Autodesk Product Usability paper

Autodesk spends a LOT of money studying how users operate their products.  You may have wondered why are they changing things.  the company determines where key changes can benefit the community, and research how and where the changes should be applied.  Quite often, many such changes seem foreign to experienced users.  “Why did they change that, it was fine”. 

The reason is simple: Just because we have done it that way for years, does not mean it is the most efficient way to get it done, experts or not.

The subject of this seemably small area is Usability, and the subject is HUGE, not only at Autodesk but across the entire world.  Scientists have been looking at every conceivable avenue on how a user thinks and interacts with controls.  The methodology produces intuitive and efficient methods to interact with software and hardware.  A good example of a common and well know usability study is the typewriter ‘ASDF…’ keyboard (it wasn’t always like that).

One of the senior scientists at Autodesk Usability is the legendary Elena Fadeeva, which I have spoke of on a few occasions.  She contributed to this paper that was written on User and Usability Studies.  You may find it interesting:

http://www.autodeskresearch.com/papers/safe3dnav/p7-fitzmaurice.pdf

The folks at Usability run a tight ship, right down to signed non-disclosure statements. The result is that I can’t say anything about the cool things I have seen.  All I can say is this is a pretty awesome realm of study, and I am looking forward to the next time I work with them…no matter which end of the study I’m on.

Autodesk News – acquires StormNET, WaterNET, and RiverCAD

http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=627

Autodesk announced that it has acquired assets from BOSS international, Inc. to expand it’s water resources analysis.  The intent is to integrate the technologies for AEC products including Civil 3D.  (Dana should have a smile on)

No integration is currently being advertised.  The products will be released from BOSS Computec at this time.  The hows and whens of the integration will be advertised at a later time.

Autodesk Manufacturing – Kanazawa Japan?

It recently occurred to me that Autodesk has no CNC or CAM solution.  I know that should not surprise me, and it doesn’t, but it does make me stop and think. Why not?  Have you ever looked at the list of software applications on the Autodesk products page?

There are many companies that have good standalone offerings that get the job done.  These companies have a large following of loyal customers. You might also consider all the companies that are integrating extensions into Inventor, Mechanical Desktop, and AutoCAD.  This I am sure aids in Autodesk annual sales.

Autodesk, however, has a good track record of purchasing product rights and integrating them into AutoCAD.  Remember DCA and Softdesk?  The product line is now Civil 3D.  But that is AutoCAD, not others.  No? hmmm.  How about Inventor and the acquisition of ALGOR for FEA in Inventor.  I think it’s time to purchase someone else.  In fact, I think a couple of companies are due theirs.  Let’s see….

First, InventorCAM.   That is SolidCAM’s Inventor plugin.  I want it! The integration is great.  I think probably the best integration I have seen.  I think this might be a good backbone.

Next, GibbsCAM.  There is not a lot said about it, but it has an interesting interface.  Kind of a drag and drop Object oriented process interface.  We might be able to do something with that scheme.

 

Ooooooh, we need to get MasterCAM too.  Not the interface, dear lord no.  Just the toolpaths.

Then get the guys in Portland to beat the snot out of interfacing the toolpaths, and get Elena Fadeeva’s bunch to work over exactly how users would make he most out of the new product.  No..on second thought…

 

A NEW TEAM!

I’m thinking Kanazawa Japan.  Hey! Get somebody into a language class pronto! Herr Schneider and Доктор Fadeeva might like another language on their resumes.  And you know I’d be there; with one thing on my mind, to make the best AND MOST INTUITIVE CAM solution available.  Yeah……(big smile on face)…..OH! Sorry.  I slipped of into some daydream there.  Anyway…

There are many good CAM solutions out there, both standalone and integrated.  None of them are perfect in their own right.  One is better at this, and others are better at that.  Many people will accept differing limitations, just to stay with an interface that doesn’t suck.  Let’s face it, if you have to use it everyday, you want it to be comfortable.  (I feel another article coming on).

There is no reason (except time, money, and politics) that we can’t get Inventor packed with a solid CNC solution; one that has a great deal more usability than what is offered.  Even another Autodesk product that works along side Inventor.  Ooh, we’ll include extensions for Solidworks and Brand X.  We don’t want to leave anyone out.

Civil 3D – 2010 PDF Overlay

Did you know you can overlay a PDF? Not like an image, but vectored data.  Yes siree boys and girls, you can do it, and without Raster Design.

The client wanted to control a slope, and the architect sent over a snippet of what they thought would work, in PDF.  I’d like to get the thing close to what they intended, and I don’t want to wait for a DWG file.  This example does not require anything better than a quick glance from across the room, but I’m sure you can picture something more deserving.

 

If the need is bad enough, we might overlay an image, and fight it in, hoping that the proportions match and there are enough references.  A PDF however is vectored (coming from a dwg plot), and will give us OSNAPS. 

Attach

Use the Civil 3D Attach from the ribbon’s Insert panel.  A dialog appears allowing the selection of the files to be attached.  Change the file type to PDF, and navigate to your reference.

Once you select the file, the rest is like inserting an image, setting insertion point an scale.

Then I used the building and parking to align and rescale the image properly.  Look a the match along the middle of the image. 

Osnaps

The attached PDF will allow referenced Osnaps.  Notice in the image the tooltip indicates a ‘PDF (approximate): Endpoint’. NICE !!  Now I can trace over the changes I need to incorporate quickly with some polylines and osnaps.

Inventor – Garin’s hole article

I was going through my RSS feeds, that are backlogged, and I ran across Garin Gardiner’s page again.  Sometimes they have him so busy that he cannot update his page often, but when he does, there is usually something interesting in there.

This time Garin’s decided to find a way to use a sledge hammer to drive a thumb tack.  Why not?  I guess I do it all the time. Get your sledge hammer ready.  Let’s find out just how efficient this process was.

Garin wanted a shaft with a chamfered hole in it.  Perhaps using a Design Accelerator is overkill, but in many cases people are not comfortable using the Shaft Generator, and don’t know there are added functions and options like a through hole. I will run through it both ways: as a simple extruded part, and Garin’s Shaft Generator.  I am mostly interested in how long either process will take.

Autodesk 2010 webcast with Lynn Allen

Lynn will host another webcast on August 27, 2009.  She will discuss the new features of AutoCAD 2010.  Lynn is always fun to watch.

Register here.

Civil 3D – Google Earth v5 problems

8/14/2009

If you have tried installing Google Earth 5 recently, you may have run into some problem.  I did, and it led me on a wild goose chase that ended at the ‘Being Civil’ blog.  The article noted scaling problems when inserting images via the Civil 3D Google Image link.

The Being Civil Blog image article

The article explains that the current download version (5.0.11733.9347) is bugged, but points to a previous version (5.0.11337.1968) and says that it should work properly.

I did a Google search for “Google Earth 5.0.11337.1968“ and got numerous results.  Be Aware!!! Most still downloaded from the Google Earth site current release.

I found the Google release url…  Google Earth 5.0 (5.0.11337.1968) from Google

After installing I confirmed the version number; I got the same results!

Time for a major version change

I found a link on Google to the previous Major revision: 4.3…Google Earth 4.3 (4.3.7284.3916) from Google (Later I found a message from Jason Hickey discussing the merits of 4.3)

I installed it, and verified the version number; uuuh same result

Test Bed C3D 09 and GE 4.3

I ambushed one of my associates, who has been using Google 4.3 with Hypack.  I had him mock up the same 2 overlapping images, and link them into Civil 09.  Exact same result.

More Research

I went shopping to find out what gives.  Discussion groups were my next stop.  I found a discussion that referred to the ‘Being Civil’ blog (again), with a different article from February.  It discussed surfacing, and after GE 4.2 the surfacing import was altered, and a reduced amount of data being exported to C3D.  They said if this is a problem, we should go back to 4.2.  Well, I’ve tried all the other versions, why not 4.2.  I know it’s not a surfacing error, but maybe they are linked.  They were kind enough to provide a link:

Google Earth 4.2 (4.2.0205) from filehippo  BTW….The same site has links to ALL the versions!

No Joy!! 

I did the same overlap test at a different region in Vegas and even worse results.

Conclusions

I wish I had some conclusions. I can’t say what the answer is.  It just does not work properly.

All things said, I have not been keeping up with the “Google Earth gotta have latest version” push.  It’s a nice tool, but I don’t use it every day.  I cannot say when things went wrong, but I don’t remember a problem in 2008.  2009 was a blur, and all I did was study for Certifications.

I might be inclined to blame my poor abused machine, but my associate received the same results from a different version of both Civil and Google. 

If you are having the same trouble, please post here so I can determine a pattern.  Then maybe we can get Justin and Jason will to do a little more research for us.

Civil 3D – This week

8/12/2009

I have been bogged down with problems getting valid information out recently.

Part Builder

Part builder had come along, but faded when I could not get 2 things recently:

1. A clandestine meeting with the Wizard, and
2. The stinking thing to repeat what I had finally forced it to do. 

The amazing breakthrough just kind of faded.  I have so many things to solve, I had to take a break.  I know you are waiting, but the issue is painful across he board, and take a great deal of time.  Bill Niell experienced the same results when his successes would literally disappear the next time he used the parts.  I am experiencing the same thing here.

Bottom line is we are trying to get the information to force the user created ‘Required’ parameters that are passed down through the catalog, into the model parameters. 

This is the key!!  If we can get that, we can do some amazing and STABLE customizations.  We are already able to do create the models, we just can’t control them as ‘advertised’.

Google Earth

An article has been done twice on this, ad each time the results prove to be erroneous.  Final new article coming this week.

Civil 3D 2010 Update 1

Still having problems with this update.  Will repost new info if I can get a positive resolution.  If anyone is still having problems, please post those issues to the update page so that we (and THEY) know.  update article

AU 2009

Still an issue that comes and goes.  Just when I think I get it solved, well…..let’s just say I plan to yell pretty loud about the last thing that went wrong, unless some kind of resolution gets made.

Civil 3D – Trojan Cleanup

8/10/2009

Autodesk posted a writeup on the trojan we mentioned earlier.  There is a script and some search and destroy. 

Knowledge Base instructions

Civil 3D – 2010 Update 1

updated 8/82009

The Civil 3D 2010 Update 1 is available at the Autodesk service release site. 

I have updated and corrected the links for both Civil and Civil 3D, but the “…Autodesk product could not be located…” error is still there, no matter where the service pack was received from.  If anyone else is having the same problem, please post your issues here for the community.

Autodesk Civil Service Release site

Civil 2010 Update 1

Civil 3D 2010 Update 1

There is a wide array of fixes.  I noticed a lot of spiral geometry fixes, 2009 issues, and profile view fixes as well.  I have selected 1 item from each category listed in the README accompanying the installation.  There were at least 60 items:

General – AutoCAD Civil no longer closes unexpectedly when you run the LIST command on AutoCAD Land Desktop entities.

Alignments – Sample lines of an alignment that is a data referenced object no longer disappear when you use the RECOVER command to open the drawing containing such alignment.