Monday, December 08, 2008

Glad to be back...

As much as I love AU I am glad to be back in the wonderful cold michigan environment. Randy Brunette sent me a couple of photo's from some of my classes. As you can tell, it was a pretty full room. I will make a post later with the final tallies of attendance.


Rob Stein-01 

Rob Stein-02

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Last day in Vegas

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.


Friday night I went to see Wayne Brady at the Venetian and it was amazing. I have wanted to see him for several years and I finally decided to spend the money and do it. Totally worth the cost of admission. Also on Friday I finally decided to figure out where I was going to be staying Friday night. (I used some Hilton points from all of my travels and stayed at one of the many Hilton properties in Vegas.) I didn't get back to bed until about 5 am, slept for a few hours then met up with some friends and played in a poker tournament at Planet Hollywood after walking the strip for a while and getting some of the "Free" slot money at Casino Royale and Imperial Palace.

After losing in the Poker Game, we started heading back down the strip toward the Venetian where my friends had their bags stored at and my wifes Aunt would be picking me up. Along the way we stopped back at Imperial Palace and played the 1 cent slots for probably about an hour to hour and a half. I spent 5 bucks in the slot machine, and spent 5 bucks on tips for drinks. 

After my wifes Aunt came to pick me up we hung out for a while, had some dinner then I crashed. I have about 45 minutes before I head to the airport now so I figured I would write up something quick before I head out.

One last thing about Vegas. Every time I come here I always say I am never going to stay this many day's again because it is just too long. Well I didn't listen to my own advice this year and I am going to say it again, I am never going to stay this many days again.

Later.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Links that were promissed...

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].

My Apologies

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.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Two down, One to Go...

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.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

AU 2008, A learning experience...

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.

A big thanks to an Attendee in my class.

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. 


Thanks again.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Viva Las Vegas (Autodesk University)

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.

Monday, November 24, 2008

T minus 1 Week...

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.


Once again for anyone who is interested, I am teaching the following classes and you can still sign up I believe.

Wednesday December 03, 2008 ~ 10:15 am
  • (EC205-1) AutoCAD Electrical Power Tools for Power Users 
"Are you an AutoCAD Electrical power user looking for commands you are certain exist but can't seem to find? During this session, we'll discuss several of the lesser-known AutoCAD Electrical features, including wiring information for panel drawings and using the power of Excel to update and manipulate your drawings. We'll take a look at setting up Pin Lists to automatically assign pins to your components based on catalog information."

Thursday December 04, 2008 ~ 8:15 am
  • (EC301-1L) Become a Circuit Ninja with AutoCAD Electrical 2009 Circuit Builder  
"Do you want to be a Ninja? I did, that's why I submitted this course. After taking this course, you will be able to take the AutoCAD Electrical standard circuits / templates and create your own. This will allow you to take it back to your company and provide digital prototyping to your electrical department. I will show you how to create custom UI, and custom configurable circuits. This will help automate your engineering designs for similar circuits, such as start / stop circuits."

Thursday December 04, 2008 ~ 10:15 am
  • (EC305-1) Using the AutoCAD Electrical Circuit Builder for Other Stuff  
"This new tool made its debut in AutoCAD Electrical 2009. It is designed in such a way it begs to be twisted, bent, and customized to do other neat and cool things."

I hope to see you all at the event. Now back to practicing my presentations. 

Monday, November 12, 2007

Back from Chicago..... Finally...

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.