Let us observe on May 25th

Towel Day!




Don't Panic! Just join many around the world in celebrating the life and literary art of one hoopy frood, Douglas Adams. I'm sure not everyone fully appreciates the linguistic gymnastics performed by this verbal olympian, but, he is an entertaining writer who plays wildly with his words... which amuses some of us endlessly.

I've been a fan since my harley-riding computer-geek uncle gave me the first of the six books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. I've since obtained the books in hardback as well as the original cheesy movie on vhs. I somewhat enjoyed the newer version of the movie, but, it doesn't quite do justice to his written words.
http://www.paramountcomedy.com/shows/show.aspx?id=123





So, grab your towel and show your support for the late Douglas Adams.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. :-)

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Happy Birthday, Dear Hubby!

WAKE UP! It's your Birthday!

Yep, DH turns another year older today. He blames the gray hairs on me, I tell him it's just his advanced age.

Join with me as I wish my wonderful husband a wonderful day!

Happy Birthday, Darling!

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Two Free Apps I couldn't work without

I know it's not CAD, but, there are other programs that we need to make it through our days.

My husband is always checking out new applications... sometimes installing them on my pc when I'm not looking and making me an unwitting guinea pig.
BUT! at work, where I am the only one choosing programs for my pc, I keep these two old favorites that he recommended to me awhile ago.

Gadwin Printscreen -
Options! There are options! (but, not too many! like some applications)
You can hit printscreen, select your area, hit enter... and you're done! You've set up a directory and these screenshots are sent right there, naming themselves in a sequence. If you're working along, you can quickly capture each step, and collect the images later.

Before Gadwin, I'd Prnt Scrn, open my photo editor, paste as new image, make selection, choose crop to selection, then save. WAY too many steps there.

Try out this freebie, I think you'll like it (if not, check out the hyperlink in the second paragraph of this post, to a BLAUG entry by my Dear Hubby and see what else he mentions).

Ditto clipboard extension -
You can copy multiple bits of text, etc at a time, and paste to your heart's content. There are a million ways that I use this at work and at home.

One that sticks out in my brain is the AUGI Annual Salary Survey. I calculate those numbers using excel. There are just reams and reams and reams of data, I've got some formulas that count up/average out/total, etc. But, those just aren't very pretty spreadsheets to look at, so I use simple forms to report the results that are posted on the website. I used to copy, switch files, paste, switch back, copy, switch files, paste, etc, etc, etc. UG! That took forever. Now, I can just go through and grab each result I need and paste them in as I need them.

Another thing would be answering questions in discussion groups... you find a few websites that could help and copy the URL's and perhaps a snippet of pertinent information (applicable text, or a knowledge base ID number for when someone does a site redesign, invalidating your URL's). Take everything you need from one page and paste, paste, paste the information much more quickly.



I hope you find these great FREE applications as handy as I do. I appreciate all of the work that developers put into these freebies for all of us to benefit from.


Oh, another cool freebie that I was just using today; this one is a lisp routine from Dotsoft's FREE STUFF page which "Exports TEXT objects to an ASCII file in the order they are selected."

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National BIM Conference

Saw a notification about it today through a CADalyst magazine email...
The conference is being held May 15th through 17th in Anaheim, CA. Looks like registration is under $600.
It is sponsored by National Institute of Building Sciences, Facilities Information Council, National BIM Standard, AECnews and CADalyst; the site for the event is www.bimconference.com

I'm not exactly sure what the AEC-ST exhibit is, but with the description in the CADalyst announcement makes it sound like it's something that would affect FMers:
"The National BIM Conference is part of AEC-ST - the only event addressing the IT needs of the entire facilities and construction team and covering the entire lifecycle of the built environment. AEC-ST is co-located with Ecobuild America which covers green and sustainable building. For more information on AEC-ST, visit http://www.aecst.com."

I'd love to hear from anyone who attends. What type of 'now' and 'future' projects others are doing, recommended resources, etc.


For the past two years at my Facility and Corporate 'Planning Conference', I've presented briefly on BIM as applied to our field (Facilities and MEP design planning, building, maintenance) to plant the idea in the heads of the executives and get them to start thinking about it as momentum grows with BIM adoption and education.

This year I won't be formally presenting, but, I believe I'll be speaking at least a little on CAFM again, as I've just gotten approval to roll out a pilot program for a small portion of my facility with the FMDesktop suite.
I've turned over a list of the information I intend to gather over the next few months.

I'm waiting for a purchase order number and then I will be ready to roll. I know that the FMD install is pretty simple already, and I can't wait to actually have 'work' time to fully explore it. I really hope there are some hands-on classes at Autodesk University 2007 for FM Desktop/Facility Manager/Facility Web, etc. I had some good FMDesktop classes last year, but, they were all lecture courses, and I learn better with my hands than with my ears. ;)

Wish me luck as I break some new ground, moving from CADD Coordinator to CAFM Technician (well, in skills only, not like my job or pay is actually changing, I'm honestly wondering how the !*$% I'm going to squeeze this work in with my normal duties :-o)

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MISSING POSTS

edit: all of my posts have been restored and the remainder of my blogs migrated thanks to the Blogger team. Woohoo! I love blogger. ~does snoopy dance~


IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR MISSING POSTS...
If you've found an article via google search, I recommend checking out the 'cache' link where you can see a saved image of the missing post (see below image)...

Still no word from Blogger support on why all of the posts since I migrated to the 'new' blogger have disappeared... ~grumbling~

If you are looking for a post, and the cache in google search doesn't help, please feel free to email me, and I will send you the contents of the post you're looking for... I do not have time to repost every article yet, although I intend to if the Blogger employees don't come through for me.
I apologize for any inconvenience resulting from broken links. :-(

It will be a couple of weeks before I can get to all of the reposting, I'm afraid; I am working on (technically editing) another book right now and have deadlines to meet.

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Alright... my blog was fine last night... (I think)... it was most certainly fine after I made my last post, as I saw DH reading it later...

I came to search for a link this morning and I see that my blog has been magically rolled back to January! So... all of my posts and my links and my lovely new colour scheme has gone POOF... I've got a question in with blogger support, hopefully they'll be able to fix whatever went wrong.

If they can't, I've got archives, and will hopefully be able to back up most of what I've lost.

~sigh~ Sorry if you're looking for something specific I've posted since then.

Cheers and have a lovely weekend.

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Free and Updated Autodesk Products

Where to start? This has been a busy few weeks for Autodesk announcements and I know I haven't kept you up to date, so be prepared for this little deluge below:

Design Review - View, measure, markup and print 2D and 3D designs for FREE.

DWG True View - View and plot DWG's and DWF's... PLUS now you can convert between different releases from R14 through 2008! (this functionality was previously offered in a different free download called True Convert)

Units Converter - don't forget about this nifty online tool.

ScriptPro - Easy interface for scripting (apply a set of commands to many drawings).

AutoLisp Compatibility Analyzer - searches for known compatibility issues in lisp files created for versions prior to r2004.

Approved Grapics Card List - See if your card is Certified, Supported and Recommended, Supported and Not Recommended or Not Supported. (if you're ordering a new pc, send your IT guy up here first when selecting a card, they'll find their favorite brands and be able to tell which models will work)

AutoCAD LT 2007 SP2 - I believe this is the service pack that helps LT07 work with Vista. Don't forget to read the notes. Still install even if you're not using Vista... there are a lot of other fixes in here as well that you won't want to miss.

AutoCAD 2007 SP2 and other updates - Check out the whole list here and make sure you've got everything you need. From Vista to Copy/Paste bug, to Activation Errors, OLE errors, Regenerating Text, Fatal Error During Save, Closing Drawings, etc...


FMDesktop - There are a few updates here, but, I wanted to point out some recent compatibility discussions:
Facility Link with AutoCAD 2008 - Installation problem, patch is not yet available.
FM Desktop with MS Access 2007 - Some bugs with saves in forms, does not affect the data; patch is not yet available (I'm sticking with Office 2003 for now, just to be on the safe side).
FMDesktop with Revit Systems 2 (Revit MEP) - Cannot import spaces or plan views from RSys (RMEP) into Facility Manager at this point. Product teams communicating and working on future compatibility.

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AUGI Forums Updated for Autodesk 2008 Products

Well, there have been some updates going on over at AUGI.com discussion group, thanks to the tireless work of the Forum Manager, Mike Perry.

The AutoCAD Community Team had a little hand in our corner of the world.
That would include Kris Keller, the AutoCAD Community Chair, along with Ed Jobe and myself as the AutoCAD Community Forum Managers.

You can check out BLAUGI for a short list of the changes that have been made.

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There have also been some changes with the Media and Entertainment forums (aka, the Design and Visualization forums), so be sure to check those areas out, too.

A note on AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP 2008 forums... they will be updated once the products are officially released. ;) So, don't feel left out if you don't see anything new in there quite yet, you haven't been forgotten, the ADT/ABS (erm, ACA/AMEP) team is hard at work.
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One thing definitely worth mentioning about the AutoCAD Community forums is the expanded coverage of Dynamic Blocks!!! We've recently added two new moderators to the team, Chris and Rico (aka, Dynamic Blockheads) who've done A LOT of work to organize all of the free AutoCAD Dynamic Blocks that the amazing augi community has been making and collecting.

You can ask your dynamic block questions here.

And you can download blocks from this forum, an extensive library well classified (search the labels for Annotation, Architectural, Civil, Electrical, Manufacturing, Mechanical (hvac), Plumbing, Structural and Miscellaneous.).

Be sure to pop up there to check them out, download some blocks and give them a try; heck, you might even want to post one or two nifty creations of your own.

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