With all the 3D products available today, you might think that Autodesk is not investing in AutoCAD any more and that just isn’t true.  AutoCAD is the flagship product that has more users than any other because of its speed and recognizable interface. Today, with Desktop Subscription allowing purchasers to scale up or down their software needs easily, it is a great first step.

Are you checking to confirm your Vault backups are occurring?

If not or you assume they are, I highly suggest you put a plan in place to confirm backups are occurring. Even if the responsibility lies with another individual or a group, simply ask them. Most time Vault backups run without incident. But there are times when it fails and no backup occurs.

In the end, no one wants to deal with lost data but it will happen at some point. So is your organization prepared?

So you know that your organization needs to move to Building Information Modeling, but how?  Perhaps you read our posts about BIM 101: An Introduction to Building Information Modeling or the BIM Pilot: Getting Started Guide, and now you are wondering how to put this knowledge into use.

Autodesk is working to deliver a better experience for discovering and applying updates to the products you own and manage.  Included in all 2015 Windows desktop products is a new cloud-based software delivery solution that ships with a client component called Autodesk Application Manager that helps you stay current with the latest updates for your installed Autodesk 2015 applications and suites.

Autodesk Vehicle Tracking software allows designers to see how transportation will interact with their building and infrastructure designs before they are built.

Some of the benefits of Vehicle Tracking include:

1. Faster planning and design
2. Accurately predict movement
3. Reduce rework
4. Easily evaluate for safety factors
5. Optimize designs

Watch the video below for a quick overview of the interface and capabilities:

Autodesk Cloud Credits allow you to use services like cloud rendering and simulation. We get a lot of questions around cloud credits so we wanted to give you the most relevant information to motivate you to try the cloud components today.

You can see all this information and more on the Autodesk Knowledge Network page on Autodesk Cloud Credits.  We wanted to break it down to the basic need to knows.

CAD News for Govies is a weekly feature on Acronym that scans thousands of industry articles to present you with a regular source of CAD and GIS news, events, and ideas that impact the public sector. Here’s the latest round-up:

Autodesk Launches Instant Mobile Messaging App for Enterprise Users

Sometimes the simplest explanation can save many hours of frustration.  That’s what we find when people move directly to a 3D environment without an introduction training.  It’s different. Sure, it’s still designing, and sometimes it makes manipulating your design a longer, more frustrating process as you learn on your own.  With that in mind, I have created this video so that you can understand how the rotation and movement of your designs work in the Autodesk 3D environment.  When you understand how something works, it makes it much easier to work with.

Points in Civil 3D are blocks you need to extract to create a point file.  Here I will go over the steps to get this done so you can move your work from AutoCAD to Civil 3D.

1. On the Ribbon go to the “Insert” tab and select Extract Data

2. When the Data Extraction box comes up, accept default – Create a new data extraction.  Click next.