Report from the Gateway AUG Tips and Tricks Meeting

Tuesday, March 20th, another quarterly meeting of the Gateway AUG.We gathered again for some pizza, tips and tricks, and good nerdy discussions. We spoke about the new product naming schemes for '2008' Autodesk software and talked about some of the changes in the Autocad-based product line. You've already read about my highlights from this version in a previous post, so I'm going to share the AutoCAD Tips and Tricks (applicable to earlier versions)....

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Microsoft Event In St. Louis

This product launch event actually took place in late February, and I'm just a big slacker for taking so long to share it with you. (you can find microsoft events here)This 'tour' of theirs was called Microsoft Across America Launch Event. Registration was free. You could sign up for different 'tracks'. DH chose IT, and I chose Small Business. There were two four-hour demonstrations, but, we only took the morning tracks.The Small Business track was dedicated to showing tools in the new Office 2007 and how they could improve the day to day office...

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Reminder: Gateway AUG Tips and Tricks Meeting in St. Louis

Just wanted to remind those in the St. Louis/Metro area that there will be an AutoCAD Tips and Tricks meeting on Tuesday the 20th, starting between 6 and 6:30pm. This is general stuff, not discipline-specific, so hopefully there will be something for everyone. Seiler Instrument is buying us pizza, drinks and meeting handouts (we like to take those tips and tricks home, don't we?). We'll also be giving away plenty of door prizes, from toys, to...

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AutoCAD 2008 - Customizing a Dashboard Panel

As I mentioned in my previous comments about AutoCAD 2008, I am enjoying the Dashboard Panels. I have to admit that the only thing I really use Tool Palettes for is block insertions, and while the Dashboard might seem slightly similar... it's really a cool combination of the best in Tool Palettes and Toolbars.In my work as a Facility Manger, I 'clean up' a lot of drawings, so I'm going to create a Dashboard Panel with my favorite simplification and...

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International Women's Day - Recognizing Women In Architecture

In my google homepage, I keep a feed from Architecture from About.Com. I see a notation that today is International Women's Day and indicates this page, where we can learn about several interesting and important female architects. If you follow to the 2nd page of that article, you can see a list of organizations for Women Designers.Here's a snippet from today's feed that I mentioned...March 8 is International Women's Day... A special time to honor great women and their accomplishments. But hey, shouldn't we be doing that every day? Here are resources...

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WID Interview: Beth Powell - CAD Software Applications Specialist

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to inspire women by showing them other successful ladies in the fields of Architecture, Engineering and Design.I have the pleasure of helping you get to know: Beth Powell 43 year old CAD Business Owner & CAD Software Applications Specialist (they want me to say Applications Engineer, but I won’t) from Roanoke, VA Years in your Field: 15 Education: A.S. Business Management & many...

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FacilitiesNet on FM and BIM

Greg Zimmerman posts on FacilitiesNet about his perceptions of Facility Management's possibilities with BIM (Building Information Modeling). He hopes the new BIM Standard will be the first step in the right direction to help move more people/companies forward to embrace the newer technologies and fully benefit from them. I'd also recommend looking through some of the FacilitiesNet blog archives... commentary on the boomer generation and tech positions, great technologies being implemented in building design, etc......

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FMDesktop Tips and Tricks

Trying to learn a new program, the first thing I'm going to do is keep up with Peer to Peer Discussion Groups!There has been a lot of activity recently over on the FMDesktop area on the Autodesk Discussion Groups. Check out what others are saying, and add in your questions and/or solutions!Don't forget about the AUGI forums, there have been some good posts in there as well.But, my post was actually prompted today by a thread started by Robert Burns over on the FMDugi (that's FM Desktop User's Group International) forums, with some great FM Desktop...

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My Son Just Read His First Sentence!

I found this wonderful website with great games that Ty is loving. Most of it is filling in missing letters from words. Ty does great with sounding out letters! There are some more complicated games every few activities that involve instructions in a sentence. The kids can click on the words and they'll be read out loud or they can just read them themselves.Well, the first one Ty, clicked through each word... (it was something like, Click on the...

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