DBUG Meeting Notes for October 26, 1994

[Evan H Shu <eshu (Evan H Shu)>]

November 2, 1994

NEWSFLASH: Please note DBUG meeting for Build Boston has been set for
TUESDAY (NOT usual Wednesday), November 15, 1994 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. in City 
View #1. It will be hosted by Rick & Ann Gleason.  Further details will be 
released as soon as they are available.

             ****************************************

DBUG at IBA

October 26, 1994

Introduction & Announcements

Ivan Bereznicki Associates welcomed 30+ people to this month's DBUG meeting 
-- for a change, NOT the dark and stormy night that has visited their 
annual meeting in years past. [IBA wins the award for the year's best and 
most artistic buffet!] Ivan introduced the firm and its work doing 
primarily high end custom homes.  He noted that their work breaks the 
stereotype that CAD is best used for highly, repetitive housing units, as 
they use DataCAD with great efficiency and productivity on highly 
individualized custom homes.  They have perfected the use of templates and 
symbols stored on a file server and accessed over a network to produce that 
efficiency -- as demonstrated at previous meetings.

Ivan asked for introductions of new people, and five or six new folks 
introduced themselves as being relatively new to DataCAD.  As for 
announcements, Evan Shu announced that the GSA (General Services 
Administration) was embarking on a significant minority hiring program for 
architects/engineers, where CAD knowledge is critical.  Contact Dan Corria 
at (617)565-5842 for details. (They use DataCAD.) He also announced that 
the price structure for DataCAD 6 has been set at only $69.95 for upgrades 
(still at $149 for new purchasers.)  Considering the new rendering package 
RenderStar, the Icon Tool Bar, the 3D Framing Utility, and the linetype 
tail fix, this decision is a no-brainer.  All files between DataCAD 5 and 6 
are compatible.  There will be an extra charge of $99 for the Estimator 
Module -- but this may only work with fully framed 3D models.  Evan was 
also pleased to announce that the new DataCAD forum on the Internet was off 
and flying with a rousing start of info, opinions and good Q&A.  If you 
have an E-mail address via any online service or via an Internet gateway, 
you can subscribe by sending an E-mail message to "majordomo@world.std.com" 
and just put "subscribe datacad-dbug" in the message and you will be sent 
all the messages automatically. Finally, he reminded people to register for 
Build Boston (forms on table) to attend next month's meeting hosted by Rick 
& Ann Gleason [Note set for TUESDAY, November 15, 6-8:30 in City View 1.]

Geoff Langdon announced that ArchiCAD was promoting a new $200 plus $4 per 
hour lease program that may be worth using at times for some of its special 
features (including full cost analysis.) Geoff has purchased a new video 
card that is now allowing him to make special demo videotapes taken 
directly from the screen input. Greg Dysart announced his availability as a 
3D modeling consultant (508)653-4683. Someone also mentioned that Seattle 
Film Works (Sunday paper inserts) will now develop your film images on a 
FLOPPY disk for only $3.95!

FILEMAKER PRO

Valle Blake then gave a combined Beginner & Advanced User Lesson by running 
FileMaker Pro, which is a powerful cross between a database program and 
desktop publishing program.  Valle showed on it has proved invaluable in 
the task of Project Administration by not only issuing Change 
Proposals/Orders, etc, but also tracking them through the job.  FileMaker 
Pro has the ability to create database fields that can be applied to any 
number of forms or schedules and thus update each of those forms 
automatically.  It runs under Windows. Ruth Neeman has also used this 
product for the complicated door schedules that her firm must produce and 
has found it to be an extremely good program. FileMaker Pro also has the 
ability to use "scripts" like macros to help you build custom forms very 
quickly.

KEYBOARD MACROS FOR DOING MULTI-SCALE PLOTTING

For our DataCAD Lesson, Valle showed another aspect of our IBA uses 
keyboard macros to do multi-scale plotting.  They have a separate keyboard 
macro file for each different plotting scale.  They use David Pendery's New 
Key Macro (Cheapware P1) to swap files while in DataCAD.  For each detail 
scale scenario, they use Alt-I to access the keyboard macro file for the 
detail scale desired. Then they hit Alt-D to automatically set all the 
dimension parameters to match that scale, then they hit Alt-T to set all 
the text parameters, and bingo, they are ready to rock and roll on the 
detail.  Finally, they use the "enlarge" methodology on the detail to do 
one step plotting.

Valle also demonstrated again for the group the advantages of using the 
Associative Hatching feature of DataCAD 5.  In addition to Heather Conway's 
method of overlapping boundaries, they have found that you can also do 
voids by hatching 3D polygons with voids.  Greg Dysart volunteered that he 
discovered accidentally that associative hatching does NOT rotate with the 
entity hatched -- so be careful about rotating your plan or model if hatch 
direction is important.

THE STATE OF CAD HARDWARE TODAY

Geoff Langdon then introduced what he termed his most difficult 
presentation to prepare for -- given the amount of expert knowledge in the 
group.  He suggested using the Beginner Lesson "shut-up and give the 
presenter a chance" rule to allow him to get through this difficult task of 
updating the group on current hardware.

Geoff took the group through the various state of art chips like the 
Pentium, the Power PC(not recommened at this time) vs. the higher end 486 
chips. He cautioned that unless the software package is designed to take 
advantage of the Pentium's 32 bit processing capability, you will only get 
maybe a 20% benefit over a 486 chip. Rather than try to highlight all this 
very valuable information, Geoff has been kind enough to provide the text 
of his talk which he has written up for the next edition of "CADD and the 
Small Firm" (see attached sheet.)

We will however bring you Geoff's "Top Ten (make that 11) Things that 
People think Windows '95 Really Stands For" (from an Internet Discussion 
Newsgroup):

11. The percentage that will be complete on the shipping date.
10. The number of floppies it will ship on.
9.  The percentage of people who will have to upgrade their hardware.
8.  The number of megabytes of hard disk space required.
7.  The number of pages in the "Easy Install" version of the manual.
6.  The percentage of existing Windows programs that won't run in the new  
   OS.
5.  The number of days to install.
4.  The number of calls to tech support before you can get it to run.
3.  The number of people who will actually PAY for the upgrade.
2.  The number of MHz required for the OS to run.

and now . . . the #1 thing some Interneters think the 95 in Windows 95 
really stands for . . . drum roll please . . . 

1.  The year it was DUE to ship.

BSA BBS

Geoff Langdon then gave a whirlwind tour of new "First Class for Windows" 
system now available for the Boston Society of Architects Bulletin Board 
(software was distributed free at the meeting and it will also be on 
Cheapware next month.) This system uses graphic Windows folders and icons 
to allow you to access information, send email between members, and 
download or upload files.  One of the best features of the system is that 
it allows you to download or upload files in the BACKGROUND while you 
peruse other sectors!  Although it is not tied to the Internet, Geoff has 
begun to "echo" some of the messages from the DataCAD-DBUG Internet group 
to the BSA BBS. (617)737-8102 (serves modem speeds 2400 to 14.4K)  


Note: Signature below only applies to DataCAD Forum (not to BSA CAD group).

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