - stay tuned for more as I get this puppy trained!

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Shaan Hurley has a new post about the AU2010 Blogger's Social in his Between The Lines blog.

"The event is for bloggers who actively blog on Autodesk product and events not really for blogs about their unicorn training, bacon weaving, or wicked butter carving skills."

Shaan, I happen to be very proud of my butter carving skills!

j/k, I'm actually crap at it. My artistic skills just aren't that great.

Yet, back in the day, I was a pretty good manual drafter, if the job was mapping, or transportation and utility design. I just wasn't much good at architectural stuff, despite winning 3rd place in the state high school archie competition my junior year. And my hand lettering was (and is) awful.

Eventually AutoCAD came along, combining what I did with what I was highly interested in (computers) and things changed up some. My main weaknesses became unimportant, and I started to understand what it was that made my work good in spite of them.

First off, I realized that what I liked about the work was REPRESENTING something, be it a subdivision, a road, a building, bridge, whatever, in a precise way. CAD let me be even more precise in the representation, and that's a big thing, but MUCH bigger is the skill I didn't realize I had.

Communication.

It isn't enough to show the thing, you have to present it in an understandable way, with (only) the details and annotation needed to so that a builder can grasp the elements and the processes needed to turn the representation into the real thing. I've always had this attitude if the engineer gets huffy over how many hours it took to do such a simple plan sheet, I've done a good job.

I wish more of them understood that. It ISN'T simple, but the ability to make it seem so is why I'm still at it today. AutoCAD is a tremendous help, because it separates the representation from the page. That is becoming much more so now; with Civil 3D and Revit you develop the model long before you develop the plan sheets that show it. CAD gives you a lot more freedom when it comes time to develop those plan sheets, too - you can try different views, closeups, sections, etc. to give emphasis or clarification where needed.

You can't do it if you don't know the subject. I used to get assignments like, "Make us a new map set of the city at 50 scale, overlaid on the topo/ground feature drawings we got from the aerial mapping company. And I'd do it, because I know the stuff you need: plats, surveys, deeds (gotta learn title searching), even some of the history involved.

The same is true in most design fields. A lot of CAD monkeys are afraid that they will be replaced as engineers come out of school with CAD skills. That may be true if you are the type of drafter that can only draw details from sketches. If you work to know CAD the very best you can, work to understand the subject the best you can, and finally hone that communication aspect that the shavetail engineer does NOT have, don't sweat your job. You are a Designer, not a drafter.

So how do you get the CAD skills notched up? Grab all the training you can. Read blogs, ask questions. Be willing to use your own time for this stuff, too. Insist on getting your due help from the company, though. Subscription users have access to home installs, training modules, as long as your CAD manager and IT guys aren't too lazy to make them available to you. And ask for a trip to AU. Ask every year, in writing. The worst that can happen is they they say no, but if you never ask they'll never say yes.

I asked, and it worked. Several times. I still ask, but the answer doen't matter. I'm going, because it helps me improve my skills, and the people I see there are now friends that I want to see again. Among them are some of the top CAD brains out there, especially bloggers.

Improvement of my skills, and knowing these people, is why I started blogging. A great way to understand a subject better is to figure out how to explain it to somebody else. And like Chris at C3D Reminders says, it's a great way to file little bits for you OWN reference. He and Robin Capper both say that searching a question often finds them a link to the answer - on their own blogs!

I wish I was more prolific with it. Sometimes the motivation is hard to develop, like when work gets piled high. I think I do OK, and maybe have done some pretty good posts. Even if there is a post in there on teaching a Unicorn to fetch. Or maybe like a series I'm working on now - using ArcMap to get around things CAD doesn't do that well, so that you can then use CAD to finish the job using what ArcMap doesn't do well.

This is EklectiCAD, remember, and I am trying to help you and me get the job done.

And you know what? Check out a lot of the "top" blogs out there, and many don't post any more often than I do. That's no excuse, I still want to do better. I like and read what "they" do, and wish there was more. I hope there is somebody out there that wishes I'd do more.

Less than two weeks now until my flight to Vegas. Hope to see you there!

Tips from AU Veterans...

... the folks with the blogs, anyway. Check any Autodesk-oriented blog within the past and next week, and you'll read about what works and doesn't work, at Autodesk University. There are definitely some good things to know, but I'll stand by my old standby - don't be shy!

Across the table at lunch, ahead or behind you in the food line, the next seat in class or lab. Strangers. They don't have to be. You don't know them. You can. All it takes is to open up and say hi.

It sounds cliche to say that everybody there is interested in the same subject. But really, it's a MASSIVE understatement. We're all interested to the point that we travelled, some of the crowd halfway around the planet, to be there. In many cases, we're there out of our own pocket. Yer darned right we're interested! Get us started, and the hard part is to shut us up.

So you really have nothing to lose, and you will gain many things: insights, friends, connections, recognition, respect from, respect for... and wait a sec, here...

I was wrong, you do have some things to lose. Boredom, certainly. The whole thing is much more fun when you participate. I used to be a generally shy type. I lost that at AU and now I apply this tip to any situation I find myself, and it's like I said, the hard part is to shut me up ;-) So how about that, the cure for shyness is not being shy. Nerd-zen!

See you there - and say hi to the big guy in black. No, the other one... Did you just say to yourself, "BOTH?" You're ready for AU!

Autodesk University 2010 is getting close!

I've been ready to pack & git for weeks, myself. So I guess it's time I started blogging it up. Maybe it will help fill in the 16 days 13 hours and 23 minutes until my fight leaves for Vegas?

Back in August, it was triage phase 1, as the choices piled up while signing up for classes. My 7th AU and I still find more classes I want than I do class sessions in the day.

Now, the emails are starting to take up the first hour of my day... who's going, let's meet up, join our special session... and the next phase of triage, deciding which class gets skipped so I can take part in special sessions.

Information on keynote sessions is trickling out, too. Just announced today - we will be getting another visit from the entertainment industry. Tuesday's general session will include a presentation about the upcoming movie, "TRON: Legacy." Later on, clips from the movie will be previewed in 3D during the M&E keynote session.

Check Shaan Hurley's (http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/) and other Autodesk bloggers for more on TRON: Legacy at AU 2010.

Another fine mess...

Well, it has certainly been a month for wierdness from AutoCAD! I wish I had been thinking right, and copped screenshots of the error messages, but here goes.

I started out my day firing up a dwg in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010, part of the same project that glitched out so bad a couple weeks ago. Beep! The message says that the drawing is corrupted and can't be loaded, but that I should try Recover...

We've seen that before, really, and it happens. No big deal. So I tried another drawing from the same project - and got it again. Now we're at "uh-oh."

Tried a third, and this time I got a different message. Instead of "can't be loaded", the message tells me that there have been around 6,000 errors detected in a couple sections of loading. Do I want to continue trying, or bag it. Well, gang, we know have permission to be concerned.

Let's try a different workstation. Won't load here either? OMG. How about a different project? NO? Put an eff in that oh em gee!

Golly, this must be Monday. Count to ten, chant a couple "omm"s... try that count in Japanese, Spanish...

Calm... I do still have a couple things I can check before I start looking online for answers. Let's try a dwg from a different drive. A few mouse clicks, and...  everybody can breathe. It loaded!! Dancing in the streets time, everybody! We actually have a CLUE!

So SOMETHING'S still wrong with that first drive, so back to work. How about copying a file to our good drive. BZZZTTT - again!?! You can't even copy & paste a file? What does the dialog say this time?

The bad news is actually good news. And something new for us all, I bet - no space on the disk. The SOURCE disk. ????

Did you know that you need some space on your file server to copy & paste a file to another drive? I sure wouldn't have expected that, but that's what's going on here. The share on the file server is really, truly, full. Like zero kilobytes available.

It IS kinda wierd, but this is something we can fix. I love it when I can fix it! After a restart of the server, which frees up some space, I did some archiving and cleared out some projects. Can't do much, though. We share this server with the GIS guys. "Share" meaning that they use up about 95% while 3 solid years of CAD files, including imagery, PDFs, and support files, city, state, and federal drawing standards, standard details, highway stds, railroad stds, even three years of CAD install files and service packs, make up the other 5%.

I've knocked off about 40 gigs by the end of the day, and they've cleared out about a gig. Doggone the GIS guys and their precious data. In ten minutes I can show them the exact same data four times in their stuff. And that GIS stuff is really horrible when it comes to storage efficiency. The typical shape file can be cut in half by a simple cleanup, while actual compression, like zip, can take it down to around 10%.

OK, you don't really need to hear that rant, though some of you probably live it. I mention it to bring up the subject of what clearing a LITTLE space does for you. It's kind of odd, too...

With no more than a gig or two available, my drawings loaded up OK, but for some reason, none of the xrefs resolved. Xrefs got found, and showed the correct location & file in the "Found at:" slot on the Xref Manager - even with relative pathing saved - they all still said "Not Resolved" in Xref Manager's status column. Right-clicking and reloading fixed them right up, and getting a decent 30-40 gigs clear on the server left us back to normal for now.

Well, I hope someday that helps. One of us will get a panicked call from our users, or even somebody else's users (that happens to me more than you might expect) and the memory of this experience will make us look like geek gods.

Just make sure to play it for all the geekly worship you deserve!