Day 4 of AU 2012

Ok I’m back again. We have actually been having cold days here in Dallas, Texas. Last year we didn’t have a winter, just 2 cold days. Anyways, back to AU. Wednesday at AU was also another informative day. After the Grab & GO breakfast, I headed to my first class,s which was an advance SSA class. The class was taught by the SSA guru himself, Matthew Anderson. Out of the 50 so classmates attending, there was only 3 of us that were not engineers. There was actually another cad manager (Juan) from the DFW area that I knew and follow on tweeter. This class ending up being the second best class of the day. What I enjoyed about this class was Matt asking question first . He wanted to know what types of issue or problems we were facing with SSA. During his lecture and presentation he would answer those questions if could. I got a few of my questions answered in the class.

The rest of the classes were good but not great. The rest of the day I attended a Pressure Pipe Network classes, Applying SSA and Autodesk Navisworks to Subdivision Development class, Curbing with new featureline application class, and last but not least, the Raster Imagery for Mapping and Land Development class. The raster imagery class was the best class of the day. It was very informative with a great presentation. David Zavslan, CAD Manager for NV5 presentation covered over imagery features and comparisons  with Civil 3D, Map 3D and Raster Design. After what I saw, I was ready to go home and play around with raster design and see how I could incorporate the software into our company workflow.

After all the classes, I ended up going back to the Exhibit Hall to check our a few more booths. While I was there, I ran into a fellow USAF airmen. If you don’t know, I spend 4 years in the USAF in the civil engineering squadron in Florida. It was a great experience.  Anyways I had a good time hanging out with a USAF member again. In addition, I also spend some time with Christian Barrett, the AutoCAD Civil 3D Community Director at AUGI . We ended up having some great conversations. On top of that, I ran into the famous Lynn Allen at one of the booths. I just had to take a picture with her lol. After about 2 hours of checking our booths, I ended up leaving and went back to the hotel bar few a beers. See images below for pictures I took throughout the day. I felt and looked like a tourist lol.

 

     

     

Day 3 Of AU 2012

Good afternoon everyone. Well it has been an extremely busy week for me at work. I had a lot of work waiting for me while I was gone. I worked 14 hours the first 2 days back, then an all nighter last night. In order to re-energize I took the day off. Tomorrow is our company’s xmas party. I can’t wait. Anyways I have been slowly but surely recovering my blog pots. Thanks you for be patient.

Anyways, back at AU week, on Tuesday we started the day off with the keynote address. It was an amazing site to see the Event Center filled with roughly 10,000 AU members from architects, civil engineers, designers, instructors, owners, directors, IT , mechanical engineers, structural engineers, programmers, and techs. They had several speakers from the famous Lynn Allen to the president Carl Bass. The keynote address new innovation design software and a few featured design concepts. In addition, we were introduced to a 12 yrs old boy that was working with Autodesk to great new design software. Overall the keynote address was a big hit.

Later that day I attended my first true classes that I signed up for. I have provided the list of classes that I attended below. Some classes were too basic for me so I moved on. The cool thing was, we were able to leave at anytime and go into another class, if there was any seats available. At the end of day, the Exhibit Hall opened for the first time. We were all packed in at the front of the entrance like it was black Friday at Best Buy lol. There must be at least 100 exhibitors from Leica, HP, CAD Masters, AUGI, BOXX, Cannon, Imaginit, Dell, CAD Learning, and may more. After about 3 hours of walking around (with a few free beers) it was time to go. I spend a few more hours at the hotel bars  with other fellow AU members that I knew from tweeter. The day went incredibly fast but it was great. See images below.

• Surveying:Cleaning Your Dirt Data (C+)
• Using Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite for Data Collection and Preliminary Design Work (A-)
• Using Geotechnical Data in AutoCAD Civil 3D (B+)
• Ten Practically Awesome Grading Examples  (B-)

 

Blogger Under Construction Thanks to Google+

Hi everyone. If you have not noticed all my images in my blog have disappeared. Here is what happened. Last week I decided to link my Google+ account with Google Blogger. Yesterday I noticed an that all my images and videos in my blog have been updated to my phone which ate up a lot of space. So I decided to removed the Google+ link then removed the images from my phone. Well it seems there a small clause that I fail to understand. It seems that when I was deleting the images from my phone it also deleted the images from Picasa which is where all the images are stored for Google Blogger, which I never knew. Now I to go back thru each post and find all my images and repost. This will take me some time. If you know how to restore my image and video links please send me an email or post. Thank you for viewing my blog and hopefully I can get it all back to the way it was 

Day 2 of AU

Hi everyone. Well today the Infrastructure symposium classes started. The first class was a general class splashing over all the new technology and innovation in visualization, collaboration that was coming out. They introduce a few new software such as Pictometry and Autodesk Fusion 306. Both software was pretty amazing. There were a few others that dealt with imagery. The second class was over land development dealing with small and large scale projects.. Most of the design examples were in Vancouver, Canada.  The third class if I remember right, was over networking. Anyways, here are a few pictures I took that day. Oh yeah on this I ran into the famous Dana Probert and James Wedding. In addition, I also ran into Ian, Kati and Juan that I follow on tweeter. My last class was freshman orientation. There must have been 1,000 members in this a large room. Lynn Allen gave the welcoming speech to us. It was an awesome sight to see that many newcomers. At each table they assign a mentor to provide guidance and helpful types. Luckily for me, I had Rick Ellis at my table. If you don't know who Rick Ellis is, he is the author of A Practical Guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2013. This is a great book to have. I have was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy where at AU. Anyways, later the evening I had a chance to hangout with Dana and James from Autodesk. Two people I really look up to. Anyways, I ended up get the first golden "I'm Digging This" shovel that Dana was handing out to those that could find her that night.  Overall the day was pretty amazing.

Day One of AU

The first day at AU is down in the books. So I arrived today in Vegas sometime around 1 pm coming from Dallas. I checked into Mandalay Bay hotel and went straight to my room. I looked outside my window to check out the strip. I unpacked my clothes and headed downstairs to find the AU convention center and also walked around the hotel and ruin in the sites. I then headed back to my room and chilled and relaxed. At 4 o'clock I headed back to the convention center for registration. While I was there I ran into Scott Sheppard from Autodesk Labs. In addition, I ran into one of or resellers from Imaginit. Within 15 minutes I witness several hundred AU members get registered. The rest of the evening I mingled with other AU members from all parts of the US. Anyways, I have attached a few pictures from today's events.