Between the Lines

Back from Japan

I had an excellent week in Japan meeting many nice people and seeing a very different culture and scenery. So many more travel stories I have to tell now. On the first day I was there I was invited to the Autodesk user group meeting in Nagoya Japan by Yuji Suzuki but unfortunately I was unable to attend but was honored to have been invited. I even ate the deadly Fugu and survived. I have posted many images from the trip in my Shaan's Daily Grind II gallery and have some posts I need to make this week after I catch up on my overflowing email inbox.

One funny thing as I was Leaving Tokyo Saturday night was the warning of what not to try and smuggle in your carry on luggage. Like I would really have a stuffed turtle or armadillo in my jacket or carry on bag. ;-)

Cheers,
Shaan

I am in Tokyo this week

I am here in Tokyo this week for business. I arrived last night from the long flight and then had a 2 hour bus ride from the airport to my hotel in the downtown district. There is snow on the ground and I don't think I can ever recall seeing so many lights and signs in any place I have ever visited. I am a day ahead here of my normal US timezone which is weird but the hardest thing to get used to is the lack of my Blackberry cellphone working or any other US cell phone we had. I have used my Blackberry in the amazon jungle but cannot use it in Japan due to the 3G cell standard. I guess I will enjoy the quiet cell phone and no frequent checking for emails. It took my 10 minutes to figure out that I had to insert my room key into a slot to turn on the lights in the room as the switches were accomplishing nothing. I am sure there is much that I will have fun with this week.
I will be posting photos from the trip in the Shaan's Daily Grind II gallery.

-Shaan
1:51 PM PST Monday
7:51 AM Tuesday

Blogging First?

Sunday 6:47PM PST
Monday11:47AM Tokyo Time

Probably not a first but thought I would do it anyways on this long flight. I am currently in a 747 jumbo jet 40,000 feet above the middle of the North Pacific somewhere just South of the Aleutian Islands and near Russia and within 5 hours from landing in Tokyo. To my surprise there is nothing to take a photo of  but clouds and a very bright reflection from the wing. I did not even see the International dateline down below. Oh well, back to some work and the in flight movies.

I will definitely post some photos and blog from Japan when I have the free time.
:-)

56 Years at Autodesk Today

Well today January 19th, 2006 is my eighth anniversary (or 56 years in dog years) at Autodesk although I feel I worked for them long before they hired me. Hard to believe as the time has flown by. It seems like just last year I was a mechanical designer living in Portland Oregon in 1998. Eight years ago I was contemplating a position with the then pre release 1 Autodesk Inventor team that had an office about 4 miles from my home or taking a position offered by then Autodesk Beta Mgr. Jeff Allen in San Rafael California . I chose to take the San Rafael position as I really liked Jeff and the position offered and moved to California. I have truly enjoyed the experience and have been challenged all eight of the years. One nice perk is every four years Autodesk employees get a six week paid sabbatical to go on vacation and come back refreshed and with new energy as two weeks of vacation is not sufficient to get full disengaged IMHO.

Now Eight years later I have just recently relocated and now work from a remote home office enjoying the beautiful Utah mountains out my window and am looking forward to the future years with Autodesk. I stand on the shoulders of many giants at Autodesk as my fellow employees are the best in the world. No wonder Autodesk was just ranked as one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune Magazine.

Now the big decision is what will I do for my sabbatical...another Amazon Jungle trek, New Zealand and Australia pub crawling, Thailand or Indonesian exploring, camping all over the US, or just relax around the new house. I will give the sabbatical possible plans some thought over the long flight I have coming up this weekend to Asia.

Cheers,
Shaan

Beta Season! Get Involved

It is beginning to be the height of Autodesk product beta testing season.
Help shape the future of Autodesk products by becoming active as a customer in the future product beta test.

Who defines what the next Autodesk products will have in the next version?

The customers do and Autodesk listens.
Be heard and get involved in shaping the future of Autodesk products. What you see in our products today are a direct reflection of your involvement with support calls, e-mails, AU, AUGI, discussion group participation, usability sessions, beta testing, surveys, and many more methods.

Beta sites have the greatest opportunity to influence the final implementation of features and to identify critical problems with the best chance of early resolution.

The goals of each beta release are to collect your assessment of the overall feature set, to get your opinion on the implementation of each feature, and to begin identifying bugs which occur in your use of the product and in your environment.

Customers are selected to become Beta Sites based upon their interest, willingness, and ability to provide timely information. Beta Sites provide product feedback throughout the development process until the final release.

All customer problems, issues, enhancement requests, and suggestions are reported to the Beta Team and escalated to the appropriate development teams. Regular contact with Autodesk via bug reports, weekly summaries, and questionnaires is expected.

Beta Sites are also selected on the basis of past participation and sign up information.

Each beta program varies, but at a minimum, we expect you to spend as much time as possible in your normal production environment with the software to expose defects. Along the way, we also expect you to send in your comments about the software as well as any wish list items you may have.

Risks
Please note beta version programs and files should not to be used without careful consideration that these are unreleased beta products and are not fully supported and may contain software defects. The main purpose for posting them is to find the defects and have them reported so that they can be fixed in the final released version. As with any beta software always back up your data and previous files and exercise caution when in a production environment.

Rewards

• You get to preview the product before final product is released. Allows customer to take early
  advantage of productivity enhancements.
• A private online discussion group available in both web and NNTP.
• Getting an advance look at new software.
• The delight in discovering bugs that we didn't catch in our in-house testing.
• Enhancing the software for your own use by suggesting possible improvements.
• Having a sneak peek of new products and emerging technologies
• The pleasure of finding unsuspected bugs   
• Making our (i.e., your!) software better as a result of this collaboration program
• Your suggestion may add new dimension to our development process!
• We sometimes offer rewards like free products, free hardware, digital camera, new computers, free AU travel and passes, and MP3 players and best of all knowing that you were getting your feedback in and being part of the extended product team.
• Most important, it's your chance to contribute to the product's design and features!

Confidentiality

Most beta projects require the agreement to a Beta Site Agreement which protects both your and Autodesk private and confidential information. During beta no details may be discussed publicly. Please no posting of beta or feedback project details, questions, rumors, or support requests in the public and that includes public web sites, or public discussion groups.

This is a very important requirement to keep betas private and only discussed in these private forums or with Autodesk employees.

We will clearly announce to you when the date for a beta is reached and you can then begin discussing the next release of the product you are beta testing.

Sign up at http://myfeedback.autodesk.com

Some tips:

• This is for customers or potential customers. Resellers, Employees and ADN developers have alternate channels to get beta or preview products.
• Make sure to complete the sign up profile accurately and do not use a free email account use your business or personal email so we know who you are. We do not sell your email or spam you.

Final Notice for Holiday Giveaway

I am now allocating the free products I have received to people. If you would like to be considered please complete the following survey. This holiday giveaway/donation is for students, teachers, and those needing the assistance and not to be used commercially. I am extending the deadline until February 1st 2006.

Nomination Survey Link

See my past 2 posts on this 3rd annual giveaway.

Shaan's 3rd Annual Between the Lines Holiday Product Donation to Students

3rd Annual Holiday Giveaway

Creating Menu Flyouts in AutoCAD 2006 CUI

The following is an email response to a customers feedback form question entered on the autodesk.com product feedback link. All feedback form submissions go to the actiual product teams. This response on CUI was very helpful and Bud said I could share his reply.

— — —

The menu system has not been updated in many years and we have been asked by many customers to be able to migrate settings between releases on upgrade.  Because the old menu system is ascii base, we could not tell who created what customization.  Going to an XML based menu system gives us that ability and in the future releases we will be able to migrate CUI customization forward.  What we have seen with CUI is that most people that are having issues with it are not understanding the flow of how it works.  We are working on making that better in the next release.  For now we have animations available on the WEB Site as well as white papers that will help you get up to speed on CUI.  I taught 3 courses on CUI at Autodesk University this year and talked to a lot of customers about it and how it works.  The one things I heard over and over was that as you use it, you start to understand the flow.  And then for many menu customization tasks, it’s simpler to use.   

Let me give you some screen grabs on how to create a Flyout in CUI.  It’s actually really simple compared to AutoCAD 2005 and back. I’ll also post some links to the white papers and the animations.

• Bring up CUI and expand the Toolbar node.
• Right click and add a new toolbar.  I called mine Flyout Test.
• Now right click on the Flyout Test Toolbar.
• Click on New and notice you have a choice between Toolbar and Flyout.  Select Flyout.

Screen Grab of the right click menu:

Screen Grab showing the Toolbar node and the properties node of the CUI:

Now click on the Flyout to create a Flyout Toolbar.  Give the Flyout a name.  I called mine Filters to represent what I’m going to use it for. Then go to the Command List and select all the X,Y and Z filters.  Drag then up and drop them on the Filters Toolbar.

Screen Grab of the Flyout you are creating:

Here is what it looks like after you drag the filters onto the Flyout:

Now you can OK the changes and see your new Flyout on the AutoCAD Screen.

You can also add your own custom commands or other toolbars to this new Toolbar by just dragging and dropping onto it. If you have already created custom Commands with your custom macros in it, just filter the Command list for Custom Commands and select the ones you want in your Toolbar.


Notice that I selected Notepad, Plot and Save.  Then I drag then until I see the small arrow pointing at Flyout Test and I drop them.  This adds these new commands to the Toolbar.

One thing I like to do is move the CUI over to the right and click apply.  Then I can actually see my toolbar to make sure I have every thing in it that I want. 

Here are the links that I talked about.

White Papers:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5543397

Animations:
http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2005/05/autocad_2006_tu.html

Also if you would like to be involved in future decisions about what goes into AutoCAD, please go to the MyFeedback WEB Site and sign up for Beta testing and feedback project.  It’s a great way to give us direct feedback while looking at the latest version of AutoCAD.

http://myfeedback.autodesk.com

Bud Schroeder
AutoCAD Test Development
Autodesk Inc.

Welcome Aboard Alias Employees!

Autodesk has now completed the purchase of Alias. news link

It will be great adding the new software and talented people that Alias brings into the Autodesk family. I also get to say to my 4 year old daughter that the Tablet PC application Sketchbook she loves is by daddy's company. Hopefully I can find the proper contact within the Alias group to start providing the Alias products in the MyFeedback.autodesk.com beta and feedback projects. I have so many new people to meet and software like Maya to play, er I mean learn.

Cheers,
Shaan

3rd Annual Holiday Giveaway

This is an update to my 3rd annual holiday giveaway announced in my post from December 16th.

A huge thank you to fellow Autodeskers that rounded up and sent me the not for resale products they had. This years most generous teams were the AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor product teams. The donations came from coast to coast. I have received quite a few nominations so far but can take more especially for Revit and 3ds Max. This holiday giveaway/donation is for students, teachers, and those needing the assistance and not to be used commercially. Spread the word to schools and user groups to get the nominations in. I will start emailing those that nominated someone in the next two weeks and ask what product would work best for them in their studies.

Products available for donation:
5 - AutoCAD 2006 English US only
2 - AutoCAD 2006 English Europe only
2 - AutoCAD LT 2006 English US only
1 - AutoCAD LT 2005 English US only
5 - Autodesk Revit Structure English US only
1 - Autodesk Architectural Desktop 2006 English US only
1 - Autodesk Revit Building 8 English US only
1 - AutoCAD Electrical 2005 English US only
1 - Autodesk Inventor 9 Pro English US only
1 - 3ds Max 6 English US only
1 - 3ds Max 7 English US only

Nomination Survey Link

Cheers,
Shaan

Manufacturing Community Portal

Amy Bunszel mentioned the details on this new manufacturing community in a In The Machine Inventor blog post. The new community has new blogs and RSS feeds.

http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/ 

After having a look at the new community please take a moment and provide your feedback.
http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/feedback

New AUGI AutoCAD Wish List Link

Spread the word far and wide to all AutoCAD users. There is a new direct link to the AUGI AutoCAD Wish List: http://www.augi.com/wishlist

Make sure to join Autodesk Users Group International "AUGI" as it is free and then get you wish list items nominated and when the voting cycle comes get everyone to vote. AUGI membership is free and has many benefits. The nominations are voted on by AUGI members 3 times a year resulting in a top 30 AutoCAD wish list for the year.

Cheers
Shaan

Upcoming AUGI CAD Camps for 2006

• Omaha, Nebraska -- February 21, 2006
• Seattle, Washington -- February 23, 2006

Other upcoming locations. Stay tuned to http://www.cadcamp.com

• San Francisco Bay Area, California -- March 7, 2006
• Houston, Texas -- March 9, 2006
• Indianapolis, Indiana -- March 21, 2006

Happy New Year & Tips

I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday. I spent the most time offline in years and had a great and relaxing time with family.

To start 2006 off here are a few computer system tips to get/keep your system top performing and your data safe for the new year.

• Backup your system and also make sure you have regular data back ups planned so you can get your data back should something occur such as hardware failure, virus, or other event. I personally use multiple external hard drives including 1 that has a built-in network connection so everyone here at home can backup to the same drive.
• Review and delete files and directories from the Temp folder (%TEMP% from Windows Explorer) for the Windows user accounts on the machine
• Clean your Internet browser's temp files cache
• Clean up unused applications by uninstalling them
• Clean up old files and archive them to a backup CD/DVD or external drive.
• Run Check Disk and Defragment of your hard drive from Start > All Programs > Accessories> System Tools
• Perform a full virus and trojan scan and make sure you keep your anti virus up to date. There are some free anti virus and firewall software out there so price is no excuse for your data being at risk.
• Check out some free diagnostics online from http://safety.live.com/
• Perhaps defragment your page file with the free PageDefrag from www.sysinternals.com

Regards,
Shaan