Augiworld 091002
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Sept/Oct 2003 Should you customize AutoCAD yourself or buy an add-on? Here are some of the alternatives, plus tips for getting management buy-in •Rockin’ in the Civil/Survey World • Q&A: Autodesk Land Desktop •The CAD Manager: Pain-free CAD •AUGI Launches the Forums www.augi.com Your Mouse Needs Help! Productivity Discomfort SpaceNavigator ™ Integrated Motion Controller Keyboard Two Handed Power for AutoCAD® What is “Two Handed Power?” It’s being able to grab onto the power of AutoCAD with both hands. It’s being able to pan, zoom, Two Handed Power scroll and position with the controller in one hand, while the other for AutoCAD hand simultaneously creates, edits or annotates with the mouse. Over 250,000 CAD designers worldwide enjoy 3Dconnexion’s proven two-handed workstyle, reporting up to a 30% increase in productivity and up to a 50% reduction in repetitive mouse movement. Learn more about “Two Handed Power”: www.3Dconnexion.com 888.247.9545 © 2003 3Dconnexion. All rights reserved. 3Dconnexion, the 3Dconnexion logo, and other 3Dconnexion trademarks are owned by3Dconnexion and may be registered. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo and AutoCAD are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. Products carrying this logo are not necessarily Autodesk® products and as such are not warranted by Autodesk. Autodesk Revit happens here. Oculus, Inc. does a last-minute redesign of a library facade and turns around a new set of bid documents by the original deadline. True story. Make a radical, eleventh-hour change on a public project, get the board to approve it, and have the revised construction documents—including 56 sheets of drawings—out to bid on time. Read how the Autodesk® Revit® building information modeling solution helped make it happen. And see the possibilities for yourself, by ordering a free trial CD. Visit http://www.autodesk.com/revithere. Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, and Autodesk Revit are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. ©2002 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved. TableContents of feature Editorial Managing Editor Marilyn Law [email protected] Technical Editor/PaperSpace Editor John Clauson [email protected] Contributing Editors Richard L. Binning Michael DeGraw Elise Moss Alireza Parsai Mel Persin Gary Rosen Production Tim Varnau [email protected] Circulation Scott McFarlane [email protected] Advertising Dan Teeter [email protected] Controller Larry Teeter [email protected] Publisher Rich Uphus [email protected] AUGI Board of Directors, 2003 John Clauson, President R.Yoshi Honda, Sr.Vice President David Kingsley, Secretary Marv Muston, Jr. Vice President Michael DeGraw 8 Beth Garrison Peter Jamtgaard Chris Lindner John Moran Should you customize Elise Moss Augiworld is a trademark of Autodesk User Group International AutoCAD yourself or buy an (AUGI) www.augi.com. Autodesk is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Augiworld is published by Solidvapor, Inc., add-on? Here are some of 19601 James Road, Noblesville, IN 46060. Canadian Publications Agreement # 40733013 BPA International membership applied for the alternatives, plus tips for August 2002. getting management buy-in © Copyright 2003 Solidvapor, Inc. All rights reserved. 2 www.augi.com Table of Contents 4 Cyber Support The Forums, at www.AUGI.com, deliver easy-to-use, peer-to-peer support to AUGI 14 Ladies and Gentlemen - members. Here’s a look at how they work It’s Time to Rock 6 The CAD Manager A Look At The Civil/Survey World CAD 18 PaperSpace Shouldn’t • VBA Foundations Hurt • Digitally Publish It! • RPC and ADT 12 Autodesk Land • The Road Less Traveled Desktop 2004 • Autodesk Revit: Collaboration A conversation with Terry D. Bennett, Methods and Features Civil Industry Marketing, Autodesk 28 Back in the Day Whether you are working with CAD or GIS applications, digitizers can improve your accuracy and efficiency on all your AutodeskTM projects. With programmable buttons, the highest resolution in the market and built in time saving tools, GTCO CalComp’s digitizers are the perfect tools, no matter what your application. 800-344-4723 [email protected] HTTP://WWW.GTCOCALCOMP.COM S ept/Oct 2003 3 Cyber Support The Forums, at www.AUGI.com, deliver easy-to-use, peer-to-peer support to AUGI members. Here’s a look at how they work By the time you read this, the complete- Categories and Forums The previous topic, “Moving posts,” was ly rebuilt www.AUGI.com should be open Only the AUGI Forum administrator started by Ed. It is shown “collapsed.” You for business. One of the major features of can create category and forum definitions. can expand and collapse topics by clicking AUGI’s new website is “Forums, ” AUGI’s Currently, there are more than 20 cate- on the plus or minus signs to the left of the new web-based, peer-to-peer support sys- gories and over 50 forums. Figure 1 shows topic name. tem. Unlike the AUGI Guilds, an email- a partial list. Architectural Desktop, based support service, it is not necessary to Architectural Studio, and AutoCAD are formally join forums. If you can log on to the categories. Below each of these are augi.com, you can read, write, and search forums within the category. Most any public forum. Autodesk products will have their own cat- Three different routes to egory. Within each product category there will be at least two forums, named X forums Support and X Wish List; some will have • Select Forums from the main menu more. There are also several “cross prod- bar and you will go to the main forum uct” categories, such as CAD Management page. Here you can select from a com- and Programming. Tip: If you click on the plete list of available forums. category link, it will simplify the display to Figure 2: The Forum Level • Select Product Channels from the show only that category. main menu bar, then select a product Topics and Threads in the left panel. This will display the Topics are created within forums by mem- various AUGI services for that product bers. Creating a new topic is how you present in the left panel. Select forums from a question to the forum members. When you that menu, and you will see a list of the use the “NewPost” button (Figure 2), you will forums supporting that product. create a new topic. The resulting “Post New • Select My AUGI and set your prefer- Thread” window looks and acts just like the ences for your chosen product. Select “Reply To Message” window (Figure 4). My Home Page and set it to “Product Before starting a new topic, please Forums.” Log out and log back in to search the forum to see if the topic already make the changes take effect. When Figure 1 exists. When you post a new topic, make you log in you will be taken directly to sure that the subject is concise, but catchy your chosen product forums. Follow the Forums and Topics and accurate—don’t just enter the word same procedure to undo this setting. In Figure 2, we have entered the AUGI “question.” We know you have a question, Moderators forum, which was not shown in that’s why you’re here! Forum Primer Figure 1. Two topics have been started here. When you have arrived at the forum of BigBopper started the “Welcome Threads and Messages your choice, the system requires you to Moderators” topic. Ed and Mike have Threads are created within topics by navigate through four levels. From top to replied, thus creating a “thread.” This thread members. When people reply to a topic, bottom they are Category, Forum, Topic, is “expanded” showing all replies to it. Notice that group of topic-related messages is and Message. that the newest topics appear at the top. called a thread. 4 www.augi.com You may use either flat or tree style to There are too many text formatting Subscribe to Forums or Threads read a thread. Figure 3 is an example options to go into here, but you should When you are at the forum level, in the of tree style, which displays thread entries know that the “code” button allows upper right area of the window you will see in chronological and hierarchical order. programming code to be placed in the the word “Subscribe” (Figures 2 and 3). You can see who replied to whom, message box without being corrupted by Click on this, and as a subscriber, every and in what order. The red text indicates format tags. Select the code portion of post made to that forum will be emailed to that this is the message shown in the box your message, then click “code.” the address you provided in your above. If you click on the line below the www.AUGI.com profile. The email will red one, it will become red and display its contain the text of the post as well as a link text in the message window, and so on to that point in the thread. If subscribing down the line. to an entire forum generates too much Flat style (click on Flat Style; see Figure email, you may focus your subscription on 3) displays a chronological list of messages. one or more select threads. To subscribe to a thread, check the box “Notify me via email when someone replies” when com- posing a reply. (Figure 4).