Between the Lines

Jay Leno's Green Garage

See Jay Leno's solar and wind system for his car garage in the embedded video below or at www.jaylenosgarage.com. I got the rare opportunity to visit with Jay and his team a couple weeks ago in his secret car collection buildings and it was unbelievable to say the least.

I recently provided some AutoCAD 2009 upgrade training to Jay's team who use Autodesk products like AutoCAD and even Autosketch in the designing one off replacement parts for Jay's world class car collection when Jay breaks them. I got to reverse engineer a Model T Ford bearing cap in 3D while there. I met some of the worlds most experienced and knowledgeable engineers, car lovers, and top notch fabricators in his shop. This is also where I met the legendary Eddie Paul who is a legend in metal fabrication and designing cars for the movies, mechanical sharks, new types of motors and just about everything else using AutoCAD 2009 and 3ds Max and soon Autodesk Inventor.

I even got a slick ride back to my hotel in Jay's hydrogen cell powered GM SUV which runs on hydrogen. I would love to have a hydrogen powered vehicle but with only 40 of them made so far they run about 1 million dollars so the price needs to come down to an affordable level.
One funny thing I found out is Jay is a happy mouse clicker on a computer "click" "click" "click" "click" when only one click was needed. He is a very down to earth guy off camera and like myself he does not sleep much and is always going.

    

Cheers,
Shaan

Happy Birthday Autodesk - April 26th, 1982

A HUGE Thank You to John, Duff, and Dan for giving us Autodesk and AutoCAD. For many of us it not only changed an industry but also changed many lives,
While there was a product named Microcad purchased by Autodesk before AutoCAD, it did not become AutoCAD although some incorrectly thought it did.

Cheers,
Shaan

Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD 2007, AutoCAD 2008, and AutoCAD 2009

The updated and very very popular Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD has been updated for AutoCAD 2009 so that it now runs on three AutoCAD versions. There have also been a few updates by the developer Thomas Inzinga:

• Support for the new AutoCAD 2009 Geographic Location object
• Numerous bug fixes.

The Google Earth Extension is a great way to get your designs into Google Earth or reference Google Earth in AutoCAD.

"Using the simple wizard-driven interface, you can publish your 3D models from AutoCAD or select AutoCAD-based products directly into Google Earth™. The technology preview is available for 2007, 2008, and 2009 versions."

http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/google_earth_extension_beta/

In AutoCAD 2009 I created a 3D model of the Autodesk Civic Center Offices and published them to Google Earth using this extension.

 
View in Google Earth View in Google Maps

Google Map view showing the real-world location buildings in a satellite photo map.

View Larger Map

 

PS: Happy Earthday!
This is not a guilt motivated post by me just because I ran my chainsaw for 2 hours last night trimming my trees and roses after watching a new reality show Axe Men and just had to use my chainsaw. I guess it is a guy thing...

 

Cheers,
Shaan

Autodesk Content Search Graduates to Autodesk Seek

The Autodesk Labs project Content Search has made its transition from lab project to a graduate as of April 4th 2008 and more exciting details and updates will follow shortly.

What is Autodesk Seek (http://seek.autodesk.com/)?
Autodesk Seek delivers the design files or product specifications that you need regardless of format. You can download everything from Revit product family files and DWG files to DGN and SKP files to Microsoft Word documents and PDFs.

AutoCAD LispWiki

David Harrington pointed me to this wiki that describes itself as "a wiki code repository for AutoCAD specific VBA, AutoLISP, VisualLISP, and ObjectARX source code."

This appears to be a nice start and resource to bookmark and see how it grows with helpful routines and code shared by the community.

http://lispwiki.com

Cheers,
Shaan

I am now on Facebook

I waited a longtime to join but finally did it. ;-)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1221796059

Camtasia Studio 5.1.0 Released

At least someone is not taking something more from me on this US Tax deadline day...

My smart and friendly friends at TechSmith in Michigan have released an update to their excellent screen recording program Camtasia that I use almost daily along with their SnagIt screen capturing program. The newly released version April 15th, 2008 is Camtasia 5.1.0 (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp). There are quite a few updates as well as fixes worthy of updating to 5.1.0.

Some of the updates

• New callouts shine the spotlight on your content
• Add background music with a third audio track
• Deliver screencasts to millions of iPhone and iPod Touch users
• Customize Flash FLV videos with TechSmith ExpressShow™
• Build a Web menu for your videos with Camtasia Theater

See what else is new!

Cheers,
Shaan

AutoCAD 2009 - SnagIt Window Capture Tip

I have used the screen capture programs SnagIt and Camtasia from my friends at TechSmith for over 10 years now. Screen capturing is an excellent way to communicate something without just relying on words or excellent documenting a process. With the newer software applications being developed these days some like AutoCAD 2009 using XAML are using application frameworks that can be tricky to capture.

 

When trying to capture or record a single full application window that is using application frames you might find yourself with a small portion of what you wanted to capture or just screen capturing the full desktop and then editing items like the system task menu out which neither are fun.

 

The trick is it run the application in a minimized window just under full size then select the bottom left corner for the Window capture select.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Shaan

AutoCAD Google Earth Extension Updated for AutoCAD 2009

Updated Google Earth Extension for AutoCAD Now Available

Google Alerts for AutoCAD 2009

I have been using Google Alerts to notify me by email for various subjects. It is another way to see what is being said without having to scrub the Internet for the latest information.

Here is what I received this morning for AutoCAD 2009 Alerts:

Google News Alert for: "AutoCAD 2009"

Driving Design With AutoCAD 2009
InformationWeek - Manhasset,NY,USA
The AutoCAD 2009 portfolio seems to have overcome many of those obstacles starting with the ease of use. The company said it has revised its UI with the new ...
See all stories on this topic

Autodesk Ships AutoCAD 2009 Portfolio
Ten Links (press release) - Novato,CA,USA
SAN RAFAEL, CA, Mar 25, 2008 - Autodesk today announced that it is shipping AutoCAD 2009 software, one of the leading applications for conceptual design, ...
See all stories on this topic

Google Blogs Alert for: "AutoCAD 2009"

Introduction to AutoCAD 2009: 1 - New user interface
By Erhan Toker
Although we have been using AutoCAD 2009 for months, we introduce you just now since its newly come publication permission. AutoCAD 2009 has a new great user interface which we know from Microsoft Office 2007. (Figure 1) ...
Daily Autocad - http://www.dailyautocad.com

AutoCAD 2009 - Find and Replace
By Brian Benton(Brian Benton)
AutoCAD 2009 has enhanced the F & R by providing more options to search with, and more filters to weed out what I don’t want. It will also automatically zoom to the entity we are replacing. That makes the process easier to review before ...
CAD-a-Blog - http://cadablog.blogspot.com/

It's Tips and Tricks Tuesday!
By Lynn Allen
I'm going to be hitting the road with my Autodesk peeps just waiting to show you all the cool new features in AutoCAD 2009. Last year I was only able to do about half of the tour - this year I get to do the entire tour (and I am so ...
Lynn Allen's Blog - http://lynn.blogs.com/lynn_allens_blog/

AutoCAD 2009 Software Family of Products
By JTB World
Autodesk today announced that it is shipping AutoCAD 2009 software, one of the leading applications for conceptual design, drafting and detailing. The AutoCAD 2009 portfolio includes updates to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, as well as the ...
JTB World Blog - http://blog.jtbworld.com/

Free One Click 2D and 3D Design Collaboration - Updated ShareNow Utility from Autodesk Labs

This free utility from Autodesk Labs allows you to one click publish to the free hosted Project Freewheel from your AutoCAD based products as well as Autodesk Revit and Autodesk Inventor Autodesk Freewheel is for quick and easy sharing of designs online in the DWF format.

Scott provides a detailed list of the update on his Its Alive Autodesk Labs blog.

• 3D/2D ShareNow supports AutoCAD flavors - both 2008 and 2009

Here is the new floating toolbar after I installed the latest ShareNow on AutoCAD 2009 as I gave it a run through.

Figure 2 is my design published to Project Freewheel which is a hosted zero client viewing site meaning nothing is required to be installed to view 2D or 3D designs. No need to be clogging up emails with attached files or someone having to install something to view a design or be on a certain version of a viewing application.

You can use the Wheel to Zoom and Pan within the design.

There is the option to save your session and share your design with others using your free Autodesk Labs login and password protect your session sharing. Those with whom you share the session with do not have to install anything at all just use their browser. You can even share a drawing set or email others of the link to the design session.

 

When you invited guest views the link to your design shared in Project Freewheel they can markup and even view the markup list.

Download ShareNow

Documentation: http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/ShareNow/documentation/
Feedback email: Labs.Freewheel@autodesk.com.
Project Freewheel: http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com/index.aspx

Cheers,
Shaan

AutoCAD Team Tip: Anatomy of an AutoCAD 2009 Tooltip

This AutoCAD Team Tip is from Randall "Randy" Young who is on the AutoCAD QA Team.

According to Wikipedia “The tooltip is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a small box appears with supplementary information regarding the item being hovered over.”

AutoCAD has had tooltips for a long time, but very little ability to customize them. In the following article I will explain the new AutoCAD 2009 tooltips structure and explain how to make your own extended help tooltip.

Figure 1 - This is an example of the new command tooltips in AutoCAD 2009. (The content of the tooltip is derived from the CUI file, Name: Line, Description: Creates straight line segments, Command Display Name: LINE)

 

 

The new extended tooltips are a good way for cad managers to rollout new tools and information to users. These tooltips are displayed in the Ribbon, Menu Browser and on toolbars.

Figure 2 – This is an example of the new extended help tooltip that is displayed after hovering over the control for 2 seconds (by default 2 seconds and controlled in the Options dialog). The extended help tooltip content is stored in a .XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language; pronounced "zammel") file; the image is stored in any assigned directory and linked from the .XAML file.

 

The following procedure will help you create your own user extended tooltips. I will be using resources that ship in the 2009 release, but you can easily make your own by updating the file we create.

Step 1 – Creating the .XAML file that holds the tooltip information;

A. Create an empty file using Notepad (or your favorite editor), name it tooltips.xaml (you can save this file anywhere).

B. Copy and paste the following content into tooltips.xaml or Download tooltips.XAML.

<ResourceDictionary
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:src="clr-namespace:Autodesk.Windows;assembly=AdWindows">

<src:ProgressivePanel x:Key="MYEH_CMD_0001">
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Background="White" TextAlignment="Left">
This is a picture of the bay, <Bold>wouldn't we all rather be here!</Bold>
</TextBlock>
<Image Source="C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2009\Sample\bay 6.jpg" Width="Auto" Height="Auto">
</Image>
</StackPanel>
</src:ProgressivePanel>

<src:ProgressivePanel x:Key="MYEH_CMD_0002">
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Background="Yellow" TextAlignment="Left">
This is a same image from the
<Run Text=" VBA " Foreground="Red" FontStyle="Italic"/>  samples.
</TextBlock>
<Image Source="C:\Program Files\AutoCAD 2009\Sample\VBA\2d Projected Polylines.jpg" Width="Auto" Height="Auto">
</Image>
</StackPanel>
</src:ProgressivePanel>
</ResourceDictionary>

Note: This XAML file is creating 2 custom tooltips using some images that ship with AutoCAD 2009.

Step 2 – Attaching the new extended tooltips to the command within AutoCAD;

A. Launch AutoCAD 2009

B. Type CUI in the command line to open the customized user interface

C. In the “Command List:” search for the command you want to attach the extended help to (for this example I am using “Line”) and select it.

Figure 3 – Is the CUI dialog with the new “nodes” that are used for the new tooltips. (Extended Help File is the one we need for this operation.)

D. Select the Edit Help File Node and click the ellipsis (…) button at the end of the row.

 

 

 

E. Navigate to the location of your tooltips.xaml file and select it and open.

Figure 4 – Is showing the list of extended help options that are located in the tooltips.xaml

Note: If you hover over it you will get a preview of the extended help tip.

F. Select the “MYEH_CMD_0001” and ok out of the Select Help ID dialog.

G. Apply and OK out of the CUI.

H. Now hover over the Line command in a toolbar, Ribbon, or Menu Browser.

Result: SHAZAM! You now have a new extended help tooltip.

Thank you Randy! Yes I do wish the tropical image was my view out my window.

Cheers,
Shaan

I Better Get Busy, I made the Autodesk.com Home page ;-)

I have been swamped with the Autodesk 2009 product line launches, the beta projects wrapping up on many of the products, took a week off and went hiking and shutterbugging in Southern Utah, and then I got sick. No time for any of that now that I have hit the big time with my blog being on the main page of Autodesk.com.

I have a few blog posts in draft I will finish up and get them online like the updated ShareNow utility from the Autodesk Labs. As you may have noticed I have been adding some guest articles and tips from fellow AutoCAD users to add more perspective and knowledge like the Layer Isolate tip from Michael Beall and I have a few more guest authors. If anyone else has tips and tricks to share with Between the Lines all you have to do is email me at shaan@autodesk.com.

Cheers,
Shaan

DWFx and AutoCAD 2009

The DWFx format has been added to AutoCAD 2009. DWFx is based on the XML Paper Specification (XPS) format from Microsoft. You can view and print DWFx files using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista and Windows XP (with latest updates for .NET). 

In AutoCAD 2009 You can plot or publish to DWFx, attach DWFx files as Underlays, and read DWFx files using Markup Set Manager. You can still and will continue to be able to plot the older DWF format as well.

The soon to be released FREE Autodesk DWG TrueView 2009 will provide the ability to open and view DWG or convert to DWF or DWFx as well as much more including the much requested measuring/inquiry capability. See the Beyond the Paper posting DWG TrueView 2009 is cool.

The soon to be released and FREE Autodesk Design Review 2009 supports viewing, some editing, and markup for both the DWF and DWFx formats.

 

The free web service for viewing your 2D and 3D files from any operating system through a browser Project Freewheel (http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com) now supports DWFx and the official Autodesk Freewheel (http://freewheel.autodesk.com/) perhaps in the future.

Google Desktop Sharing Concerns

I have been researching some reported items showing on Google and found what I believe to be a concern for people with private data, private feeds, files, or private pages viewed. Users that install the Google Desktop client could unknowingly be sharing content with Google and thus revealing information on Google search results of chats, private web pages and such on their machines if they have the sharing option enabled. While the person with the machine may be willing to share the administrators of the web sites with private login requirements may not prefer their content to be shared. Now I can see why many companies including Autodesk IT groups forbid Google Desktop to be installed in their group policies. Those with web sites can possibly limit this indexing and sharing by making sure you have a tough robots.txt file in the root as well as the NO FOLLOW , NO INDEX and also noarchive attributes in the header section of all pages.

I shared the following yesterday in my Google Reader Feedlist They are available as a page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/07276097266275194453(and there's a feed too)

This is somewhat related and funny.
Wrong Turn Down Google StreetView (from Gearthblog.com)

 

-Shaan

Amazing Technology to Resize Photos

The new smart image resizing, retargeting, and cropping technology for images and photos called seam carving is amazing and downright brilliant. This was an algorithm developed invented by Dr. Ariel Shamir and Dr. Shai Avidan. This is really cool and helpful to do instead of resizing an image with a focal area that gets distorted this method starts by letting you mark the important target to keep then in simple terms starts by removing parts of the photo or adding based on priority of the calculated horizontal and vertical seams.

Check out the Youtube video recording of a presentation at SIGGRAPH 2007 showing the pure magic and application of seam carving.

 

There is now a web 2.0 online free version. Check out a photo and resizing it and you can also carve someone out of a photo.

http://rsizr.com/

There was also a free plugin that added seam carving for Photoshop but it appears Adobe hired the person and then removed the free plugin download.

Cheers,
Shaan

Autodesk Labs Project Draw 0.7 Uses Google Gears for Offline Mode

It is always pretty cool to watch the evolution of a idea or software. The Autodesk Labs Team has now released an updated Project Draw which allows the web based application to run in the offline mode and synch files later when you re-connect. It is like having a web 2.0 and a desktop application rolled into one. That has always been my concern is getting used to an application that is web based then not being able to use it when on a long flight or when my Internet connection is unavailable but Google Gears solves this concern for now. Now you can use Project draw on the plane to do simple diagrams and synch back up with the web app when you reconnect and imagine the possibilities with other web based apps in the future with no reliance on a specific machines operating system.

Project Draw 0.7 Now Available

http://draw.labs.autodesk.com

FeedDemon RSS Reader, Now Free!

FeedDemon is an excellent and powerful full featured RSS Feed reading product and I was a paying customer but a few months ago got hooked on Google Reader. Now Nick Bradbury mentions they have gone free. I am switching back to FeedDemon due to it being a more powerful RSS Feed reader and managing your feeds not just because it is free. They also released a few other tools as free.

FREE Demon? Yes, FeedDemon is Now Free!

 

Technorati Tags: RSS, FeedDemon, RSS Feed Reader:RSS Aggregator, Nick Bradbury, Free RSS Reader

Autodesk University 2007: General Session Behind the Scenes Video

Here is a quick video clip recorded behind the scenes of the general session where 7600 attendees (room limit) were to attend the following day. I grabbed two of the main people for quick comments on what was driving the general session as they were in final countdown mode and had thousands of feet of cable, many developers, high end machines and technology to drive the HD Projectors to 20 - 20 foot tall HD screens for an immersive presentation.

7600 AU attendees would either be impressed or bear witness to one very huge technical problem in 360 degrees around them and in HD no less. Luckily they pulled it off, so well in fact a few people complained that the live Metropolis 3D environment that bathed attendees in a 3D World down to a city with BIM models and categorized trees made them motion sick when it was demonstrated live. If I could have only snuck in and played an Xbox on the 360 degree surrounding HD screens...ahhhh now that would be awesome. Can you imagine using this as your desktop just to check email or to impress geek friends?

I only had a brief moment with Jonathan Knowles and Brian Mathews of Autodesk for this impromptu behind the scenes tour that literally blew me away and reduced me to giddy geek on a HD cloud immersed in a 3D world of pure pixel-icious pleasure. This was even better than being onstage the year before in front of 4000 people with the Blue Man Group, and I did not get any blue makeup on me this time.

I can't wait to see what they will do next year to top this, perhaps teleport me to another planet or time? They better get that project going faster to make AU 2008. :-)

Helge Brettschneider of WWW.MCDCAD.DE videotaped this as well as more video segments to be posted later.

I am no Oprah when it comes to interviewing, but it sure was fun.

Technorati Tags: Autodesk, Autodesk University, Autodesk University 2007, Video, High Definition, Behind the Scenes, 3D, Metropolis, Shaan Hurley, Jonathan Knowles, Brian Mathews, Immersive, Autodesk University 2007 General Session Behind the Scenes Video

2007 Stats for this Blog

I want to thank everyone for all the emails and visiting this blog. It has really grown from a geekish hobby to a full blown blog and started many other blogs in the process. I still feel the same passion for the blog and read about 300 feeds a day in my RSS feed reader which is something you could not do just browsing updated pages as the feed reader allows me to read the feeds a few times a day and scan for articles that interest me much like a newspaper as nobody really reads each article of the newspaper heck not many read newspapers today come to think of it.

2007 Stats (just this blog not photo galleries)
RSS: 25,946 average per day subscribers high point 43,278 RSS subscribers in one day.
Browsers HTML 473,060 absolute unique visitors from 177 countries.

Cheers,
Shaan

Autodesk will be closed

Autodesk will be closed for the annual week of rest and the holidays from the 22nd of December until the 2nd of January. Contacting Autodesk employees during this time may be difficult as we spend time with our families and prepare for the new year.

     I sincerely appreciate everyone's feedback over the past years and look forward to an even better new year. Thank you for reading and replying to this blog as it has been a pleasure. I welcome any feedback or suggestions to improve or content ideas for the tens of thousands that read this blog daily. I have tried to keep the topics varied from Autodesk and AutoCAD to technology and photography as well to keep things fun and informative appealing to this wide and diverse audience.

     A blog is like a conversation and not really for press release type of text words and tone but a personal view and opinions. The personal expression and tone are what makes a blog really different from just a web page. If the tone or words don't sound like a someone really sitting down with you over a cup of coffee, then the personal feel is lost. If I get out of bounds or wander too much please let me know so I can adjust my course but know that with this blog you get the real me good bad or indifferent it is me along with my opinions, bias, my passion for design and Autodesk products as well as geek gadgets, and of coarse my warped sense of humor which sometimes does not translate into other languages too well.

I have some big and exciting plans for the new year 2008 and this blog.

Have a very happy holidays, Merry Christmas, and a safe and great New Years.

Sincerely,
Shaan Hurley
Autodesk, Inc.

Scott Sheppard - A Dead Man Posting ;-)

Just noticed in my RSS feed reader the following post on the Autodesk Labs blog...

AutoCAD Elves from It’s Alive in the Lab by Scott Sheppard

"Shaan Hurley will make sure this comes back to haunt me, but here goes:

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1574997118 

It takes a while to load, but it's worth it. Happy Holidays."

Well it is elves dancing and it has the faces of Lynn Allen, myself, and Heidi Hewett on them. Scott, as the old saying goes revenge is a dish best served cold. Bwahahahaha.

 

OK I did have a hard laugh over this. :-)

-Shaan

Autodesk Products Customer Error Reporting (CER) Now Does a Roundtrip!

Now when you crash an Autodesk product not only  is the important details are sent to Autodesk and later an email notification if you entered your email address when a fix is available, but now you can see/search immediately if there is a fix for this issue. Unlike many other software companies that simply rely on a default crash reporting mechanism that may just send out your feedback and the valuable details into a black hole or to Microsoft who cannot fix the problem and offers no help of any kind, Autodesk knows how important it is to correct any issues we can with our products. This is a very important project and resulting in more stable and higher performing Autodesk products which results in happier and more productive customers.

I have wrote many blog posts over the years on CER and CIP explaining the process and why you should participate as it helps you get resolutions to issues you have been encountering or with CIP your command usage of AutoCAD 2008 helps develop a greater understanding by Autodesk on how our products are used and how to improve.

• We Try Hard!

• Help Autodesk to Help You - March 2007

• AutoCAD - Customer Error Reporting (CER)

• Recent Customer Error Report "CER" Changes

• Your Customer Error Reports Are Very Important

• 85% Do Not Enter an Email in Their Error Reports

• Customer Error Reports - Please Send Them In

AutoCAD CER http://www.autodesk.com/cer

Autodesk Customer Involvement Program (CIP)

Now with AutoCAD 2008 Customer Involvement Program (CIP) a customer can elect to send anonymous usage data we will get even better. We hope that customers will enable anonymous CIP data reporting to help us understand how they are using our products so that we can make even more solid decisions based on that data.

Please make sure if you do happen to crash (we hope you don't) to be sure to send in the CER report each time it occurs so our teams can research the culprit. And no, there are no file names, bank accounts, DNA details, covert black helicopters circling when you send the data or people checking your serial numbers and knocking on your doors. In fact all the data is on your machine unencrypted before sending if you like to snoop and verify for yourselves.

Happy Holidays,
Shaan (suffering from a bad cold, and too much snow)

Technorati Tags: Autodesk Products Customer Error Reporting, Crash, Unhandled Exception, Error, Solution, Customer Error Reporting, AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, CIP, CER, Customer Feedback, Autodesk, CAD, Customer Involvement Program, Software Error Reporting, Best Practice

For those on the Windows Vista Bleeding Edge, Public Preview of Vista Service Pack 1

The Public Preview of the Release candidates for Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 is now publicly available.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Public Availability Program

 

 

Please note Autodesk is internally testing for compatibility with products at this time and no official support or result statements will be made until the upcoming service packs for Windows Vista are released in the final form.

Initial results from some using the Release Candidate say the performance is greatly improved and optimized CPU usage among other noted items. Pretty interesting deployment method using a script to edit the registry to flag your system on the next Windows Update to get the Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate.

Regards,
Shaan

i get it, it = email spam

Did you get it too?
I received an unsolicited sales advertisement for a service for a product I do not even use. I suspect they got my email from some CAD/Design related email database or harvested it from the web. It is unfortunate when some that have no relationship with me or not even known to me decide that some unsolicited email would tempt me to purchase their products when in reality it makes me alert to never look into their product or service. Spam is bad business, so is ads placed in RSS feeds, or blogs without a real purpose or person like the one that does nothing but schedule regular posts and a RSS of their Help manual content piece by piece bravo great idea <NOT>.

OK back to my regular work and waiting for my flight to New York tonight from Brasil, then Utah tomorrow.

Ciao,
Shaan

Autodesk Products and Microsoft Windows Vista White Paper

Greetings from Brasil!
I was sent the following white paper dealing in-depth with Autodesk products and Microsoft Windows Vista support. It will soon be on the Autodesk website but I have provided a copy for you now.

"Introduction
With the introduction of Microsoft® Windows Vista, Autodesk® customers have another choice of operating systems. Whether a company opts to adopt Windows Vista, Windows® XP, or another supported operating system (OS), Autodesk applications deliver exceptional performance across the board.

To ensure the superlative performance of Autodesk applications on Microsoft operating systems, Autodesk has worked closely with Microsoft over the past 12 years, collaborating on product development, bringing innovative technologies to market, and exceeding customer expectations. As a Microsoft Platinum Partner, a Global ISV, and a member of Microsoft’s Manufacturing ISV program, Autodesk’s close relationship with Microsoft enhances Autodesk’s ability to provide products that raise the bar for innovation and transcend operating systems. Whether companies use Microsoft Vista or Microsoft XP operating systems, Autodesk is committed to delivering solutions that provide the functionality its customers have come to expect.

The close collaborations between Autodesk and Microsoft result in simultaneous support for new technologies, as evidenced by the compatibility of Autodesk applications with Windows Vista and Microsoft’s adoption of the Autodesk DWF file format as a native part of Windows Vista. In addition, Autodesk has chosen the Direct3D graphics application programming interface (API) developed by Microsoft over the alternative OpenGL API. By aligning with Microsoft on Direct3D, Autodesk is delivering a highly positive experience to customers using its products with Windows Vista. For more information on how Direct3D enhances the user experience for graphics-intensive applications, see page 15 of this paper.

While Autodesk believes that Windows Vista will become the industry-standard OS over time, the Autodesk 2008 product line increases design efficiency and cost savings for customers using any supported OS. Companies that plan to deploy Windows Vista this year may have questions about whether their specific Autodesk applications are compatible with Windows Vista and what kinds of performance changes they may expect. This paper add