Overclock your video card – but stop if you smell something burning

Luke Johnson

In the past, overclocking your graphics was risky, difficult, and yet at the same time it could be very beneficial.  These days, it is easier to do, but video cards are often cheaper and some people may ask ‘is overclocking really worth it?’

In any case, if you are interested in giving it a go, the new overclocking utility of choice is MSI Afterburner.

Obviously, you use this utility at your own risk…

MSI Afterburner

Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download Page

Features:

  • Change your core clock, shader clock, memory clock and fan speed using simple sliders
  • Works on nearly any video card, not just MSI-manufactured cards
  • Turn on voltage tuning for super high overclocks
  • Built-in access to MSI’s Kombustor benchmarking tool
  • Monitor your clocks, voltage, fan speeds, frame rate and more from the app’s drawer or from an on screen display during games
  • Save your settings to five different profiles for quick loading
  • Take screenshots and capture videos from your games with hotkeys
  • Fine tune the automatic fan control so you stay at the temperatures you want
  • Multiple different skins for changing the interface
  • Start with Windows or apply settings at boot, so your card is always overclocked

via
App Directory: The Best Video Card Overclocking App For Windows | Lifehacker Australia

Make Windows Explorer Left Sidebar Expand As You Navigate Through Folders

Luke Johnson

In Windows 7, by default, Explorer’s sidebar stays the same size unless you click within it. That is, if you use the right pane to navigate through folders, as most of us do, the left sidebar doesn’t change. With a simple tweak, though, you can have the left sidebar focus on your current folder in the tree as you click around the right pane. To enable this feature:

  • Open up Explorer and go to Organize > Folder and Search Options.
  • On the General tab, look under “Navigation Pane” and check “Automatically expand to current folder”.

via
Make Windows Explorer’s Sidebar Expand As You Navigate Through Folders | Lifehacker Australia

The Revit Community

Luke Johnson

It can be really had to keep up with all of the Twitter and blog data that is generated every day on the topic of Revit.  However, if you have the time to skim through the main Revit blogs and tweets, you will likely find something that will increase your productivity.

In the interest of sharing, here are a few links that may help you get started –

My blog reading list:
Google Reader link here or site link here

Another blog list:
Revit OpEd: Blog Listing – Revit Focus

Revit chat (IRC site open to guests):
http://revittotd.com/chat 

Revit content:
Crowd sourced content list

How to fix broken Russian Type Catalogs

Luke Johnson

There have been a few posts recently about how to fix Type Catalog errors.  If you use Russian Revit (particularly Web Update 2), the following fix will be useful (the key part is changing the file encoding to Unicode):

We find the folder for Russia, such as doors, inside we see two types of files *. RFA and *. TXT First, the actual file of the family, the second directory sizes. Here is a directory and have a problem! Open the text file the appropriate “problem” families, with – Notepad:
Kodirovka1
Without changing anything, just save the file as … and change only the encoding to Unicode.
Resave the file over an existing one.
Before opening the file, do not forget to remove the check mark in the properties file read-only

via Translated version of

Borissofff: Cервис-пак для Revit 2012 (WU 2) и ошибка кодировки

Some Photoshop Tips for enhancing Architectural Photographs

Luke Johnson

I’m sure many of you are very experienced Photoshop users, so I won’t bore you with too much detail.  There are just two things I wanted to mention:

  1. If you have a photo that was taken in less-than-perfect light, try the Image – Adjustments – Shadow/Highlight tool.  Some experimentation with this adjustment can yield very good results.
  2. One principle of Architectural Photography is that of Straight Verticals.  If you have an image that has warped verticals due to perspective, you can use the Filter – Distort – Lens Correction tool in Photoshop.

Here is an example:

Original Photograph
Adjusted Shadow / Highlight and Lens Correction

For more photography and composition principles, check out AB4061 Is That a Photograph? Architectural Photography for 3D Rendering. 

Create a multiboot USB pen drive inside Windows with YUMI

Luke Johnson

How to Create a MultiBoot USB Flash Drive

  1. Run* YUMI-0.0.4.0.exe following the onscreen instructions
  2. Run the tool again to Add More ISOs/Distributions to your Drive
  3. Restart your PC setting it to boot from the USB device
  4. Select a distribution to Boot from the Menu and enjoy!

via
YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator (Windows) | USB Pen Drive Linux