Autodesk University 2007 is over. There were a lot of good classes, and a couple that....well, I'll get to that later...

Here were some of my favorites.

• DEA path to Civil 3D migration - DEA presented a class on their migration from Land Desktop to Civil 3D. You can read all the blogs and websites you want, talk to all the resellers you want, but this was first hand info from a consumer on what worked and what didn't. Excellent class. Most of our assumptions were confirmed, one being the expected 5-6 days of training required for each user.
  
• The Secrets of cutting plan and profile sheets in Civil 3D - Michelle Rasmussen from IMAGINiT Technologies was easily the best speaker I had last week. The content fit the time slot, and it was presented in a logical and easy to understand manner.
  
• Vaulting the Civil 3D Data Chasm - Mark Evinger from Cowhey Gudmundson Leder presented a fairly technical class on why they decided on Vault over Data Shortcuts, the cost, time, and hardware needed to set up a Vault, and even shared their internal training schedule.
  
• Filling the gaps in the Sheet Set Manager - If you use SSM, you probably wish it could do some things that it can't. R. Robert Bell demonstrated how to use VBA to solve some of the shortcomings of the SSM.
  
• Anonymous - I did sit in on one class however that was brutal. It was advertised to users of the product, however the speaker spent the majority of the time talking about doing stuff like manually editing XML files using different 3rd party programs, and using VBA to edit files supplied by Autodesk. I do a fair amount of programming and I barely understood what was going on. About 3/4 of the 400+ user class left in the first 45 minutes.
  

That last example is an exception to the rule of course.

Outside of class...

• The exhibit hall was huge. Hundreds of booths with a variety of products exhibited.
  
• I met several people, some for the first time - others I have met before. Allow me to drop some names....
  
  
  
  • Melanie Perry - the Mistress of the Dorkness
    
  • Shaan Hurley - Technical Marketing Manager, Autodesk
    
  • Eric Stover - Product Line Manager, Autodesk
    
  • Kate Morrical - Kate's CAD Tips
    
  • Ralph Sanchez - texupport.net, AutoCAD Bugtracker
    
  • R. Robert Bell - AU Speaker, programmer extraordinaire...
    
  • Jerry Milana - Senior Consultant, Autodesk
    
  • Robert Green - CAD-Manager.com, Cadalyst Author, and all around good guy...
    
  • Bud Schroeder - Sr. Test Engineer, Autodesk
    
  • Amy Stankiewicz - Editor-in-chief, Cadalyst Magazine
    
  • Nancy Johnson - Editor, Digital Media
    
  • Bill Fane - Cadalyst Author
    
  • Murph - Map 3D and Murphs Law
    
  
  

Other notes...

I even ran into Shaan (camera in hand of course) out on the strip Wednesday night. Does he ever sleep?

During my 3:00-4:30 class on Thursday, my wife was out shopping and ran into Pete Rose over at a sports shop in Caesars Palace. You just never know who you might run into in Vegas I suppose....

Labels: AutoCAD, AutoCAD 2008, Autodesk University, Cadalyst, New Blogs, Notices, Vault

---

PermaLink       Posted 11/30/2007 02:20:00 PM     

Post a comment