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Rydal Road
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015394 34489
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Wed 26.12.01
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Sun 23.12.01
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Very tasteful.... hope they don't mind me 'borrowing' the script for snow! :)
Plandesign - I wonder whatever happened to updates for the English language version of Plandesign? If you access the updates server directly from nemetschek.de then you can see that SR3 has just been released for 2.5a - if you access the updates server from any other Nemetschek site there is no option to obtain updates for Plandesign and currently we seem to be stuck on 2.5... I suppose they don't sell many copies of the English language version but it would be nice to have some of the bug fixes listed (in English!) on the German updates.
Update 24.12.01 - apparently the current Plandesign CD is v2.5a_1 which will accept Service Release 3 .... maybe Santa Claus will bring me one! :)
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Fri 21.12.01
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Thur 20.12.01
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(if you ask Maxon nicely I am sure they would send you a CD instead)
Update 26.12.01 - nice surprise when you start C4D after this upgrade!
Best Wishes to the programming team! :)
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Wed 19.12.01
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All in the best possible taste!...- a card from those nice people at Archicad today with a picture of a skip (a container for rubbish) with written on the side 'scrapautocad'...
what happened to the season of Goodwill? ... :)
v16.3...- seems to have gone 'walkabout' - expected last week but no sign... have they found a last minute XP-related glitsch maybe?... the FAQ concerning running Allplan pre-v16.3 on Windows XP has not reappeared on the nemetschek.de website
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Tue 11.12.01
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more XP- or rather 'less XP' perhaps? - the FAQ on running current versions of Allplan under Windows XP has been 'pulled' from the nemetschek.de site.
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Fri 07.12.01
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Wed 05.12.01
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it has always seemed strange to me that there is not a 'step by step' guide to creating smart symbols - or 'makros' as I think they are referred to by Nemetschek. Andreas Buttner has some nice tutorials on his site but they are in German of course. There is a 'schritt fur schritt' guide listed in Nemetschek's catalogue called 'Makros und Listen' but whether this is relevant is hard to tell as it is one of the few guides not translated into English. We once asked Nemetschek in Munich if there was a guide to smart symbols but the reply was that there was no demand for such a guide(!) - strange, considering smart symbols are one of the features of Allplan. Richard Talbott in the US has done a lot of work on understanding smart symbols and helps where he can via the webboard but it is surprising that Nemetschek do not make more of an effort to help users with this. Unlike Archicad there is no large library of ready-made components on offer for Allplan - which is fine, I prefer to create my own - but some guidance on how to do this is long overdue.
There... today's moan out of the way! :)
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Sat 01.12.01
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Thur 29.11.01
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Wed 28.11.01
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Update - and now they are back again - access has become quicker too I notice.... perhaps they were just tinkering? Thanks anyway.
Update - apparently they are working on translating the FAQ database into English :)
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Mon 19.11.01
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- the Swiss distributor site at Nemetschek Fides & Ptnrs has an illustration of what seems to be the D-board v2...
- interesting couple of press releases on nemetschek.de - one mentions a new flavour of Allplan called Allplan LT ... (you can guess what that's about) whether this will make it into an English language version only time will tell - there are quite a few Nemetschek products that are not marketed abroad. The other press release is financial stuff which is way over my head... although the launch of Nemetschek (UK) Ltd gets a passing mention.
Update - this press release now available in English from tenlinks.com
- Nemetschek seem to have been making some changes to their website - the address to the German FAQ index page for the last year has changed slightly if you have it bookmarked - it is now here (be patient, it is a bit slow)
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Thur 15.11.01
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Fixed at last?... sometime
recently possibly in the 16.2 update they have fixed the problem of slabs
and beams which overlap within the same drawing file causing the overlap
to disappear from the animation window - wonderful! I have been doing
so much 2D drawing in recent months that I did not notice it! Even overlapping
walls no longer seem to object. I wondered if it was the change to the
Wildcat card that had made the difference but no, it all works the same
on the Gloria III card as well. I wonder if roof overhangs have also been
improved as well? :)
Update
18.11.01 Was
there ever a problem?... as Richard Talbott points out in a recent webboard
posting there is an option in 'Tools->Options->Architecture'
called 'Archit. elements with diff. bottom levels
may intersect' which influences this. When checked, overlapping
slabs and other archit. elements within the same drawing file but at different
heights will 'remove' the overlap from one element when viewed in the
animation window. Although I checked this its effect is not seen until
you use 'Restore 3D View' to update the model. Thus it may never have
been a problem - although if so, technical support did not realise either!
:)
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Tue 13.11.01
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Sun 11.11.01
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Tues 6.11.01
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Result anyway is a gloriously powerful machine - works a treat with Cinema 4D XL v7 - now to check it at length with Allplan - initial tests are very promising.
Update 7th Nov See hardware page for more ...
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Thurs 1.11.01
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Full page ads inside the magazine for Allplan and also the first ad I have seen for Allplot the engineering package.
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Tues 30.10.01
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Friday 2nd Nov update: more information on v17 posted in a further reply.
Windows XP ... vague rumours that there might be a few problems at the moment running Allplan under Windows XP. My copy of XP should arrive tomorrow but I will stick to Windows 2000 for Allplan for the present.
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Thur 25.10.01
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I'll post the end results of installing it with the dual processor Athlons and seeing if it all runs smoothly with Allplan.
Late update: Just noticed on the specsheet for the Wildcat II 5000 the terribly low refresh rates available - I mean, 60 Hz in many resolutions - or even 75 - by today's standards hopeless and surely contravening Workplace Health, Safety and Welfare regulations? ... seeking clarification from 3DLabs.
Friday 26th update: 3DLabs have come good - tested the card for me at 90Hz refresh and it works fine - the listed rates are just 'standard' whatever that means.
Tuesday 30th update: Wildcat II 5000 arrived today - installed it on my PIII 800 machine instead of the Gloria III - very smoooth, lovely colour gradients, it can rotate a rendered model at almost the same speed as the Gloria III can rotate an un-rendered model. Very classy card - noticably faster at redraws as well.
Friday 2nd Nov update: a quick panic as I noticed that the 5000 card has an AGP Pro edge connector and the dual processor motherboard has just a 2x/4x slot!
The ever helpful Eighty-20.com reassures me that yes, the edge connector does overhang the slot (!)... Phew!
Sunday 4th Nov update: all working but still some problems... see hardware page for continuing saga...
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Wed 24.10.01
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Also mentions launch of 'Nemetschek MyOffice' - see the link for details.
A welcome sign of Nemetschek's commitment to the UK market.
Best Wishes to Clive Flynn and team.
update 25.10.01 - the launch took place at the RIBA hq in Portland Place, London
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Mon 22.10.01
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I'll leave the last words to www.anandtech.com in their review conclusion...
| "If
you can't tell by now, we're very impressed with the AMD 760MP chipset.
In fact, one of the reasons we spent so long on this comparison is
because the outcome of our results would influence what platform we
used in our next database server for the AnandTech Forums. The choice
is simple; the AMD 760MP is the DP workstation and server platform
to have. It's reliable, it's high performing and it's very flexible;
everything you'd expect from an Intel based server solution, except
that it's from AMD instead.
Three years ago we wouldn't be caught dead recommending an AMD based server solution. Today, we'd be crazy not to do so." |
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Sun 21.10.01
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anandtech.com have reviews of both Athlon MP and P4Xeon with exhaustive tests including a CAD component(Microstation SE) and they were pretty excited by the dual Athlon setup. Certainly worth detailed consideration.
Nemetschek Romania Gallery I have repaired the links on the 'World Gallery' page to the Nemetschek.ro site. Some terrific work on show here.
See also the Nemetschek.bg site (mirrored as the Nemetschek.uk site also) which contains a good range of rendered Allplan model images from different countries.
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Wed 17.10.01
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Nemetschek Romania Gallery has been reindexed and so many of the links on my 'World Gallery' page here no longer work. I will fix it as soon as possible. The new indexing makes it much easier to find all the images in what is probably the best online Gallery of any Nemetschek website :)
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Tue 16.10.01
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Just in the process of ordering components for a dual processor workstation. Talking it over with my Engineer who puts these things together for me (Tony Richards from www.lakelandcam.co.uk) we think that a dual Pentium III system is a real bargain at the moment - at least if you go for the Coppermine ones - the latest Tualatin PIIIs would be nice but they are a bit pricey and the motherboards a bit new. You have to be careful to buy both PIII chips together so that they match stepping etc. but enough people have done it to suggest that it should work. We will probably use the motherboard from the usually reliable Asustek - the CUV4X. Although I do not like straying from Intel chipsets, the latest VIA chipset on this board is reckoned to be OK for CAD work. Time will tell.
Tomshardware.com ran a review of this setup in June also using the Gloria III graphics card which looked promising.
I sent a query to Nemetschek Munich about the use of dual processors with Allplan and they thought that more RAM would be more cost-effective. The same query directed to the Cinema 4D support desk confirmed that C4D XL will use any resources it can see(!) and dual processors should halve render times.
I'll post the results ! :)
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Tue 09.10.01
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Later... ran the Graphisoft CD - a lot of work has been put into it - for some reason the images are very low resolution despite being on a CD (and accessing the CD just locked up my PC!)
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Wed 03.10.01
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Lease/purchase scheme... for Allplan now available in USA & Canada - details are on same 'Product Specials' page of the cadconsulting-usa.com site as the symbol CD mentioned above along with other trial/purchase options.
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Tue 02.10.01
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Mon 01.10.01
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later... webboard back online, must have been maintenance or a glitsch.
utility?... if the engineers at Nemeschek ever take a break they might be intrigued (if they haven't already seen it) by the 3D modeller from @last software - Sketchup 3D - demo /tutorials downloadable at www.sketch3D.com For 'throwing together' a model in minutes it is very clever - particularly for one-off objects which can then be imported to Allplan... it is also great fun for 'sketching' ideas in 3D - but in a different way to the elegant D-board from Nemetschek. Well worth a look - the sort of clever idea that one of the big companies will probably snap up if it catches on. It is much more intuitive than the 'traditional' approach of working with 3D primitives etc.
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