Archive for Hardware

2011 Hardware Advice from My Buddy Matt Stachoni

Over the past couple of weeks as people have realized what a game changer C3D-64 could be, they’ve started looking at the absolute dogs in their office, and a couple have asked me what I’d recommend for new systems. Confession, I’m not a hardware wonk. Haven’t been a chipset junkie ever, barely was a processor guy, and only vaguely give a fig about the graphics card; as long as the job’s getting done, I’m happy. The only hardware that generally gets me going has an apple on it, and that’s not really what I want to tell people as a stock C3D workstation.

One of the caveats of being a consultant is valuing other consultants. Know what you don’t know, that sort of thing. When I need to know hardware, I ping my buddy Matt. Matt was part of the old T5 back in the day, might still be for all I know, and Matt’s a hardware wonk. So, what’s Matt buying these days? Make the jump to find out.

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Give your mouse some energy.

This is one of those “I never realized” or more like a “duh” moment that I just experienced and thought I’d share since it’s a quick informational post.  I promise my next post will be more insightful to those that will be thinking to themselves “duh”, Jonathan’s an idiot, (which of course is well deserved at this moment).  But maybe, just maybe, someone will check their batteries to their optical mouse, before they call their CAD Manager or IT Administrator and harass them about why their Civil 3D is hesitating.  Yep, that’s it.  For a few weeks now, I’ve been noticing much slower zooms using my mouse wheel along with delays in double clicking to edit something.  I just figured since I’m working on some big data sets with aerial images that my computer is slowing down.  Well, today my mouse completely died on me.  I put a new battery in and Voila!  No hesitation in any clicks or mouse movements within Civil 3D.

John Evans-Why should I buy a CAD card?

I’m linking to his site instead of the PDF directly, but over on Civil to Inventor, John links to the latest issue of AUGI world where he’s got a real gem of an article. “Why should I buy a CAD card?” runs through all the usual arguments and gets to the bottom of what I consider to be a lot of graphics cards myths. I wish he’d shown price tags in his chart, or done a bang for the buck comparison somehow, but it’s good stuff.

New Computer, Windows 7, and an Interview with Peter Funk

My recent hiatus from the blogworld is due to being in-between computers. My new laptop just came in last week and I am so excited!! However, with a build it is always scary to know if what you are building is just right for Civil3D.

So follow along as I interview Peter Funk – Autodesk’s Civil 3D Product Manager – about new computer builds and especially his passion for Windows 7. Afterward, we will see how well I did with my build.

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Contours as Artwork and Housewares

OK, so it’s not really C3D related, but it’s at least field related. Fluidforms out of Austria, has what I think might be the first ever bowl with land development appeal. Based on a Google Map, satellite data, and your own settings for the exaggeration, etc., you get to design your own bowl. While I couldn’t get the pricing or modeling links to work, perhaps you can. There’s also a German version of the site, so perhaps one of our European readers could help me out and send me the link to the builder? I really want to see my neighborhood done up like this!

Edit: It’s all about shockwave. I managed to get it loaded on my VM, and I’m really impressed. Not sure I’m 230Euro impressed just yet, but what a cool merge of tech and craft and all that jazz. JW