Autodesk Acquires Micro Application Packages Limited. This acquisition Helps Extend Building Information Modeling Across the Building Lifecycle Beyond Design to Support MEP in the BIM environment.
Backburner is a batch network rendering utility that comes with 3ds Max and Maya. This is used when you want to render multiple images to several computers/nodes.
After waiting what seemed like forever to download Inventor, I was ready to install the application. That went smoothly and now Im ready to start learning some new stuff. First off I felt somewhat comfortable with the application because of the Ribbon configuration. The first tab is a "Getting Started" tab with a dozen or so panels with items to help to get you off the ground. These look very informative, covering Ribbon intorduction, What's New, Tutorials and other helpful items. Be sure to take a look at them. Above is a screengrab to see what is listed.
Autodesk has a Download Manager that is suppose to help when downloading large files. Most of the installation exe's are 2+ gig, so they are all large. The problem is that I talked with folks who have had problems with installing the Download Manager or they installed it and nothing happens. There is a link to the right that reads "Standard download method", but clicking that sometimes doesnt seem to do anything.
Guide Grids are new in 2011. They are designed to help in laying out of views on sheets. This is useful when tryign to line up floor plans on different sheets.
Here is something for increasing your rendering time. Ignore Backfacing. From the Autodesk 3ds Max Help menu "When on, selection of sub-objects affects only those facing you. When off (the default), you can select any sub-object(s) under the mouse cursor, regardless of their visibility or facing. If there are more than one sub-object under the cursor, repeated clicking cycles through them. Likewise, with Ignore Backfacing off, region selection includes all sub-objects, regardless of the direction they face."
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I had mentioend Acad for Mac the other day, but it struck me to be so interesting, I haveto talk about it again. It even sounds odd to say AutoCAD and Mac together. Lets hope they are developing other apps. for Mac like Revit. Other Autodesk apps like 3ds Max Design will run under Mac's Boot Camp. So atleast that is a step in the right direction.
Quantity Takeoff or QTO for short. Is an application built on the DWF Design Review software engine, that is used to take a DWF model and apply pricing and takeoffs of a project. From Autodesk "Autodesk® Quantity Takeoff software enables the effective quantification of design data for use in estimating construction costs, enabling you to collect and synchronize design data and streamline cost-estimation processes." Here is a link to Autodesk's QTO page:
Autodesk announced today the soon to be release of AutoCAD for Apple, iphone and other Apple "i" products. This is pretty cool, and its about time. 
There has been a lot of discussion on website, blogs, email, tweeting, etc. on "Cloud computing". So what is "cloud". Basicially it is web-based vitual server space and applications. Instead of building on-site server rooms, servers, and the high costs related to that, its all gone virtual. In a simple form its like Web-mail, Flickr and Google Docs. These are all a software service, on the web. Autodesk is working on something similar for the cloud, which is project Butterfly. Online drawing without the need to buy/install an application. Multiple users drawing in the same drawing at the same time.
Most new Revit users usually start asking the question soon after they have a few hours under their belt "Where can I find Content and Families for Revit, especially if I dont know how to make them?" Well There are a couple of resources. One resource is Autodesk Seek, which I highlighted in a previous blog. The second resource would be RevitCity. website: http://www.revitcity.com This is a user added site and all the content is free. But user beware... that doesnt always mean you will get a properly functioning Component. But in most cases, I have been very succssful with the content I have downloaded from this site. The signup is free. There is a search section to find what you are looking for and then download. This site also has a forum, job postings, and a gallery of images from users. Check it out and see what kind of useful content you can download. Oh, and if its not on the site, users can upload their Revit families and share with the world. Happy Revit searching!
