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NIST says Inadequate Software costs AEC Industry 15.8 Billion
Inadequate software interoperability in the capital
facilities industry cost the commercial, institutional
and industrial building sectors $15.8 billion in 2002 in
lost efficiency, according to a newly released study
commissioned by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST).
If you read the report, you should note that NIST
contacted twenty different companies and then used
their information to extrapolate the results of their
study. However, the small number of actual
companies used to gather data does not mean the
information in the report is not interesting or relevant.
The report details the life cycle of a construction
project and the cost impact of a change order during
that life cycle. It also goes into how PDM and
technology is currently being leveraged by the
building industry. There are some really excellent
charts and graphs that could be useful to instructors,
marketing managers, and resellers.
The most interesting to me is their list of money-
losers:
- Redundant CAD Systems - Most companies had
more than one CAD software program
- Multiple translators - most companies had
invested in some sort of program to allow them to
convert file formats
- Training costs - NIST considered any amount of
money spent in training to be a loss - NOT a money-
saver
- Most companies had to dedicate labor to RE-
ENTER information from one system to another
- Most companies lost money SEARCHING for
information
Gosh, does any of this sound familiar to you? Of
even greater concern, it appears things are getting
worse. The report says that the losses have grown
by almost 2% since 1997. So, what do they
recommend? That owner/operators only purchase
software that will promote inter-operability or buy
one CAD system and only one CAD system, rather
than try to support different software seats.
It appears that many AEC firms will have a seat of
ArchiCAD and a seat of AutoCAD thinking that this
will save them money. In fact, this study clearly
shows that this actually is a money-loser. The
company would be better off with simply ditching the
lesser-used software because of the amount of time
taken up in training, re-entering data, etc.
To read the full report....
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| My Next Overseas Tour |
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I am starting to map out my next overseas tour -
destination: England, Ireland, and Scotland for May
2005.
If you are a user group, reseller, etc. and would like
me to speak to your group while I am on your
continent, email me and I will try to arrange my
schedule to accommodate a stop in your town.
I usually speak on Inventor, AutoCAD, ADT, Revit,
Lisp, and whatever topics users bring up. I do not
charge any speaker fees...I try to bring a prize or
two to give away (kudos to corporate sponsors, like
Autodesk, IntelliCAD, and 3D Connexion); as well as
one or two copies of my latest texts.
My husband of thirty years travels with me -
somebody has to carry the heavy suitcase loaded
with textbooks, software, and other goodies. It is
appreciated if a non-CAD user takes him out to a
local pub while I speak.
It will be my first time in that part of the world and I
am greatly looking forward to meeting Autodesk users
there and hearing what they have to say.
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| AutoCAD 2005 Release Set for March 2005 |
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Ralph Grabowski reports in this week's issue of
upFrontezine that the next release of AutoCAD 2005
is due in March 2005.
I don't know how many users have managed to move
over to 2004, but I am still getting used to the
current release. I feel like I haven't had much of a
chance to really explore all the new features.
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| Controlling Visibility in Inventor Views |
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I was creating a view in Inventor R9 and I needed to
turn off the visibility of some of the hidden lines to
make the view a little more readable. A great method
is to just select the unwanted line, right click and
uncheck Visibility. This gives you even more control
than turning off the visibility using Show Contents in
the Browser.
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| Creating a Section View from a STEP file |
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Last week I talked about importing a Unigraphics file
into Inventor...yeah, I was able to bring it in, but
then I needed to create some section views. Darn, if
Inventor would not create a single section view from
the imported file.
Turns out I am not the only person with this
problem. Inventor simply does not handle STEP files
really well. So, how did I solve the problem?
I imported the file into MDT. I had absolutely no
problem creating section views from there. I was
also able to dimension from most of the geometry in
MDT - something I couldn't do in Inventor. I ended
up using MDT to reverse engineer the part in Inventor.
And, yes, it was incredibly tedious.
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| Routine to Turn off an Xref's Layer |
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A faithful reader requested that I write a lisp routine
to
help him out. This routine will turn off the layer for
an external reference simply by picking on an entity
that is in that reference.
As always, I have kept the code open and
commented so other lispers can see what I have
done - and how. I have tested this with AutoCAD
2005, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't
work in R14 and above.
This is a useful routine if you have a lot of external
references and are having a hard time figuring out
what belongs to what. The reader also wanted a
routine that would turn the layer on by picking on the
same entity, but I couldn't figure out how someone
could pick on something they couldn't see.
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Download it here... |
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| Register for NDES now |
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I love visiting Chicago. It's one of my favorite
towns. Thankfully, NDES - the National Design and
Engineering Show gives me a great excuse to go.
This is a great conference and a wonderful way to
find out about the latest and greatest technology in
your field.
I've already booked my reservations...hope to see
you there!
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Learn more about NDES |
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