clears throat [image: frankenstein-mask-1.jpg]

I've been spec'ing a new PC also, just read through this interesting thread. I like the i7 3930(k) sandy bridge with the extra 2 cores, really curious how it stacks up to the Ivy Bridge i7 3770(k) ... in real world testing sketchup, autocad, solidworks, adobe cs suite for photoshop, illustrator, premier pro etc. Benchmarks are nice for baseline, but more interested in real world performance use cases. 3930 has the extra 2 cores 3770 newer 22nm architecture with almost 1/2 the wattage req. 77 vs 130 The Xeon E3-1275 V2 (ivy bridge with IG) is another very tempting processor I am also wondering about the new nVidia 6xx cards esp. 660 to 680 vs. the older 560 to 580. Seems a lot of "render" pro-amateurs point to the 5xx series for the superior floating point processing over the 6xx. Apparently the 570 was getting such good render/viewing in professional software as to tempt professionals from the Quadro/Fire series cards, so nVidia hamstrung the 6xx architecture to only focus on Frames/second. I'd love to see the difference between a 570 vs 670 (with same ram, or highest available ram in both 2.5gb?) Although I am seriously thinking of getting a Quadro 4000 for 3D work. I am painfully familiar with 3D render errors/glitches and CAD parts issues occurring with consumer grade graphic cards. It is fine if you have the time to re-render a scene once, thrice or painfully more or fix and fidget a CAD part to re-appear correctly. The Quadro drivers are pretty tight and can be targeted towards a specific piece of software. (i think sketchUp has it's own specialized drivers, although not 100% sure on that) ECC ram (error correcting code ram) can make for huge savings in time if an error ever corrupts a file (or simply a single part in a CAD project, try hunting that down!) Building a system with these parts should be do-able in the $1400 to $1800 range for good (silent cooling) gear. Any opinions? I'm starting to lean towards a full ECC system, something that gamers of course will not appreciate. Love to hear how your system works for you TomDC!

@o2bwln said: These images always bring to mind my favorite cartoon strip. ..and also there is something very true about this. nice one, o2bwln!

Warmers? That's a new one. Like birthers?

... or you could play with artisan with one of the warehouse models to get it looking more like that

Not really. You just have not been working with the correct org.

Best pictures are from the UK, go figure. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225108/Hurricane-Sandy-2012-Obama-declares-major-disaster-New-York-39-people-die-Superstorm.html

You are right, your copy of revit was upgrading an older version. And yes they won't be able to use what you change. As far as what is best for them that is really up to them. It also depends on who is doing the final drawings. If you are producing the construction documents for the landscape then they only need to modify their model in those areas to match. I would just ask them which is the best. Personally I would probably prefer a SKP to import then modify my Revit model to match.

Will see

@gaieus said: Hehe. You got me. I should go back to school. Does IRender do displacement mapping? I did not know that, great! Yes - but we haven't found a great use for it yet. We worked on a ruby to create bump maps and displacement maps from SketchUp models. Basically you render the scene - say a wall with 3D depth - or a window treatment - of rocks - with a camera point straight on - in OpenGL - but save a greyscale image using the Z-depth for the intensity, and then use it as a bump map or displacement map. (This could be done purely in Ruby as well by getting the Z-distance at each pixel and creating an image using the Z-distances for greyscale intensity) It was hard to find a good example for it. e.g. Background windows which would have many fewer faces in SketchUp - but still render will from different angles because of the mapping. Here is a sample from of the image from the procedure - which we wrote for experimentation but never put into a product. [image: http://wiki.renderplus.com/images/d/d3/Rock-bump-images.jpg] The problem was creating a SketchUp model good enough to use for the bump maps. A brick wall would be easy - but it also easy to create a decent bump map for brick using Paint. So you need a more complex sculptured surface - or rocks. When we asked at the time no one could supply a good model of rocks which would be useful for creating a bump map or displacement map image.

That is definitely amazing, also the large size makes it easy in some parts and harder in some cases. BTW one of my close friend IMO is one of the best pencil and oil color painters i've ever seen, while completely anonymous,you may see some "Hossein" paintings here: [image: http://www.apadanagallery.com/media/apadanagallery/2011/09/hossein-hadipour-04.jpg] and more oil paintings here also: http://www.apadanagallery.com/artist/hossein-hadipour/ I've seen unbelievable portraits that he have drown ...

On Google maps you can edit the live maps that are seen by everyone throughout the world and it lets you add info about if its a bike path, ped path, no sidewalk, dirt road, locked gate, etc. So maybe an app like this would get runners to slowly start inputting data about the areas around them, improving the maps accuracy for everyone. It does sound like a great idea. You can almost come close by doing the get directions, and put in your house address and the house address of your neighbor. Then click on the path and drag the pin to anywhere that you want to walk past. It will you give a route to your neighbors house via wherever you put the pin. And it tells you how far it was. And if you click on the "walking" tab it will even include walking paths if your town has any (we have a very large network of walking/biking paths here in Davis) and Maps did a pretty good job using them.

Thanks Roger. I'll look for it. Surprised PBS didn't fix it up before broadcast. As a documentary there must be ample places to provide English voice-over anyway.

as you may know , nowadays, Iran government is almost banned in different field , so private jobs and offices are trying to develope themselves, preventing to die. (i.e. I saw this few days ago: http://www.umef-university.ch/?lang=fr , that has an sister office here in Iran-Tehran :http://www.mahanbs.com/en/) So I thought that maybe some of you , are university lecturer,managers, etc ... and interested in having co-job with our private academy!... is there anyone here? anyone interested?

If you want to leave legacy photos for your offspring, could I urge you leave hard copy versions. A recent project I have been involved in has shown how rapidly things can change. Making use of the 100 year old photographs was easy. Trying to retieve 20 and 30 year old text and graphics files was a nightmare. Finding working drives for old format discs then trying to convert what were once relatively mainstream file formats took hours of work and proved simply impossible in a couple of cases . I spent three weeks trying to find someone with a working zip drive only to find that the disc I had was corrupted.

kmead, thanks for this.

Another aspect to this is that an Architect will communicate in a variety of styles and the casual styles reflect the conceptual nature of the presentation and seem to imply that they should not be taken to literally. Conversely as the design development continues everything becomes more precise and a more disaplined drawing technic is usually employed. I think this is one of the reasons I love sketchup and layout because I can change the style effortlessly. I have seen clients become nervous when presented with a concept in a hard line format. One more thing, good sheet composition and organization of information is always high on my list.

Happy bday. See you in a couple days!

Thanks Trogluddite for those observations ! Nice idea to build something from premodeled parts ! Concerning 3D warehouse...I'll definitly not rely on it, too messy for me and most of time bad models...Concerning practical things, I'm aware of SU requisities and I'll not propose any training sessions if PCs are not good for SU. Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts, they're very usefull !!

@richard said: BTW mate, it's funny that they ask immigrants to Australia if they have any criminal record, I'm not sure if that means it's still a requirement? Bit like last time I entered the US; I was asked "got any guns on you?" "No" I replied, since I rarely use small weapons. "Want some?" they asked.