Building Information Modeling - Earthquake

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Archive for August, 2008

Obscure Survey Anomoly

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

This probably won’t help a lot of users.  For those that may be suffering in silence, however, it will be a great  relief.  I have been struggling with creating a new survey network.  The dialog box has gone “blank” to the point that I can’t use it.  Those of you who use it know that if that dialog isn’t working it can make life a lot more difficult.

It turns out the answer was about 3 inches away from where my cursor was!  Cleverly camoflagued in the dialog box, my Value column had become crunched into the corner.  All I had to do was drag it from the corner, then drag the field open a little bit so it could be seen.

Its in the corner  Now, just open it  Back in business

Click on the thumbnails to get a closer look.

Posted in Civil | No Comments »

Mapexport to SHP

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

We’ve seen this a couple of times in the past couple of days.  It turns out that the Mapexport command (or Map pull down - Tools - Export) has a bit of a Fatal Error issue.  The Mapexport.ini file somehow is residing in the wrong folder and needs to be shifted for this command to work.  Autodesk has a Knowledge Base document on this on the easy fix for this issue.  Its just a little browsing.  They give you the path in XP, but for those of us in Vista the path is slightly different.  Just replace the paths they call out for these - the rest is the same.

from: C:\ProgramDat\Autodesk\AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009\R17.2

to: C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\C3D 2009

(so close, yet so far away!)

Posted in Civil | No Comments »

Data Shortcuts Come of Age

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

The Project Team Can Work Together

One of the first questions I was asked about Civil 3D was regarding project workflow.  Since several individuals were working on a project together they needed a way to share, let’s say a topo surface, between several project members.  In the early days Civil 3D didn’t have much for this.  Then data shortcuts appeared allowing the referencing of data, surfaces, alignments, and so forth, between several team members.  This was followed by Vault – a big change for a similar need.  Although this was a space where a project team could share information (plus some other very valuable functions) the perceived maintenance of the Vault and Vault server scared some firms.  Data shortcuts seemed to do the same project related work without the overhead.

I’ll admit I’m a Vault fan.  I like the data sharing capabilities, but I really like the data protection and versioning that it provides.  Realistically, however, it isn’t a fit for a lot of firms.  The problem was, as data shortcuts were reintroduced, they weren’t up to the task that could have been handled by the Vault.  We were stuck in between two potentially great tools.

With the release of Civil 3D 2009 the data shortcuts have come roaring back.  They’re stable, dependable, and easy to work with.  There is even a Data Shortcut Editor that if a link gets broken you can easily fix it.  The data shortcuts still don’t do the versioning of the drawings that Vault did, but as for project sharing they have come of age.

The user can interact with data shortcuts in the Prospector (Master View).  You will need to assign a folder where the shortcuts are held.  This is handy since you can change the folder per project to help manage your data.  In the folder an XML file will be stored that does the work of referencing and updating the objects.  If the topo surface your team is using changes, each file it is referenced in gets a notice and the opportunity to update immediately.

If you are involved in team projects where data needs to be shared concurrently, you need to at least be looking at data shortcuts.  You can save time and effort while your team works on the same data at the same time.

Posted in Civil | No Comments »

Distributed Bucket Rendering in 3ds Max

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

The process of rendering an image is extremely intensive on the computer processor and high quality images require a great deal of time to complete. The mental ray rendering engine has been included with 3ds Max for several releases now and it effectively utilizes multiple processors within the computer during rendering, as indicated by the multiple buckets shown in the rendered frame window while rendering. But even with these improvements, it is frequently not enough for a production environment that requires higher level renderings in a shorter period of time.

Fortunately, mental ray comes with a tool called distributed bucket rendering that can help. Distributed bucket rendering functions similarly to Backburner in that it spreads the load of the rendering across multiple computers. It differs in that there are no external client or management executables to load and configure and unlike Backburner, it can easily distribute portions of a single rendered image. The use of distributed bucket rendering allows you to use up to 8 additional processors to render a single image. The result will add between 8 and 32 buckets to your screen as you render depending on the types of computers and processors available to you. Just like Backburner,

Setting up distributed bucket rendering is quite simple.

  1. Open the Render Setup dialog and click on the Processing tab.

    2. 1-Render Setup Dialog

  2. Scroll down and open the Distributed Bucket Rendering roll out.

    3. 2- Distributed Bucket Rendering

  3. Check the box marked Distributed Rendering to turn the feature on.
  4. Click the Add button and add the IP address of the computer that will be used as a satellite node.

    5. 4- Add/Edit DBR Host

  5. After entering all of the IP addresses you can use, select those to be used for the current rendering from the list in the Distributed Bucket Rendering roll out. This allows you to use only specific computers at a given time, rather than all of them.

5- Distribution Bucket IP

Some things to be aware of with distributed bucket rendering:

  • There is overhead processing time involved in controlling the distributed bucket rendering satellites so the speed gain is not directly proportional to the number of processors assigned.
  • On smaller renderings, distributed bucket rendering can actually take longer than using a single computer.
  • Distributed bucket rendering distributes the final gather pass as well as the raytrace pass.
  • Distributed bucket rendering will seize all the resources of the satellite computers so it’s not something you want to assign to another computer that is regularly used.
  • Distributed bucket rendering can increase computer network traffic significantly and the use of an isolated network is advised if the satellites are dedicated machines.

Distributed bucket rendering is an easily configured tool that can greatly improve rendering times and is a feature already included in 3ds Max since the advent of mental ray. Using it will provide you with more time to evaluate and improve your final rendered output and decrease the amount of time spent waiting for things to finish rendering.

Posted in Building / AEC, Visualization | No Comments »

Keep It Clean!

Monday, August 11th, 2008

As a member of the “Road Warriors”, those of us that travel a lot to customer engagements, I have the luxury of seeing many, many different engineering departments. This is a good thing considering the fact that every business has their own way of succeeding. Some methods are better than others but collectively, we can share these successes and help others when they are struggling.

One thing that amazes me though is the sheer number of individuals, both daily end users of Inventor and Vault and managers that occasionally open the applications, that don’t see the importance of keeping their workspace clean. Now some of you may be thinking of their 8′ x 8′ real estate they call home for 8 or more hours a day, but what I am referring to is their local Workspace. This is the disk space used for Inventor and Vault on the local machine that assists in working with files checked out of Vault. If you are viewing files from the Vault or are editing them, these copies clutter your workspace and can lead to confusion. Understanding that the Vault is there to store that one, accurate, true document is essential. Having redundant information is never a good idea to remain efficient and reduce errors.

In todays engineering environments, we need to minimize mistakes as much as possible. Keeping a clean workspace makes the applications perform better and is a good workflow for us to ensure we are following through with our tasks. When finishing a procedure to edit a DWG or modifying an IAM, checking the box “Close files and delete working copies” makes things even easier.

This will not only ensure that you are keeping your workspace clean but it also gives you a reminder that you are completed with that task and to move on to the next step.

As a rule of thumb, I recommend cleaning that workspace at least once a week. Come Friday, check everything in that has changes that you want to capture. Everything else doesn’t matter, you can just “Get Latest Version” on Monday. Then find your workspace folder, it may be Designs, Work, Inventor or some other name and just RMB - delete. Yes, I said delete. It’s alright, everything is in the Vault, you have nothing to worry about. Trust me :)

Posted in Manufacturing | No Comments »

Civil 3D 2009 Service Pack 1

Monday, August 11th, 2008

For those of you who have been waiting, service pack 1 is now available for Civil 3D 2009.  As always, the Readme file is a must read.  As usual, the service pack includes everything you need (including the AutoCAD SP1, and a previous C3D hot fix) so its a one stop shop.

Posted in Civil | No Comments »