Classroom Training – Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

2.13-15::Portland
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.21-23::Portland
Civil 3D Fundamentals
2.22-24::San Jose
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.22-24::Seattle
Revit MEP Electrical Fundamentals
2.22-23::Seattle
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics

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Adopting Lean Practices in the Architectural/Engineering Industry

David Haynes, AIA, LEED AP, Director of Consulting at Ideate, Inc. has spoken at numerous conferences about technology and business issues that affect the AECO (Architects, Engineers, Contractors, and Owners) industry. Recently, David spoke at Autodesk University and Revit Technology Conference about adopting Lean Business Practices in the A/E (Architects/Engineers) community.

In the most recent AECbytes issue, David’s article addresses bringing the best practices learned in other industries (manufacturing) to A/E design workflow practices. This article is a must read for everyone in the A/E community looking to maximize profits, reduce waste, create a better design experience for customers, and increase customer retention.
 

AECbytes Viewpoint Article: Adopting Lean Practices in the Architectural/Engineering Industry

eLearning – Upcoming Classes

Join the Ideate Tech Experts for eLearning – live online classes that provide your entire organization with easy access to premium education.

Upcoming classes include: 

1.31.12::
Revit 201: Revit for Interior Designers
2.7.12::
Revit 301: Revit Architecture Family Editor Basics
2.14.12::
Ideate 101: Getting Started with Vasari

Each class is designed to give you specific, improved results in a particular topic. You can interact with the instructor right from your own office, while eliminating travel time. Because the class schedule rotates, you can easily select your topics of interest and choose the day which best meets your schedule.

Click here for class descriptions, times and registration link. Questions? Contact education@ideateinc.com

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Playing Nicely with Navisworks Manage

Working with both AutoCAD MEP and Navisworks Manage, we always want to make sure to utilize all the data built into AutoCAD designs in the Navisworks model.  However, when exporting from AutoCAD MEP, some information seemed to get lost in translation. Recently, an Ideate Inc. customer contacted us about this exact issue. Thankfully, the Techs at Ideate along with Autodesk were able to resolve this issue.

Classroom Training – Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

1.31-2.2::Seattle
AutoCAD Beyond the Basics
2.13-15::Portland
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
2.21-23::Portland
Civil 3D Fundamentals

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Optimizing Performance with Autodesk Software, Windows, Parallels, and Mac OS X

Well it’s been about 3 months now since my Dell M6300 had to be sent out for service and I switched to our iMac as my main workstation. I’ve been loving using our Mac; secretly I hope the Dell can’t be fixed :).  Like Apple says Mac OS X is the most advanced operating system in the world. With more developers writing apps for both Windows and Mac OS X and huge leaps in virtualization technology Apple products are popping up everywhere. Apple first infiltrated the enterprise market with its mobile devices and has been steadily carving away at the PC share. This shift has been increasingly referred to as the consumerization of IT.  iMacs, Macbook Pros, Mac Pros, machines once only seen in the hands of design professionals; can now be seen in all industries. Case in point, the last engineering firm I visited here in Portland the IT director had a Macbook Air in hand as we toured the office physically and virtually, remoting into workstations as needed. As IT, notorious for their iron like grip over its end user’s workstations, devices, and software, start adopting more Apple devices this trend will gain even more traction.

In the case of the AEC industry there has been one very large problem why we haven’t seen many Apple computers used in the workplace before – Autodesk.  Autodesk’s products which have been adopted by architects, engineers, and contractors almost as a standard are all developed for Microsoft Windows. But even this is starting to change. AutoCAD for Mac re-released in 2011 and AutoCAD LT for Mac this year are now part of its entire software offering. But what about the other Autodesk products, what about Revit? For this problem there is a solution and like I said I’ve been using it for 3 months now and am pretty happy about it.

I use Parallels 7 to virtualize Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit on top of the Mac OS  enabling me to use Revit, Navisworks, even 3ds Max in a seamless environment with my Mac apps. Parallels is officially supported by Autodesk as the virtualization software. I’ve used VMware before and Parallels has by far surpassed it. I chose to install the Building Design Suite Ultimate and Infrastructure Design Suite Premium as part of my test. This setup requires a rather robust machine, so let’s start off with hardware. This is what I’m running:

• 21. 5” iMac , mid 2010
• 3.2 Ghz i3 processor
• 8 GB memory
• ATI Radeon HD 5670 512 MB memory
• Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Anyone looking for a similar setup, I would recommend increasing the RAM to 16GB, so you can allocate 8GB to OS X and another 8GB to Windows; which by the way at this time is the max in Parallels. Setting up Parallels and installing Windows was pretty straight forward and went smoothly, but there are a number of settings where you can optimize the experience. Below are my recommendations separated out by changes that can be made on the Mac side, Windows side, in Parallels, in AutoCAD based apps, and Revit.

Mac OS X

• Create a Bootcamp partition, install Windows, and install your Autodesk products before you setup Parallels. Why? Because Parallels has a great feature that will create a virtual machine based off the Bootcamp partition. This allows you to work in Windows on the Bootcamp partition when you need a 100% of your Mac’s resources, restart and boot back into the Mac OS and Parallels all other times. The file/folder structure is retained. So any changes, file saves, etc. made on one side is reflected in the other.

Windows

• Get rid of that fancy Windows 7 Aero theme and graphics. You don’t need all that graphics glitz because you won’t see it, more info below under the Parallels section. In Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, Visual Effects, select Adjust for Best Performance.

• Connect to your company domain – more of a reminder than anything, so you can connect to your company’s network and file servers. The network will actually see your machine as two machines while in Parallels. For example, I named our iMac, IdeateiMac, and the Parallels Windows VM, IdeateiMac-PC.

Parallels

• Coherence mode. Hands down this is what amazed me the most. As the name implies Coherence basically eliminates the feeling that you’re working in two environments, and instead in one coherent combination of Mac OS X and Windows. Windows applications can be accessed from a folder on the Dock or by the Start Menu by right clicking the Parallels icon in the Application bar.  Parallels allows copy/paste functions between the two operating systems, even drag and drop! It also knows which documents can be opened with what program when double clicking the file. Other features like USB detection are nice too. When you plug a USB device Parallels asks what side is it for, Windows or Mac.

• Memory. Allocate as much as you can to Windows, 8GB.
• Processor. Parallels even allows you allocate entire processors to the virtual machine. I didn’t see much of a difference between settings. It could be because I didn’t push it hard.
• Video Card memory. Like the processor setting I didn’t see much of a difference, but again it could be because I didn’t stress test it enough. 

 

 

AutoCAD and AutoCAD-based Products

• Hardware Acceleration. The first time I fired up AutoCAD in Parallels I was a little disappointed. There was a considerable delay between the mouse and cursor. It felt like I was working underwater. I checked Options, System, 3D Performance, and disabled Hardware Acceleration. This immediately resolved the cursor lag. 
• Selection Cycling. Disable it. We’ve actually seen performance hits on PCs with this option on too.
• Dynamic Input. Disable it. I like dynamic input and saw a minor hit when it was on, but it still helps a little.
• Use an MS compliant mouse with a scroll wheel. I LOVE the Magic Mouse and its multi-touch gestures, but when I would work in AutoCAD or Revit I wanted to be able to use the scroll wheel to zoom, pan, and orbit.

Revit

• Hardware Acceleration. I actually didn’t see a difference with it on or off.
• Anti-aliasing for 3D views. Same here, I didn’t notice a difference with it on or off.
• Visual Styles and Graphic Display Options. Just like on a regular Windows machine, different visual styles affect performance in it different ways.  Hidden Line and Wireframe obviously performed the best; while Realistic lagged a little when orbiting in 3D. Not surprisingly, ghosted surfaces utilized more resources.

Parallels truly is the best of both worlds. You can use all of those Mac OS features and be able to run your Windows only apps like Revit; and with a seamless feel to the two environments. If you’re one of those users who love their Mac and work with Autodesk software I highly recommend going the Parallels route. Just make sure you have enough memory which will have the most impact on how well the software will run.

I hope this helps. Do you have a specific question I didn’t cover here? Feel free to email me at support@ideateinc.com.

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Derek Wielkopolski
Technical Support Manager/Application Specialist
Derek holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Roger Williams University, Rhode Island. He is experienced working within the AEC industry from concept design through construction administration for both small and large scale projects. As Ideate’s Support Manager he ensures a timely and quality response to support requests and questions. Follow Derek on Twitter: @dwielk

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Classroom Training – Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

1.23-25::Portland
AutoCAD Fundamentals
1.23-24::San Francisco
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics
1.31-2.2::Seattle
AutoCAD Beyond the Basics

Know your software. Sign up now!

Classroom Training – Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

1.17-19::San Francisco
Civil 3D Fundamentals
1.23-25::Portland
AutoCAD Fundamentals
1.23-24::San Francisco
Revit Architecture Beyond the Basics

Know your software. Sign up now!

Corridor Section Displays Improperly in Section View Editor

Recently, Ideate received a support request from a customer who is using Civil 3D 2012. In the particular file, the corridor was not displaying properly in the Section View Editor. The following figure shows the customer’s screen image with the problem:

 

As you can see, this section is at station 0+50’ that all the corridor section lines are jumbled up and the grid is not visible. For example, you cannot see the datum and the top links clearly on this corridor. It is not easy to use or interpret this information.

From the figure below, a few sections ahead, at Station 2+75’ the corridor section line work gets even more difficult to understand the section.

 

What’s happening is that Civil 3D is showing you all the sections from the start on this corridor baseline. So in the figure above you are seeing sections at station 0+00,’ 0+25,’ 0+50’ and so on to station 2+75’ all at one time, each station overlapping each other.

The simple answer to this problem is to set the visual style to 2D Wireframe.

You can find the visual style on the top left corner of this screen. Currently it is set to “Wireframe” which stands for 3D Wireframe. Click on this and chose “2D Wireframe.”

Problem solved! As shown below:

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Gaurav Bagga
Infrastructure Solutions Application Specialist

Gaurav is a well rounded Application Engineer and Project Manager for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 15 years experience in construction industry and has been helping numerous small, medium and ENR 500 firms maximize their CAD investment for the last ten years. Gaurav is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and Autodesk Civil 3D Implementation Certified Expert. He has taught at several conferences, CAD Camps and Autodesk University. He has taught AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Land Desktop and Map 3D to thousands of students and helps Ideate develop the Infrastructure Services curriculum and courses. With his extensive CAD technology background he helps Bay Area engineering and surveying firms analyze and improve their design and drawing production process thereby improving productivity and the bottom line. Follow Gaurav on Twitter: @BeGeez

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Increased Requirements for 2012: AIA Continuing Education

On December 9, the AIA Board of Directors voted to modify the AIA’s calendar year continuing education requirement. Per year, AIA members will be required to complete 12 hours of health, safety, and welfare (HSW) education, an increase from the previous requirement of 8 HSW. The AIA Board will re-evaluate the sustainable design (SD) requirement in 2012. The new HSW requirement goes into effect in January 2012 and AIA members should fulfill their total 18 hours of continuing education during the calendar year.

Increasing the HSW requirement per year sets a higher standard for AIA members and will enable them to fulfill state licensing requirements for most states.  Additionally, increasing the required number of HSW credits will raise the level and quality of our continuing education and professional development of architects.

Additional information and list of topics on health, safety, and welfare (HSW).

Additionally, in calendar year 2012, aligning closer with state licensing boards’ practice, AIA members will no longer be able to self-report HSW courses for credit. Members will need to complete HSW credits by taking qualifying courses from registered AIA CES Providers and Providers will need to report HSW courses for members to receive HSW credits. Members can continue to self-report learning unit (LU) credit hours for non-provider courses and programs.

In the past, AIA members were able to attend courses outside of the AIA CES Provider network and submit a self-report online to be reviewed for HSW or SD credit. AIA CES is implementing this new HSW and SD credit policy to ensure quality education and establish an educational standard for the courses that AIA members attend.

Both Ideate Green BIM Basics and Ecotect Fundamentals qualify for HSW credit, 7 each. For more information about these and other Ideate course offerings, contact the Ideate Training department or call 888.662.7238 x1012.

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Credit requirement information via the American Institute of Architects.

Share and View Your 3D Infrastructure Models Online + Browser + iPad

Are you using Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler (AIM) to create 3D models of your projects? If not, refer to my earlier blog post where I talked about importing GIS data straight into a 3D model using Infrastructure Modeler.

So now that you have 3D infrastructure models, the question is how do you share them with your design team or project stakeholders? The answer was simple if you needed to share DWG files – email the file or use online document management such as Autodesk Cloud. But how to share infrastructure models that are represented by multiple files and folder structure? Here is the answer:

Project Galileo Online
Using PLUG-IN to SHARE FILES

In short, create infrastructure models using AIM and share them with your project team member using Project Galileo Online. Team members can view the model online or within AIM.

On the Project Galileo Online page you will find three download options:

1. Project Galileo Online Installer: Plug-in that gets installed and runs within AIM
2. Web Browser Plug-in: Browser plug-in that gets installed and runs AIM scenario within Browser
3. iPad App: Use iTunes to download the application.

 

 

Download and install Project Galileo Online Installer to be able to see the options to share project data within AIM.

Once this is done you will need to activate your Sync > My Galileo Online Account which will give you a unique Service URL and Account ID.

Next create a scenario from the Scenario Explorer and publish it. A scenario is just the subset (or more) of the whole project that you want to share. Once the Scenario is created and published you will see the share links in the Sync > Manage Online Scenarios dialog box:

Now the project stakeholder who does not have AIM can view the infrastructure model in the browser by installing the Web Browser Plug-in as below:

By downloading the plug-in and publishing the scene, team members and stakeholders can see the 3D infrastructure model. Using an internet browser, the process is even simpler. Collaboration and team communication is greatly enhanced, further reducing project timelines, and getting valued team feedback quicker.

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Gaurav Bagga
Infrastructure Solutions Application Specialist

Gaurav is a well rounded Application Engineer and Project Manager for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 15 years experience in construction industry and has been helping numerous small, medium and ENR 500 firms maximize their CAD investment for the last ten years. Gaurav is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and Autodesk Civil 3D Implementation Certified Expert. He has taught at several conferences, CAD Camps and Autodesk University. He has taught AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Land Desktop and Map 3D to thousands of students and helps Ideate develop the Infrastructure Services curriculum and courses. With his extensive CAD technology background he helps Bay Area engineering and surveying firms analyze and improve their design and drawing production process thereby improving productivity and the bottom line. Follow Gaurav on Twitter: @BeGeez

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See How Autodesk Cloud Computes Optimal Design Profile to Minimize Earthwork

You create the existing ground profile using Civil 3D and then create the design profile using the traditional Civil 3D commands to balance and minimize earthwork.

What if you could click a button to automate the design profile creation based on certain design criteria?

While it's not quite one click; it's what Autodesk labs came up with recently: 

Project Silverstar for AutoCAD Civil 3D

The project codename does not quite convey the advantages but it is a really impressive feature. The way it works is you click a button within Civil 3D, specify some design parameters and send the data to the Autodesk Cloud. After the calculation is done you will get an email from Autodesk cloud with the design profile file/s. Now you can import the profile form the .txt or LandXML file into the Civil 3D project drawing.

The following Profile Views displays the design profile in blue created traditionally:

Download the Project Silverstar executable.

Once you install you can access the Profile Optimization command from the Toolspace > Toolbox. You may need to register or sign in to your Autodesk account.

This will open the Optimization Wizard.

In this box, apart from the other options specify the Design Speed and Earthwork Cost Table. Yes, earthwork cost table, impressive, isn’t it, take a look…

In the next few pages you also specify the Dump/Borrow Site, Max/Min Grade, other such parameters including the solution precision and maximum solving time. Once you hit Finish, everything seems to finish. It may seem like nothing happened, but you sent the information to the Autodesk Cloud where the computation is being done. On your command line you will see a message saying: The request was sent successfully.

 

Expect to receive an email with the .txt file or LandXML file with your results. Once you get the email save the files and import the profile via Create Profile from File command:

That’s it! You are done. The profile that I imported is displayed below.

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Gaurav Bagga
Infrastructure Solutions Application Specialist

Gaurav is a well rounded Application Engineer and Project Manager for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 15 years experience in construction industry and has been helping numerous small, medium and ENR 500 firms maximize their CAD investment for the last ten years. Gaurav is an Autodesk Certified Instructor and Autodesk Civil 3D Implementation Certified Expert. He has taught at several conferences, CAD Camps and Autodesk University. He has taught AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Land Desktop and Map 3D to thousands of students and helps Ideate develop the Infrastructure Services curriculum and courses. With his extensive CAD technology background he helps Bay Area engineering and surveying firms analyze and improve their design and drawing production process thereby improving productivity and the bottom line. Follow Gaurav on Twitter: @BeGeez

Get it. Know it. Use it.

Classroom Training – Open Classes

Know It. Ideate Training.

Position yourself to land dream projects. Tap the full potential of your software solutions. Increase your facility, fluidity and capability to maximize the value of your precision software tools.

Here are a few of the training opportunities Ideate has to offer in the coming days:

1.9-11::Seattle
Civil 3D Fundamentals
1.10-12::Sacramento
Revit MEP Mechanical and Plumbing Fundamentals
1.10-12::Seattle
Revit Architecture Fundamentals
1.17-19::San Francisco
Civil 3D Fundamentals

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