Funny how things go....I was of the impression that R2009 was fairly crash prone. However, I have been using it now at NZSugar Ltd, where I am not attached to the network, and I have have had no crashes in the 3 weeks I have been there. (I was on a network on my previous assignment.)
Another factor may be that I have not done much in the way of 3D, stuck as I am doing the hot water P and ID. So Network? 3D?
In my way of doing P and IDs, I was asked if I could stick to NZSugar standard symbols for valves and so on. This I did do, and was able to add yet more symbols that they did not have.
The design and sizing of these symbols was a trick-do you make them fit on a grid? I have done P and IDs in the past and used the idea of using a grid but got sick of putting snaps on and off, not to mention that whenever you opened up someone elses drawing, they never used a grid.
The trouble is if you make your symbols too big, the drawings look wrong, and if they are too small, they are not legible.
I would be nice if, when I get the drawing with all the standard symbols on it, I could post it on this blog so others might use it. But I have not figured out how to put a download onto this blog.
Anyone have any ideas how?
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Why I do not have an email address on my blog etc
Hi Jim!
Sorry I have not replied-I have been busy with personal things as well as falling off my bike.
I have not posted my email address as I do not wish to be engulfed with spam. Which makes me think: how can I be contacted? I have thought of this idea....since robots are trolling for things with an ampersand in them, all I have to do is put my address in a blog posting like this one and make it look like this: blecouteur at xtra dot co dot nz.
Should be easy to figure out....
Now for the autocad stuff: I have been laid off from my job at Nucon Ltd, and have managed to land a short contract at NZ Sugar Ltd, who as it happens, do not want my computer connected to their network. You could almost hear my computer go:"What....there is no network? So I will go at almost twice the speed....". Well, maybe not twice, but it is very noticeable.
Which raises the interesting question: Is this R2009's fault, or is it the networks?
Arriving at NZSugar, I was surprised to find there was already a draftsman there (they went for quite a period with none). What was interesting about him was the fact that he was into VBA for Autocad in a big way and he had applied this all to electrical drawings.
Another interesting thing was that NZSugar had bought 6 seats of Cadopedia, an autocad clone.
The version they had though, could not read more than one layout tab. The other draftsman downloaded the latest version, and apparently it can.....
Sorry I have not replied-I have been busy with personal things as well as falling off my bike.
I have not posted my email address as I do not wish to be engulfed with spam. Which makes me think: how can I be contacted? I have thought of this idea....since robots are trolling for things with an ampersand in them, all I have to do is put my address in a blog posting like this one and make it look like this: blecouteur at xtra dot co dot nz.
Should be easy to figure out....
Now for the autocad stuff: I have been laid off from my job at Nucon Ltd, and have managed to land a short contract at NZ Sugar Ltd, who as it happens, do not want my computer connected to their network. You could almost hear my computer go:"What....there is no network? So I will go at almost twice the speed....". Well, maybe not twice, but it is very noticeable.
Which raises the interesting question: Is this R2009's fault, or is it the networks?
Arriving at NZSugar, I was surprised to find there was already a draftsman there (they went for quite a period with none). What was interesting about him was the fact that he was into VBA for Autocad in a big way and he had applied this all to electrical drawings.
Another interesting thing was that NZSugar had bought 6 seats of Cadopedia, an autocad clone.
The version they had though, could not read more than one layout tab. The other draftsman downloaded the latest version, and apparently it can.....
Sunday, April 27, 2008
R2009 Autocad
Oops! In a previous blog about R2009, I said the best thing about R2009 was that it drew blocks on the use of the soldraw command. This DID work in one of my drawings, but the other day I noticed it did not work in another. This is cause for some investigation on my part. I will keep you posted in case you do not have R2009.
It seems some people are having no problems at all with R2009, while others are complaining about some of the "features". For myself, I am perservering with it, as it may well be things like your video driver(is it up to date). I am using smpseesaw as a means of forcing acad onto one cpu (I have a dual cpu). I presume this makes a difference, but how much I am not sure.
It appears to be slightly weird that some have problems and some don't. I would like to know what the cause is. Any ideas, anyone?
It seems some people are having no problems at all with R2009, while others are complaining about some of the "features". For myself, I am perservering with it, as it may well be things like your video driver(is it up to date). I am using smpseesaw as a means of forcing acad onto one cpu (I have a dual cpu). I presume this makes a difference, but how much I am not sure.
It appears to be slightly weird that some have problems and some don't. I would like to know what the cause is. Any ideas, anyone?
Monday, March 10, 2008
How to get your co-workers frothing at the mouth....
I've been doing this a while now for architectural stuff. I want a detail in my drawing: I drag the detail block in from explorer, and insert it in paper space, then scale it by 1:10 or whatever scale it is. Nice, neat, quick and no horsing around with viewports and model space.
I have run this technique past a couple of Cad monkeys and ......they are unanimous in their condemnation of me......how dare I insert geometry that is not 1:1?
In my defence, I claim any fool opening such a drawing will immediately see that this is indeed a block and it is in paperspace....so what is the big deal?
I have run this technique past a couple of Cad monkeys and ......they are unanimous in their condemnation of me......how dare I insert geometry that is not 1:1?
In my defence, I claim any fool opening such a drawing will immediately see that this is indeed a block and it is in paperspace....so what is the big deal?
Saturday, February 23, 2008
File management fun...not
This post is just a warning to those of you out there that work on large projects, and there are frequent changes to files and revision files have to be kept. What a pain.
Where I work, we have all the drawings kept in a directory, and under that directory is a folder called Superceded. The plan is say you have a drawing called 5046034.dwg and it becomes rev A, you copy the original to Superceded and then rename it to 5046034A.dwg.
Well, somewhere in the piece I was renaming and renumbering files, and I used the "drag and drop" technique. It appears this works fine on c: drive but not on a network drive, as the dragged files suddenly reappeared in the next session. Needless to say, the engineer was very confused and upset!
Moral of the story? DONT USE DRAG AND DROP ON A NETWORK DRIVE!
File Management
The standard way the firm has kept files in the past has been to chuck em all in one honkin' great directory and call them things like: 5046032.dwg
So.....you want to find something? You have to have a good memory, or you make a temporary Excel or Access file. Some of our projects might have as much as 500 drawings in one directory.
Which is OK except that you are now typing out the title block all over again....which seems inefficient.
After all the shouting is over these all get put into a program called EDMS, which is nice, but who wants to manually key in all that stuff? Not me, said the draftsman!
I had encountered another firm, where some bright spark decided to give a name to the drawing file, for instance 5046-032 Sugar Surge Hopper G.A.dwg.
I thought this was a much better idea, and adopted it, even if it did mean that I had to type the title twice. I can even admit to it's major drawback, that it does use up space in the file open dialog box.
It does have one advantage: You can use a dos batch file to extract all the file names to a text file, then they can be further carried to Excel and or Access. I call mine getem.bat---all it has is one line
DIR/B/X > THELIST.TXT
It outputs the listing of the files to a file called "thelist.txt".
I would imagine there are people out there using Autocad's data extraction techniques to populate databases with things like drawing no and title.
Ahhh.....but I don't use that File Open Dialog--I use a permanently open Windows Explorer to open my drawings from.
Another refinement I tried to introduce was putting different groupings of drawings into different folders. For instance all Layouts would have their own folders. Each grouping of plant would have its special folders. We did try, but this was "not the way we have always done it..."
Revisions
Ahh....revisions....don't you just love them? Whoever wanted these, was mired in the good old days of manual drafting. There is just one big problem: Now we work on 3D models, the concept of revisions is almost unmanageable.
Someone I know says the people he deals with have actually given up on revisions. Which if you think about it is not such a bad idea. After all, all you are trying to do is provide a snapshot of the drawing at a particular time. What is wrong with (say) if you change something, take a PDF of the drawing, and save it somewhere, with the date printed on it?
Maybe the drawing should be considered a moving target until the magic "Issued for Construction" stamp gets put on?
Where I work, we have all the drawings kept in a directory, and under that directory is a folder called Superceded. The plan is say you have a drawing called 5046034.dwg and it becomes rev A, you copy the original to Superceded and then rename it to 5046034A.dwg.
Well, somewhere in the piece I was renaming and renumbering files, and I used the "drag and drop" technique. It appears this works fine on c: drive but not on a network drive, as the dragged files suddenly reappeared in the next session. Needless to say, the engineer was very confused and upset!
Moral of the story? DONT USE DRAG AND DROP ON A NETWORK DRIVE!
File Management
The standard way the firm has kept files in the past has been to chuck em all in one honkin' great directory and call them things like: 5046032.dwg
So.....you want to find something? You have to have a good memory, or you make a temporary Excel or Access file. Some of our projects might have as much as 500 drawings in one directory.
Which is OK except that you are now typing out the title block all over again....which seems inefficient.
After all the shouting is over these all get put into a program called EDMS, which is nice, but who wants to manually key in all that stuff? Not me, said the draftsman!
I had encountered another firm, where some bright spark decided to give a name to the drawing file, for instance 5046-032 Sugar Surge Hopper G.A.dwg.
I thought this was a much better idea, and adopted it, even if it did mean that I had to type the title twice. I can even admit to it's major drawback, that it does use up space in the file open dialog box.
It does have one advantage: You can use a dos batch file to extract all the file names to a text file, then they can be further carried to Excel and or Access. I call mine getem.bat---all it has is one line
DIR/B/X > THELIST.TXT
It outputs the listing of the files to a file called "thelist.txt".
I would imagine there are people out there using Autocad's data extraction techniques to populate databases with things like drawing no and title.
Ahhh.....but I don't use that File Open Dialog--I use a permanently open Windows Explorer to open my drawings from.
Another refinement I tried to introduce was putting different groupings of drawings into different folders. For instance all Layouts would have their own folders. Each grouping of plant would have its special folders. We did try, but this was "not the way we have always done it..."
Revisions
Ahh....revisions....don't you just love them? Whoever wanted these, was mired in the good old days of manual drafting. There is just one big problem: Now we work on 3D models, the concept of revisions is almost unmanageable.
Someone I know says the people he deals with have actually given up on revisions. Which if you think about it is not such a bad idea. After all, all you are trying to do is provide a snapshot of the drawing at a particular time. What is wrong with (say) if you change something, take a PDF of the drawing, and save it somewhere, with the date printed on it?
Maybe the drawing should be considered a moving target until the magic "Issued for Construction" stamp gets put on?
Autocad R2009
R2009 Autocad.
In a nutshell as far as I can see, it has a few killer features:
1. The ability to have a permanently open layer dialog box. Only useful for some.
2. Click on something, and a properties box comes up. This is a bit disconcerting at first, but I predict some will just love this one. You can choose what properties will normally appear.
3. This is the absolute most wonderful item: Soldraw now does its thing on BLOCKS!(same with the section tool)
4. There are preview gadgets for drawing files and layouts, which in time may become a more useful feature, once we all get used to them.
5. The ribbon. I know I have raved on about going to keyboard entry, but my natural laziness has prompted me to use the ribbon. The reason is I have 2 screens and this really is a replacement for the Dashboard, which I have been using.
6. There are some 3D visualisation tools that may grow on me.
So there you go:
It looks prettier than R2008. Not a big consideration for some, but we spend 7-9 hours a day looking at it.....
It also allows me in my daily work to do a section on a set of solids, some of which might be a block, and have them appear....which would be worth the cost of the upgrade.
In a nutshell as far as I can see, it has a few killer features:
1. The ability to have a permanently open layer dialog box. Only useful for some.
2. Click on something, and a properties box comes up. This is a bit disconcerting at first, but I predict some will just love this one. You can choose what properties will normally appear.
3. This is the absolute most wonderful item: Soldraw now does its thing on BLOCKS!(same with the section tool)
4. There are preview gadgets for drawing files and layouts, which in time may become a more useful feature, once we all get used to them.
5. The ribbon. I know I have raved on about going to keyboard entry, but my natural laziness has prompted me to use the ribbon. The reason is I have 2 screens and this really is a replacement for the Dashboard, which I have been using.
6. There are some 3D visualisation tools that may grow on me.
So there you go:
It looks prettier than R2008. Not a big consideration for some, but we spend 7-9 hours a day looking at it.....
It also allows me in my daily work to do a section on a set of solids, some of which might be a block, and have them appear....which would be worth the cost of the upgrade.
Monday, February 18, 2008
New Personal Blog
I have now realised the error of my ways. What started out as an Autocad blog has now ended up a personal photo gallery.
SO........I have now got a new blog, just for the personal stuff. It can be found at
http://williamlecouteursblog.blogspot.com/
What with all my building work at weekends and a weeks holiday, I have not had much time to rave on to the (it appears) two or three visitors I do have. (Or are they just web bots trawling?????)
SO........I have now got a new blog, just for the personal stuff. It can be found at
http://williamlecouteursblog.blogspot.com/
What with all my building work at weekends and a weeks holiday, I have not had much time to rave on to the (it appears) two or three visitors I do have. (Or are they just web bots trawling?????)
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