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Apparently, shift + rmb (right mouse button) keyboard shortcuts are something that very few people use. It's very handy. For example, I can just press shift+rmb,d in the middle of drawing a line to snap to a node without having to escape out and turn osnap on. Because of the shift+rmb shortcuts, I rarely have osnap left on any more. After a couple of minutes of experimentation, my findings for the shortcut defaults (as of 2018) are listed below. The most useful ones, in my humble opinion, are bolded. Not only are they needed, they are easily reacheable from the WASD home position of the left hand. (Which is the key for lightning fast cad work. I will elaborate on that in another article) Keyboard Shortcuts After Shift+rmb q - Quadrant w - Midpoint between 2 points e - Endpoint r - Nearest t - Point filters (submenu) i - Intersection p - Perpendicular a - Apparent intersect s - Insert d - Node f - From t - Tangent k - Temporary tracking point o - Options (dial...

Recently, I was asked to submit to my organization's IT department concerning what kind of computer setup is best for civil technology. My answer might be surprising to some: it's not a laptop, it's not 4k, and it's not a "workstation" setup. Why Not a Laptop Right off the bat, laptops are simply out of the question for any heavy duty work. The reason is that while processors are getting faster and faster, laptops lack the physical space to dissipate heat effectively. There virtually no space for a proper heat sink, fan, and air flow channels, the secondary vents are often on the bottom of the laptop which do not work unless the laptop is raised off the desktop. Not many people use their laptop raised off their desks. The high heat typically makes the laptop throttle down its chips, resulting in a massive reduction in performance and often, catastrophic hardware failures. Let's consider the heat sink design problem for laptops. There is no room fo...

" Why you should not learn to code. ("Just stop already, it's too hard.") " Techlead created this masterpiece of dry wit yesterday and it already has 21k+ views. It's a true gem. Please check it out here . Why Software Engineering Must Intersect with Civil Technology I always thought that the software engineering field had a lot to show us civil techs on how to do get things done on time, with less effort, and with style. First of all, good coders make their work readable, and with helpful comments peppered throughout their work. Compare this to a typical design drawing in a large projects with contributions from several techs. It take some real skill to be able to stitch together what corridor feeds of which surface using which targets etc. Add in a couple of tight deadlines and things can resemble a messy pizza real quickly. Now coding has its own share of nightmare stories I'm sure but I would bet money that pound-for-pound, coding pr...

My love with technology first surfaced late in my elementary school years. In hindsight it was obvious from the beginning what being a tech head was all about. I'll come back to that. In grade six I remember studying for a social studies exam  for hours every day. It was especially hard since I've only been learning English for two years at that point. A couple of weeks prior, I begged my parents if they could buy me a computer and they said that they would if I got 100% on my exam. I wanted a computer of my own because I loved playing around with the Macs in the school computer lap. A bunch of us played a multiplayer Star Trek game where we each controlled a ship and shot each other with phasers and torpedoes. I even found the fireworks screensaver fascinating. I remember that my teacher was so proud to give me back my test. I got 97% on it and she didn't expect that out of me at all. I was just a Korean kid who was still taking ESL classes. She just didn't underst...

As a mentioned in an earlier post, I've just had my fifth year as a civil tech. It took a lot of things going right for me to get started in this career. It took an outstanding teaching in college who looked out for my future in so many ways. He was the one who set me up with a two-week internship at my current employment, in fact. He, along with several other teachers, also backed me up during my negotiations with the administration when I was in danger of having to repeat my final year. If you are reading, thank you Mr. Morrison. A big thank you to Mrs. Coleman and Mr. Nelson as well. At the risk of sounding immodest, it also took an insane level of determination. The two years I spent learning at my community college in preparation for civil technology was absolute hell. The workload was high. Sure, I could have coasted and scraped by. But as with most things you get what you put into it and I really wanted to go beyond what was necessary. What really made it difficult was t...

A month ago I've hit my fifth year as a civil tech. I started this blog to document the things that I've learned about working as a tech back in 2014. A couple of months later I stopped writing to create a collection of help documents for my employer for private use. Four years later, that work has been fleshed out with several other contributors and I think it is a good time to write for myself and the community in general.I think I will begin with a look back at my still-young career, and share some observations with not only other techs but also for students who are looking into this industry. Do you have a blog of your own? Please feel free to share.

Sometimes software has a critical failure and you are better off (or forced to) reinstalling. It could be AutoCad, Office or even Windows. Just in case, it pays off to have the product information and serial keys saved or written down somewhere. Autocad You can access Autocad product and serial info via the about command: Hit the downward arrow next to the help button then click "About..." to bring up the serial info. Either write down the info or screen capture it is a image file and put it in a safe place. Windows & Office For Windows and Office product keys, you can hunt them down through the registry key. A better solution though, is to use a free utility to do it for you. A good key finder currently is Magical Jelly Bean . It installs clean, works quickly and is free. System Restore Points  If you have not checked recently, be sure to check you operating system and make sure you have a recent system restore point. Having a good restore point can save you...

The question came up at my workplace: Will we benefit from having a workstation computer setup? The computers we tested had the following specs: Machine 1 CPU: Xeon E5 1650 V2 (3.5ghz) Video Card: Quadro K2000 (later upgraded to K4000) Hard Drive: SSD  Ram: ECC ram Machine 2 CPU:  i7-3820 (3.6ghz)  Video Card:  Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost Hard Drive:  WD2500HHTZ HD (single; not raided) Ram: Non-ECC ram The test we ran was the CADalyst benchmarks (http://www.cadalyst.com/benchmark-test). The results were surprising. The following were the findings (please excuse the loss of the graphs; images were lost from this blog): There was no 2d graphics index difference between any of the video cards. There was no CPU score difference between the CPUs as well. There was a slight difference in the single loop test for file loading speeds. However, over several loops, difference evaporated. ECC Ram did not seem to have any impact in any of the indices....

On July 13, 2013, Ishka Voiculescu posted a nice video on YouTube on how to bring in geo-referenced images of Google/Bing map (among other map sources) into AutoCad. What follows is step by step guide that you can follow at your own pace. The steps do not mirror what Ishka does in the video exactly but it's the same thing in the end. Step 1: Create a Geo-Referenced Image. Download Terra Incognita here. The nice thing is that it is portable; you can stick it in a usb key or in a network drive and run it from any computer without having to install it. Run Terra Incognita (simply referred to as "Terra" from now on). Choose a map source. Locate the area that you want and select the desired area. Choose the zoom level. This will determine the resolution of the image. Save the image by saving as an ArcView map. Step 2: Bring in the Image into AutoCad In AutoCad, set the coordinate system that you want the image to be brought into (e.g. using t...

Autocad 2014 has an annoying tendency to print the navbar on every viewport. I thought they solved this problem with Service Pack 2 but it showed up again the other day. The problem is intermittent so I know I will forget about it until it happens again. I always plot by exporting to PDF first so I just created a custom command called "Export to PDF (Navbar Off)" and stuck "navbar;off;" in it. Hopefully it will keep me from forgetting about it, missing it and having a client staring at it wondering what the heck it is. But the Problem Isn't Over The major problem with the Navbar  plot issue is that when it's turned off, it can interfere with correct plotting of line weights. So you end up having to choose between line weights plotting right but navbar showing in the plot as well, or preventing navbar plotting but line weights also being messed up. Problem Doesn't Affect All Machines I don't know if it's a problem with .net files or w...