Ad

Monday, September 09, 2013

Dell Precision Workstations

It looks like I’m picking up speed on my blog posts, two in two days!

Dell announced new version of their desktop and laptop workstations. Since my primary machine is a laptop, I’m going to focus on the new laptop features. One new feature available for the new products is an available WiGig wireless docking station. this means you no longer have to have a physical connection to a docking station to connect to a monitor, external hard drive, mouse, and/ or keyboard. The laptop needs to be two to six feet from the docking station and the laptop will automagically connect to the docking station and connecting the associated peripherals. Since I typically work in a non-traditional workspace, this would be great for me.

Another feature is an optional 10-finger Wacom multi-touch on the 17.3 inch display. I have no idea what it does, but it sounds really cool. Unfortunately I slept through my briefing time period due to a late night work session. Since I didn’t start writing this article until yesterday I didn’t get a chance to ask a question on what exactly it does. I did read that Dana Probert uses a Wacom, but I’m not sure what use it has for Civil 3D. Most articles I’ve searched on the topic don’t do a good job explaining what it does. They do make general statements that is available, so I guess I have the same understanding as those authors.

The workstation boast the availability of four hard drives, although only three of them are the standard 2.5” hard drive docs. The fourth is a mini hard drive. Doing Software development I have a large need for hard drive space. The huge install space required for the virtual machines along with the large install space requirements for Civil 3D makes a lot of hard drive space a requirement for any machine I’ll purchase in the future. Although my computer still has a year of warranty left on my Dell Precision workstation.

For more information check out Dell’s Workstation page.

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Section Labels

Often times we need to show section labels on the plans. I recently came across a great idea on how to show them. In the image below you can see Section A-A indicated in plan view. The section line shown below is an alignment with begin and ending station labels as the arrows and A. Adjusting the alignment automatically moves the A callouts as well as updating the profile I’m using to represent the section.

image

If you wanted the section to be offset from the alignment as simple line label anchored to the start and end of the alignment, with an offset value. The alignment would then need to be set to not plot to complete the look.

I got this great idea from John Mayo, PE. A fellow Autodesk Expert Elite.

This makes a whopping 20 posts for the year, should I post more often?

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Ad