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The Blast is a media-rich, interactive magazine providing insight into the latest innovations in the 3D design, architecture, construction, engineering and entertainment industries. Our subject matter experts provide advice on using the latest Autodesk applications, including tips and tricks, industry trends and real world solutions to today’s design challenges.
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How to Get and Stay Productive
Without question, we are living in the age of hyper-productivity, and there are tons of resources out there to help make you more efficient—blogs, podcasts, and books, all chock-full of advice on improving productivity. In fact, there are so many available resources that it can become a little noisy in the productivity space. I will, however, promise you that if you want to start making true, lasting changes, you have to come up with actionable plans and a system of reinforcement that will help you develop habits that you can stick with.
How to Sketch Fast in Fusion 360
Almost every Fusion design starts with a sketch. Understanding sketch properties and behaviors can go a long way in creating the best design. By default, snapping is enabled and constraints are inferred when you sketch. For example, if you sketch a line, then bring the next segment back onto itself, Fusion will automatically infer constraints, such as a parallel constraint or midpoint. But, if you want to override this behavior, hold down the CTRL key and these constraints will be ignored. Additionally, if snapping is enabled, holding CTRL while sketching will temporarily disable snapping for that sketch object. This way, you can keep snapping on for fast sketching but also quickly and easily disable it for a sketch object that does not require snaps or inferred constraints.
How to Access a Project in PlanGrid
Accessing PlanGrid from your mobile device means you can mark up and annotate your project while in the field. After logging into the PlanGrid app from your mobile device, you must download your project to the app. This will give you access to your project even if you are not connected to the internet.
It is important to note that projects can only be downloaded using a strong internet connection. It is not possible to download projects using only cellular data. Also, before downloading a project, in your mobile device settings, disable any autolock or sleep settings. If your device becomes idle or goes into a sleep mode, the PlanGrid project will halt downloading and the project will be incomplete. Finally, a project downloaded to your mobile device will use a considerable amount of storage, so before you start downloading, ensure you have ample available storage on your device. To optimize storage, PlanGrid does give you the option to either download the entire project at once or download only parts of the project, such as downloading only photos or the most current data.
In the PlanGrid mobile app, under Projects, the projects that are listed under On this device are the projects that have already been downloaded. Projects with the Alert icon indicate that there are updates to the project that have not yet been synced to the device. Projects listed In the cloud are those that have yet to be downloaded to your device.
How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
We don’t often consider our emotional health when we are thinking about work. When asked if we like our jobs, we may nod emphatically, or shrug, or lapse into a complicated tale of a love/hate relationship. But, regardless of whether or not you have the job of your dreams, you still bring your whole self to work every day. And let’s face it—whatever may be affecting your personal life comes with you in some form into your professional life. Positive or negative, our emotions have an enormous effect on everything we do, so it’s important to develop skills that hone both our IQ and our EQ.
I bet you didn’t even know you had an EQ. Your EQ is your emotional intelligence quotient. The term ’emotional intelligence’ (referred to as either EI or EQ) is defined by Psychology Today as, “the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.” This is an important ability for collaboration in a team environment, and absolutely critical if you’re a leader or manager.
Leading Scores
What makes one a leader? Well, first things first – people follow you. And not because you’re rich or famous, simply because they believe you can get them where they want to go. And just as importantly, you want to go there too but you know you can’t get there alone.
Once again, March marked the annual release of new versions of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. AutoCAD 2022, the 36th iteration of the company’s flagship CAD software, includes just a handful of new features, many of which only work in conjunction with the company’s growing collection of online tools, such as the AutoCAD web and mobile app and BIM 360.
Enter Revit’s RPC family. RPC stands for Rich Photorealistic Content, and that’s exactly what it is. You can add in a realistic airplane, a car, or humans in a variety of poses. You can also visualize furniture! On top of viewing realistic images of the furniture in a space, you can modify the furniture’s texture and color. This is a dream come true for all of us need-photos-kind-of-planners.
As always, the Fusion 360 development team at Autodesk has been hard at work consistently improving and adding new features to the program. While not every user will benefit from every new or improved item, there is sure to be something in nearly every update to raise the bar on capabilities and quality of life experiences Fusion 360 offers. Here’s a short list of new or improved features to look for and implement into your Fusion 360 workflow.
Each year, Autodesk improves its software with an annual product release. And while some years introduce radical changes, most years introduce more measured changes with the addition of new tools and updates. 3ds Max 2022 is one of those.
When opportunities present themselves, whether they are across a team or across an entire organization, you must decide to be a part of them. Changes both large and small can have enormous effects. For example, software updates can help users perform tasks faster, or even eliminate manual, redundant tasks altogether. And that’s a good thing, because your valuable time is much better spent focusing on more challenging tasks or conquering a goal. Grab hold of that opportunity!
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