In the Pipes

Quiet before the storm

It’s the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans and Autodesk has decided to shut offices down worldwide for the week. (Not saying those two facts are related.  Just saying.)  Myself, I’ve decided to decompress by heading to Los Angeles for a few days. I’ve plans to hunker down, fry a turkey and have a hurricane party with some other New Orleans ex-pats there. 

Things are a bit crazy in the office just now – and everyone is asking “When is AutoCAD Plant 3D out?"  All I can say is, keep your eyes open, its very very close. 

Video Survey and Screensaver

So we are getting great traffic for our getting started with AutoCAD Plant 3D videos – over 1000 views!  And boy is my voice tired ;-)  In the interest of “tell us what we did right” and “tell us what we need to do better”, we have a survey.

So if you’ve watched the videos found here  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=70F758BE2DFBAB21

Take the survey? http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=uknKFqJug5ecnG8hwID2sQ_3d_3d

Also, we are very interested in how people learn new software.  If you are interested in having a brief (15-30 minute) conversation so we can find out HOW you learn software like Plant 3D, please send an email to eileen.foran@autodesk.com. Eileen will set up a phone call at your convenience. Eileen is our technical publications manager, and is looking into how we can best assist you in mastering the product. 

And now for some fun -- we have a Plant 3D screensaver.  It’s like the old windows “Pipes” screensaver, with a Plant Piping twist. To get it, first Download Plant3DSaver.msi (267.0K) and install it.

 To Make this your Screensaver: 

• Right click on your desktop 
• Click Properties 
• Click Screen Saver tab
• Choose AutoCAD Plant 3D from drop down menu
• Click Apply

To view without waiting for your PC to go to sleep click the Preview Button. If you are having trouble with preview, please make sure you are not moving your mouse after clicking – if you move your mouse the preview ends immediately. Enjoy!

Getting Started Videos

In getting ready for launch of AutoCAD Plant 3D 2010, we created a number of getting started videos. These are introductions to the various features in the software such as routing pipe, data handling, isometric production, and ortho drawing creation. We have 9 posted so far, with more to come. The videos range form about 2 to 8 minutes in length. Here is the first one introducing the product.

You can view the rest of the video from either of these links:

• Official link: www.autodesk.com/autocadplant3d-gettingstartedvideos
• YouTube playlist (HD available): http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=70F758BE2DFBAB21

And again, AutoCAD Plant 3D Beta 3 (which was used to make these videos) is available from the beta feedback site. See the previous post for signup instructions.  Thanks for watching !