Archive for Hardware

DWG to Play Nice with WAN Guys

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. In what can only be seen a a complete refusal of Autodesk to listen to my completely narrow and unfounded business advice, they’re changing the dwg format to play along with the WAN guys. You can read the InfoWorld article here. (Exclusive? Come on, Eric, we’ve had cocktails at AU! Hook a brother up!)

It makes sense in light of the upcoming format change, but I wonder if this means that Autodesk will now kowtow to the graphic card and plotter vendors when the new versions break something in those systems. In my opinion, it’s a slippery slope, and generally says that the WAN accelerator market (or at least the big fat subscription customers running them,) is more powerful than many considered. Good for them I guess.

Considering this is still a year away, anyone taking bets that Riverbed and Silver Peak put the kibosh on sales to AEC firms? Me neither.

We’ll be watching this story continue to develop, it’s a good one.

Many thanks to Rizzo and others that sent this over.

Hey WAN Guys! Pony up.

I’m hereby offering to test in a controlled environment any network WAN accelerator that will agree to the test. You can have your guy on site, you can tweak and config based on what I throw, but you won’t know what I’m throwing until the day of the tests (hell, I probably won’t either.) Interested, gentlemen? Then read on. Read more

The Love is Over: Civil 3D and Riverbed

In a bit of a surprising move, Riverbed essentially hung Autodesk out to dry with a conference call and webcast pointing the finger directly at Autodesk for issues with Riverbed hardware and 2007 format DWG files. You can view the webinar here, and download the PDF they released here.

It seems that Riverbed has been catching a lot of heat from users complaining about the lack of updates and functionality. It’s not unusual for developers to point the fingers at each other during a support call chase, but to air the laundry in public points to a breakdown in communication between the two parties. Based on casual inquiries, and out own attempts to get definitive answers on this subject over the years, it doesn’t seem that chatter was ever as open as it should be. For Riverbed, a company that made the AEC industry its bread and butter, this smacks of a desperate attempt to deflect some heat.

Edit: Someone pointed out that I’d given some serious love to Riverbed just over a year ago in this post. I did. I think they’re marvelous tools. Here’s the problem with that older post: the test was done with Inventor. Inventor doesn’t use dwg files. Damnit, that means all bets are off.

Have a Riverbed? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

Christmas Presents for Your Firm?

Another one of those things that I love is a good present. While these aren’t the sort of things you normally pick up to shove in the stocking, an engineering firm I know has recently upgraded their office WAN connection to 100Mb. Don’t ask me how, call AT&T.

So, with that said, they have some sweet hardware sitting on the shelf:

  • 2 Riverbed Steelheads 1010
  • Barracuda Spam Firewall 200
  • Watchguard Firebox 500
  • Cisco 2600 Router

If you’re interested, let me know, james.wedding@ this domain.

Graphics Cards for Civil 3D: Rule of Thumb

I spec’ed out my new desktop a few weeks ago. Every day, a package has arrived and been
stacked on my table.

Finally, today, the UPS website let me know that the last piece was to arrive today- the motherboard.

I raced home through Hurricane Whoever to meet Mr. Brown at the door
before he left me a “Sorry We Missed You” slip and left me in the rain without a computer
to build until Tuesday.

Since my husband is one of these “Never Trust Intel” type guys, we have always built our own machines, and he has very particular rules about where and what to buy. This time, we almost had to seek couples therapy over the video card.

My husband swore that a gamer card would be good enough, but I did my homework and I
decided that in order to be a good member of the Autodesk extended family, and to
prevent any possible issues, I needed one of the Certified Cards Autodesk Certified Cards

Basically, it boils down to this:

Your Graphics Card should cost at least as much as your first car.

In 1996, I paid $400 for a 1983 Mazda GLC with no paint.

My graphics card, an ATI FireGL V5200 set me back $479.99

So I’m good. How about you?