Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts

About me - 2010 resolution

The BIM revolution is happening right now, I wanna be an active part of it.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I have never introduced myself properly in my own blog, kind of rude, but as some of you already know it all started as a record keeper of little things I was learning. The snowball became bigger and bigger, and then i forgot to be polite. Since this article needs a bit of my own background I am going to start with that.

My name is Martí Broquetas, I am an Architect from Barcelona. For those who don't know it I am currently studying a Master in International Building Project Management and working at the Construction Management Team at a big Project Management Company in Stuttgart, in Germany.

Before moving to Germany in September '09, I worked for the previous 3 years in Baltimore, MD in a mid sized (nearly 100 employees) Architecture and Design Firm, I worked as a Project Designer on big projects all over the world. After learning the insights of a big architectural practice i realized I wanted to get a better insight of the construction industry itself, and for this reason I chose the IBPM Master in Stuttgart.

My workflow has mostly comprised working with CAD Design softwares like AutoCAD, Microstation, SketchUp and Rhino and doing some tweaks with Photoshop and other image editing programs. This is the reason why most of the posts are related to these programs.

I haven't wrote much about BIM here since unfortunately it has not been part of my workflow since I started this blog. But I am intending to change that soon. I am very much decided on writing my Master Thesis on the role of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) to make the Design and Construction Process more efficient (I know, i need a shorter title line). I am not an expert on either, but I intend to become one.

So from now on (it might take a couple of months to really get something interesting enough to be published here) and with the same spirit of sharing knowledge that made CAD-Addict what it is, posts related to this two topics will hopefully appear here as often as possible. The idea is not only to publish posts that explain better ways to work with BIM programs like Revit or ArchiCAD, but also to encourage the discussion about the need for change in the way architects work to make building design a much more efficient practice.

The website is named CAD-Addict, and for a while i thought to maybe start a separate blog for the topic. But I sincerely think it is better to have the discussion here, since pure CAD users can benefit from and contribute to the discussion about BIM and IPD a lot. Plus, I am sure a lot of the readers of this blog are already BIM users. Aren't you?


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2009 Posts of the Month

The most visited posts of 2009 by month.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
As I already did last year here comes the list of the most visited posts of each month. This is just a way to make old posts accessible to those who joined CAD Addict recently. Hope you find something interesting. This is the list.
Note that there are some months when the shown post is the second one because the most visited one was the same as the previous month. I did it like this so there could be 12 different posts here.

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Helping Haiti

Give a bit to help Haiti
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
After the Earthquake in Haiti the situation in the country is much worse than already was before. The reports I've been reading by some journalists, are really heartbreaking.
If you feel like you want to help, but you don't want to do it through religious organizations, the link on the image below will allow you to donate through Paypal to Red Cross International and Doctors without Borders. It takes 1 minute and less than 5 clicks. It's your call.


Click on the image or here to go to the donation page.

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2009 Top Ten Visited Posts

The ten favourite posts by the users in 2009 by the number of Unique Visitors
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
As I did last year with the Top Ten List of 2008, here comes the list of the top 10 visited posts all year round in 2009. Happy New year to Everyone! Keep visiting and commenting on this 2010. All the Best.
  1. List of Sketchup Plugins
  2. SketchUp Plugins: Make Faces From lines
  3. SketchUp Plugins: Weld
  4. SketchUp: Bonus Packs and Extra Materials
  5. SketchUp Plugins: Joint Push Pull
  6. SketchUp Plugins: Volume Calculator
  7. SketchUp Plugins: Loft
  8. SketchUp Plugins: Round Corners
  9. AutoCAD tutorial: Creating a dynamic block 1.0
  10. AutoCAD: Convert a 3D Model into a 2D drawing


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Autodesk - Graphisoft - Nemetschek Software for Free

Are you a student? Then you are lucky, the major CAD and BIM vendors will let you download their products for free.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Going back to school has an advantage, and that is that you can get free versions of the major CAD and BIM software available. If you are trying to learn a new software, or simply need to use on your personal computer the software that you already have available in the school PCs, don't bother looking for pirated versions. Most of the major vendors will let you get a free version of their products if you have an email address provided by your school. See that this are not intended to be 30 day trial versions, but 1 year subscriptions (except for 3Ds and Maya, only 6 months)Here come the links.

Autodesk Education Community: Here you will be able to download for free the following programs:
  • Autodesk Revit Architecture
  • Autodesk Reevit Structure
  • Autodesk Revit MEP
  • AutoCAD
  • AutoCAD Architecture
  • AutoCAD Civil 3D
  • AutoCAD Electrical
  • AutoCAD Map 3D
  • AutoCAD MEP
  • AutoCAD Mechanical
  • AutoCAD p and ID
  • AutoCAD Structural Detailing
  • Autodesk Ecotect
  • AutoCAD Raster Design
  • Autodesk Impression
  • Autodesk Maya
  • Autodesk 3Ds Max
  • Autodesk 3Ds Max Design
  • Autodesk Navisworks Manage
  • Autodesk Algor Simulation Professional
  • Autodesk Alias Automotive
  • Autodesk Inventor Professional
  • Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis Professional
  • Autodesk Showcase
  • Autodesk Sketchbook Pro
Graphisoft Student and Teacher Webpage: If you are looking for free software from Graphisoft, here you will find:
  • ArchiCAD 12
  • Artlantis Studio 2.1
  • Cigraph Bundle
  • MEP Modeler
  • ECO Designer
  • CADImage
  • Objective
Nemetschek also allows free downloads of their software for students by registering. In this case the download sites are specific for each software.
Bentley only seems to provide a FREE version of their Microstation PowerDraft V8 XM Edition. But I thought I'd mention it here anyways.

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2008 Posts of the Month

The most visited posts of 2008 by month.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
I am trying to organize my site a little bit and will try to come with some posts that work as a directory of it. To shorten the list of "most visited posts" on the sidebar, here comes the list of the most visited posts of the months between June and December 2008. This is just a way to make old posts accessible to those who joined CAD Addict recently. Hope you find something interesting. This is the list.

See that the list starts on June 2008 since it is when I started using a visitor tracking service.

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CAD Addict emails are Slow in MS Outlook

I am working to find out a solution
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Kerry and Cristophe have recently pointed out an issue with the email subscription to CAD Addict. Aparently reading the emails in Outlook has become slow since May 20th. I´ve been doing some research and aparently that is a common issue to other blogs subscriptions (see this post). I am looking for solutions althought it seems to be a bug that someone form google should fix. Please bear with me till this get solved.
ANd Again thanks for reading.

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CAD-Addict's first anniversary!!

It is CAD-Addict´s first anniversary. Tell me what would you like to see here before the second one.
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
It's been one year since I started taking this website seriously. I started it back in 2007 but not till last June I started to Blog regularly. One year is not a long time but I am happy to have helped some people find their way to work smarter, and I have to say the will to write here has forced me to find solutions that previously I might have just avoided to search for. I encourage all of you to find some time to blog about those tools you use more often, we will all benefit from the shared knowledge and you will realize that you will learn more when you have to explain to others what you just found out.

The English version of CAD-Addict had over 34000 visits in the past 12 months(over 28000 visitors) and over 75000 pageviews. I have to confess that it is much more than I expected when I started. This added to the overall more than 45000 visits if we add the other languages, make me want to blog more and more to reach more and more people. Besides that 130 people are currently subscribed to this blog's feed which is not a bad number.

To help me improve the website on the following months please don't hesitate to write a comment on this post telling me what would you like to improve on the website, or simply use the Poll on the upper right corner to quickly choose from 4 topics what would you like to change.
Again, thanks so much for reading me and feel free to contact me here if you need anything.

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Table of Contents

The CAD Addict Blog Directory
Català - Castellano - Deutsch


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2008 Top Ten Visited Posts

The ten favourite posts by the users in 2008 by the number of Unique Visitors
Català - Castellano
Sorry for the almost two weeks of silence, I've bee out of town and then very busy. Till I get some time to organize myself here comes something I wanted to do for a long time. The list of the 10 most visited posts in 2008. I have my own favourite list that I will share soon, but this is your list, the posts that you have found more useful. The list belongs only to the English version of CAD Addict. The other languages have their own lists.
  1. SketchUp Plugins: Weld
  2. SketchUp Plugins: Extruding and Offsetting Curved Faces
  3. AutoCAD: How to Create a Dynamic Bloc
  4. AutoCAD: Overkill and Flatten Commands
  5. AutoCAD: List of Express Tools
  6. SketchUp: VRAY for SU works on version 7 too
  7. SketchUp: Bonus Packs and Extra Materials
  8. AutoCAD: THings That Shift Can do For You
  9. SketchUp Plugins: Volume Calculator
  10. SketchUp 7: New Features and Download Link


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Follow CAD Addict on Twitter

Now you can follow CAD Addict also on twitter
Some months ago I started to use twitter. Since it seems to be working pretty good and I keep getting new followers almost every day I thought I'd share with everyone the possibility to follow the posts directly from your Twitter account. To do so, follow this link and click follow, if you don't have a twitter account you'll have to register first.
Remember that you can also subscribe to the RSS feed using the links on the upper right corner of the CAD Addict website.
For those using Facebook, I also created a page through NetworkedBlogs application.

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Happy New Year to All CAD Addicts

The Year comes to an end with big doubts on the Architecture Industry but with hope of a Better 2009.
Català - Castellano
Just wanted to wish a Happy New Year to all CAD Addict users who joint this community during 2008, and hope for a better 2009 to everyone in the Architecture Industry. Hopefully by the end of Next year things could be a bit better and less layoffs and company closing will be happening.
Although many forecasts are very pessimistic about the evolution of the economy next year do not forget that if you make yourself indispensable wherever you work you will have a change to overcome the crisis.
As a New Year wish I intend to get even more serious into this blog, put as much time an effort as I can, try to improve both the design and the contents of this site and hopefully reach a wider audience.
Remember that you can stay update Subscribing to the blog updates in a reader or entering your email address in the box found on the upper right corner of this website.

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First SIGGRAPH conference in Asia

The first ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics
and Interactive Techniques in Asia opens in Singapore on 10 December 2008
From Decmeber 10th to December 13th the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Centre is going to host the first Asian edition of the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference. The US version of this conference that aims to Computer Graphics professionals took place last Ausgust in Los Angeles. Next Summer New Orleans will host SIGGRAPH 2009 from 3rd to 7th of August.
For more information visit SIGGRAPH.

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CAD Addict featured on CAD Digest

CAD Digest has linked to some of the articles published in this web site for the first time
After almost 6 months of serious blogging its good to start seeing other websites linking to the posts published here. CAD Digest, that compiles useful CAD posts from other websites has featured some of the posts.
Besides the satisfaction of knowing that more people are finding useful tips on this website, I'd just like to welcome the new readers and encourage all of them to come back often for new tips or to subscribe to the RSS feed using the big button on the upper right corner.
Again, welcome everybody and please comment if you feel like.

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Learning to Use Adobe Products

Adobe has a grat video Library to learn to use their products
Català - Castellano
I started updating my portfolio this weekend (with the current state of the Architecture Industry you never know when you will need to have it ready) and I wanted to use Adobe InDesign because I had read is the best software for composing great looking professional layouts.
My knowledge on this software is so far very limited so I wanted to learn from tutorials or whatever resources are available. Looking through the help files, I found a link to video tutorials.
The best thing of this finding is that the video tutorials are not limited to InDesign, but to all the products Adobe has in its Portfolio. I followed 8 of the videos about InDesign and I can say they are very easy to follow and each one concentrates on one topic. I think it is a great resource to learn some basics and some advanced tricks so I´ll be using this on the next months. Anything that I find worth mentioning will of course be posted here.
Hopefully if I get good enough on using InDesign, I might even start a new category dedicated to this program. Architects don´t generally use InDesign (at least no company where I've been ever had it installed) but I believe it is a great tool.

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How far could you go with Architectural Software?

You learn AutoCAD, then Photoshop, then SketchUp, then Revit, then 3DMax...See how far others have gone...
Català - Castellano
If you followed similar steps as I did, probably you started in School learning som CAD software. I was actually taught Microstation SE back in 1998. Together with this you probably learned some image editing program like Photoshop or Corel Draw to improve your presentations (I actually love the discussions between people with vector shaped brains because they learned Corel first and those with Raster shaped ones because they stated with Photoshop).
Soon after that comes the attempt to go 3D, not only for presentation purposes, but also from the design point of view.
Before @last software released SketchUp (yes, Google didn't create SketchUp, they bought it in 2006) crossing the 3D threshold was too much for many. Many of my friends back in School would say "I can't do 3D", nowadays it seems to me impossible to imagine an architecture school without almost all the students using SketchUp or something similar to design their buildings.
The use of 3D modeling programs is vital as I see it in the design process. Some old school guys say that real models are better, but I respectfully disagree. While a real model is a great tool to show to clients and to get a sense of scale of what you are doing, it rarely allows you to understand the real effect of the buildings and spaces you are creating. Modeling in the computer allows you to get that view from the human position as if you were in the project.
The hard step to do next is to have the ability to use 3D not only for design purposes but for presentation. Reaching and acceptable level of Image realism (enough to look professional with a client or to not let your professor make fun of you) takes some time. The most challenging part is to be able to stick to one rendering program/plugin and develop your skills fully.
In many years I've got into 3D MAX, V-Ray, Maxwell, Cinema 4D, Rhino... I have to say that for the easy of use so far Maxwell Render has proven to be the easiest to use (although render times sometimes skyrocket when using Multilight).
Many have followed this road before, and some have been extremely successful in getting the most of the process, reaching levels of excellence with Computer Graphics Software that allowed them to jump to other fields thanks to that.
I was reading in CGArchitect an Interview with Tino Schädler, who starting with an Architect background made it to the Film industry after becoming truly proficient with Maya.
Thanks to Tino, i got to discover some CG Artists who have done great jobs lately. Like Joseph Kosinski. For most of us involved in Architecture Software and struggling to work smarter, it seems a very long shot to ever reach similar levels, but as the end of this post I thought it would be nice to dream a bit.
Those levels of imagery require of course full time dedication, super powerful computers and time, but as read in Tino's Interview, improving those skills (even if it doesn't mean that you will turn into a CG Artist) can only help you on your daily struggle for better designs, better buildings (and better pay).

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Architecture Software Acronyms

What do all these acronyms stand for? CAD, CAM, BIM, IPD, CAE, AEC...Not so long ago, a friend of mine started publishing in his blog a list of Acronyms related to the Business Intelligence field. For a long time I wanted to do something similar, so finally that pushed my laziness away and here comes the list.
Since this website deals with Architecture related software, I'll try to list all those acronyms related to this topic, or at list the ones that I am acquainted with. The list might get updated as new abbreviations develop or I get to know them. Here is the list:
  • CAD: Computer Aided Design. Sometimes also referred as CADD (for Computer aided Design and Drafting). The most basic one (and the one that gives name to this website). Although originally understood for 2D drafting with a computer, nowadays is also used to refer to 3d Design. Most of the big names in CAD software deliver products with strong 3D modelling capabilities. The Almighty AutoCAD is the industry most widely spread CAD package in the construction industry.
  • CAM: Computer Aided Manufacturing. Originally Computer Aided Machining. Is the use of computers (and designs generally prooduced with CAD systems), to streamline the production of goods.
  • CAE: Computer Aided Engineering. Although in many countries the functions of CAE software are performed by Engineers and not by Architects, in some places like Spain, the Architect still plays the main role in this field, specially on Building Structural Analysis. The tasks accomplished with this software are analysis, simulation, design, diagnosis of built solutions (and thus, of buildings) and many others. The software range might go from CAD/CAM software to Structural analysis programs, Heating and AC system calculators, etc.
  • AEC: Architecture Engineering and Construction. The explanation is kind of obvious, software or any tool related to these 3 fields. The abbreviation is used by many BIM software to name some of the tools such as the AEC Polygons.
  • BIM: Building Information Modelling. This is were the industry seems to be strongly moving to. BIM means not only building a 3D modell of a building, but also adding to these model all sorts of real life properties, such as materials, plumbing, structure, etc. It is in certain way like building in a computer a complete model previous to the construction of the real thing. ArchiCAD is known to be the first BIM software (released in 1987), other big names on BIM are Revit by Autodesk, Allplan by Nemetschek or Bentley Architecture (the BIM version of Microstation).
  • IPD: Integrated Project Delivery. Not very extensively explained, seems to be a step forward from BIM. A way to not only build a model that has all the information of a project, but also to create an interconnection between Architects, Owners and Constructors (and all providers involved in the process) to minimize costs and maximize building efficiency. In this video, you can see a brief (and a bit stressing) introduction to IPD.
  • CGI: Computer Generated Imagery. A wide meaning of this would be any image you produced using the computer (kinda obvious eh!). The use of the term refers mostly to 3D imagery and animations produced using any of the softwares explained above (and many others)
There are other 3 letter Acronyms related to architecture like GMP (Guaranteed Maximum Price) and others, but I am not going to explain them here since they have few to do with Architecture related Software

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Benvinguts, Bienvenidos, Ongi etorri, Welcome, Välkommen

Let's wellcome the new visitors of CAD-Addict.I recently started using Google Analytics to start keeping track of the visits to this blog. The coolest feature so far is the world map that allows you to see visits by Country/Region.
I was just checking from which countries I got visits this last week and just wanted to quickly welcome all new visitors. The new Countries are:
Spain, Sweeden and Australia. So here is a quick welcome to all of you who spent some time reading what I post here.
Bienvenidos
Benvinguts
Ongi etorri
Välkommen
Welcome
Hopefully, I´ll keep posting similarly, meaning people from more and more countries have joined me reading once in while what I write.
Thanks to everyone.

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Blog update and new domain

Cad Addict is updating and upgraing.So after deciding to get a bit more serious about writing here I talked with a friend of mine about how to get a more personalized look to blogs. He explained me how he transitioned from a blogspot domain to his personalized domain at www.enricbiosca.es .Following some of the steps he explained I acquired the domain www.cad-addict.com so this will be from now on the home address of the blog.
On a similar note I tried (and still working on it) to give the blog a more unique style. I am still using the 565 template from blogger, but as you can see not much is left from the original one. I got a new header with my parents house as an AutoCAD scfreenshot, and some quick design that I am pretty happy with. Oh!, and I also added a search box up on the upper part of my sidebar and tweaked a bit the position of the AdSense, please let me know if any of it makes the blog less reader friendly.
On the next weeks, other than a long list of posts that I have ready to publish, I´ll try to go over all the old posts, try to make some sense of the lables I am using, and maybe start to Add some directory to make it easier to search within the blog...But that is just a will, you never know how much time you have for your blog...

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Thanks for Buying from CAD-Addict.com

Thank you very much for shopping at CAD Addict.com. I hope you are happy with the purchase. You should receive your item as soon as your order is processed. If you do not receive it in 48 hours please contact me here.
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