Connected

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'll be off next week, but before I sign out I'd like to give a big shout to all the readers of Connected, wish you all Happy Holidays & safe travels, and leave you with some Christmas cheer...DWF-style .

See you in January!

Gizmodo Conducts Definitive Coast-to-Coast 3G test

Interested in which major carrier (AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint) has the best U.S. coast-to-coast 3G coverage? Look no further than your friends at Gizmodo. The results? Might surprise you...

BIM in Home Building: An Example

Our Autodesk Consulting team is working on a Revit implementation for a leading national home builder, and shared this image with me. It's one of the builder's prototype 2D plans taken into Revit Architecture 2009, in a 3D view. We're working with this builder to test out the impact of BIM on their operations. There are a lot more where this one came from; I just wanted to give you a flavor for the kind of work they're doing.

It's too early to tell what the final results will be, but people on the project are pretty excited about the amount of detail that is going to be available for cost estimating, marketing, purchasing, and design. It's safe to say that BIM has really gained serious momentum in the home building space, and we look forward to seeing it sweep through the home building supply chain just as it has done in commercial, institutional, and public projects. Exciting stuff!

Creepy BIM

I've just learned that the Corpus Museum in Oegstgeest, Netherlands (slideshow) was designed and completed using BIM technology. They probably needed a lot of clash detection to get this thing right:

Change default size of clash images in NavisWorks

Sometimes you want to export clashes from NavisWorks, but the 512x512 pixel resolution of the exported images is too small (here's a 512x512 export from NavisWorks):

Here's how you enlarge it, courtesy of Autodesk NavisWorks expert John Lipp.

 - Click Start.

 - Click Run.

 - Type in cmd in the Open field and click OK.

RESULT: A black command prompt window will open. Click into the black window so you can type commands in.

 - Type: "CD C:\Program Files\Autodesk\NavisWorks Manage 2009"

RESULT: You will now be in the NavisWorks Program Directory

 - Type "OptionsEditor.exe -a"

RESULT: The Global Options editor will open in advanced mode.

 - Expand Registry > Current User > Clash Detection > Reports

 - Adjust the Image Height and Image Width values to whatever size in pixels you want.

Connect Revit or AutoCAD products to Autodesk Buzzsaw

Today's guest blogger Keith Pierce (Autodesk Technical Specialist) writes:

Did you know that Revit can publish DWG and DWF files to Buzzsaw and you can open files in Buzzsaw directly from AutoCAD?

We were surprised to hear that many people didn’t realize this capability existed.  In a world of rapidly expanding 3D models, publishing a Revit DWF to Buzzsaw provides an easy way to keep the project team updated on the design, with Buzzsaw providing automatic notification, markup capabilities, and version control on the published files.  Here’s a shot of the file menu where Revit's Publish to Buzzsaw command is:

 

In AutoCAD, you can use the File/Open, select Buzzsaw, and add your location to access files in Buzzsaw. When you do open a file, a lock is automatically placed on the file in Buzzsaw, so other team members know they can’t edit that file. Here’s a picture of the AutoCAD 2009 menu:

 

And here' the subsequent lock on the opened file in Buzzsaw:

 

Thanks for sharing this great info, Keith! Now get back to the Xbox 360 Rock Band, ok Jack Tackle?

Albert loves collaboration

New Version of Autodesk Buzzsaw: 2008.4

It's that time of year again: yuletide cheer, Santa, and a new release of Autodesk Buzzsaw. This version (2008.4) makes logins and forms faster, and adds a bunch of nifty new features I'll be blogging about in the days to come.

One little trick added to this release is the "Refresh Cache Login" which is used to clear out a corrupted cache file. You get those with Buzzsaw from time to time; usually it shows up as a site that refuses to refresh, or doesn't show you all the folders/files/forms every time.

In 2008.4, hold the Control key down on your keyboard while you click "OK" in the login box. Hold Control until you see the Sending "Login" request. message at the bottom left of the Buzzsaw window, then you can let it go. What this will do is force Buzzsaw to download a new version of the cache file from the server, overwriting your corrupted cache file on your computer.

This is much easier than navigating through folders looking for that cache file! Thanks Buzzsaw team!

A visual guide to the housing meltdown

Mint.com's blog at blog.mint.edu has posted a fantastic guide to the housing crisis. Take a look, it's worth seeing both (a) the great visual and (b) the solid analysis.

Mint is a great site for tracking your personal finances (not so fun these days.) I've been using it since it was in alpha.