Technically Speaking

Is data the new bacon? The world’s most valuable resource? That fuel that powers the digital enterprise? The most successful companies in the world – Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc. – use data to drive business strategies. Being insight-driven isn’t just the domain of consumer tech. Government agencies rely on data to make informed and quick decision making, enhance productivity, improve transparency and build trust with citizens, eliminate fraud and abuse, reduce crime and security threats, and more.

2019 has ended with more uncertainty than normal—even than the federal government is used to. Last year at this time, of course, Christmas brought the advent of a record-long lapse in appropriations for about half the departments and agencies. The exceptions of Homeland Security, Defense and Veterans Affairs kept IT dollars flowing, but the partial shutdown left its mark nonetheless. The ugly impeachment process working its way down the hall from the house to the Senate might be a psychic distraction but will have no effect on IT procurement.

Following on from two of our most popular digital design blogs, 8 How-To Video Tutorials for Transportation Infrastructure Designers & Engineers and 8 How-To Video Tutorials for Bridge Designers & Engineers, we’re back again with a new crop of training videos. This time we’ve focused on road and highway design. Regardless of your competency level, or the software you use, check out these 10 design, engineering and productivity hacks!

This June, Autodesk launched a new release of its flagship preliminary design software tool for AEC professionals, InfraWorks 360 (we profiled all the great new features in our earlier blog: 4 Exciting Features In The New Release Of InfraWorks 360). One of the biggest changes with this release is the ability to convert regular old intersections into roundabouts with only a few clicks.

Have you ever seen a drawing file you created with Civil 3D balloon in file size? Has this caused performance to take a nose dive? The following steps should help you get some improvement on getting smaller file size, and hopefully better performance:

Prior to 2007, drawing in 3D forced the drafter to constantly change the XY plane to draft on a particular face or plane of an object. You had to create a new user coordinate system every time you changed views. This AutoCAD tips and tricks roundup focuses on the Dynamic User Coordinate System (UCS), a feature that automatically creates a temporary XY plane to draw on. Check out these seven videos on AutoCAD UCS.