selophane.blog » IT

To BIM or not to BIM that is the question

spencer — Thu, 06 May 2010 01:34:57 +0000

Today I came across an e-mail informing me that Autodesk had released the new 2011 versions of their CAD and BIM software, AutoCAD and Revit. If you are familiar with these products feel free to skip the following two paragraphs for my opinion about BIM and CAD, if not, read on. For those of you who are not familiar with the world of architectural software it is broken into two different conceptual models: Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM). CAD software has been around since the 1980′s and is a digital analog to hand drafting. In it, users work in either a 2-D or 3-D environment defined by points and lines (or vectors). CAD software is a time saver in that instead of each drawing being an independent sheet that needs to be redrawn whenever changes are made, the drawing lives virtually within the software and changes can be made rapidly without effecting other areas of the work. In addition drawing elements can be quickly scaled larger or smaller to create details or other drawings. Since CAD is a replication of the drawing process it is used by many different industries. For three dimensional work it can [...]

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To BIM or not to BIM that is the question

Wednesday – App Review – CardSnap

spencer — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:11:16 +0000

It took me a while to find an app that could successfully translate any business card into a contact. I tried out apps that limited the number of contact fields and the types of fields (e.g., no e-mail addresses or job titles), but eventually decided to bite the bullet and pay the rather hefty price of $18.99 for Beach House Software’s CardSnap. This application will translate any business card regardless of orientation or text arrangement into an iphone contact. The only drawback is that it can take up to 24 hours, this is because the application sends the photo of the business card that you’ve taken with the iphone to a server where a “proprietary process for processing and mapping the cards” creates a contact without using OCR. Now as far as I’m concerned that proprietary process is probably an offshore customer service center in Bangalore, but it works and thats what’s important. I have had to correct one or two letters in a company name on occasion. But for the most part this is a great app. It is definitely a time saver, if you are willing and able to wait a day to have a full contact automatically [...]

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Wednesday – App Review – CardSnap

Wednesday – App Review – XpenseTracker

spencer — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:46:40 +0000

Even before I was laid off I had to keep track of my expenses for work. At that time it meant extra bonus “expense” checks for mileage driven or reimbursement for my food. Now that I am working for myself and not taking a salary, it is of the utmost importance that I do this, because its one of the only ways i can get cash inflow. Since getting my iPhone I was convinced that there had to be a good tracking program. The problem was that many of the apps on the market were unitaskers, they EITHER calculated vehicular expenses (and some only mileage) or they were submittable receipts. Eventually I found XpenseTracker. This app lets me log all of this information in one place, plus i can divide things up in job specific logs. There are custom notes fields as well as fields for merchants and clients. It also allows me to keep track of my non-profit miles for the work I do with Dominion Stage. In addition to tracking and keeping my records it also allows me to use the camera to take photos of my receipts at the time of purchase. I no longer need to [...]

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Wednesday – App Review – XpenseTracker

Wednesday – App Review – myPantone

spencer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:30:00 +0000

I know as someone affiliated with architecture and not Interior Design I should be somewhat ashamed to say this, but I am a color nut. I think it stems form my days as working as a graphic designer, but I love color standards, whether thats ICC profiles or standardized colors like the ones in the Pantone Fandecks. This is why I love the myPantone app for the iPhone. This app was released on September 10, 2009 and has been covered by many of the big tech blogs recently (here, here and here). This app allows you to make color palettes on the go. They can be pulled by hand from the Fandecks within the app (only one can be in play at a time), or they can be extracted from an image. The program allows you to choose an image already on your phone or take one with a camera. Once you have an image selected you can have the app automatically choose colors from the image and map them to the current active Fandeck or you can choose them yourself. This is where this app is really useful for architects. Do you have a client with a work of [...]

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Wednesday – App Review – myPantone

Virtual autoCAD

spencer — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:11:46 +0000

One of the most expensive purchases of any architecture and design office is drafting software. Not only does it cost anywhere from $1000 to $3000 a seat but the software changes yearly and every three versions the file formats tend to change as well. Whenever that happens firms either need to buy into the new version or be left behind. Autodesk has come up with their own solution to this, yearly subscriptions. The initial charge is the same as a usual one seat license, but every year they charge the firm about $500 per seat and send you the updated software. This is supposed to save you money while giving them a guarenteed revive stream, which it does but each version still needs better hardware to operate at maximum efficiency. That’s about a $2000 investment per machine on at least a three year rolling clock. In all, that’s a lot of expense especially for a new found firm. It’s no wonder people turn to piracy, unauthorized installs, and multiple seats. Citrix has a different solution. They have developed a virtualization software which can eliminate the rolling hardware expense. This software is like most virtualization software, it lives on a host [...]

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Virtual autoCAD

Wednesday – App Review – StonePedia

spencer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:14:53 +0000

Keeping with the pattern I started last week, today is the day I am going to spotlight an app for the iphone that specifically is helpful for the architecture and design community. This week I am shining a spotlight on StonePedia brought to you by Marble & Granite, Inc. This app, which showcases over 500 different types of stone, seems like it should be more helpful than it is. While there are over 1,400 photos of stone in the app, they are no where near as nicely presented as the wood images in I.D. Wood.; these images are not full screen close ups of the stone, instead they are images of large slabs of stone in a warehouse. In addition, the program is set up as a resource directory by stone name and as such it is difficult to browse for a stone sample based on color or grain; this makes it hard to stumble across material options for projects. Instead, this program seems as if it has been designed for someone looking to provide an image to a client or distributer of an already selected stone type. I do want to stress that there are some beneficial applications to [...]

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Wednesday – App Review – StonePedia

App Review Wednesday – I.D. Wood

spencer — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:45:33 +0000

Yesterday I finally took the plunge, deactivated my blackberry curve and bought an iphone. For months, I had nothing but trouble with my blackberry, it crashed constantly, I had to empty my mail and texts off of it weekly so that it could have enough memory to run, and on a regular basis the google sync service I had set up would stop updating my contacts and calendar and leave me with an empty address book and schedule. It boasted the ability to use an 8gig SD micro card for music and media storage but couldn’t store any e-mail, sms messages or applications on it; instead those had to all fit in the resident 32 mb of onboard memory. This phone just did not suit my needs anymore, especially as someone trying to get their own firm off of the ground. I had promised myself that If I could hold out for my license then I would buy an iPhone, but as week 10 of Score Report Watch is here and there is no license in sight, I decided that I had had enough. I know some people may think of this as a vanity purchase, but all of the [...]

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App Review Wednesday – I.D. Wood

Autodesk meets Barbie Dream House Architect

spencer — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:40:51 +0000

I just read a great article on the New York Times about a new product from Autodesk (Design Your Dream House, Lamps and All – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com). It looks like Autodesk is getting into the 3-D home architect/interior design business with their new product “Project Dragonfly”. But instead of charging an arm, a leg, and the blood of your first grandchild like they usually do, Autodesk is giving it away to the public and charging the product manufacturers to list their products. I don’t know what to think about this. On one hand its great that there is a free way for people to redesign their interior spaces without having to use the IKEA planner or The Sims. But on the other, the product placement aspect and limitations to using Autodesk’s approved library of products rubs me the wrong way. In addition, I can just see the army of housewives and weekend warriors storming their local home depot with print outs from this website in hand believing that they should get a “trade” discount because now, they too are designers. Post from: selophane.blogAutodesk meets Barbie Dream House Architect

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Autodesk meets Barbie Dream House Architect

WordPress Issue

spencer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:54:13 +0000

So, this post is a bit off topic. It was brought to my attention that my single post pages were 404ing. This was an odd issue because my posts all showed up in the main page, but clicking any link would return an error. So I changed my permalinks from being Month/Day/post based to being the standard straight numeric method. After clearing the cache the page loaded fine; I tried the other possible permalinks and none worked correctly. I’m thinking that this has happened since my last wordpress upgrade. Anyone have any experience dealing with this? Post from: selophane.blogWordPress Issue

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WordPress Issue

Breaking the Autodesk Hegemony

spencer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:30:32 +0000

In the modern architect’s office there are no more drafting boards; if they exist, they serve as extensions of the desktop and become semi-permanent homes for check sets, red lines, specs and trace paper sketches. Instead, we work in CADD – Computer Aided Design and Drafting – usually short for Autodesk’s AutoCAD or Architectural Desktop/AutoCAD Architecture software. This software (in practice) is little more than hand-drafting+; it is rare to find a firm using the full three dimensional capabilities of the software. In addition, Autodesk’s CAD is PC only. There exist a handful of other pieces of drafting software for the PC – specifically Bently’s Microstation comes to mind, but truly Autodesk is the most popular girl at the dance. Mac users on the other hand have a rough and varied landscape of numerous semi and fully professional software solutions. Since purchasing my first Mac when Leopard was released (a Mac Mini – my last apple before this was a IIc), I have been trying as many of these programs as i can find. All in all i can not seem to find one that balances the speed of use of AutoCAD and its keyboard commands and a good integration [...]

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Breaking the Autodesk Hegemony