Archive for October, 2008

The secret to making money as a CAD manager

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

How to get a pay raise and a promotion

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Increasing your income is never a wrong thing to do in any economy. With today’s economy, having the edge you need to get paid more is critical. Training is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make yourself more valuable to your company and increase your chances of higher pay. Putting in longer hours is not the answer to higher pay. A fast employee that produces high quality work will always be more valuable than a slower one with lower quality work.

There are better ways to making money than putting in longer hours.

Just like Axiom’s software and services, LearningBay’s training courses are designed to: 1) save you time, 2) help improve your quality of life at work and 3) make you look even more like a genius. The courses also have the added potential of increasing your pay.

“Training saves you time by making you faster and even more proficient at what you do than you already are. Based on our experience in dealing with thousands of customers, only a fraction of CAD designers are using MicroStation to anywhere near its full capability,” stated Mike Arroyo, Axiom’s Vice President for Learning. “Knowing all the tricks of how to more effectively use MicroStation and MicroStation add-ons such as GEOPAK and InRoads increases your proficiency and speed in using these programs. This makes training an excellent way to pass your competitors, especially the ones who aren’t training.”

Today, users who neglect training are really missing out on functionality developed from the experience of others in a similar situation. Knowing exactly what tools to use and having complete confidence in how and when to use them can greatly increase your productivity as well as the quality of your work. This confidence will also make your work easier because you’ll have complete certainty on what you’re doing. From here, the formula for getting a pay increase is simple: Higher quality work done in a shorter period of time equals a pay raise and possible promotion. Training has also been known to make people happier, more confident and more self-sufficient.

LearningBay makes it easy to train anywhere, anytime. The courses are convenient, flexible, interactive, available 24/7, completely under your control and designed from the ground up to make learning smooth, fast and effective. Whether you need to learn a particular topic from the beginning or simply want to advance your skills, Axiom has the training solution you need. “Training gives you the knowledge and confidence you need to move forward on the road to financial success,” concluded Arroyo.

Call now!

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The curse of the mummy’s deadline

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

An interview with Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II

Cairo, Egypt — In search of an appropriate interview for the October edition of MicroStation Today, I found myself in Cairo, wandering the streets and looking for a story. A few of the locals informed me that the Egyptian Museum had a healthy collection of mummified ancient Egyptian kings, so I thought — being the Halloween issue — it couldn’t hurt to take a look.

In ancient times, missing a deadline could mean your death.

After wandering through halls laden with artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, I located Ramses II, arms crossed and with a gold mask covering his face. I kept walking and a few displays down, there was another mummy in an open casket, a roll of papyrus and ancient Egyptian pen laid at his feet.

Intrigued, I picked up the papyrus and was startled to discover… it held blueprints for a pyramid! If I could interview this chap, the article would fit right into the October edition! I picked up the pen and thought for a bit. My eyes darted to the inscribed plate in front of the casket: “Romulus III — Chief Architect to Ramses II”. Suddenly, the mummy started to move!

MicroStation Today: My god!
Romulus III: Aaaaauuuuuuuurrrrrgggghhhhh! Who disturbs my slumber?!

MST: Um… Er, hello. That would be me. I’m a reporter for the monthly periodical called MicroStation Today. It’s a CAD-related magazine… MicroStation specifically. I was wondering, could I do an interview on you? I’m sure our readers would love to hear about your experiences as an architect in ancient Egypt!
Romulus III: Hmmmm… As you have taken my drafting pen, you have incurred the wrath of the dreaded Romulus III — Chief Architect for Ramses II. This, I cannot forgive.

MST: What if I were to replace the pen immediately after we do our interview? No harm, no foul right?
Romulus III: Well, I suppose that would be alright. It is a tad drab just sleeping all the time. What have you got?

MST: Well, you must have a pretty interesting story on how you began as an architect. Can you tell us about that?
Rumulus III: I started off as a mason [someone who builds with cement and materials like stone and brick] when I was 15, carving stones and such. There was a complete lack of wood, so most of our buildings were built of stone, which was just as well, I heard that a lot of them are still standing today. You can’t say that about most structures that old. Anyhow, I wasn’t that fond of manual labor, so I apprenticed under a master architect, and he taught me a lot. By the time I turned 24, I was Ramses’ Chief Architect. I had a lot of respect, but also a lot of responsibilities. Structure design is no walk-in-the-park, let me tell you. I would have given anything for some way to speed it up and handle the problems that kept popping up.

MST: You know they have something like that now, it’s called “MicroStation”. It’s a Computer-Aided-Design software program. It lets you design entire structures with pinpoint accuracy and much faster than traditional pen and papyrus.
Romulus III: That’s amazing! And there are no problems with it?

MST: Sometimes there are, but there are tools like FileFixer and Title Block Manager that help sort those out quickly and painlessly.
Romulus III: Wow! Sounds like those would have been life-savers!

MST: Yeah, I know.
Romulus III: I don’t think you do! I was executed for not finishing the designs for Ramses’ “Thebes Temple Remodeling Project” in time! That man was an insane multi-tasker! He wanted all existing monuments to reflect his divine nature and power, so we had to come up with plans to redesign dozens of existing temples in his image, and he wanted it done in a month!

MST: You could have done it in a week with MicroStation and Toolkit.
Romulus III: Exactly! Now you know what I mean when I say “life-savers”. Anyhow, at least I was given the gift of eternal life by mummification. He must have liked me to some degree.

MST: Yeah… Next question: What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?
Romulus III: The Ramesseum, hands down. [Editor's note: The Ramesseum is a memorial temple that was built by Pharaoh Ramses II in 13th century B.C. It currently lies in ruins across the Nile river from the city of Luxor.] There were three statues of the man [Ramses II], one of them weighed over 1,000 tonnes! It was preceded by two courts and had giant pillars, huge walls, the works! I am definitely proud of that one. I heard it’s not doing so well today though. Pity.

MST: What is your favorite movie?
Romulus III: Well, you’d think that I don’t watch TV, stuck here in my display. However, the museum guard booth is just down the hall a bit, as you can see, and last year one of the guys (“Bakari”, I think his name is) brought his daughter to work. She sat in there and watched a cartoon called “The Prince of Egypt”. Excellent film, very true-to-life stuff. I pulled my wrapping down a bit from over my eyes and watched the whole thing. I laughed so hard, I started coughing up dust!

MST: Yeah, I saw it too, good stuff. Now, what do you predict will be the “next big thing” in CAD?
Romulus III: I had always thought it would be wonderful if they made a special table with instruments attached that helped you measure distances and draw perfect lines and curves on your papyrus.

MST: Yeah, that’s already been done. It’s called a “drafting table”.
Romulus III: Ah, I see. Well… then how about some sort of magic box that can hold thousands and thousands of designs. Maybe even simulate the designing process — allowing you to draw faster and more accurately!

MST: Yeah, we’ve got that too. It’s called a “computer”. And the “Computer-Aided-Design software” I told you about earlier is what simulates the designing process.
Romulus III: So that’s what a computer is? Fantastic! I heard you say “computer” earlier, but I just ignored it. Didn’t want to tie you up for too long here. Anyhow… So you’ve already got that, huh? Okay, well I’m sure there are things that could be improved, like, say a guy needs to make bulk changes to all of his designs? Changing all circles to squares or making all of a certain type of line thicker, that would be a “next-big-thing” wouldn’t it?

MST: We’ve got that too, it’s called Global File Changer and it’s part of Axiom’s Toolkit.
Romulus III: What about when something goes wrong and you can’t open your designs?

MST: FileFixer handles that. It’s also in Toolkit.
Romulus III: Well you know what? You just may have asked the wrong mummy!

MST: That very well may be the case, Romulus. I’ve got to catch a flight in about half-an-hour. Are you ready for me to replace the pen?
Romulus III: (Yawn) Yes, I think so. I’m growing rather sleepy. This is the most excitement I’ve had in the last 700 years!

Romulus crossed his arms and laid back in his display case. I placed the pen and the papyrus back at his feet and made my way outside to flag down a cab. “The Editor is not going to believe this,” I thought, clutching my notebook to my chest. I hopped in the cab and said, “To Cairo International Airport! And step on it!”

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Update design file settings fast!

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

How to update your entire project in minutes.

Clearwater, Florida, USA — At various times, during almost every project, it is necessary to prepare project design files for submittal to the organization or executive who authorized or is paying for the work to be done. Part of this preparation includes updating each design file’s view attributes and other design settings to make sure they meet the project’s requirements.

To make this whole process an extremely fast and easy task, Global File Changer has a custom feature called “Update Design File Settings”. This custom feature copies the settings and view attributes you want to use from an existing design file and then, based on your choices, updates all your project files to match.

To show you how simple and powerful the “Update Design File Settings” custom feature is, we will run through the procedure on a hypothetical set of 150 project design files. To keep this example brief, we will only update the “View Attributes” of these files, but the same process works for just about anything else you’ll ever need to update. “Update Design File Settings” can be used for updating any or all design file settings at the same time. This includes working resolution, global origin, color table and coordinate readout.

To begin, open a design file that has the view attributes set the way you want them for all your project files. With this design file active, load Global File Changer by selecting it from the “Axiom” pull-down menu on MicroStation’s main menu bar. From the “Custom” menu of Global File Changer, select “Manage Design File Settings|Update Design File Settings…”. This opens the “Update Design File Settings” dialog box.

The “Update Design File Settings” dialog box lets you specify the exact attributes and view or views you want to update. You can update your project’s design files in batch — hundreds or thousands at a time.

Now, select “File|New” from this dialog box. This initiates the default settings for this custom feature and unloads any previously active settings file. The next step is to select the design file that contains the standard settings we will use. Do this by clicking the <Browse…> button at the top of the dialog box and selecting the active design file. You could also select any design file that has the settings you want to use; however, for the purposes of this example, we’ll assume the active design file is the one containing all the settings set the way you need them.

Since we are only interested in the view attributes for this example, we will clear all the other categories by clicking the <Clear All Categories> button and then selecting the “View Attributes” category from the “Category” list box on the left. [Editor's note: If you are already a Global File Changer owner and your dialog box doesn't look like the one above, you should call Axiom to obtain the most recent Global File Changer update. For active maintenance holders, all updates are free.] With the “View Attributes” settings selected, click the <Select All> button. This activates all the view attribute checkboxes and selects all 8 views to update. For this example, we will only update views 1-4, so deselect views 5-8 by clicking on each of the <Views to update> buttons 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Keep in mind that each checkbox only determines whether or not we will update that view attribute based on the selected design files settings. It does not mean that we will turn that view attribute on. To see which way the view attribute will be set, for each view selected in the “Views to update” section of the dialog, click the <Display the current view attribute settings> button.

When you are done creating your settings, click the <OK> button at the bottom of the dialog box. This opens a “Save As” dialog box so you can save these settings to a file that can be reused at a later time. In this example, we will name the file “ViewAttributes.dsu”. After saving the filename, the “Update Design File Settings” dialog will close and the custom key-in command Global File Changer uses to update settings will be loaded by default into the “Key-in file:” field of the main dialog box.

Global File Changer is ready to update the settings on all 150 design files in the project — in one processing run. Yes, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true and will happen in just a few minutes too.

The last steps are to simply tell Global File Changer which design files to process, which models to process and the name of the report file to create. When you’re ready to process the files, simply click the <Start> button. After just a few minutes every design file you selected will have the correct view attributes for views 1 through 4.

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Axiom releases new InRoads XM Corridor Modeling courses.

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

Browser-based, interactive courses teach roadway design.

Clearwater, Florida, USA — Axiom, the world’s most experienced developer of time-saving MicroStation solutions, announces the release of the latest InRoads online training courses for MicroStation XM called InRoads XM Corridor Modeling Part 1 and InRoads XM Corridor Modeling Part 2.

The browser-based InRoads XM Corridor Modeling courses use videos and interactive material to cover both theory and application of corridor modeling in InRoads XM.

These browser-based courses demonstrate how to use geometry, surface, typical section and superelevation information to create roadway designs. Roadway modeling, or “corridor modeling” as it is often called, is the action of taking a typical section or sections and making them travel along the path of a horizontal and vertical alignment. As a result, InRoads is able to create both “planimetrics”, which is a two-dimensional representation of geographical space, and three-dimensional surfaces of the new design based on the horizontal and vertical geometry. The newly released InRoads courses reinforce the student’s ability to confidently accomplish roadway design, both by watching informative videos and by doing real-world step-by-step examples.

LearningBay courses combine in-depth instruction with hands-on labs, videos and practice sessions, in a self-paced setting with centralized monitoring and examination. This combination of materials and approaches has proven itself to be an effective training method for both new users and experienced users who want to refresh their skills.

Instructors can keep tabs on student progress, identify trouble areas (either slow students or difficult subjects), set requirements and more. Students learn InRoads at their own pace, on their own schedule, right from their own desk. Further, LearningBay can automatically build review content based on missed test questions. Students have the materials available to them at all times for reference or review.

The InRoads XM Corridor Modeling browser-based courses are the collaboration of Axiom’s LearningBay team, renowned for it’s learning technology, and InRoads guru Mark Ditko who brings over 20-years of experience working with grading, paving, water, sewer and other utility design. “Our professionally created, online courses reduce training costs and assist users in learning the materials faster. Helping CAD users to be able to produce billable hours quickly is a hallmark of LearningBay’s online courses,” stated Mike Arroyo, Axiom’s Vice President for Learning.

Collectively, Axiom’s system of online training is called LearningBay. LearningBay provides browser-based training for MicroStation and MicroStation products, with several options for delivery, including LearningBay Enterprise, LearningBay Professional and LearningBay Hosted. Enterprise is a learning management system (LMS) designed specifically for very large organizations, Professional is an LMS designed for small to mid-size companies, and Hosted is for companies that would rather not manage their training system themselves, no matter what size they are. All of the InRoads online learning courses are available via any of these methods.

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Tips & Tricks — Load your favorite MicroStation V8 commands fast with a function key.

Tuesday, 7 October 2008

By Rick Sewell
Busy MicroStation users are always on the lookout for a faster way to get work done. Here is a simple way to speed things up using function keys.

Have you ever noticed that row of keys at the top of your keyboard that start with “F” and seem to get no use at all? Well it just so happens you can make use of those F-keys (function keys) to invoke dialog boxes or commands in MicroStation.

It is really simple to assign commands to the function keys. You can use function keys by themselves or in combination with other keys.

In this example, we’ll load AccuDraw using the key sequence <Shift+F12>.

  1. Go to Workspace|Function Keys….

    2. The “Function Keys:” dialog box allows you to assign commands to your F-keys.

  2. Toggle on the “Shift” key checkbox at the top of the dialog box. (See “A” in the image above.)
  3. Select “F12″ from the pull-down list. (See “B” in the image above.)
  4. In the “Action:” input box, enter the MicroStation key-in command “AccuDraw Activate”.
  5. Press <OK> to close the “Function Keys:” dialog box.
  6. Now try out your new trick. Press <Shift+F12> and watch AccuDraw load!

Remember you can enter any valid MicroStation key-in command you want. In case you’re wondering, MicroStation does publish an index of their key-ins, called the “MicroStation Key-in Index”, under the “Help” menu. To access this index, go to “Help”, click on the “Contents” tab, then click on “MicroStation Key-in Index”.

See a list of MicroStation key-in commands by Clicking on the “MicroStation Key-in Index” from the “Contents” tab of the “Help” dialog box.

MicroStation is the powerful CAD system that it is because it can be made to work for you. Take advantage — use this tip and get your projects done faster!

Don’t spend time repairing thousands of files when only a few are the real troublemakers.
It’s a waste of computer resources to repair thousands of files at a time when the majority of them don’t need to be repaired. Instead, use FileFixer’s “Search for Problems” feature and the following settings to generate a list of the true troublemakers. This lets FileFixer identify the design files with serious errors. Then, you can use FileFixer’s “Automatic Design File Repair” to repair just the troublemaker files. This is the efficient way to ensure the integrity of a huge quantity of project design files.

FileFixer’s “Search for Problems” feature will find the true troublemaker files.

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MicroStation Today — October 2008(Volume 15, Issue 10)

Wednesday, 1 October 2008

Click here for back issues.

MicroStation Today — October 2008 (Volume 15, Issue 10)

Download a PDF version of this issue.

To read the pages above, download Adobe®‘s free Acrobat Reader®, if not already installed in your computer.

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