Image by Tom Sawyer Full Picture Photos are assigned to points called "rooms" on plans. Opening a plan and clicking a room delivers a gallery of all photos assigned there. Photos are further tagged by trade and will show up on the appropriate plans in a set. A new cloud-based construction photo-and- plan managing collaboration service is drawing praise from beta testers who started throwing projects on it within hours of its April 30 release."It's brilliantly simple. I can't believe we've been living without it," says architect Oscia Wilson, Boiled Architecture, San Francisco. Now launching a project, Wilson is tagging
Related Links: http://www.knowledgesmart.net KnowledgeSmart.Net Engineering News Record Bristol, U.K.–based KnowledgeSmart Ltd. is starting to turn heads on the west side of the Atlantic with its independent, online-software skills-gap analysis and industry benchmarking service for design firms.Rory Vance, CEO, says about 25 U.S. companies have subscribed to the service, including Stantec, HOK, Atkins and Cannon Design. Doubling in a year, the number of subscribers on the list globally is now "into three figures."Subscribers are testing hundreds of users—and not just BIM jockeys—for comprehension and skills with specific software tools, such as Autodesk Revit and Bentley Microstation. Others are testing project managers
Courtesy of Balfour Beatty Data-rich information models not only can support exquisite representations of facilities, like this one of the Presidio Parkway in San Francisco, but more importantly, they can be used to study alternatives, and optimize design, construction, operations and maintenance for the lifecycle. Balfour Beatty PLC is stepping up its support of new software and digital tools that underpin full lifecycle use of building information modeling around the globe. A recent deal with Autodesk is a key part of the strategy.Chris Millard, head of systems integration for the 50,000-employee, UK-based infrastructure firm, says the goal is to expand
Photo by Tom Sawyer Drag and drop Form builder for Android device lets users with no programming skills create apps. App development for mobile devices is surging, like lines of surfers picking up big sets of waves.Economists are beginning to notice "the app economy," saying that it is now responsible for 466,000 jobs in the U.S., up from zero in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, according to a report published on Feb. 7 by TechNet. The report is based on research by Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics LLC, a consulting firm that tracks the impact of innovation and
Related Links: Key Federal Technical Committee Says No Practical Solution to LightSquared's GPS Interference LightSquared Pushes for FCC Decision on GPS Network The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to turn out the lights on LightSquared's proposed $14-billion national 4G broadband network, following findings from a key technical committee that "there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference" with the nation's GPS systems.The FCC will open a comment period today on the recommendation from the National Telecommunications And Information Administration that the launch of the network should be killed.“NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and
COURTESY OF INSITE SOFTWARE New vectors Software displays multiple views and grabs selected contours. A new release of an earthwork estimating tool should make tracing contours on most site plans obsolete. Replacing tracing, the software allows a user to click on the end of a line to extract vector data from CAD files and—remarkably—many commonly distributed PDFs.InSite Software released SiteWork 11 on Jan. 24. The product's new automated, vector-based contour-tracing function is quite different from the contrast-based automated tracers available in previous versions, which are easily fooled by intersecting lines. By importing a CAD file or first-generation, vector-based PDF and
A British company has a reassuring answer for safeguarding data on USB flash-drive devices, which are all too easily lost or stolen.Conseal Security Ltd. on Jan. 17 released a new version of a locally installed software, called Conseal USB2, that password-protects such devices and then enrolls them in an online "dual lock" password-checking system. Whenever the device is jacked into a computer, the drive checks in with a server that turns back to the software's local management consol to verify the credentials.Because the device is managed from the local administrator's console, access rules can be set at a variety of
Image courtesy of Lantronix The xPrintServer by Lantronix helps iPads print. As elegant as they are, the Apple iPhones and iPads surging into the workplace still have a few rough edges, including the limited number of printers that work with them.But that's about to change.In February, Lantronix, an Irvine, Calif.-based technology firm, will start shipping the xPrintServer, a $149 plug-and-play device that can be added to any network Ethernet port, allowing wireless iOS devices to print out at almost any subnet printer. Early testers rave about it.The need stems from Apple's iOS engineering, which supports only AirPrint-compatible printers. While the
H. Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and an expert in seismic-resistant design, has enormous experience bringing engineering relief to the scenes of disasters and helping local leaders restore safety and order amid danger and chaos.
