Mutually Assured Destruction – Intel vs AMD 64 bit architecture

Luke Johnson

Found some very interesting information on Wikipedia about 32 bit and 64 bit processor architecture – check it out (italics by me):

AMD licensed its x86-64 design to Intel, where it is marketed under the name Intel 64 (formerly EM64T). AMD’s design replaced earlier attempts by Intel to design its own x86-64 extensions which had been referred to as IA-32e. As Intel licenses AMD the right to use the original x86 architecture (upon which AMD’s x86-64 is based), these rival companies now rely on each other for 64-bit processor development. This has led to a case of mutually assured destruction should either company refuse to renew the license. Should such a scenario take place, AMD would no longer be authorized to produce any x86 processors, and Intel would no longer be authorized to produce x86-64 processors, forcing it back to 32-bit x86 architecture. However, the agreement provides that if one party breaches the agreement it loses all rights to the other party’s technology while the other party receives perpetual rights to all licensed technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

If you want to read more about MAD, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_assured_destruction

How To Create a Revit Walkthrough and then Upload it to Youtube

Luke Johnson

Here is a brief how-to on creating a large, high resolution rendered Revit walkthrough (or sun study) and then subsequently compressing and uploading it to Youtube.

  1. Setup your walkthrough view.
  2. In Revit, Export – Walkthrough and divide the total frame count of the animation into parts that have a manageable number of frames (I recommend 100).
  3. Do this for each part of the Walkthrough (ie. create files with frames 1-100.avi, then 101-200.avi, 201-300.avi etc). Use ‘Full Frames (uncompressed)’ when creating these parts.
  4. Use VirtualDub to join the parts together. In VirtualDub, open the first part. Press Ctrl-Right arrow (this takes you to the end of the file), then go File – Append AVI Segment… and choose the next part. Do this however many times is need to append all parts to the original file.
  5. In VirtualDub, go to Video – Compression and I recommend using the ‘Cinepak Codec by Radius’ if you have it. Quality = 100.
  6. In VirtualDub, go to Audio and choose ‘No Audio’
  7. Choose Video – Full Processing Mode
  8. Now go File – Save as AVI and create your combined and partly compressed AVI file.
  9. Open Windows Movie Maker. Import the combined file into the collections.
  10. Drag the file into the storyboard at the bottom.
  11. Go to File – Publish Movie. Choose ‘This computer’ and click Next. Choose a filename and location and click Next.
  12. I recommend choosing ‘Best quality for playback on my computer’. This should reduce the file to a manageable size.
  13. Now, open your browser and login to your Youtube account. Choose ‘Upload’.
  14. Select the compressed video you have created, and upload it. This may take a while, so just wait patiently (or do some other work!)
  15. Once uploaded, you can now share the link code with Clients or others who may like to view the animation.

Below is an example of a 1000 frame rendered animation we recently produced at Dimond Architects. It started out at about 1.2 gb, then VirtualDub compressed it to around 225 mb, then Movie Maker compressed it to about 20 mb.It took about a week for one workstation to produce this:

Feel free to share links to any files you upload to Youtube by commenting on this blog post.

Reduce Precision of AutoCAD file for insertion into Revit (too many decimals!)

Luke Johnson

Let’s say you have AutoCAD file of unknown origin, and it has some wacky or imprecise units (like the distance between two walls is 8250.092234897). What you need to do is reduce the precision, such that all the decimal points get ‘chopped off’.

To do this:

  • Open the offending DWG in AutoCAD.
  • ‘Save As’ and choose a DXF format.
  • Go to Tools menu – Options (see below)

  • Choose DXF Options, ASCII Format and set the ‘Decimal Places of Accuracy’ to the desired value (choosing 0 will remove all decimal places):

  • Hit Save.

I recommend that you now open the DXF file you saved, and then resave it as a DWG file.Now you can insert your file into Revit, and you won’t have to deal with imprecise units.Please note that this process may result in some ’rounding off’ of values – you may want to double check the resulting file.

I found this process at the following link:
Forum Link

Problems joining VPN with Windows 7?

Luke Johnson

I had a weird issue wherein I could join our office VPN using XP and Vista with no problems, but Windows 7 would not connect to the VPN and would trigger an error. (Please note that I was trying to connect to a Small Business Server 2003 computer).

The following fix worked for me:

  1. In the Windows 7 client, open an elevated command prompt
  2. Type in the following: netsh int ip reset > resetIP.log

Reboot the computer, and see if you can now connect to the VPN.I found this fix at http://thenonapeptide.blogspot.com/2009/09/solving-pptp-vpn-error-720-on-windows-7.html

Multiple Revit Instances when working on the Same Central File

Luke Johnson

You can increase your productivity by opening Multiple Instances of Revit when working on the same Central file. This is particularly useful if you want to set one instance to render a view, and continue modelling or drafting in the other Revit instance.

This is how to do it:

  1. Open Revit, and open a local copy of the Central file. This instance will be using your normal user name (eg. Luke).
  2. Open another instance of Revit. Click the ‘R’ button, and go to ‘Options’.
  3. Under General, type a different Username into the applicable box (eg. Luke-SECOND)
  4. Click OK.
  5. In this second instance, open another local copy of the Central file. This is done by navigating to the Central, and then ensuring that the ‘Create New Local’ box is ticked before opening the Central.
  6. You now have two instances working on the same Central file. You can test this by ‘Synchronizing’ each instance.

If you have Worksharing Monitor installed, open it up and have a look at the two instances. You should see something like that shown below:Please note that you will need a decent PC to take advantage of this ability. It will be particularly useful if you have 4 or even 8 processing cores available.

Windows 7 and Vista advanced mode – very powerful

Luke Johnson

(whispers) There is a secret way to enable a advanced user feature in Windows 7 and Vista, and it is extremely simple.

Just make a new folder, and give the folder the following name:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

You will find that when you open this folder, it is like a Super Control Panel.

Apparently this does not work in Vista 64 bit, but it does work in 32 bit.

Thanks to PC User magazine and William Archibald for writing this tip in a letter to the magazine.

Computer Unreachable Using Autodesk Asset Locator

Luke Johnson

While using Autodesk Product Manager, or the Autodesk Asset Locator, you may come across an issue where certain remote computers are ‘unreachable’. Assuming you have the correct permissions, the problem here is that the Remote Registry Service is not running.

Simply go to the Client computer that is ‘unreachable’, open Services (Start – Run – Type services.msc), find the service called ‘Remote Registry’ and Start the service.

When you run a search again, this computer will now be reachable by the Autodesk Asset Locator, and you will see the Autodesk products on this PC in the search results.