The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

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  • Restoring the Start Menu in Windows 8

    My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the lack of a Start button and the associated Start Menu and its shutdown provisions. The Metro interface gets blamed, but MS could have left the Start Menu and still added the new interface.

    Metro, why do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

    1. The Metro interface requires a convoluted and not-at-all intuitive sequence of commands to shut down or restart your computer. Either hover over the right side of your screen, wait for the panel to pop up, then pick Settings and then..oh, never mind

      -or-

      Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and sign out. After that is complete, then pick the doodad at the lower right part of your screen and Shut Down

    2. You cannot find your programs. Once you switch to the Metro screen, you can indeed start typing in the name of what you want to run (and I like this feature), but items are no longer grouped, you do not know which one you are going to get. Try typing in README and see how many show up. Now, try to figure out the right one. This makes it a support nightmare for us
    3. When you install new software, shortcuts do not show up on the Desktop. It is not easy to find them in the Metro screen and bring them over to the Desktop. Yes, it can be done, but it is far harder than it needs to be

    What to do? I installed VISTART – it is one of many utilities that will recreate the Start Menu. I ran this one because it seemed to have the most recommendations. And it worked great. Hallelujah.

    PS – I am going back to Windows 7

  • What SHIFT Can Do For You in AutoCAD

    SHIFT can do some SHIFTy things (sorry, I had to ). I found this on Cad Addict's website:

    • SHIFT while drawing a line will lock the
      perpendicular inference. It is like a temporary activation of the ORTHO
      mode. If you press SHIFT, a tooltip with similar to the macro Icon of
      digital cameras appear to show you that ORTHO mode is temporary active.
    • When
      using FILLET or CHAMFER, pressing SHIFT while selecting the second
      entity will override the fillet radius or the chamfer distances with a
      value of 0. Very useful if you want to keep certain radius or chamfer
      distance but once in a while you need a sharp corner.
    • When Selecting Grips of an object, holding SHIFT will allow us to select multiple grips (deeply explained here).
    • When we are selecting objects, pressing SHIFT will allow us to deselect any of them.
    • When
      using TRIM or EXTEND, pressing SHIFT will toggle between one command
      and the other (i.e. if you typed TRIM and press SHIFT and select the
      object, it will extend instead of trim).
    • For object snap
      tracking, object points are automatically acquired. If you press SHIFT
      you will avoid acquiring points for object snap tracking.
    • SHIFT
      + SPACEBAR: cycle through selection peviews If selection preview is
      turned on, you can cycle through the objects by rolling over the object
      on top to highlight it, and pressing and holding SHIFT and then pressing
      SPACEBAR continuously. When the required object is highlighted,
      left-click to select it. If selection preview is turned off, hold down
      SHIFT + SPACEBAR and click to cycle through these objects, one after the
      other, until the one you want is selected. Press ESC to turn off
      cycling.
    • SHIFT + RIGHT MOUSE CLICK: Will call the Osnap contextual menu (see more here).
    • SHIFT + TAB: When working with Dynamic dimensions, it cycles backward
      through all editable dimensions (TAB only will cycle forward)

  • Using Visual Styles to Present 3D Models

    Once you 'go to 3D' in HydraCAD, you get a wireframe model. This is actually a Visual Style named '2D Wireframe'. If you would like to make a more professional looking presentation, you could apply a different Visual Style. To open up the Visual Style palette, type in VISUALSTYLES or pick the Visual Style button from the HydraCAD SMaRT toolbar.

    This brings up the Visual Style palette, from which you can choose a new style:

    For example:

    The 3D Model 'as is' (Visual Style = 2D Wireframe)

    Now, try the Visual Style named Conceptual:

    Or, even better, try the Visual Style named Shaded(AutoCAD 2012 or newer):

    Pretty, huh? Expect even better results on a 3D Riser!

  • Creating a Submittal Packet in HydraCAD

    Version 51.11, and by extension, V52.01 added a new function named Bundle PDFs to the brand new Collaborate toolbar. This command will be renamed Create Submittal Pack in the next update (V51.12/V52.02), so keep an eye out for the new name.

    This command will scan the drawing an pull out PDFs for many of the items used in the drawing – sprinkler heads (if defined with a viable part number using head selector), piping, fittings and so forth. Some items are not yet picked up, such as hanger,s but over time we will get more items picked up.

    Bundle PDFs/Create Submittal Pack brings up a small dialog box with two buttons. The first one, Bundle PDFs, requires that you be in Model (3D) mode. If not, you will be asked to do so. You will also be asked to save your drawing. It will then search the drawing and create a subfolder under the folder where you drawing is saved, with the name xxxxx_pdfs, where xxxxx is the drawing name. In that folder, you should find a list of PDFs and some HTML files, which act as an index to some of the PDFs. If no files appear, other than the README (which may of may not apply), then it is possible that you did not define your sprinkler heads using the Head Selector, or your drive letter is wrong in the path to the PDFs (see below).

    The second button will allow you to map which fittings pick up which PDFs. It will show the following tool. Take a look around and refer to the Help accessed via the Help button. If you have your HydraCAD installed on any drive other than C:, then you will need to alter the drive specification in the URL paths. A quicker way to do this might be to edit the Fitting_Mapping_Revit.dat file in the \HES\HydraCAD\Ver50\DATA\Setup folder and do a search and replace on the C:

  • Using the Graphical Pressure Display

    HydraCALC has a special tool to help you figure out where in your system losses are occuring. The Graphical Pressure Display (GPD) is that tool. In order to use it, one extra step is needed – you need to fill in the column named Input Type

    This column specifies the role of each pipe in the system. It does not affect the calculation in any way. also, it is automatically filled in by the AutoCalc process and it is also filled in if you bring in the job from HydraCALC-Sizer. The Num. of Hds. column does not need to be filled out.

    After a calc is run, pick the GPD button to see the tool.

    This tool shows exactly where the losses occur in your system. Note the color coded relationship between the graph and the individual items listed at left. In this case, say we needed a 10 pound cushion. With only a 3 pound cushion right now, it would not make sense to increase the riser nipple size, since they are only losing 1.97 pounds, total.

    Another special feature of this tool is the ability to change items in your input directly from here. To change the K-Factors of all the heads, or to simply see if changing them will help, hover over the E.H.Press (End Head Pressure) item at left and click on it. This will bring up a list of available K-Factors. To see how this part works, refer to this K-Factor Analysis post, which previously addressed that.

  • Manipulating the AutoCAD Status Bar

    What is the status bar? It is that thing at the bottom of your drafting window that looks like this:

    Now, in my opinion, the icons are pretty, but I would rather have the words, so I don't have to think too much when I am changing settings. So, right click on any one of these buttons and deselect 'Use Icons'

    This will give you named buttons:

    But, that is a lot of buttons, especially since we don't use many of them in sprinkler design. Next, right click on any button again and pick Display to show the buttons available. Deselect the ones you do not want, unfortunately you can only turn one off at a time and will need to start the process over.

    In my case I left the following on and turned off the rest:

    Resulting in:

    Much better…

  • Getting a Reflected Ceiling Plan

    HydraCAD V51.10 (and by extension, V52) added a new function – Generate RCP Heads to the Cleanup toolbar.

    What does this do? From the OlderChanges.rtf document:

    (N)New command added (Generate RCP Heads) to help with the plotting of pendent heads for a Reflected Ceiling Plan. This command will generate a copy of any sprinkler heads that the user selects. These copies go into a new RCP_HEADS layer that can be turned on while the traditional SPRNKS layer is turned off for plotting. This will only work on new drawings, due to changes required in the way sprinklers heads were defined

    All of our sprinkler heads were redefined in that update. They were switched to be based in Layer 0. In the drawing, they are still in SPRNKS. This allowed us to change their properties after running this command, so as noted, it may not work properly on older drawing. Check it out!

  • AutoCAD 2013 Service Pack 1.1 Released – Fixes XREFs Not Resolved

    This Service Pack fixes many things, but what made it pop up on our radar was that a customer was unable to properly load a drawing containing xrefs in 2013, yet it worked fine in 2012. This must be a new problem (broken with SP1.0?) since it could not have been around since the April release, unresolved.

    View the list of changes and download SP 1.1 here: AutoCAD 2013 SP1.1

    There are many fixes in this Service Pack. Here is what Adesk has to say about the XREF fix, specifically:

    External Reference (XREF)

    • External reference drawings (XREFs) show as unresolved in AutoCAD 2013

     

  • What is Revit LT?

    Autodesk has created a reduced feature version of Revit (with a much reduced price) that will allow you to open Revit drawings, but not do much else. It will allow you to open Revit files from other sources and turn them into DWG files, but there is no ability for it to be programmed by us (or anyone else). It has trimmed down Architecture and Structural tabs, but no MEP functionality.

    The bottom line? We will not be selling or supporting Revit LT. If you are interested to see what it can do, donwload a free 30-day trial from: RevitLT Trial. On that site you will also find an FAQ and a comparison between full Revit and Revit LT

  • Windows 8 – Don’t Do It (not yet, at least)

    Here is the deal:

    1. Windows 8 is in Beta.
    2. I upgraded my machine to Win8 – 64 bit two months ago
    3. Almost everything works. Almost..
    4. I have not actualy installed much on Win8, but have rather relied on existing apps still working
    5. Based upon discussions I have had with Autodesk, ACAD 2013 will receive a service pack updated so it will work on Win8. ACAD 2012 might also get a service pack. No earlier versions will get fixed to work on Win8

    Here is why I am warning you off, for now – I was bumping along nicely, actually, with Win8. I was able to use ACAD 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2013. 2010 and 2010 and 2007 would tell me that they are not compatible and gave me a choice to check online for a fix or carry on, so I ignored the warning and carried on. One day, I decided to try out the 'check online' option while firing up 2010. Bad move. It went online and decided that 2010 is not compatible, end of story. I can no longer open 2010 under any circumstances, and I have tried everything to remedy that. I need 2010 because I must edit the CUI menu file in that version in order for our users on V51 to be able to use the menu changes. Waaa.

    Also, as important if not more important, I have not tried to install any AutoCAD 2012 or 2013 versions on my computer and I have not tried to install Hydrtec software either. So I do not know what will happen. I hope to get a new drive and start those tests next week, so stay tuned and hold off on Win8 for now.