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Archive for September, 2009

Autodesk Expands Options for Mac Users

Monday, September 28th, 2009

By: Dwane Lindsey

Attention Mac users, Autodesk has announced that AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Autodesk Inventor Professional, 3ds Max and Revit Software will be able to run on a Mac via Parallels Desktop .

****** SNIP******

"Autodesk customers are increasingly working with both Mac and Windows, and have asked us to support Mac virtualization," said Chris Bradshaw , Autodesk chief marketing officer. "Today we are pleased to welcome Parallels as a partner and Parallels Desktop as our preferred Mac virtualization software. This is the latest step in Autodesk’s ongoing efforts to support our customers on the Mac, who will now be able to use some of our most popular 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software alongside Mac OS X, in addition to the five native Mac applications we currently offer."

******SNIP******

The full press release can be read HERE.

Posted in Building / AEC, General, Manufacturing, Visualization | No Comments »

Training “Stimulus” for the Wisconsin Precision Metalworking Council

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Get a $2,000 per employee grant for professional development and a FREE SpaceNavigator

Who is eligible?

The W-O-W Workforce Development Board recently established a program to use government grants to pay for professional training for members of the Wisconsin Precision Metalworking Council. The program, titled Advanced Manufacturing in the Global Workplace, will reimburse companies for two thirds (2/3) of the cost of eligible training up to a $2000 reimbursement per employee or $10000 reimbursement per company.

The company must be located in any of the seven counties of Southeastern Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha, Walworth, Kenosha, and Racine counties.

How can you use the grant money?

One of the available training options is to increase productivity and skill through training on design software at MasterGraphics. The 2/3 reimbursement of training costs can be applied to one of MasterGraphics’ regularly scheduled training classes or the reimbursement can be applied to custom training performed at your location or at one of MasterGraphics training facilities.

Software that MasterGraphics trains on includes, but is not limited to:

Utilize this grant money to sign up for training with MasterGraphics and receive a FREE SpaceNavigator

For more information:

To learn more about training with MasterGraphics, please contact Colin Forester-Hoare at (262) 717-2152 or training@mastergraphics.com, or visit our training webpages.

You can also speak to an Account Manager at the Wisconsin Machine Tool Show, October 6th, 7th, and 8th, in booth 523 to learn about more Stimulus offers from MasterGraphics.

For information on the reimbursement of training costs, please contact Karen Skonecki at (262) 695-7883 or kskonecki@wctc.edu

Posted in General, Manufacturing | No Comments »

Inventor - VB and API

Monday, September 28th, 2009

By Dan Banach
At our last Inventor User Group meeting in Waukesha we talked about how to get started with Visual Basic, what is Inventor’s API and how ilogic simplifies the programming experience. Attached is the paper that we discussed in the user group meeting.

VB Programming White Paper

Enjoy

Posted in Manufacturing | No Comments »

Autodesk Skill Builders: Revit MEP 2010

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Autodesk has created a short vignette regarding the AEC Exchange tool:

Interoperability and Data Exchange
The enhanced AEC Exchange tool in Autodesk Inventor 2010 simplifies the exchange of data for use in building design. AEC Exchange allows users to publish data files with simplified 3D representations and intelligent connection points for use in building models created using Autodesk® Revit® MEP, Autodesk® Revit® Architecture, Autodesk® AutoCAD® MEP, and Autodesk® AutoCAD® Architecture software.

Posted in Building / AEC, Manufacturing | No Comments »

Autodesk Releases AutoCAD MEP 2010 Update 1

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

By: Dwane Lindsey

Autodesk just released the first service pack for AutoCAD MEP 2010.  You can get the service pack at the following link - AutoCAD MEP 2010 Update 1

Please make sure to read the Readme file before installing this service pack.

Below is a sample of what the updates are for this update…the entire list can be viewed in the Readme file.

General Updates to AutoCAD MEP

Duct

  • Duct Flanges are displayed incorrectly after moving a duct using grips.
  • Velocity in Duct Modify does not match the Velocity in the Properties Palette.
  • Add Selected does not work correctly when duct height is greater than duct width.
  • Takeoff for branch is not sized correctly when duct height is greater than duct width.
  • Top and Bottom Elevation are incorrect in tooltip when duct height is greater than duct width.

Electrical

  • A crash may occur when closing a drawing with an EPD file that has a relative path.
  • A crash may occur when converting multiple blocks to Devices.
  • Wire will only connect to one connector on some scaled devices.
  • Device modify via grip edit doesn’t move or maintain its orientation as expected.
  • The Add Automatic Property for a Device was not retrieving the Load Category or Number of Poles.

Pipe

  • The formula for percentage slope by angle is incorrect. Fixing this means that an existing tool in which a specific number for percentage is stored will produce a different slope due to the new calculation.
  • Pipe layouts with Very low slope cannot be created correctly.
  • The Parallel Pipe command places new pipes on the wrong layer when systems use different layers.
  • Some Pipe created in previous versions of AutoCAD MEP snaps to fittings when opened.

Multi-View Parts

  • Some linework is missing from certain MvParts.
  • Radiator insertion fails, using the window option, if the radiator width or length is located in a basic table.
  • Radiator Import does not set property data properly.
  • Radiator valves are not aligned to the radiator when inserted using the plus grip.

Display

  • Haloed or hidden appearance for Plumbing Lines, Schematic lines and Wires do not display correctly.

Miscellaneous

  • CollisionDetection does not work as expected.
  • "Copy to Clipboard failed" dialog will appear when copying an object that has been copy/pasted from another drawing.
  • A fatal error will occur when creating an elbow with multiple segments.

Posted in Building / AEC | No Comments »

Autodesk Releases AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Update 1

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

By: Dwane Lindsey

Autodesk just released the first service pack for AutoCAD Architecture 2010.  You can get the service pack at the following link - AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Update 1

Please make sure to read the Readme file before installing this service pack.

Below is a sample of what the updates are for this update…the entire list can be viewed in the Readme file.

General Updates to AutoCAD Architecture

AEC Dimensions

  • Multiple overlapping windows may lead to incorrect dimensions.

API

  • AutoCAD Architecture might crash when trying to define a Display Theme style using .NET API.

IFC

  • Slabs may have the wrong elevation when imported from an IFC file due to an incorrect thickness offset.
  • Exporting a drawing to IFC may create incorrect IFC GUIDs for AEC objects.
  • Importing IFC files that contain certain material settings may crash.
  • Space exported to IFC have the IFC type of IFCTYPEOBJECT instead of IFCSPACETYPE.

Layers

  • The "New layer from Standard" button doesn’t work in localized versions.
  • Layer description fields are not automatically populated in all cases.

Performance

  • Response is very slow when using Dynamic UCS and objects are Isolated.

Property Palette

  • Changing an entry to one that is the first characters of the previous entry will not work in some fields.

Schedules

  • Schedules are not sorted as expected when values are a combination of numeric and alphabetic characters.

Sections

  • Some objects imported from Inventor display as points in 2D Sections.

Structural Members

  • Custom block based on 3D Solids using Boolean operations are always placed at the start point.

Wall Objects

  • AutoCAD Architecture might hang when opening certain drawings that contain modified Wall Endcaps.
  • Window openings may not be created due to Wall Plan Modifiers.
  • Using Refedit on a block containing Wall Object may cause a crash.

Xrefs

  • Openings in Xrefs with negative Z value are placed at an incorrect position.

Posted in Building / AEC | No Comments »

The Thing About Geo-referenced Images…

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

The thing about geo-referenced images is that there really isn’t one way to insert images into Civil 3D.

Depending on your situation you may use the traditional Map > Image > Insert command.  However, if your drawing is at a different coordinate system from the image you are inserting, the MAPIINSERT command will not transform it - leaving you with an image in la-la land.

Here’s an informal guide to what to do & when with raster images.  Hope this clears up some of the serious confusion out there!

-Lou

Posted in Civil | 1 Comment »

Strange Support Issue: Civil 3D 2010

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

After a long few weeks of training people until they were ready to run screaming, I am back in the office and back in the saddle with tech support. Well, at least today I was.

So I had this call today that was initially very mysterious. In modelspace plan view the corridor looked perfect. The layout my client was getting ready to print looked exactly as expected.

But when he went to print preview he got strange lines that always emanated from the lower right of the viewport.

When I took a closer look at the corridor in object viewer, I noticed that all was not as it seemed.

The links were totally freaking out and throwing themselves into infinity. I guess you could call them FREAK-quency lines. Harhar.

Taking a closer closer look I went to the subassembly properties and noticed that there were a bunch of zero’s in the subassembly parameters. Hmmm….zero’s.

Since the guy really just wanted a simple model of a road and wasn’t concerned about thickness, we recreated his assembly using generic links instead.

Ahh. Mystery solved. After fixing the assembly, no strange lines.

Lesson learned: Avoid zeros in your subassembly properties. If you need to set something to zero, use 0.001′ instead.

Happy Drafting!  -Lou

Posted in Civil | No Comments »