So this evenings lecture via my nightly blog on stitcher was from the Technology Today podcast, episode 10, re the eight small satellites that cover the globe via the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System(CYGNSS) aims to improve extreme weather prediction. ... In orbit.

I am going to claim 1 hour for this podcast together with another hour researching the technology. Why you might ask, well it's all about the data, and there's lots of it, all helping to provide assistance in predicting the intensity of any hurricane as it hits land, and in what direction.

Is this important, well yes, after all, it's my job not only to teach students about data but also to help them detail against it. so in my book, this is a straight 2 hours cpd

CPD via Stitcher - AI interview with George Hotz

This morning as I walked from the station to the University, I was listening, as I mostly do this time of the morning, to a podcast, I have a backlog at present to go through, but this mornings joy was a podcast on Data, a subject I am particularly interested in.

I currently run a course entitled IDD, or Integrated Digital Design., which for the most part looks at how data at a simple level is added and used in the design, my data page on Scays.co.uk is dedicated to this with a series of slide presentations and gets regular updates.

But this morning my attention was drawn to the bus stop I was walking past, and the way old paper time tables have now been replaced with digital time tables, ok so I have written about this before, so I started to ponder this subject, can I access this data in the same way I can with similar data like the training for trains running on the Dorridge Chiltern line.

The more I look into this subject the more I find new items to ponder, like AI, my next podcast was an interview with George Hotz, see right, on Autopilot, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of a Podcast by Lex Fridman, now this is a long interview and you have to stay with it, and some is just not relevant to construction, but several times I thought, oh, need to make a note of that, or could this also refer to construction, or FM, ie Facilities Management.

On a whole, it is a review of AI, with a bent towards cars autopilot, but it so outlines the thinking of AI and I could easily see it's relevance to Architecture, data and of course BIM.

The Interview is 119 minutes long and you need time to listen to it, I split it up into several timeouts. The podcast as a whole is excellent, as the name implies its all about AI, is this relevant to my CPD, of course, we can not teach or use Data, without taking in this subject.

I tend to use Stitcher as my prefered podcast player, just search for "Artificial Intelligence (AI)" Lex Fridman, within the App and look for this podcast, or search via this link there is also a video via Youtube of the interview if you're so inclined.

I am claiming 3 hours high-quality CPD for this, listening to the interview, making notes, and some quiet thinking time. Visit my private website to view my CPD Spreadsheet.

Demolition

I passed this the other day, a block of flat, I remember being built, but now being pulled down. Interesting to see the method. In another shot I took from a train, the skyline was full of tower cranes, and as some once said to me its a sign of the economy doing well.

Put the two together and we get a lot of work about for Architectural firms, and a great time to study for a degree in Architectural Technology.

Exporting from Vectorworks to another ie Autocad

As I close down my practice, which will be the subject of a much longer blog, I have handed over one project to another Architects office. Now I work within the Vectorworks environment, I like the way it works and feels, for me it feels like home. But the new practice want to work in Autocad Lt, this is a slight problem, the project file I have is quite large and although it is need of a clean, it works fine on my version of Vectorworks, But as I export the complete file to dwg, thins started to go slightly wrong, and yes before you ask, I did check and load the exported file into my copy of Autocad, all be it on a Mac, and it worked just fine, given a little patience.

So I had a call, the file you sent over keeps crashing, what are you loading it into, oh an old copy of Autocad lt, ah I say, best I come over, do you have a copy of Vectorworks, yes they replied, good.

To cut a long story short, I managed to export the model to Vectorworks 2016, and show the practice how to deal with this type of model, splitting up the various levels into different files for Autocad, and making Xrefs to a series of master site plans.

You might ask why not use IFC after all its what I teach at University, but in real life the output was a lot of work to make work and often dam difficult. The Autocad export offered the route of least resistance.

This is only the start, I have several other projects being exported to Archicad, which is a Nemetschek company, same as Vectorworks, but there is no real export link other than IFC or using dwg, both ways of importing the projects into Archicad seem to indicate spending a lot of time correcting,

So there it is retirement is not a simple process, apart from the legal bits of shutting down, the need for my PI runoff etc, I thought the drawing side would be a piece of cake, not so.

Linking this blog to my Google Web Site

So some days start of with a bank, some a spark some just fizzle a little, but this morning, a thought of a video I had seen a while back came into my head, and I managed to find it.

So what was this moment, well it was a video tutorial on the way you can embed all of my blogs here into my Scays.co.uk web site, assume, at last, so pleased.

So below the video, not mine but by a gentleman called, Richard Byrne, so simple, I have no idea how he came upon the small addition to the code link but it works so well.