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Hi there! This has been on my mind the past few days and I keep forgetting to talk to DH about it so I thought I would get your thoughts first :) DH and I have always said that our Daughter will be the first one to meet her baby sister when she arrives. Now this is assuming that she is born during the day. We all know that this very well might not happen so my question is if this LO is born while DD would be sleeping, do we still keep the rule/idea of no one meeting her til DD does? or do we let whoever comes to the hospital in the middle of the night meet the new baby then DD will meet her when she gets up and comes to the hospital? My thought is keeping the rule that no one can meet the new baby til DD does. Its her new baby sister and I think she deserves to meet her first-granted shes only 2 but still, its going to be a huge change for her. So what do you ladies think? What have you done? What would you do? TIA!!
To those having 2 + baby, is this unreasonable?
Comments (9)
I would just plan DD come in the next morning.
I'm having a scheduled CS but we did say my parents, MIL and our DD are the first to come in in the afternoon.
Angela, wife to Nolan
Momma to Tobias (5/28/08), Naomi (4/7/10), Simon (9/3/11), Sophia (2/14/13) and Colette (11/2/14)!
Kenzie April 2010
Addison February 2013
I am going to have my kids be the first to meet their sibling. If baby comes at night, we will be going home (birth center) and no visitors until everyone is up (which means kids get first visits).
In a hospital setting I would probably say no visits until after kids visit still, and have the kids brought first thing in the AM - def. no visits overnight!! you will want your rest!
~Jen, mom to Rebecca (3/08), Eliana (4/11), Zachary (1/13) and baby on the way (EDD 6/15)
Oh no, DD will not come in the middle of the night She would come first thing in the morning. And our hospital does allow people in the waiting room in the middle of the night if someone is having a baby-not that I think many would come at that time other than maybe a few good friends, my sister, and my parents(but theyll probably be staying with DD). I think it would also be nice to have some time just DH and I with the new baby if she does make her entrance in the middle of the night.
Proud NAVY wife and mommy to J- 6/15/07 M - 3/18/10 J - 2/20/13 S- 10/16/15
I had my first at 11:38pm and people came in about an hour later (after delivering placenta, DD getting checked, breastfeeding, and just some time to ourselves). I hated having people there that late and honestly wished they would have gotten tired and left before we had her. We only let grandparents hold her and everyone else had to come back the next day.
Since we want our 2 year old to be the first to meet this baby, we will have everyone wait until after her, even if we have her in the middle of the night. We prefer that anyway since it sucks having people around so late.
Nobody will be coming to visit me in the hospital if I deliver in the middle of the night.....not gonna happen...
And I am the same as you, my children will be the first to meet their little brother. Nobody else, other than DH of course, will be allowed in the room until my children have gotten their time in first.
Jessica (32) married to Todd (37)
Nicholas 03/03/01, Claire 03/22/04
Johanna 02/13/07, Daniel 01/30/13
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Capitol Hill Matchbox Set to Open Tomorrow
After the usual delays, some wildly rampant speculation, and a couple of trial runs for friends and family, the new Matchbox, the second D.C. location in the budding chain, is set to open tomorrow on Capitol Hill.
For the first few weeks of operation, the Cap Hill Matchbox (521 8th St. SE) will serve dinner only, says co-owner Perry Smith. Brunch will be served this Sunday only but will expand to both Saturdays and Sundays the following weekend. The menu at both D.C. Matchboxes, Smith says, will be exactly the same.
That's not to say, though, that the menu will be the same old, same old.
When Smith and his partners started ramping up for their second location, they hired some new kitchen talent, Shannon Troncoso and Jacob Hunter, who spent months working with executive chef, Jonathan McArthur, to revamp Matchbox's offerings. Not to worry. The pizzas and mini-burgers remain.
"People come in because they have heard of the pizza and mini burgers," Smith says. "But the next time they come in, they may try something else."
That "something else" now includes an appetizer of bacon-wrapped shrimp with grits, a crab cake with coconut red curry and pineapple tempura, and seared sea scallops with herbed risotto. Matchbox is also trying to adopt more green policies, Smith says, which is why the restaurant dropped a Hawaiian fish supplier in favor of a local wholesaler.
The space itself used to be the home of a vending-machine vendor, Smith says. As a way to bridge the old with the new, and perhaps create a little "good karma," Smith says, the owners decided to refurbish a leftover oak shuffleboard and turn it into the bar at Matchbox. The partners also purchased an old barn in New York state, had it dismantled, and brought to Capitol Hill, where it has been repurposed as part of the massive renovation of the space. Then there's the "cube" table, which serves as a sort of divider between the bar and the dining room. People who sit there have views of both spaces, Smith says.
The opening, frankly, couldn't come soon enough for Smith and his partners. The blogosphere was starting to get cranky about the delays, and some folks were even speculating that Smith had lost his financing. It was never true, he says, but he realized that people were getting upset because they were anxious. Or as Smith says: "The customer base has claimed us."
Image courtesy of Matchbox.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
madpoet0204's messages
Public messages for madpoet0204
Jul 10, 2013 12:28pm
is their a dragon in one of the levels?
4 comments (show more) | comment
bradley13 Aug 7, 2013 6:58pm
i want to see the dragon one XD
madpoet0204 Apr 2, 2014 9:28am
You can see the dragon enemy in a new video on Steam Greenlight. Vote if you can..:)
bradley13 Apr 3, 2014 5:03am
O.o wow that a cool dragon :D good luck on the game :D
Mar 27, 2013 7:05am
Let's Battle!
Mar 27, 2013 7:05am
New Player vs Player flying multiplayer shooter game just went live on Kongregate!
Jan 19, 2013 6:09pm
First time indie dev on Kongregate with my game.


text:
Horseshoe Bend residents are mourning the loss of former mayor Charles R. "Bud" Mowder who died May 11 in Havana, Ill., from natural causes.
"He was great to work with," said Horseshoe Bend Recorder/Treasurer Sally Prohl. "He had Horseshoe Bend in his heart."
Horseshoe Bend Mayor Bob Spear echoed Prohl's sentiments."He was a good guy and a personal friend," Spear said. "I've been mayor for seven years and I know how hard Bud had to work at this job."
Mowder, who was 80 years old at the time of his death, served as mayor in Horseshoe Bend from 1987 to 1999.
The Horseshoe Bend public works building, the fire department and several pieces of city road equipment were purchased during Mowder's tenure, Prohl said.
She said these projects were financed in part by a $500,000 settlement that was given to the city from bankruptcy court in the mid-1980s.
The settlement stemmed from the bankruptcy of Horseshoe Bend Development Company, the company that developed Horseshoe Bend.
Horseshoe Bend Development Company owned and operated the city's water department until the city took over its operations in 1981.
Prohl, who worked with Mowder from 1990 until his retirement, said the water department was in deep debt and Mowder was instrumental in persuading the bankruptcy court to give the city of Horseshoe Bend settlement money.
She said that he had a good relationship with the city's employees and the city council.
"There are some people who aren't going to agree with some of your decisions as the executive," Prohl said. "And there was a political faction in town that opposed him. It's just a part of politics."
Services for Mowder were held May 17 at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Havana. It was followed by a graveside service at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Havana.
Mowder was preceded in death by his first wife, Betty Strube, who died in 1992.
He is survived by Kathleen, his second wife; three sons William (Judy) Mowder of Horseshoe Bend, Charles (Pam) Mowder of Bettendorf, Iowa, and Joseph (Kris) Mowder of Bartonville, Ill.; one stepson, Dennis (Kris) Skaggs of Havana, Ill.; three daughters, Cecelia Wagner of Colorado Springs, Colo., Betsy (Steve) Tammeus of Highland, Colo., and Kathleen (Bob) Davis of Horseshoe Bend; two stepdaughters, Terry (Marshall) Markley of Havana, Ill., and Wendy (Leonard) Barnard of Canton, Ill.; one sister, Virginia (Bob) Long of Springfield, Ill.; 25 grandchildren; and 26 great-grandchildren.


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Crash.Net F1 News
Pirelli names tyre choices for next three F1 races
11 April 2014
Pirelli has announced its tyre choices for the next three F1 races in Spain, Monaco and Canada.
In Spain, Pirelli has nominated its hard and medium tyres, the two hardest tyres in the range.
"The Montmelo circuit is well known for putting high-energy loads through the tyres, while ambient temperatures can also be notable at the Spanish Grand Prix. Tarmac roughness is quite high, and the tyres on the left-hand side are particularly stressed," Pirelli explained.
Meanwhile, for Monaco and Canada, respectively a street circuit and a semi-permanent facility, the two softest tyres in the range will be used - the soft and supersoft, the latter making its 2014 debut in Monte Carlo.
"Monaco is the slowest circuit on the calendar, which is very twisty with smooth asphalt, and also relies heavily on mechanical grip from the tyres. This makes it the perfect place for the supersoft with its rapid warm-up to make its 2014 debut, in combination with the soft," Pirelli added.
"Canada is another circuit that is very reliant on mechanical grip, with the race frequently held in cool temperatures. As a result, the soft and supersoft is once again the ideal choice. Traction and braking are the main characteristics of the lap."


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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14852341055526042882016-04-11T20:43:55.897-07:00William Le Couteur's Autocad BlogAutocad blogWilliam Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-41001210234435393772016-03-15T13:15:00.000-07:002016-03-15T13:15:10.909-07:00Which is faster? Autocad LT or Revit for drawing a house? The results are in!You would hope this result is a reflection of the prices of Autocad LT and Revit, which is that at the time of writing, Autocad LT is Australian $530/year, and it seems they do not sell Revit by itself, but comes in a Revit Collaboration Suite, which is Australian $3,515/year, which presumably includes full Autocad.

The results are:

Autocad LT : 2.5 hours

Revit: 1.5 hours

Proof can be viewed at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCnowQThv4s

I came across as a bit of a novice user occasionally, so in the hands of an experienced user, you would expect an even quicker time.

Still, drafting is not all about creation of geometry, as I am finding in my job that the focus is not so much on the drawing as on the annotations. I would prefer Autocad to do 2D annotations, but this could be my lack of familiarity with the Revit detailing options, which do have all sorts of nick nacks, for example to draw insulation, you just pick two points and there it is.

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-73015132994505503892016-03-08T01:09:00.000-08:002016-03-08T01:09:33.357-08:00So.....which is faster, Autocad or Revit?I have just spent most of the weekend producing 10 videos, uploaded to Youtube, for the Autocad section of this test. Just a bog standard NZ house, single level, part brick and weatherboard.

Plan, elevations, and 2 sections: 2 and 1/2 hours, which is not too bad I thought. So why have I just spent 6 hours at work, just altering a house that was already drawn? Not sure really- could be that I am still feeling my way with how things are done. For example: with a roof plan layout, you do not normally show the internal walls, unless they are load bearing. Plus if you have land that is on a slope and you have to do a sectional view, all bets are off, as you have to massage a site plan to be acceptable.

Here is the link to the first of the 10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieMeaGc8pDU

I am hoping to do the identical plan in Revit, which may cause skewed results because I am not a long time Revit user, but I will get a bit of practice in beforehand, next weekend.

It could be argued I do things the slow way, but I have tried my reasonable best to think of quicker ways of doing things.

About half my time was spent organizing blocks and a pull down menu. I tried to do a few screen shots, but you cannot hold a pull down menu down and then use the snipping tool. If you watch the videos, you will see this in action - albeit with some blocks not coming in because their name was not quite right!

Pull down menus are really easy to make, and if someone else on the network wants it, it takes 2 minutes to install it for them.

This is the format to use:

***MENUGROUP=GMB
***POP18
[Details 2D]
[->Decks-Joining to House]
 [Weather boards]-insert;"C:/CAD/GB/Details-2D/Decks-joining to house/DTH-150X50 Joists-to Weatherboards.dwg";\1;1;0;
 [Bricks]-insert;"C:/CAD/GB/Details-2D/Decks-joining to house/DTH-150X50 Joists-to Weatherboards-to Existing Lower Brick Wall.dwg";\1;1;0;
 [<-butynol ecks-joining="" etails-2d="" font="" house.dwg="" house="" insert="" joists-deck="" sloping="" to="" towards=""></-butynol>
[->Decks-outer edge]

You just make this using Notepad, then in Autocad use customise user interface, to insert it.

There are no doubt really good explanations on how to do this on the internet.

One of my ones I was was quite proud of was an inserted window block in plan, which brought in it's elevation at the same time. Another time saver was the one to insert whole rooms at once, eg bathroom, toilet and so on. The block for doors was not wonderful, and a bit clunky to use. Could have been a dynamic block.

Here is the final result:

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-38139231669620053472016-02-15T00:38:00.001-08:002016-02-15T00:38:26.245-08:00New ways of using AutocadMy new job has offered up some different ways of doing things.

1. You work "in the viewport", from paperspace. You can do this because the viewport's property is "locked". Very disconcerting for an aged draftee used to doing most things in model space.

2. Using "layer filters". I have not totally mastered the use of these yet but am making some progress.
The idea is you set up a filter, say "GF*" and it will ignore all else and show only layers that begin with GF, eg GF interior wall.

3. They use lots of layers. This takes a bit of getting used to. No rigid "color by layer" rules. Same with linetypes- some by layer, some not. Only the first 8 colours are used, so it is hard to know which layer you are on unless you keep an eye on the layer box display.

4. My worst trick is to be on say the foundation layer, nip into the ground floor viewport and start drawing, only to find nothing appears. Because it is frozen in the viewport, dumbo!

5, Using a Sheet Set to control the title block. The title is not a block actually, just some lines and a few text fields. These are controlled by the Sheet Set. Each new job has to have a dst file copied across to the directory.

6. Everything is drawn on top of each other. Seems a good idea for sections with elevations, but plan views get very messy looking in model space.

I set up buttons to show for example, only the ground floor stuff. This worked fine, until I opened up a different drawing only to find the layer names were not consistent. So the button approach was a waste of time, until I realised a "negative" system would work: just get a button to do the following:
-layer;f;GF*;; This means freeze all the layers that start with GF. The ; is autocad macro language for the enter key.

The catch with this is you have to just keep pruning away until you have what you want, without coming across the famous "cannot freeze the current layer" dialog. Got around by setting the layer you want before pressing the button.

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-29784078742882368192016-01-19T23:41:00.003-08:002016-01-20T01:14:48.396-08:00Drawing a house in Autocad 3D SolidsI have become the magpie of CAD software, dabbling in, but never quite mastering Inventor, Solidworks, Vectorworks,Chief Architect, and so on.

The thing that strikes me with most of the architectural ones is that they provide a solution to a set problem, for instance, how to draw a roof. Then you have a major struggle to make things like the fascia board to be in the correct position, which usually causes it to be buried in the roof. I have just realised most users of this software just live with the approximations the software creates. After all, does it really matter if the gutter is out of place by say 30mm?

You can draw a house using solids Autocad, but things like doors and windows can be a problem because you have to draw them each time, or have a library of pre drawn ones to stretch into place.
Or have a set of lisp routines to Africa to insert these. Not impossible.

A unioned window frame is not that stretchable, but if you could live with a window made up of slabs, you could alter these using the properties of the slab. Then once things are fixed, union it all.

I have just got a job drawing houses in 2D, using Autocad LT. The boss says he is not totally against 3D though, so this possibility is suddenly interesting. In the meantime, I hope to learn the ropes using 2D.

Over the years I have made a few lisps to lighten the load:

1. Wind.lsp This just draws a simple window, putting things on layers like "window" and "glass".
You can have only vertical mullions, so it is pretty limited. On the other hand, is is fast.

2. Truss.lsp.

The truss routine uses a dialog box called truss.dcl to draw a cross-sectional view of a roof truss. It inserts components such as GutterCopper in the process of drawing the truss.

It could be argued that the bracing is a bit unrealistic.

This is usually not a problem in New Zealand because the draftsman is only expected to
produce an approximation as the actual truss is redrawn anyway by the truss maker.

3. A set of routines to draw wooden windows.

Modelling The House in 3D
The technique used is to model the house carefully in 3D, then xref this into a blank drawing and then use the section command, and the flatshot command.

Bringing my recent try at this into Showcase turned out a bit strange: all the bricks decided not to lie the correct way! I tried drawing a brick as a block and laying them, but this was too long and involved, plus the mortar seems to be a problem. A cunning plan might be to draw a wall all as mortar and then stick 10mm thick bricks on top of this. Which still does not solve the problem of trimming the bricks around a window. Maybe a super lisp routine might be needed.

The nice thing about Autocad is you know EXACTLY what you are modelling, and Autocad has a nice set of solids editing tools.

In this screenshot, you can see the model on the left, with the sections and flatshots on the right.

I brought this one into Showcase, from Autocad, all weatherboards are drawn, which came out with a bit of realism.

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-82100867139126171122015-11-16T22:28:00.001-08:002015-11-16T22:53:58.810-08:00Autocad Dimension Crazy!Well, maybe not crazy, but a little irritating.

I have just gone back to by old work for a short time to earn a few dollars to pay for a tooth that fell out.

The man who took over from me is an engineer, and while fairly familiar with Autocad, it was not his main thing for most of his career. He tells me that he finds drafting is a nicer job than being an engineer. Let's hope this remains the case!

The task he has partially completed is enormous in size, covering several levels of plant and several buildings.

They also had a friend of mine filling in for a time, so I have been opening up some of their drawings and working on them. Their drawings are fine, except for one thing: dimensions.

In the past, I would open my template drawing, draw the model in modelspace, jump out to paperspace and start dimensioning with my 1:1 dimension style. It did not matter what zoom factor the viewport had, it would always give the correct dimension.

Now I find that I have to set dimlfac to whatever the viewport zoom factor is. This is a nuisance, especially as I had no firm idea what the problem was.

A little bit of research on the net and things became clear:

If you set DIMASSOC to 2, Autocad will take the zoom factor of the viewport into account when filling out the dimension.

I have raved on about zero height text in a previous blog, here:  http://wlecouteur.blogspot.co.nz/search?q=dimstyle

Nowadays, If my dimensions and text are not to my liking I just blast the drawing with 2 lisp routines:

1. DS.lsp which is in the link above, a simple routine, which I have extended below a bit to cope with the various text styles I did come across. All the things after a ; are comments to explain things

(defun c:DS()
(setq skale (getreal "Please enter the plotted scale: "));get a scale from the user and assign it to skale
(command "-style" "STANDARD" "ARIAL"
 "0" "1" "0" "" "" );issue the style command and make it Arial font

(if (tblsearch "style" "ROMANS")(command "-style" "ROMANS" "ARIAL" "0" "1" "0" "" "" ""))
(if (tblsearch "style" "R1")(command "-style" "R1" "ARIAL" "0" "1" "0" "" "" ""))
(if (tblsearch "style" "R1-25")(command "-style" "R1-25" "ARIAL" "0" "1" "0" "" "" ""))
(if (tblsearch "style" "R2")(command "-style" "R2" "ARIAL" "0" "1" "0" "" "" ""))
(if (tblsearch "style" "R5")(command "-style" "R5" "ARIAL" "0" "1" "0" "" "" ""))
;;;the above just checks out the other styles in the drawing and sets them all up to zero height text

(setvar "MIRRTEXT" 0) ; hard to believe - some people set their mirror command to be a bit silly
(setvar "DIMSCALE" SKALE); so if you typed 1 as the plotted scale, dimscale gets set to 1
(setq the_textsize (* skale 2)) ;setting a variable up to be used next line ie if dimscale= 2
;the textsize will be set to 2 * 2 = 4
(setvar "textsize" the_textsize) ;the system variable set to that value
(setvar "dimassoc" 2); will take the zoom factor of the viewport into account
;funny, I had forgotten I had put this line in a zillion years ago!
(princ);exits quietly
);end of the defined function

2. The other lisp is called Dimlo.lsp
;imports a dummy block containing a set of dimension styles
(defun c:Dimlo()
(command "-dimstyle" "r" "STANDARD")
;sets the current style to STANDARD
(command "-insert" "dimstyles" "0,0" "1" "1" "0"); inserts a block called dimstyles
(command "-dimstyle" "R" "1-1");issues the dimstyle command and restores it to 1-1
(command "erase" "l" "");then erases the block from the drawing
(princ)
)

The block called dimstyles is just a rectangle (just something to fill in the drawing-,may not even be necessary), but in the drawing all the dimension styles normally used are set up, eg 1-1, 1-2, 1-5 and so on. Normally in paper space you would use 1:1, so very little setting up is needed. Sometimes you have to put dimensions in paper space, so you can choose 1:2 if you need to from the dimension styles pull down.

There is no reason why you could not make up such a block and get all your dimension styles all set up in that one block.

This is close to the idea of a virus used in Autocad, but in a good way!

The only problem is that it illustrates how easy it is to get away from how Autocad works using automation, ie lisp routines, to accomplish a simple task, and how strangely rooted in the past some people are. this command came out in 2004.

Other not recommended things are clicking on a dimension and changing it's value; This should never be done! The reason is anyone coming into your drawing will find this (if they are lucky!), then will not trust any of the other dimensions.

As for exploding dimensions-very naughty!

I have been thinking about putting all my lisp routines on a new web page, probably around Christmas time. If you are keen for that, post a comment. If nobody posts I may get lazy and not do it.

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-24155385897508963612015-07-30T23:54:00.001-07:002015-07-30T23:54:13.190-07:00Much Posting on YoutubeToday is my last day on Autocad Subscription. If I had found some drafting to do at home for money, then most likely I would have paid up to keep the suite going. I had thought that by now I would be happily (?) drawing houses in Revit, but it appears I am not suitable for this as I have not got 2 years architectural drafting experience(I have 9 months experience drawing houses).
Mechanical drafting jobs seem elusive as well. It could be an age thing as well.

So, turning my thoughts to making a little money to help the retirement along, I thought a series of Autocad tutorials would be the way to go. If they proved popular, I could clutter up the beginning like everyone else does with an advert.

I came across a free video recorder called "Screen Cast O Matic" , found at

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

This is very good, the only catch is that you are limited to 15 minutes- not a big deal anyway because most people can only stand watching something like a tutorial for that long anyway.

Lesson 1 is to be found on Youtube at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k55532L2Ut4

I thought 5 tutorials would be enough, but I seemed to rave on to produce 15 in total.

Towards the end I did a short piece on rendering, here is a sample:

Not to imply that this is the cutting edge of rendering, but to show part of the platform I drew as part of the lessons. I did a short bit using Autocad 2016 rendering, and was a little disappointed in my results, but that would be me not exploring every setting. The last video, No 15 shows the Autocad model being brought into Revit, and Showcase, both of which were easier to get a render out of.

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-31659703703209720072015-01-11T11:59:00.003-08:002015-01-11T12:01:39.221-08:00End of an Autocad WebsiteMy site bilrocad.com has just expired. My original idea was to make a small income from posting blocks, lisp routines and so on. I did make $2.89 or so. After a few years, I did away with the advertising.

My apologies to all who requested info regarding lisp routines and had no reply from me. I guess I just had other fish to fry.

I am in the process of learning Revit, but have a feeling that I might be too old to catch on to this fish.

It is an amazing program in some ways, any fool can put together walls, doors, windows and roofs.
The fun begins when you want a roof that is not just a slab of butter (easy), but a composite made up of tin, purlins, and wooden trusses. Can be done, as shown below:

This is the same building I had a go at 4 years ago, see

http://wlecouteur.blogspot.co.nz/2010/01/autocad-to-revitnotes-of-autocad-user.html

I have made slightly more progress this time, but things are still taking way too long, which will definitely be my unfamiliarity with the software. It took 7 and a 1/4 hours to get the basic shell up and going with a start on the floor joist layout made, which compares favourably with the 4 weeks it took to do the whole job in 2D Autocad, I made the decision way back then to keep everyone happy and use 2D. Bad decision. It takes forever!

Things I like about Revit are:

1. Make a change in one thing and everywhere it appears gets updated automatically. If you have ever made changes (what? a draftee who never made any changes?), then this alone is worth all the pain of getting your thinking in line with the designers of Revit.

2. Any sectioned items are hatched automatically with the appropriate hatch pattern.

3. You can make up the equivalent of an Autocad block, but it is in 3D. You then change its parameters when inserting it in a drawing. For instance, I made the trusses above, then just adjusted the span and slope to fit this location. Laying them out is a bit more frustrating.

Things I am having trouble with (abeit in a very low state of proficiency):

1. Sometimes you cannot just change the size of a family, say a window width, Revit will let you do it then spit the dummy after it fails to work.

2. The famous "You are not putting this in at the correct level for this view".
It is not good that at this stage of it's development, you have people still wondering how to fix this.
Would it not be nice to have a thing that told you what level you were putting things in at?
(Yes, the panel on the side, silly.)

3. Yup, you sure can dimension whole walls at a time. Just try deleting one of the dimensions though. According to the experts on the net, just hover over it and hit tab, then delete. Does not work for me.

4. How do you get an endpoint of a line that is vertical to snap to a nearby point?

5. Why do you have control over material hatching only in coarse mode....what about fine????

6. Ok, you can have visibility of certain items, so for instance if you were doing floor structure, this is great: Just turn off all walls and floors and draw in timber framing. The problem arises when you have a mixed timber and concrete floor and you put in a concrete block wall....

7. Sometimes it does not regenerate other views after a change.

Anyway, I now have a book on Revit (thanks, Robin!), so magical things might happen....

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-31140032668042535522013-04-20T03:38:00.000-07:002013-04-20T03:38:00.942-07:00Cunning plans: How to get Autocad to work smarter?One of the frequent insults hurled at Autocad is that it is not an intelligent program.

Problems with Xrefs
I have tried to steer my drafting life clear of xrefs, for the reason that when I'm gone, some IT Preventer of Information technology will rename the main network drive or someone else will rename directories. All this will cause blank drawings to appear! Having said that, maybe the idea of "relative paths" is a good approach. Of course, if you have the files all in the same directory, then this is not a problem.

Say you have an item, say a magnet box, and this is to be placed in a layout, then the only way to keep any automatic updating is to use the Xref mechanism in Autocad. This means that the item being xreffed in needs to be "pure", that is, it has to be just a 3d model and no more.

This then means that you cannot have things like section planes in that model, or any other extras like 2D sketches.

Organizing your Assembly to go into a Layout Drawing

Yes, you can organise your magnet box drawing to be a series of layout tabs for each of the parts.

There are problems with this approach though: You have to have all your parts with distinct layer names so that you can use freezing and thawing on a per viewport basis, and while this is possible, setting it all up seems time consuming.

I have devised a layering system that copes with multi-level layouts. It makes layers like:

LEVEL 1 - FLOOR
LEVEL 1 - INTERIOR WALLS
LEVEL 1- PIPING
LEVEL 1 - BEAMS
....and so on. This seems to work well, and is heavily reliant on lisp routines to make it go.
The advantage is that there is a structure to the layer naming.

To tie this all in with the layer names you have to create for the above system is also a pain.

This can be got around by calling layers names like MAGNET BOX LID LEVEL 1, and when the xref turns up in the layout, then the lisp line becomes (command "-layer" "t" "*LEVEL 1*" "") ie it uses the * as wild cards.

Any Other Options?

One that might deserve some consideration, is to have a "pure" model, in which every item is on layer 0, so that when it arrives in the xref, it picks up the layer it is to be, and appears in the correct colours for that layer. Simple.

To enable parts drawings, this pure model would have all the individual parts (each a separate drawing file) xreffed into it.
The nice thing about this system is that you could have a separate assembly drawing of the magnet box, and any sub-assemblies could be easily arranged. In the assembly drawing you can go ahead and do sections.
OK, so what is the downside? A great pile of autocad drawing files is what you would end up with, instead of one drawing with heaps of layout tabs on it. Coping with printing out a drawing set is probably not as bad as it seems, as you can use saved sheet sets to deal with this. Your drawing register then becomes a large clerical pain to fill out, that is if you decide to go down that route. To avoid this bureaucracy, an alternative to listing them in a separate register could be to maybe keep them in a directory, labelled say "150905 Magnet Box". In the drawing register, all you need is one entry:"150905 - Magnet Box". Only the "pure" model, with a file name of 150905.dwg would appear in the main directory.William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-32311041374990535512013-03-30T01:07:00.001-07:002013-03-30T01:07:06.199-07:00Drawing an archimedes screw in AutocadRecently, a man at my work wanted me to draw the junction of a double screw conveyor. It was a long screw conveyor, and had a hanger bearing in the middle that was causing some trouble. This was the junction.

In the "olden days" I used to use a 2D lisp routine to draw a screw conveyor. This was my first request since those days to actually draw a screw. Usually we just draw the outside casing and this is all you really need, unless you are a manufacturer of screw conveyors.

No worries, I thought, I'll just draw a helix, and sweep a rectangle along the helix. Yes, it is that simple. If you have release 13 that is! At work I am on release 12 and spent 2 hours trying to persuade Autocad to this. In the end I googled it. Humf! It appears no easy "how to do it" is there. The nearest I got was someone drawing an acme screw thread.

After about 2 hours I discovered you could do it, but you had to input in a value for twist of about 30 degrees.

On another subject, my website, bilrocad.com seems in for the chop. At one stage I had advertising on it and thought it might pay it's way. This was not to be. The people at BlueHost did give me an extra year for free though.

Anyway, here is my method for release 13:

1. Draw a shaft - usually these are from 80NB pipe, ie about 89mm outside diameter, say 3000mm high.

2. Draw helix. In my example, I used a base and top radius of 123.75mm, 10 turns and a height of 3000mm.

3. Draw a rectangle. I drew one 158.5mm x 10mm so that my outside diameter would end up around 406mm.

4. Issue the sweep command, pick the rectangle and then pick the helix: Job done!

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-15348080281619163192013-01-03T00:07:00.000-08:002013-01-03T00:09:25.944-08:00Sheetmetal-Pretty BasicVanilla Autocad does not have a trick for doing simple folded sheet metal developments.
(Hey, we're only up to Release 18 or so, maybe in release 44....)

When I say simple, I mean a piece of sheet metal with one fold or two folds, both at 90 degrees.

Maybe I am the only draftee on the planet that sometimes does this, but it is always a painfully slow process when I do.

To do this manually, I draw an end on view as above, using polylines. I then would offset
the inner polyline to create a neutral axis, by half the metal thickness. In other words, the "K" factor I was using was 0.5. Which for steel should have been 0.4. I only realised this by looking up "sheetmetal developments" on the web, here is a good link, even if it is 1998! (In the link he does something similar, but to my mind, not as useful as my one.)

http://www.oocities.org/wpsmoke/acadsheetmetal/paper.html

The length of the neutral axis polyline is the length of the development. To get the position of the fold lines, I used to use midpoint snap to put a line on the corner and used it to trim the pline:

Then it was just a matter of clicking on that pine and checking out it's length on the properties palette, to give me the position of the fold line.

All this horsing around: surely I have better things to do? The upshot is an afternoon spent doing the following Lisp routines, which have not been fully tested by hordes of draftees, (apart from me!). So if you like to try them, make sure you cross check the first few by doing the manual stuff above.

To make sure you can check what you keyed in, a piece of text is generated at the end, and put on Defpoints layer (ie it does not print, but you can see it on the screen).

It uses the layer names "MED" for medium thickness lines, "hid" for hidden lines -ie the fold line , and "dim"
for the dimension lines. If these layers are not there, it should still work.

(Feed back??? Anyone out there????Hullooooo??)

A typical output in Autocad looks like this:

Here are the two routines: (cut and paste from here into Notepad.)
(These routines are free)
;Program written by Bill Le Couteur
;Auckland NZ
;Rev 0 date 3 JAN 2013
;THIS PROGRAM DOES ONLY SIMPLE SHEETMETAL BEND OF A 90 DEG BEND - U SHAPED TROUGH-BOTH UPSTANDS EQUAL

(defun c:DEVU()
(setvar "osmode" 0)
(setq KFactor 0.4)
(setq MetalThickness (getreal "\n Enter Metal Thickness"))
(setq InnerBendRadius MetalThickness)

(setq Length1 (getreal "\n Enter Upstand - Outside Dim"))
(setq Length2 (getreal "\n Enter Middle Section - Outside Dim"))
(setq MiddleSection Length2);;;keep this for later use in text
(setq MiddleSections (rtos MiddleSection))
(setq Length2 (/ Length2 2))
(setq TheWidth (getreal "\n Enter the width"))

(setq NeutralInnerOffset (* KFactor MetalThickness))
(setq NeutralOuterOffset (- MetalThickness NeutralInnerOffset))

(setq NeutralBendArcRad (+ NeutralInnerOffset InnerBendRadius))

(setq Length1Neutral (- (- Length1 NeutralBendArcRad) NeutralOuterOffset))
(setq Length2Neutral (- (- Length2 NeutralBendArcRad) NeutralOuterOffset))

(setq ArcLength (/ (* pi 2 NeutralBendArcRad) 4))

(setq DevLength (+ Length1Neutral Length2Neutral Length2Neutral ArcLength ArcLength Length1Neutral))

(setq HalfArcLength (/ ArcLength 2))

(setq DistanceToFold (+ Length1Neutral HalfArcLength))
(setq FarDistanceToFold (- DevLength DistanceToFold))

(setq TheOrigin (getpoint "\n Pick a point for the development"))

(command "UCS" "n" TheOrigin )

(if (tblsearch "layer" "MED") (command "layer" "s" "MED" ""))
(command "_rectangle" "0,0" (list DevLength TheWidth))

(if (tblsearch "layer" "dim") (command "layer" "s" "dim" ""))
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list DevLength 0) "0,-50" )
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list 0 TheWidth) "-50,0" )
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list DistanceToFold 0) "0,-25" )
(command "_dimlinear" (list FarDistanceToFold 0) (list DevLength 0) "0,-25" )
(command "-text" (list DistanceToFold 20) "" "90" "BEND UP 90%%D")
(command "-text" (list FarDistanceToFold 20) "" "90" "BEND UP 90%%D")
(if (tblsearch "layer" "hid") (command "layer" "s" "hid" ""))
(command "_line" (list DistanceToFold 0) (list DistanceToFold TheWidth) "")
(command "_line" (list FarDistanceToFold 0) (list FarDistanceToFold TheWidth) "")

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;NOW DOING THE TEXT TO ENABLE CHECKING THE INPUT DATA;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(command "layer" "s" "Defpoints" "")
(command "UCS" "W" )
(setq apt (getpoint "\nInsertion Point for Text: "))
(setq TheText "Data for this development input as follows: ")
(setq MetalThicknesss (rtos MetalThickness))
(setq Length1s (rtos Length1))
(setq Length2s (rtos Length2))
(setq TheWidths (rtos Thewidth))
(setq booText (strcat TheText "\nThickness: " MetalThicknesss "\nUpstand : " Length1s "\nMiddle Section : " MiddleSections "\nWidth : " TheWidths "\nK Factor Used is 0.4"))
(command "UCS" "n" apt )
(command "-mtext" "0,0" "200,-100" booText "")
(command "UCS" "W" )
(command "layer" "s" "0" "")
 (princ)
)

 Here is the other Routine:
;Program written by Bill Le Couteur
;Auckland NZ
;Rev 0 date 3 JAN 2013
;THIS PROGRAM DOES ONLY SIMPLE SHEETMETAL BEND OF A 90 DEG BEND ANGLE

(defun c:DEVL()
(setvar "osmode" 0)
(setq KFactor 0.4)
(setq MetalThickness (getreal "\n Enter Metal Thickness"))
(setq InnerBendRadius MetalThickness)

(setq Length1 (getreal "\n Enter Outer Length 1"))
(setq Length2 (getreal "\n Enter Outer Length 2"))
(setq TheWidth (getreal "\n Enter the width"))

(setq NeutralInnerOffset (* KFactor MetalThickness))
(setq NeutralOuterOffset (- MetalThickness NeutralInnerOffset))

(setq NeutralBendArcRad (+ NeutralInnerOffset InnerBendRadius))

(setq Length1Neutral (- (- Length1 NeutralBendArcRad) NeutralOuterOffset))
(setq Length2Neutral (- (- Length2 NeutralBendArcRad) NeutralOuterOffset))

(setq ArcLength (/ (* pi 2 NeutralBendArcRad) 4))

(setq DevLength (+ Length1Neutral Length2Neutral ArcLength))

(setq HalfArcLength (/ ArcLength 2))

(setq DistanceToFold (+ Length1Neutral HalfArcLength))

(setq TheOrigin (getpoint "\n Pick a point for the development"))

(command "UCS" "n" TheOrigin )

(if (tblsearch "layer" "MED") (command "layer" "s" "MED" ""))
(command "_rectangle" "0,0" (list DevLength TheWidth))

(if (tblsearch "layer" "dim") (command "layer" "s" "dim" ""))
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list DevLength 0) "0,-50" )
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list 0 TheWidth) "-50,0" )
(command "_dimlinear" "0,0" (list DistanceToFold 0) "0,-25" )
(command "-text" (list DistanceToFold 20) "" "90" "BEND UP 90%%D")

(if (tblsearch "layer" "hid") (command "layer" "s" "hid" ""))
(command "_line" (list DistanceToFold 0) (list DistanceToFold TheWidth) "")

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;NOW DOING THE TEXT TO ENABLE CHECKING THE INPUT DATA;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
(command "layer" "s" "Defpoints" "")
(command "UCS" "W" )
(setq apt (getpoint "\nInsertion Point for Text: "))
(setq TheText "Data for this development input as follows: ")
(setq MetalThicknesss (rtos MetalThickness))
(setq Length1s (rtos Length1))
(setq Length2s (rtos Length2))
(setq TheWidths (rtos Thewidth))
(setq booText (strcat TheText "\nThickness: " MetalThicknesss "\nLength 1: " Length1s "\nLength 2: " Length2s "\nWidth : " TheWidths "\nK Factor Used is 0.4"))
(command "UCS" "n" apt )
(command "-mtext" "0,0" "200,-100" booText "")
(command "UCS" "W" )
(command "layer" "s" "0" "")
 (princ)
)
Happy developing!

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-54139126796944566822012-07-25T02:28:00.002-07:002012-07-25T02:28:25.577-07:00Project OrganisationAbout one year ago at work I started work on a project to install a new packing machine where I work.

In my usual carefree fashion, I organised one drawing to do this. Even though I had my newly developed lisp routine to turn on the stuff on the ground floor and freeze the levels above, it proved cumbersome, especially as I was unable at the time to use my favourite: SECTIONPLANE. At one stage, I even created a new empty drawing and xreffed the main drawing into it and used 3DCLIP to get a clearer idea of what was going on.

In the beginning, it was "only" a proposal, so all this was not really that critical. All that mattered was "Would it fit, and in what configuration." Now this is a full on project, things are a lot more critical: you have to know where everything is, and what all clearances are to ensure no surprises on judgement day.

I noticed the engineer in charge did not seem all that happy with the drawings, in that it was hard to visualise some parts due to the fact that some things hide other things, so I have decided to rethink my strategy.

We are now going to have a drawing for each machine, and they will be xreffed into a main drawing which will be mostly just a floor with a reference point in it. Walls and doors will be on one drawing, steelwork on another.

The machine drawings will be in 3D and have all their views, dimensions and annotations in paper space.

Now I am able to use the sectionplane command, there will be one drawing that shows sections, by xreffing in the main drawing to it.

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-13227448935133885172012-06-23T21:18:00.000-07:002012-06-23T21:18:21.648-07:00Everybody draws Process and Instrumentation Drawings...don't they?This just goes on and on. Just when I thought I was nearing half way, the "man" said to me:
"Bill, of course you are doing a Bill of Material for every drawing?"
After picking myself up off the floor after a fainting attack, I replied:
"This will take me centuries!"
Fortunately, I had sort of prior knowledge of this (I appear to filter out unwanted information),
so I had devised a block named "TAG" for valves, motors and so on, and one called "INSTRUMENT" as explained in my March 6th 2012 blog.

Writing a lisp to collect all the tag ones and list them in a text file was pretty easy and went well. You might be asking why did I not use Eattext, a newish command to do exactly this? It is OK, but involves lots of button pressing dialog box travelling.

No, I wanted a one button approach. Silly me. Turns out my dynamic block is a nasty little beast. Do it as per the tag system and it makes a mess of the count.

Searching the net showed me that there are really clever lisp programmers out there, but none had written exactly what I needed.

One came close, a man called Doug Broad, who put up a bare bones solution, using Visual Lisp.

It turns out that Visual Lisp extends ordinary lisp, and allows you to solve such a problem as this.

To use visual lisp in a lisp routine, just type: (vl-load-com). After much frustration, this routine seems to work:

This is a scrap from a typcial P & ID, the instruments are the ones in bubbles.You can see there are quite a few non-essential lines, and maybe it is not done in slick elegant manner, but it it is relatively easy to follow.

Here is the routine:

;Program written by Bill Le Couteur
;Auckland NZ
;Rev 0 date 24 June 2012
;This program EXTRACTS ALL THE BLOCKS CALLED TAG AND INSTRUMENT
;AND CREATES A TEXT FILE WITH THE ATTRIBUTES

(defun c:PIDE()

;;;this file is the LISTING file
 ;;;;this makes sure file is empty
 (setq scrfile ( open "C:/Bilro/Bilro4/LISTING.TXT" "w"))
 (close scrfile)

 (setq scrfile ( open "C:/Bilro/Bilro4/LISTING.TXT" "w"))

(setq count 0)

 (setq SS1 (ssget "X" (list '(0 . "INSERT") (cons 2 "TAG"))))

(setq no_of_entities ( sslength ss1))

(while (/= count no_of_entities)
 (progn
(setq en (ssname ss1 count))
(setq ed (entget en))
(setq the_attrib (entget (entnext en)))
(setq the_tag (dxf 1 the_attrib))
(print the_tag)
(write-line the_tag scrfile)

(setq count (+ count 1))
);end progn
);end while

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;NOW TO FIND THE DYMNAMIC BLOCKS CALLED "INSTRUMENT";;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

(vl-load-com)
 (setq ss2 (ssget "_X" '((0 . "INSERT"))));;;ESSENTIAL-FIND ALL THE BLOCKS FIRST!!!!!!
 (setq no_of_entities (sslength ss2))
 (setq count 0)
 (setq innercount 0)

 (print no_of_entities)

 (while (< count no_of_entities)
 (progn
 (setq obj (vlax-ename->vla-object (ssname ss2 count)))

 (setq itsrealname (vla-get-Name obj))
 (setq itseffectivename (vla-get-EffectiveName obj))

 ;(print obj)
 ;(print itsrealname)
 ;(print itseffectivename)
 ;(if (eq itseffectivename "INSTRUMENT")(PRINT "HELLO THERE"))
 (setq en (ssname ss2 count))
 (setq ed (entget en))

 ;(print ed)

;;;;;;;;;;INNER WHILE LOOP::::::::::::::::::::::::::-only if its name is "INSTRUMENT"!
(if (eq itseffectivename "INSTRUMENT")
 (progn
 (while (< innercount 2)
 (progn

 (setq en (entnext en))
 (setq ed (entget en))

 (if (eq innercount 0)
 (progn
 (setq atag (dxf 1 ed))
 ;(print atag)
 );end little if progn
 );end little if

 (if (eq innercount 1)
 (progn
 (setq the_no (dxf 1 ed))
 ;(print the_no)
 (setq instrument_tag (strcat atag the_no))
 (write-line instrument_tag scrfile)
 ;(print instrument_tag)
 );end little if progn
 );end little if

 ;(print count)
 ;(print innercount)

 ;(print ed)
 (setq innercount (+ innercount 1))

 );end while progn
 );end while /= sequend

);END IF PROGN
);END IF

;;;;;;;;;;INNER WHILE LOOP::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 (setq innercount 0)
 (setq count (+ count 1))
 );end while progn
 );end while

 (close scrfile)

 (princ)
)

(defun dxf(code elist)
 (cdr (assoc code elist)) ;Finds the association pair, strips 1st element
);defun

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-43771154774300434772012-04-14T02:17:00.008-07:002012-04-14T02:38:19.070-07:00Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (PIDs)...but wait ...there's more!
Hmfff.....looks like I was wrong thinking 1.5mm high text was a good idea.

It so happened that one of our electrical engineers has just had an eye operation and was having an awful time trying to read my drawings.

I realised they would have to be changed to 2mm high, which a huge nuisance as I have done quite a few drawings.

Just to add to the fun, it appears that the requirement is for each sheet to show mainly just one item, so a drawing might only have one tank, with it's associated piping and pumps. So the emphasis is still on systems, just at a finer level.

The drawings I had done were not wasted, as they became the detailed PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAMS. Some upside to this as I have a bad habit of trying to squeeze too much onto one drawing usually.

I have started on a lisp routine to deal to errant drawings: it is called FIX.lsp. When it is up and running I will post it.

In the meantime, in a rush of enthusiasm that has just evaporated, I have just gotten the skeleton of a routine together that should make PID drudgery a little easier.

The idea of the routine, called ADTAGS.lsp, is that you have done all the graphical elements of your drawing, that is you have drawn all the valves and pipelines in, and you now wish to add tags to all the items in the drawing. For instance you may have 3 manual valves, and you want to label them with tags, HV001,HV002 and HV003, as per the picture above.

Here is the routine, which is obviously far from finished:

;Program written by Bill Le Couteur
;Auckland NZ
;Rev 0 date 14-4-12
;This program adds tag numbers to a bunch of blocks
;only works for blocks named "VALVE MANUAL" at the moment

(defun c:ADTAGS()
(setq count 0)
(setvar "attdia" 0); turns off the dialog box you get when issuing ate commmand

(setq ss1 (ssget "X" '(( 0 . "INSERT")( 2 . "VALVE-MANUAL")) ))
;gets a selection set of the whole drawing, filtering for the block we want

(setq the_no_of_members(sslength ss1))
;how many members in the selection set?

;;;;;LOOP THROUGH THE SELECTION, GETTING POSITION INFO AND USING THIS TO
;;;;;SET THE INSERTION POINTS;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

(while (< count the_no_of_members)
(progn
 (setq en (ssname ss1 count))
 (setq edata (entget en))
 (setq theposn(cdr(assoc 10 edata)))
 (setq the_x (car theposn))
 (setq the_x ( - the_x 5))
 (setq the_y (cadr theposn))
 (setq rot (cdr (assoc 50 edata)))
 (if (eq rot 0)(setq the_tagy (+ the_y 4)))
 (if (/= rot 0)(setq the_tagy (- the_y 1.5)))
 (if (/= rot 0)(setq the_x ( + the_x 9)))
 (setq counts (itoa count))
 (if (eq rot 0)(setq the_tag (strcat "HV00" counts)))
 (if (/= rot 0)(setq the_tag (strcat "HV00" counts)))
(command "-insert" "tag" (list the_x the_tagy) "1" "1" "0" the_tag)

(setq count ( + count 1));add one to the counter to keep the loop going

);end while progn
);end while

(setvar "attdia" 1);turns on the dialog box you get when issuing ate commmand

(princ)
)William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-25924907754047637852012-03-30T00:28:00.004-07:002012-03-30T00:37:08.300-07:00Rough Visualising of ideasWe have a man at our work who has an infectious enthusiasm for new ways of creating electricity.

Much fun has been had proposing all sorts of wild schemes involving kites and so on. I have a digital camera that can take movies, so I decided to experiment with it to present one of my ideas. A patent search revealed some similar ideas, but not precisely this one. I'm not sure on the business with patents, but I think that seeing as this idea is now out in the wild, no one can patent it.

It would be nice if someone with a bit of money and enthusiasm picked it up and ran with it.

The idea is very simple. You have a series of windmills, held aloft by a balloon, but they are better than a similar size at ground level, because the winds are faster the higher you go.

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-60129037488243273872012-03-06T23:38:00.009-08:002012-03-07T00:11:47.512-08:00Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (PIDs)
Yes, again.

Just some added light. The above is a snip of one of my drawings using our new methods. We are in the process of trying to sort all our ones up to a reasonable standard, so I have had a talked with a man from Denmark I work with, and he has come up with some good ideas:

1. Tag numbers should have the form of AV007, or PM126, which would stand for Actuated Valve and Pump Motor respectively. The reason for the XX000 format is this allows for up to 100 items in the one area.

2. The temptation is to make PIDs based on an area, but it is better to make them on a process basis. This means a drawing could have a tank in one building with a pipe leading to another.
These processes would have an overall name, and number, which would be the drawing number.
So for instance you might have a drawing/file number like "PID-014-Carbonitation.dwg".
Therefore a tag in that drawing might be AV007, but it's true unique tag would be 014-AV007.

3. The idea is to keep the drawings as clutter free as possible, and to this end, arrows are not permitted, except if you are desperate! Also on the no-go list are temperatures, flow rates, motor kWs and other fluff. That fluff can go on the Flow Diagram or if need be a separate layout.

My ideas on the drafting are:

1. All text to be 1.5mm high. For mechanical drawings I use 2mm. Just need to squeeze that extra bit on!

2. All ordinary items (eg lines) to be on the med layer. I use the name med as short for medium line weight. I normally have this as set to yellow, but maybe if things needed to be printed in colour, then it might not be so clever. I have a colour ctb that prints yellow as black.

3. All viewports to be of scale 1:1.

4. All tag numbers to have their own layer, these layer sets are available in the template drawing and as a lisp routine to create the layer set. The reason for this is to be able to isolate the numbers so you can check them quickly to see if you have duplicated any.

5. Most of the symbols are to Iso standard 10628, in other words, a world standard.

6. The Tags to have their own block, which consists of the attribute only, no lines.

7. Instrument tags have their own circle and so on with two tags, as a dynamic block allowing the same block to be used in all 4 orientations. Handy when you want to extract data!

8. All items to be in model space. This allows for more than one layout, say for instance if you need one showing flow rates. The flow rates would end up in paper space.

I know people that use a grid to do PIDs, and I have tried this but found the whole process of turning snaps on and off all the time irritating.

My web page bilrocad.com was due to die about February 2012, but Blue Host, the provider, stayed the execution for another year, so I am going to try and make it a little more easy on the eye, as it looks very rough at the moment.

All this between getting another blog going for a Flying Boat (see the new link on the right)-
I have had a struggle getting the book reading bit going, but it is up and running now-see "A Noble Chance" on Friends of the Solent Flying Boat.William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-54388162010622317792012-01-02T00:34:00.001-08:002012-01-02T00:43:36.019-08:00Just a few renders...What you see here is the result of a bit of experimentation. With Autocad the trick is to make sure LIGHTINGUNITS is set to either 1 or 2 and that you have sky background and illumination selected. It also pays to open the Advanced Render settings and make sure Final Gather is ON. The foliage in the foreground was cut and pasted in afterwards in Photopaint.
No Sky needed in the night shot but it seems it stayed on anyway!

These are a friend's design, the first is a renovation of the front of an existing house and the second is a bachelor pad, to go in a large backyard. The first one has scorched weatherboards.
Apparently this protects the wood for about 80 years.

William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-14410943308515189372011-12-10T19:29:00.000-08:002011-12-12T18:16:38.252-08:00Sheetmetal developments and PIDs
This might be handy for some: How to make a flat sheet metal pattern from a 3D solid in Autocad?

Well, as far as I know, it does not do it out of the box, unlike Inventor or Solidworks. I do not have these so I have to manage somehow.

Normal transitions can be done using 3rd party programs that do that sort of thing. Unfortunately, these do not handle special cases like the round outlet being on an angle, as well as being offset.

Back to basics: just draw the object in 3D and draw a series of lines in 3D to represent the folds that you want. If your metal thickness is 3mm, you would offset everything in 1.5mm ie half, in from the outside of the finished product.

Sounds easy? It is. Sadly it is extremely time consuming and tiresome. This is where some Lispy tricks come in handy, and while it does not do the full job, it does help.

First, to draw a transition, draw a rectangle, then a circle somewhat higher. You then use the loft command to produce the 3d solid. Now it pays to change to a different layer and draw the midlines, ie those ones halfway in as mentioned above. So, for instance you would draw a rectangle on top of the original one and offset it by 1.5mm if your metal thickness was 3mm.
same for the circle. You may need to hide the original solid to get the offset command to work.

If your circle was parallel to the rectangle, you could now issue the divide command and pick the circle and divide it into 48 pieces. You will see that nothing appears to have happened after the divide command. This is now the time to change your OSNAP to endpoint, intersection and node. This last one is important because it will pick up all the nodes (points) that were put in and that you cannot see as yet.

Issue the line command and hover over parts of your circle- you should see the nodes light up as the mouse passes over them.

Draw in your development lines-this takes a while. Now you find out the length of the small arc,ie the bit between two of the nodes. This can be done by copying the circle and the nodes off a little bit an putting in some lines to the nodes and then trimming off the circle, leaving an arc.

Right click on the arc and select Properties, it will give you an arc length. Write this down.
Call it Length A.

Next, start on the development, usually handy to the 3D part so you can see both at the same time. The rectangular part edge is the best place to start. You will see that there is a triangle, and the lengths of the sides are easily found through their properties, so after drawing one side, draw two circles the radii of which are these lengths. Now draw two lines from each end of the original line to where the two circles cross. Erase the circles and you are now started.

To get the part that has all the little creases, you need to do the same again, but for one of the sides of the triangle you use length A as mentioned above. All the while you are building on the original triangle. Normally, a transition gets welded up the middle so normally half has to be drawn (or a quarter if it is symmetrical).

My lisp routine (available free if anyone is interested) allows you to pick the 3d line, then it draws a circle with the radius information from that line, which does speed things up a tiny bit.

A nice finishing touch is to put 0.5mm radius circles on every intersection around the circle and then trim them out so they appear as notches. This is so the sheetmetal guy does not have to divide them out - he just folds using the notches.

Next a bit on PIDs (Process and Instrumentation Diagrams)

If you have done any of these, you know 3 things:

1. Lines are nice to draw first, and blocks are ok to put in a drawing, but these ones always land on lines, so the inner bits have to be trimmed out.

2. There are lisp routines around that do autobreaking of the lines, but this has to be organised or downloaded or paid for. If, like me, you only do PIDs about 10% of the time, you might not bother. (Maybe I should!)

3. Autodesk make an add-on to Autocad, specifically to do PIDs. Unfortunately at NZ$3500 to upgrade from standard Autocad, and an extra NZ$300 a year this is not liable to be on the menu any time soon.

So along came one of my ideas that even I have my doubts will catch on: what if you could do a drawing just by pressing keys on your keyboard? Turns out you cannot use the arrow keys, but the rest of the keyboard is available, using a lisp routine (see below). Just issue the command PID, pick your start point, press the "o" key (make sure caps lock is OFF!) and up the line goes by 6mm. Press "l" key and off to the right it goes by 6mm. Now press 4 on the keypad-and a manual valve is inserted. Press 5 and an actuated valve is put in. "k" is to go left and "," is used to go down.

The routine uses the autcad lisp function grread - short for graphics read, which also does the keyboard. In my research trying to understand this I realised that my level of writing lisp is very low level and basic....Anyway, it does work. You could cut and paste the following code into notepad and save it as PID.lsp.

Whoops! Stop press....just tried the routine below at work and found that HP keyboards seem to have a different mapping right is 76, left is 75, up is 79. Strangely, down is still 44. Go figure.

Stop press yet again. Just realised that if you have caps lock on, then the above is the way to go.
If caps lock off, then the stuff below is OK!

;THIS DRAWS A LINE WITH VALVES FOR A PID

;BY BILL LE COUTEUR 2011
(defun C:PID()
(setq initial_point (getpoint "Pick a start Point\n"))
(setq the_x (car initial_point))
(setq the_y (cadr initial_point))

(print the_x)
(print the_y)

(while (setq the_input (grread 1 5 2))
(progn

(if (eq (car the_input) 2)
(progn
(setq key_press (cadr the_input))
(print the_input)
(print key_press)
(print initial_point)
(print the_new_point)

(if (eq key_press 108) ;to the right
(progn
(setq the_x_right ( + the_x 6))
(command "_line" (list the_x the_y) (list the_x_right the_y) "")
(setq the_orient "right")
(print "x,xright,y")
(print the_x)
(print the_x_right)
(print the_y)
(setq the_x ( + the_x 6))
);end 108 progn
);end 108 if

(if (eq key_press 107) ;to the left
(progn
(setq the_x_left ( - the_x 6))
(command "_line" (list the_x the_y) (list the_x_left the_y) "")
(setq the_orient "left")
(setq the_x ( - the_x 6))
);end 107 progn
);end 107 if

(if (eq key_press 111) ;up
(progn
(setq the_y_up ( + the_y 6))
(command "_line" (list the_x the_y) (list the_x the_y_up) "")
(setq the_orient "up")
(print "y,y-up,x")
(print the_y)
(print the_y_up)
(print the_x)
(setq the_y ( + the_y 6))
);end 111 progn
);end 111 if

(if (eq key_press 44) ;down
(progn
(setq the_y_down ( - the_y 6))
(command "_line" (list the_x the_y) (list the_x the_y_down) "")
(setq the_orient "down")
(setq the_y ( - the_y 6))
);end 44 progn
);end 44 if

;--------------------INSERTING VALVE MANUAL-----------------------------

(if (and (eq key_press 52) (eq the_orient "right")) ;valve manual to the right
(progn
(command "-insert" "vmr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( + the_x 6))
);end 52 progn
);end 52 if

(if (and (eq key_press 52) (eq the_orient "left")) ;valve manual to the left
(progn
(command "-insert" "vml" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( - the_x 6))
);end 52 progn
);end 52 if

(if (and (eq key_press 52) (eq the_orient "up")) ;valve manual to the up
(progn
(command "-insert" "vmr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "90")
(setq the_Y ( + the_Y 6))
);end 52 progn
);end 52 if

(if (and (eq key_press 52) (eq the_orient "down")) ;valve manual to the down
(progn
(command "-insert" "vmr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "-90")
(setq the_Y ( - the_Y 6))
);end 52 progn
);end 52 if

;--------------------END OF INSERTING VALVE MANUAL-----------------------------

;--------------------INSERTING NON-RETUN VALVE FORWARD -----------------------------

(if (and (eq key_press 49) (eq the_orient "right")) ;to the right
(progn
(command "-insert" "VNFR" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( + the_x 6))
);end 49 progn
);end 49 if

(if (and (eq key_press 49) (eq the_orient "left")) ;to the left
(progn
(command "-insert" "VNFL" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( - the_x 6))
);end 49 progn
);end 49 if

(if (and (eq key_press 49) (eq the_orient "up")) ; to the up
(progn
(command "-insert" "VNFR" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "90")
(setq the_Y ( + the_Y 6))
);end 49 progn
);end 49 if

(if (and (eq key_press 49) (eq the_orient "down")) ; to the down
(progn
(command "-insert" "VNFR" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "-90")
(setq the_Y ( - the_Y 6))
);end 49 progn
);end 49 if

;--------------------END OF INSERTING VALVE MANUAL-----------------------------

;--------------------INSERTING VALVE ACTUATED-----------------------------

(if (and (eq key_press 53) (eq the_orient "right")) ;valve to the right
(progn
(command "-insert" "var" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( + the_x 6))
);end 53 progn
);end 53 if

(if (and (eq key_press 53) (eq the_orient "left")) ;valve to the left
(progn
(command "-insert" "val" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( - the_x 6))
);end 53 progn
);end 53 if

(if (and (eq key_press 53) (eq the_orient "up")) ;valve to the up
(progn
(command "-insert" "var" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "90")
(setq the_Y ( + the_Y 6))
);end 53 progn
);end 53 if

(if (and (eq key_press 53) (eq the_orient "down")) ;valve to the down
(progn
(command "-insert" "var" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "-90")
(setq the_Y ( - the_Y 6))
);end 53 progn
);end 53 if

;--------------------END OF INSERTING VALVE ACTUATED-----------------------------

;--------------------INSERTING VALVE CONTROL-----------------------------

(if (and (eq key_press 54) (eq the_orient "right")) ;valve to the right
(progn
(command "-insert" "vcr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( + the_x 6))
);end 54 progn
);end 54 if

(if (and (eq key_press 54) (eq the_orient "left")) ;valve to the left
(progn
(command "-insert" "vcl" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "0")
(setq the_x ( - the_x 6))
);end 54 progn
);end 54 if

(if (and (eq key_press 54) (eq the_orient "up")) ;valve to the up
(progn
(command "-insert" "vcr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "90")
(setq the_Y ( + the_Y 6))
);end 54 progn
);end 54 if

(if (and (eq key_press 54) (eq the_orient "down")) ;valve to the down
(progn
(command "-insert" "vcr" (list the_x the_y) "1" "1" "-90")
(setq the_Y ( - the_Y 6))
);end 54 progn
);end 54 if

;--------------------END OF INSERTING VALVE CONTROL-----------------------------

);end if progn
);end if

);end progn

);end while

);end funcWilliam Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-74529692425571964752011-10-08T19:24:00.001-07:002011-10-08T19:30:23.803-07:00Revit Spark

A while back I found that you could download a copy of a thing called SPARK.
This is a possible release of a different type of Revit.

The download is from: http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/spark/

You can check Robin Capper's blog opinion at http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/,
look for 13th September 2011.

It is free to download and will last till 7th July 2012.

I would call it Revit LT, ie "Low Technology"? or LITE?
(As Tim would say, you are able to draft lots on LT because it is "Lite")

Someone has suggested I write up my experiences with it.
I have had experience with Autocad Architecture, so thought it might be
interesting to give it a try.

At the outset, I have to say that leaping straight in is not the ideal
way to approach learning a new program. I found lot's of frustrations that
would not have happened if I had learned in a classroom situation.
I have given Revit a go before about a year ago, so the user interface was
familiar and I had a small project a friend had started using 2D Autocad.

The project is to take a standard house and put a basement rumpus room
in it. The drawings are not perfect(!?...are they ever?) and are in a very
preliminary stage.

The things I found most wanting were: (unless I'm missing something!)

1. No ability to be in 3D of the level you are editing. Sure, you can
make a 3D view and fiddle around for ages with that, but that is a
separate view. This compares very badly with Autocad Architecture, which
allows you to do an instant 3D view of the level you are editing,
and whats more, get a perspective view in an instant.

2. The supply of windows and doors seemed a little poor. I guess I could
create my own families, but that feels like a bit of a mission. For instance,
I wanted bifolds, 4 off, on the front part. Not there.... So mangled a curtain
wall to fill it in.

As with Autocad, it is a lot of knowing where to find things....William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-9770809310043154982011-09-24T21:27:00.000-07:002011-09-24T21:36:28.907-07:00Just a Simple Door

A friend of mine has a joinery shop. It seems sometimes he gets a job where an architectural style of door is needed. He mentioned how it was a bit of calculator bashing to work out the plank widths and how many planks etc. Previously, I had investigated doing Autocad scripts generated from an excel visual basic macro, so I thought, what good waste of my time this might be!

It was quite surprising to me that it was quite tricky to work out, and compromises had to be made-for instance the gap had to be specified, not calculated, then all the tricky stuff with decimal points and integers etc.

The resulting script draws it in 3D.William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-17193653166522915202011-08-14T00:56:00.000-07:002011-08-14T01:23:57.038-07:00Autocad and pipingJust had a look on Youtube at a demo of Autodesk's Plant 3D which I guess is an add-on to Autocad. It looks easy to use and produces things like isometric drawings with bills of materials.
From the short demo, I came away quite impressed. You can see one of the videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gokkAr0Lc2I

It makes my home grown approach to piping look a little crude and backward. If you want a look at how I do this, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZsVUjbRWO4

Having said this, I could imagine how hard it would be to persuade decision makers at my work that this would be a good way to go, probably because my work about 20% piping. Well, I can dream can't I?

Even if I were certain that this was the way to go, there would be a nagging doubt that maybe other products such as Revit MEP might be the clever way.....

So, back to Youtube and what do you know? Here is a demo of Revit MEP,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sf_b_Wes2s

To me, it looked like a lot of button pressing for not much result. So here is a puzzle: Autodesk make and sell both products.....why?

I don't want to be seen as a Revit basher here, because as I understand it, a lot of quite clued up people think that Revit is the way to go for drawings of buildings, so maybe I'm missing something.

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-80535683470545223092011-04-22T14:40:00.000-07:002011-04-26T03:32:41.971-07:00Acad.patA co-worker who uses Autocad LT to do his electrical drawings recently said he could not open one of my drawings, because I had saved it as R2010. I had recently been upgraded from Autocad R2008 to R2010, so I said:

"I believe you may be able to upgrade to the R2010 version".

Which he did, which in hindsight was not the best plan, as after installing he wanted to use the hatch command, and got a dialog saying:

"Cannot find acadlt.pat"

Which is fine: All you have to do is go Options, File Locations, and add where it is to your support path. Unfortunately, on the network, we are mere users and are not allowed access to our c: drive.

The IT man was duly called, and progress is on going...involving reimaging and so on.

Which made me think, why can you not get a copy off the internet, download it, stick it somewhere where you are allowed to go and add that location to your support listing?

Strangely enough, I was not able to find a copy of acad.pat anywhere!

Of course there were heaps of people giving out add-ons to the file, but not the file itself.

So here I am, Saturday morning of the 23rd of April, rummaging around my hard drive for the mysterious file. (Mad? Yes!). You can open it up in Notepad and check it out.

Here is part of it:

;;
;; Copyright (C) 1991-2011 by Autodesk, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
;; Version 2.0
;; AutoCAD Hatch Patterns
;;
;;
;; Note: in order to ease migration of this file when upgrading
;; to a future version of AutoCAD, it is recommended that you add
;; your customizations to the User Defined Hatch Patterns section at the
;; end of this file.
;;

;; Note: Dummy pattern description used for 'Solid fill'.
*SOLID, Solid fill
45, 0,0, 0,.125
*ANGLE, Angle steel
0, 0,0, 0,.275, .2,-.075
90, 0,0, 0,.275, .2,-.075
*ANSI31, ANSI Iron, Brick, Stone masonry
45, 0,0, 0,.125

It does go on for quite a bit more, as I have Autocad Architecture, then towards then end it has this bit:

;; User Defined Hatch Patterns
;; Add any hatch patterns that you define to this section of
;; the file to ensure that they migrate properly when
;; upgrading to a future AutoCAD version. If duplicate hatch
;; patterns are found in this file, items in the User Defined
;; Hatch Patterns section take precedence over patterns that
;; appear earlier in the file.
;;

I find it puzzling as to why the file is called acadlt.pat for LT, but maybe they are given less hatches out of the box.

STOP PRESS! According to Robin, a good plan is to run Autocad first time WITH ADMINISTRATOR RIGHTS! Should I tell the IT man?......William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-49638696844367537812011-04-02T01:13:00.000-07:002011-04-02T01:53:14.917-07:00Autocad 2012 - 3dconfig

Well, here we go again, with another release of Autocad.

A quick verdict:

1. It seems nice to use, quick and responsive.

2. No new killer features, except that the section command seems to be doing what it should have done in R2007. Namely the colour of the cut lines seems to be OK now.
To me that is almost worth the upgrade.

3. The nicest thing I like is the display. I have an old quadro fx1500 video card and after updating the video driver, I used 3dconfig to enable hardware acceleration. At first I had rotten results, but after setting it to only have Gooch hardware shader, I found it performed a lot better.
The point is here that you need to update your video driver with a new version, and set it's usage to be not too overtaxing.

4. It has a lot of other stuff that I probably would not use, but I have to concede that my usage is not everyones! Things like 3d parametric arrays and so on.

5. Rendering seems a lot better.

6. As usual, a small upgrade, but all these small things add up over the years to make things a little easier. For instance hatching.

7. A little easy to miss is a new system for views-there is a new bit of text in the top left corner to select views, and visual styles. This comes under the heading of old dogs and new tricks.....woof.

It seems there is more and more stuff with each release. It shows up in the file size of the download (I don't bother with discs any more). It was a 1.4GB download.
Back in 2002, it seemed to fit on a cd.

I had a bit of fun installing: It seemed Nortons noticed a good time to do a background scan, which froze things up a bit. Never mind, do a "restore point". That failed as well, and I was just considering dealing to the whole hard drive, when I tried again and it seemed OK. This time, I hovered around and pounced on Nortons as soon as it came up and killed it off.

The picture of the house I did in Autocad Architecture 2011 as a concept for a friend, which shows what gooch shading looks like.

If you want a quick roundup of all the features, nicely presented, go see:
http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/acadblog/autocad-2012-new-features/
William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-75981863217026808162011-01-06T22:56:00.000-08:002011-01-06T23:07:51.280-08:00Last Post for a While

A New Year's Resolution...haul back on the blogging and do something more useful.

Probably something to do with not a lot of feedback.

This post is about a porch roof I designed. My wife requested a cover over our front door so you don't have to get wet when it rains...it rains lots in Auckland. My original idea was a repeat of the roof nearby,ie tiles, rafters etc.

Then I saw one a friend had done: Just a sheet of glass held up by steel brackets.

Just to be competitive I designed a similar one, but this one used stainless steel. Originally, I chose 40 x 5 flat bars as the material, but the look was not all that "architectural", so I redesigned it to use a profile cut shape as the support part.

William Le Couteurhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-51256696895845525882010-12-29T14:55:00.000-08:002010-12-29T15:11:50.902-08:00Why getting into Architectural Drafting might not be a good idea....

You may not agree with this, but give Autodesk's new Homestyler a try out.

I have tried out previous attempts by Autodesk to do this sort of thing, but this is way out in front as far as usability and so on.

It's primary function seems to be for interior layouts and it is is very good at these. Outdoor layouts are catered for as well, but it appears a pretty flat world out there.

I could see my friends computer-phobic wife getting onto this and producing a kitchen or two.

In the pic, I just slammed in some furniture and hit the render button, and it produced a fairly good render.

There are some things it does not seem to do:

1. Allow you to make your own content.

2. The window content is a little sparse as yet, but might grow.

What this shows is the shape of things to come: The tools of designers will become so effortless to use, that anyone can produce drawings. The new job of architect might then become what it should be: a dreamer, artist etc.

I'm still waiting for something similar to come along for mechanical drafting.....

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=14943677
William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485234105552604288.post-63830031017906325002010-12-18T12:28:00.000-08:002010-12-18T13:05:47.797-08:00Yet another Golden Rule broken....againWhat Golden Rule? The one that says:

"If you draw everything, then there is less surprises in store for you!"

Recently, I had to draw a simple platform next to a dust extractor. The purpose of the platform was to enable maintenance persons to get access to Stuvex bottles. These bottles are an anti-explosion device and as far as I know, sense and explosion and release some sort of dampening gas so the explosion is nullified.

Just to make life complicated, it was located up alongside an old wall, which had pipes, electrical trunking and so on either side of a corrugated iron wall. I have found out the hard way, that it is easy for a draftsman to say- "This pipe will be in the way....it will have to be moved." "Yeah, but, where to?!" Easier drawn than done it appears.

The platform ended up being on 2 levels, and the lower one looked fine in the plan view: Yes, fine until you asked yourself: How to get it in that place? Fortunately, the man on the job is highly intelligent and made it bolted so it would fit in. Except there was a brace, not drawn, apparently in the way. Not a big deal, it can be relocated, but to have noted this on the drawing would have saved drafting embarrasment.

Which highlights a problem found often in drafting: You need to bash together a concept drawing, and then go through numerous changes to the design before it solidifies. By the time that happens, you are quite convinced that your drawing is accurate and wonderful.

At this point the thing to do is kick your own butt out onto the site and site check your critical dimensions. I do this now by forcing myself to put these dimensions on the drawings and putting heavy boxes around critical dimensions.

I guess the lesson I'm slowly learning here is that the initial site measuring should be thorough and accurate and not to trust old drawings, even ones that were done by yourself.

Finally, a quote sent to me that seems on the nail:

"We moderns have managed to combine an incredible mastery of technical knowledge and information with an astonishing ignorance of the traditional wisdom once possessed by an illiterate village elder, and evident for all to see on every page of history.

Spend more than you earn and you'll go broke.

Give someone something for nothing, and he'll soon expect something for nothing on a regular basis.

Fail to hold people accountable for their bad behavior, and they'll continue to act badly.

Give people an excuse to fail, and they're more likely to fail.

Let aggression go unpunished, and you'll get more aggression."

-Bruce S. Thornton

The guy who sent me this one made the following suggestion:

(except substitute 'we moderns' with 'dimwitted lefties')William Le Couteurhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Fox Two Stroke Pullover Hoodie
Take the first place spot everytime with the Two Stroke Pullover Hoodie by Fox. This racing-inspired hoodie features long sleeves, a fleece-lined interior, a kangaroo pocket, a contrast-lined hood with drawstrings, and a bold Fox graphic on the front.
- Black and red pullover hoodie
- Fox graphic on front
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Attorney H. Mark Mersel Has Achieved The AV Preeminent® Rating - The Highest Possible Rating From Martindale-Hubbell®
H. Mark Mersel , a lawyer based in Irvine , California whose primary areas of practice are Commercial Litigation, Real Estate Litigation and Bankruptcy, has earned the AV Preeminent ® rating from Martindale-Hubbell ®IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Martindale-Hubbell, a division of LexisNexis ®, has confirmed that attorney H. Mark Mersel , a partner of Bryan Cave LLP, still maintains the AV Preeminent Rating, Martindale-Hubbell's highest possible rating for both ethical standards and legal ability, even after first achieving this rating in 2005. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130130/DC51330) For more than 130 years, lawyers have relied on the Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent ® rating while searching for their own expert attorneys. Now anyone can make use of this trusted rating by looking up a lawyer's rating on Lawyers.com or martindale.com. The Martindale-Hubbell ® AV Preeminent ® rating is the highest possible rating for an attorney for both ethical standards and legal ability. This rating represents the pinnacle of professional excellence. It is achieved only after an attorney has been reviewed and recommended by their peers - members of the bar and the judiciary. Congratulations go to H. Mark Mersel who has achieved the AV Preeminent ® Rating from Martindale-Hubbell ®. H. Mark Mersel commented on the recognition: "I am thankful to my peers who nominated me for this distinction, and proud to have earned this, the highest possible Martindale-Hubbell rating." The plaque shown here commemorates H. Mark Mersel's recognition. To find out more or to contact H. Mark Mersel at Bryan Cave LLP, call 949-223-7160, or visit www.bryancave.com. As a result of this honor, American Registry LLC, has added H. Mark Mersel to The Registry™ of Business and Professional Excellence. For more information, search The Registry™ at http://www.americanregistry.com. This press release was written by American Registry, LLC, with approval by Martindale-Hubbell as well as approval and/or contributions from H. Mark Mersel ; it was distributed by PR Newswire, a subsidiary of UBM plc. Contact Information: H. Mark Mersel Phone: 949-223-7160 Email Address: email@example.com Website: www.bryancave.com SOURCE American Registry
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It used to just be when I was turning from side to side in bed and when I first get out of bed. But now it's almost constant.
Any advice would be appreciated. Not sure how I will handle 8 more weeks of this (I will have a csection at 39 weeks if not sooner)


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Host a School Fundraiser
A dedicated high school student created the "Change for Haiti" program at grammar schools and high schools throughout her region. This stellar student spent the summer revamping her program so that students across the country could adapt it for their schools. The toolkit and power point presentation below details the program and how you can get involved in your area. If you are interested in learning more about this, or other fundraising opportunities, please contact Diana Green at (574) 631-6055 or email@example.com.


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Apr 23, 2014
CAIRO [MENL] -- Egypt has determined that Muslim Brotherhood fighters werereceiving weapons and combat training in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Mar 31, 2014
CAIRO [MENL] -- Egypt has been constructing a security barrier in theturbulent Sinai Peninsula.
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CAIRO [MENL] -- Egypt's intelligence community has determined that MuslimBrotherhood commanders were establishing a haven in neighboring Sudan.
Feb 18, 2014
MOSCOW [MENL] -- Egypt and Russia were said to have signed a $3 billiondefense deal that would renew Russian fighter-jet deliveries to the Arabpower.


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I'm going to level with you: When we thought this blog post up, we figured it would just be a collection of cheesehead tailgating photos in which we made fun of white, Midwestern looking schmucks wearing Aaron Rodgers jerseys. But now, writing this in the aftermath of the actual "game," I only feel sorry for these poor bastards (even the guy in the Packers superhero costume, believe it or not). It's hard to make fun of folks you just blatantly robbed.
*See also: PHOTOS: 10 Questionable Seahawks Tattoos
These victimized Packers fans, despite their irritating headwear and even more irritating tendency to fill opposing teams' stadiums with Kirkland brand jeans and shop-teacher mustaches, didn't deserve what happened during the game last night. It was embarrassing.
Some of these people, presumably, are even from Wisconsin ... meaning they got on a plane, or in a bus, or in a car, or on a big rolling wheel of cheese, and traveled all the way to Seattle - only to have their dreams dashed by incompetent replacement refs, and more specifically a greedy, arrogant league that thinks it doesn't matter.
Hopefully it does matter. Hopefully the league has caved and the real refs have been brought back by the time you read this. No one deserves what happened last night. Not even Packers fans.
Shit, not even Raiders fans deserve that.
Because we have them, here are the photos that Intern Kyle Houk took of Packers fans before last night's game. Unlike Pete Carroll, we won't pump our fist in victory too hard. We'll just show you the pictures.
Notice the smiles on these white, Midwestern faces. That's because, as noted, these photos were taken BEFORE last night's game.
If you seen any of these people on the street today, it might be nice to apologize. They got screwed last night.
Kyle Houk He wants to curse at the replacement refs all night, and piss on Roger Goodell everyday.
The photos continue on the following page ...
Kyle Houk They might be a little douchey, but they didn't deserve this. Kyle Houk Packers fans puked up a lot of bratwurst last night. Kyle Houk Even these girls in mustaches were pissed after last night's game.
The photos continue on the following page ...
Kyle Houk It's hard to feel bad for this guy, but believe it or not I do. Kyle Houk These are good, honest, hot-dog-eating Americans who got screwed last night. Kyle Houk True story: These dudes drove home in silence.
The photos continue on the following page ...
Kyle Houk These guys just sobbed. Kyle Houk Have you ever seen a green beard run with tears? This little boy has ... after last night's game. Kyle Houk Take a good look at your victims, Roger Goodell.
The photos continue on the following page ...
Kyle Houk I have more faith in this guy's judgement than the replacement refs'.


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so we just found out our two yr old has a milk allergy when we found out one of our three month old twins has a milk allergy. this question doesn't concern the three month old yet, but does anyone know of a non dairy butter, homemade or bought, besides margarine? we love baking in our house but our son rarel gets to enjoy anything. thanks!!
milk allergy
Posted 07/22/2014
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To coincide with the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Zola's Rougon-Macquart saga, Eileen Horne, author of Zola and the Victoirans, sheds light on story of the English publisher who dared to bring the works of Emile Zola to a Victorian audience, and paid a heavy price.
Join in with May the Fourth Be With You celebrations with our Birmingham bookseller Matt's pick of his favourite Star Wars books.
We share a recipe from Sabrina Ghayour's new book Sirocco, as part of our Cokbook Confidential series.


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I have a SCH (aka "bleed") so I had light-brown spotting here & there up until about 9 weeks... I will be 12 weeks on Thursday & have had none since until last night.Ā It was still brown (not red thankfully) but MUCH darker & instead of being just a color tint to my discharge it covered my underwear, which obviously had me a little freaked!!
I hate to be that woman who calls my OB with everything as this is my 3rd pregnancy... But, if something is up I want them to know at least.
Are there any other moms on here with a SCH that know what or how much bleeding is "normal"?


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xDadx's Mom Answers Activity
I want to have sex but my husband don't.... i don't know what to do?
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I'm sorry that you too are having to go through this. I understand the man's perspective and my husband and I had the talk months...posted by dream_3_weaver
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I am so hurt by some of the men's answers. :-( I am six months pregnant and I don't think I want to have this baby any more. I ...posted by a BabyCenter Member


text: Serving Size: 2 Prep Time: 10 mins Your Rating: Login to rate this recipe. Print Recipe Ingredients 2 apples, peeled and chopped 4 pitted medjool dates, soaked dash on cinnamon powder Instructions In food processor, process half of the apples and all the dates until smooth. Add the remaining apples and the cinnamon, and process until smooth. Applesauce will keep for 3 days in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Have a better photo? Please send it to us: contact123 (at) happycow.net 1 comment nucat mostly-vegetarian Contributions +7 Posted on 06 / 16 / 2012 report abuse would you send me vanilla frosting recipe without vegetable shortening with apple sauce please. thanks for your sharings. Login to leave comments about 'Apple Sauce' Comments are not endorsed by HappyCow. terms / report abuse Back to the Main Page