That probably won’t happen for a while, but still, as Shaan Hurley pointed out, there are ways to run AutoCAD on your Apple hardware. He said, “Apple Bootcamp runs AutoCAD much faster but there is a downside in that you have to boot to it. Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion can run AutoCAD on the OSX desktop in a window.”

I’m glad there are ways to run Autodesk products on a Mac, but in my opinion, it’s going to be a wonderful day when AutoCAD runs natively on Mac OSX. I hope that day comes soon.

The party that took place the evening of day 3 was incredible. There was a lot of entertainment, good food, and beer. I really enjoyed watching people do bungee jumping on a trampoline. Good times!

Don't drink before trying this.

Towards the end of the night they held the Design Slam finals powered by Cut&Paste. It was really cool watching top-notch designers creating designs on the fly. Below I posted pictures of 3D models being created from scratch. The designers had 20 minutes to create a “timepiece of the future.”

#AU2008

What a day it has been! I took classes that gave in-depth instructions on developing pipe structures in Civil 3D, utilizing Map 3D to make drafting easier, editing pipe networks in LandXML, and setting up an multi-user project in Civil 3D without Vault.

But of course I have to tell you about my favorite class…

My favorite class today was titled The Secrets of Cutting Plan and Profile Sheets in AutoCAD Civil 3D taught by Michelle Rasmussen. When Michelle started the class, she put up a slide right away that said, “Efficiency is intelligent laziness – Anonymous.” Wow! Good way to say it. That is exactly what I believe. Throughout the presentation she emphasized the fact that she is lazy and always tries to find the easiest, quickest way to get stuff done. I love it.

The secret to cutting plan and profile sheets in Civil 3D is in the template. Setup your template correctly and you can use it over and over again on various projects. I plan on taking what I’ve learned and applying it back at the office. Some neat things Civil 3D can do for you are:

• Use different profile grids for the design (model space) and plotting (paper space).
• North arrows inserted in paper space can automatically be rotated to match the plan view rotation angle.
• Match lines and text can be customized and formatted in many ways.
• Views can be rotated automatically to align with the alignment.
• And so much more…

So as you can see, these classes are full of really great information that you can take and apply back at the office.

I plan on posting a few tricks that I picked up at AU in the coming days. There is so much to process this week but after it’s all over I will do some experimenting with some cool tools and blog about what I discover.

#AU2008

P.S.
I am looking forward to the AU party and the Design Slam finals tonight.

Here are a few pictures of conceptual designs created with Autodesk products:

RoboCoaster

Building model "printed" in 3D.

Crysler Super Bee concept car model.

Full-size "printed" 3d model of a motorcycle.

Video of the motorcycle being raised (by Scott Sheppard):

I was especially impressed with how AUGI supports the international community. There were a lot of booths for nations around the world at the International Community Pavilion.

Large world map near International Community Pavilion.

Today I took classes on Map 3D, Civil 3D Pipes, and Dynamic Blocks. Those classes were really good but my favorite class today was Painless Productivity Programming with the AutoCAD Action Recorder – Revealed! taught by Matt Murphy. The Action Recorder empowers the average user to start creating custom routines, or commands, to speed up their work. I could have used a tool like this years ago.

Matt mentioned that if a user is comfortable programming with AutoLISP, VBA, macros, and scripts, the Action Recorder may not be all that useful to them because it is a very simple and limited tool for creating custom commands. It was developed for the user that has no programming experience at all. After taking the class and playing with the Action Recorder for a while, I concluded that I will probably continue to create scripts and macros most of the time because they allow for more functionality than Actions, but there may be times when the Action Recorder will be useful. For example, if you have a simple repetitive task, you can create an Action a lot quicker than it takes to create a script or macro because the Action Recorder is very intuitive. But it does have limitations and it doesn’t fully replace the existing programming tools built into AutoCAD.

In the evening I attended the AUGI “Beer Bust” held in the Exhibition Hall. Good food. Good beer. Thanks AUGI!

#AU2008

Keep up with day-to-day happenings at AU Daily.

Today I took classes on Civil 3D Pipes & Labels, hydrology & hydrolics, and AutoLISP basics. The two classes I especially enjoyed today were Getting the Most of Piping in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009 and AutoLISP for CAD Managers. Both those classes were very inspiring. The speakers were innovative and encouraged people to be innovative as well.

In AutoLISP for CAD Managers, Robert Green talked about finding shortcuts and easy ways to accomplish things using AutoLISP. He said, “Be Lazy. Absolutely.” When he said that, I thought, “I really like this guy.”

In the class titled Getting the Most of Piping in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009, Leo Lavayen and Josh Famer demonstrated using the Pipe tools in Civil 3D for things they were not necessarily designed to be used for – pressure pipes. Josh said, “It’s not about what we can & can’t do with the software. It’s about what we can make happen.”

Later on in the afternoon, I attended the “Blogger Social” and met Shaan Hurley and other fellow bloggers. It was nice to put faces to names. One of my favorite parts was when I introduced myself to Matthew Anderson from Civil 3D.com, he lit up and said, “Hey, I follow you on Twitter!”

Autodesk University has been a really positive experience and I am looking forward to what the rest of the week has to offer.

#AU2008

Keep up with me on Twitter…

According to their website, one of their directives “is to deliver the voice of the user community to Autodesk, thus assisting Autodesk in product development and giving users a say in the process.”

The reason I mention all of this is because AUGI is now collecting wishes for AutoCAD. If you want to see the software improved, you can have a voice through AUGI.

Submit your wish…

I want to let you know that I am not a programmer. Yes, I can dig through a LISP and modify it for my needs, but I really don’t have all the time in the world to learn how to program complex LISP routines. Maybe someday I’ll learn. But for now, I use the resources available in AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Map 3D, Microsoft Notepad, Microsoft Excel, and on the Internet to make drafting easier and more efficient. This includes writing macros, modifying LISP routines freely available on the Internet, manipulating data with Map 3D, creating scripts with Microsoft Notepad and Microsoft Excel, and sometimes using all these resources together to get the job done quickly.

If this kind of stuff sounds complicated to you, let me reassure you – it’s not. It’s just a matter of thinking outside the box and I want to show you what “outside the box” looks like. Come along with me – I’ll show you.