It is now Sunday, two days after the end of the Autodesk University conference and I am getting ready to head to the airport. A while back when I made the arrangements for my trip to AU I decided to stay until Sunday morning so that I could go hit the tables, see a show and not interfere with any of the other AU events or classes.
During a few of my classes there were some web links discussed for finding more support, or specific things on peoples blog sites. Below is a brief list for your review.
Nate mentioned myfeedback, which is a place where you can become involved (if approved) with the beta versions of certain Autodesk Products. This site is http://myfeedback.autodesk.com
I mentioned that Nate Holt runs a blog site, you can find this at: http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/blogs/blog/7/. You will find great information on AutoCAD Electrical here.
I did not mention this but Jared Bunch will be starting a blog at www.gotcontrols.blogspot.com. Actually it is started but I am not sure when he will be making posts.
You can also view some of my old friends blogging at www.askthecadgeek.blogspot.com. There is a new post weekday's monday through friday. Different topic's every day, from many of my old friends at INCAT.
If I have forgotten anything please let me know, you can email me at [email protected].
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone in my lab at AU that stuck through the licensing issues. I really apreciate it and am extremly happy that you were still able to get something out of the course. Remember, I will be updating my blog site over the next week with updates from the AU courses I presented, as well as Video's wherever possible.
Thanks again for attending my courses and can't wait to see you all again next year at AU.
Alright, I just completed the Lab on EC301-1L ~ Become a Circuit Ninja with AutoCAD Electrical 2009 Circuit Builder. I am going to make two posts on this, first is everything I have compiled at this point which is what you saw in the class in power points and exercises. I plan to come back and record this as video's so you can follow it easier. This should be accomplished next week at some point.
You can download the current files here, then I will post a new one that will be a combination of the items at the time of the class, plus any new things. Download EC301-1L ~ Become a Circuit Ninja with AutoCAD Electrical 2009 Circuit Builder
Now my next class.
Here I am, completed with my first presentation for my AU week. I have 2 more to to go tomorrow morning. I figured I would post a quick topic that as many of you know is near and dear to me. In the last Keynote they mentioned stopping by the AutoCAD booth and they would show us how to run AutoCAD on a MAC. As you know, I love my macbook. As you may also know, I have been running Autodesk products on my macbook pretty much since I purchased it via, Parallels, VMware Fusion, and bootcamp depending on the need and the testing I was doing.
So later tonight when the booth opens back up I will be going to the AutoCAD booth to see if Autodesk has given the option to run it as a core mac app instead of using a virtual software or a dual boot scenario. I would LOVE to see this happen for all of the MSD applications and will keep you posted as I learn more.
I didn't catch the persons name that gave me a few cough drops during my presentation this morning but I really appreciate it. It helped tremendously.
I am sitting here in the Speaker Ready room in Las Vegas getting ready for my 3 classes I am presenting this year. I am doing well with them. Making some final adjustments to the classes then time to practice, practice and practice some more.
For the time being, I took a short break now that I have two of the 3 exactly how I want them. If I don't draw the line somewhere I will keep adding more stuff. Not a bad thing, but when you have three classes on similar subjects you can easily get them confused.
Well off to grab some dinner and maybe hit the roulette table.
Well we are down to the wire now. There is 1 week left before Autodesk University. 1 week left to make any last minute changes to the 3 presentations I have to give. Less than 1 week until I get on a plane and fly four hours to Vegas. I am really looking forward to it and so far all 3 of my classes have around 50 to 60 people signed up. I also have pretty good time slots, all of my classes are before lunch. I think that is the best thing, before lunch and not the first class either.
Last week I had probably one of the craziest experiences traveling to Chicago from Detroit, then back to Detroit from Chicago. Anyone who knows me probably already knows my horrible track record with traveling to Chicago or home from Chicago. Weather it is by Air, or by Car something always seems to make the travel portion of the trip so much longer.
This trip flying into Chicago O'Hare, we were grounded in Detroit, because O'Hare closed down 1 of their 3 runways because of some cross wind on that runway. This delayed me getting in by 1.5 hours, which also messed up my ride from the airport to the hotel. OK, not a huge deal, better safe and late with the high winds. Cool, I am over it.
During the week I had to take a cab to and from the client which was defiantly interesting to say the least. We had everything from the driver who would slow way down because they were trying to drive up the fare costs, all the way to the cab driver that was trying to keep the fare low, but make a good tip for getting us there fast. The latter of the two reminded me of that game Crazy Taxi. (http://www.sega.com/gamesite/crazytaxifarewars/minigame/index.html).
So now it comes to Friday. Awesome, I get to go home and see my wife and kids. I leave the client site at about 3pm like they recommended to catch my 7pm flight. I already had the Shuttle scheduled to pick me up at the hotel at 3:40 which would have given me plenty of time to get to the airport, through security and catch my flight. Well they never showed up, my back up plan of taking a cab would have cost my first born child, and the cab drivers all said they weren't driving to O'Hare during rush hour. I ended up taking the train back from Chicago to Royal Oak.
After taking the train in such a last minute situation and having that work out so nice I think i am going to use that as my method of travel to and from Chicago from now on. I mean the train station is 13 miles away from my house in Michigan. No long security lines, more room in the seats, power plugs for each seat on the train, a snack car with food and alcohol and it left on time and arrived on time.
Keep the train in mind when traveling from Michigan to Chicago or Chicago to Michigan.