3 Golds for XANADU

XANADU Inc., the leading supplier of CAD, GIS and IT solutions in the Czech and Slovak Republics is an Autodesk reseller since 1994. Autodesk has now awarded XANADU the highest level of partnership - the Autodesk Gold Partner for both the Manufacturing and Architecture, Engineering & Construction industries.

At the same time, XANADU became the Autodesk Consulting Services Partner providing certified experts for industry solutions and implementation of Autodesk's CAD and GIS technologies.

XANADU has achieved the "Gold" partnership level not only with Autodesk but also with another two world leading IT vendors - HP and Microsoft. We offer the highest level of support for customers combining CAD and IT enterprise solutions.

AutoCAD as a web application

With the new Autodesk Project Butterfly you can edit your DWG drawings inside a web browser, over the internet.

After some initial attempts with limited functionality (ProjectDraw), Autodesk Labs now introduced a very interesting new web service which behaves more like a standard desktop version of AutoCAD. Unlike AutoCAD, you don't need to install any software. Butterfly runs just inside your internet browser.

The technology behind Butterfly is Adobe Flash, Adobe Flex and the computing power of the rented Amazon Compute Cloud.

Despite that Butterfly works with the AutoCAD file format - DWG, it supports only a limited set of DWG object types (see our benchmark drawing - Budweiser.dwg). One of the most interesting functions (would be popular even in AutoCAD) is the "Timeline". Using a simple slider you can roll back the drawing version to any older status of it. The file versions are saved "in the cloud" but you can import and export DWG files from/to your local computer.

All standard functions like object selection or mouse zooms use the same logic and almost the same speed as in full AutoCAD. You can use standard object types - lines, polylines, dimensions, raster images, blocks and their properties - color, layer, linetype, lineweight. For simple diagramming, sketching and drawing reviews, Butterfly can replace your desktop version of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT.

Christmas CAD utilities given out by XANADU

This year for the seventh time, just like last year and the years before - during Christmas, XANADU gives out a couple of free useful CAD tools for all CAD users. As a part of this tradition, this year's Christmas-tree utilities are the following:

TURBO is a tool which switches your AutoCAD to a "fast" mode. The TURBO command sets all relevant system variables influencing AutoCAD performance. You can try how much will this make your AutoCAD faster. The next TURBO (or TURBO0) command puts all back to your old settings.

GeoRefImg in its new enhanced version automatically places, scales and rotates any AutoCAD raster image according to its georeference "world" file. Plus you can create such world file from any positioned image in your drawing.

VerticesBlk inserts a specified block into all versices of a given polyline - 2D and 3D polyline. You can then number the vertices, schedule them in a table, etc.

AddV also works with polyline vertices - by simple pointing, you can easily add a new vertex or delete a vertex.

NCOPY0 is a modified Express Tools routine - you can quickly copy out a selected entity nested in a block or xref.

P2C is a conversion routine between circles and points. You can place points to the centers of selected circles, or convert points to circles.

Mesh2Pt converts 3D meshes to a group of 3D points.

ListInspection is also part of the Christmas collection - it is an Inventor macro with creates and exports a list of inspection dimensions.

Blikej ("blink") also suggests Christmas lights - it will blink the whole layer after you select an object from that layer.

All these new applications (plus many others) can be downloaded for free from our web sites www.xanadu.cz and www.cadforum.cz.

XANADU GIS solution for Energie AG Bohemia

The water distribution and infrastructure group Energie AG Bohemia has choosen a XANADU solution based on Autodesk Topobase as its new centralized GIS system.

Energie AG Bohemia provides water supplies for almost one million people in the southern part of the Czech Republic. This group manages 7.589 km of water network, 3.551 km of waste-water network, and 178 of sewage plants.

The increasing demands for the range of the water distribution network, for the effectivity of its maintenance and for the scale of complementary services lead to the necessity of unification of the existing network documentation systems and to implementation of a new centralized network management system.

After a thorough testing, Energie AG has choosen Autodesk Topobase and applications by XANADU. The main reasons were the flexibility, scalability and openness of this system, its well-proven implementation in many other companies and organizations. The implementation includes a migration of existing data from five different GIS systems stored in multiple formats (DGN, DWG, Oracle, MS SQL server and DBF).

The new GIS solution will be linked with other enterprise systems – customer management, accident management, etc. - which will help to further improve the quality of services provided by the Energie AG group.

2010 Subscription Advantage Packs and new AutoCAD commands

Autodesk has released "Subscription Advantage Packs" (SAP) for most products of the 2010 family. The SAPs extend product functionality in a range from a couple of small enhancements (like in AutoCAD) to a big new feature pack - almost a new release - like in the case of Revit. Useful new functions are available also for Civil3D users and Inventor users.

The individual Subscription Advantage Packs are available for download on your Autodesk Subscription Center web site. If you use the localized version of a CAD product, wait for the localized version of the SAP - English language versions will not work for you (except for the AutoCAD 2010 SAP).

With the release of AutoCAD 2010 Subscription Advantage Pack we have updated our AutoCAD commands database to include the new commands introduced in this SAP. We have also added some missing AI_ commands and lots of Russian command names.

Proceedings of the conference CADforum 2009

The 6th annual conference CADforum 2009 was held in Horni Cerekev, Czech Rep. in September. In parallel, a smaller specialized conference GISforum 2009 was held in the same location.

These conferences, organized by XANADU since the year 2003, attract yearly more than 200 experts from the Czech and Slovak Republics. The goal of the conference is to let CAD users exchange their practical experience with implementing and using CAD systems in the AEC, mechanical and GIS/FM industries. Most of the lectures are always held by experienced users. Very popular is the final round-table panel, where the participants can discuss with the representatives of XANADU, Autodesk and with the individual conference speakers. CADforum 2009 was the largest event for Autodesk users in the Czech Republic this year.

One of the innovations of this year's conference was the online live video broadcast of the whole conference.

The archived video-streams in TV resolution are available on the web site of the CADforum conference - konference.cadforum.cz.

Integrating Google Earth maps with AutoCAD

We understand that the standard functionality offered in AutoCAD and its "industry" versions not always provides all functions to complete a given task in the fastest way. That's where add-on applications come into play, and thanks to the open API available in all Autodesk products, many third party vendors (including XANADU) currently offer hundreds of such add-on tools.

As an Autodesk reseller, we also carry many add-on applications from other vendors. Whenever we see a tool which can help our customers to become more productive, we test its suitability for local standards and if it fits these standards, we are happy to add it to our portfolio.

A Greek software application - Plex.Earth Tools - is a perfect example of such add-on. It is very easy to use and it can increase productivity of every civil engineering user working with any AutoCAD version. Plex.Earth Tools automatically bring in a mosaic of Google Earth aerial images covering all project area. Thanks to the Google Earth functionality, you can use this process not only for aerial maps but also for any WMS geospatial online data.

After we have localized this little gem into Czech, we offer it now to all Czech and Slovak AutoCAD users.

See the full press release.