civil3d.com

Autodesk has been making a lot of marketing noise lately, using the term “BIM” to refer to the entire AEC industry. BIM is short for Building Information Model(ing). Sorry, but civil engineers (with the exception of Structural engineers) don’t design buildings.

While I understand the need for a short, easy to say, easy to use term that conveys the essence of 3D Dynamic modeling and all the rest of what BIM implies, forcing an architectural term on civil engineers is not the way to go.

ENR recently ran an article and used the term Virtual Design and Construction or VDC for short. I had never heard this term before, but its perfect. It gets right to the same point as the term BIM, but is general enough to cover all disciplines, from architecture, to civil engineering, to mechanical.

I know in these economic times, squabbling over semantics might seem trivial, but perhaps a light-hearted diversion is what we all need. What are your thoughts in the terms? Do you have an alternate suggestion? Let’s hear it!

Since this question was just asked on the Autodesk DG, I thought it appropriate to drop a quick post about EE ProPack’s capability to Import Command Settings. Take a quick peek and see what all the fuss is about.

(more…)

For all of those CivilAccess and GuidedAccess folks, you may have noticed some cool improvements to our video player software that serves up eLearning.  Here’s a rundown of the changes we made.

• Jump ahead without waiting – better performance allows you to skip ahead without waiting for the video to load.

• Comprehensive fly-out menu serves up all training videos for every class.  This menu can be hidden while watching videos to make full use of your screen area.

• Tick marks on the progress bar show where exercises start.

• Instant Replay buttons let you jump back in short increments, just in case you miss something.

• Search Videos – Not a new feature but just in case you didn’t know this…training videos are SEARCHABLE!