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:

---

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.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

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.

---

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

Know your software. Sign up now!