Skype - Office Telephone Number

Whilst I am on a roll with reorganising my office internet, I thought I might let you all know how I use the Telephone. My office line is a paid for Skype line, which means no matter where I an as soon as I open up my laptop, or switch on my iPhone or iPad, my office is open, and that can be anywhere in the world. so if I take a week or so of then I can still get called if I want them that is.

The Skype system will allow messages to be left and picked up at my convenience.

I tend to use my Mac Address book to the fullest, Skype can access this so making called is so easy, I do a search and up comes a list of all the contacts for that person, Skype, Mac so cool, and of course its the cheapest call ever, I phone the USA and Canada a few times a year, and the call is routed through the internet to the cheapest method.

Some times I like to use my iPhone, its known to many and they see me light up their phone, but working and holding a phone is not so compatible, so I use the address book and find who I want to talk to and click the phone icon, this calls via my iPhone and I can talk hands free, ok I can do the came direct with the phone, but the Mac adress book is so much easier I think.

Thats it, my mobile office coms system, all rolled up into my mac and Skype. I have tried Google and yes it does work well, but as I am Mac oriented,  !!!

Sending a round Robin Email without showing the Email List

Want to send a round Robin Email without showing the Email List, and there are good reasons for doing this, mostly privacy, but client security from competitors and the like spring to mind.

Well its not that hard, all you have to do is send the email in question to your self or perhaps a gmail account thats been set up specifically, and then go to the BBC section. This means Blind Carbon Copy, and its where you might add your list. I use the Mac Mail address book, and in there I have set up several groups, so enter the group name into the BCC and hit send.

Dead easy and your list is safe, trying to send" to all", will not include the BCC so again a safe way to send a round robin or Email Circular.

Todays photo is of a Swivl I have for sale on Ebay, 

As Email goes, I have tried several different systems, at the University its the Microsoft system, and at home I started on Mac mail then gave Gmail a long trial, almost permanent, but just the last few days I went back to Apple Mail.

The reason is I use Mac products, and trying to balance life between the two quite different systems is some time not easy, I also did not set up my mail very well on gmail, I have several different mail addresses, and just forwarded a copy to gmail, this resulted in about 60,000 emails just sitting in different email accounts doing absolutely nothing.

They were all in imap format, but they just sat there costing me money, so I decided to invest two days to sort it out once and for all, so back to Apple Mail and I set up new accounts and used a vey simple script to set these up from my service provider, so simple I can only wonder why I did not do it earlier.

But then came to problem of syncing all that mail, it took the best part of a day to delete or save all that mail, I must admit as a lot if not most of it was backed up in gmail, I deleted most of it.

But now I have my Macbook Pro, my iPhone and iPad all syncing via map, and its very slick, mac mail is an excellent tool, but I do miss some of the features of gmail, and before you ask, it was just simpler to do in Mac Mail rather than a more complicated route in google.

I set up a few rules for mail I don't want to read, and thats just to difficult to stop, and several rules for mail I want a hard backup, and have routed these to Evernote.

So Mac is back and I must admit to being happy, no more large email deposits, no having to sync address books, and I am learning to use iCloud, although I don't think google drive will go away just yet, its to good.

So what has this to do with CPD, very little I must admit, although if your starting out and building a practice, think very carefully on what system you choose, Mac or Windows, and think very hard on your email system, Google is excellent, but don't expect an easy ride. I had some difficulty in setting up my Mac and one call to the Apple help line and it was sorted, try doing that with Google, almost none existent.

As for the Apple shops, the genius bar, and the shop staff are excellent, I have access to two shops, one in Solihull and one in Birmingham, make the appointment online and in you go, they can usually sort any problem. Again try this with Google,

Todays photo is a screen grab I took of a tv show that looked at solar power in Singapore.

Sharing Files correctly within the design Team using Vectorworks

In this blog, I will attermpt to show how I share files within a design team, the video below, I hope will make it all clear, and show the method I use.

I must admit this came originaly from a practice I worked ast a log time ago, and was set up using dwg files, all I have done here is also explain the way Vectorworks imports layers, I have used Vectorworks 2013, my current drawing package, although if you look carfully enough you can see I also have Vectorworks 2016, so I will replicate this later in the new 2016 version, I will also do it with IFC files not the raw Vectorwork files.

So take a lok at the video, I start by being the Architects practice, send out the files, I am then the Lift manufacturer, I reference the file show the position of the lift, and don't forget, my drawings are geolocated, I save it for future work, and save it again as a file to send back to the Architect, and also cleanit up, removing all the clutter, I keep in my file and and the referenced files i originaly added, I am now left with a small file that has the lift correctly positioned, and geolocated.

This I send back and the Architect practice who loads it in as a ref file and can now use the information, as its geolocated, the lift is in the correct position.

The Engineer and other consultants would do exactly the same, 

Look at the difference in file size doing it this way, also there is no conflict with the Architect files being sent back.