Fernando Malard

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Windows XP Pro + SP2 is driving me crazy!

Hello,

I'm facing a strange problem (but I'm not alone) after install Service Pack 2 on my Windows XP Pro. After install it my computer becomes very very slow even to render the Google's main page.

I have found a lot of articles on Internet talking about this but everything they tried I have also tried without success.

I have tried several virus removal tools, anti-spywares and everything you can imagine!
Nothing happens, the computer continue to stay slow and slow...

If anyone have a hunch, please send it to me!!!

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Autodesk invests heavily in DWF

Autodesk continue to invest heavily on DWF technology. With great products like DWF Composer and DWF Viewer Autodesk leads the digital document technology in CAD area. Several tools are being developed to user DWF technology and apply it in several areas.

Products like Autodesk Inventor are capable to print out to 3D DWF files which allows you to Orbit the rendered drawing (as you do inside AutoCAD) using DWF Viewer. It is very interesting and probably this technology will be present on the next AutoCAD release.

The DWF Toolkit is a free SDK set that allows developers to create, read and manipulate DWF files directly from its custom applications.

More information about DWF on:

DWF Toolkit 6.0
DWF Viewer
DWF Composer
Cheers!

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

ObjectARX for Dummies Blog is hot!

Hello,
I'm very happy to see people are pointing out my Blog about ObjectARX.
I have already received some e-mail messages about conceptual and technical issues.
Hope to see much more people there!
Class 3 is coming...stay tuned!
Cheers!

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

AutoCAD Release History

Hello,

I have found a page that describes all AutoCAD Releases since its first version.
There is a lot of interesting information there:

http://betaprograms.autodesk.com/history/area51.htm

Cheers!

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

New Blog!

Hello,
I have decided to extend my Blog with a new "ObjectARX for Dummies" Blog. My intention is to present this powerful but very complex programming language for AutoCAD.
Hope to see you there:
Cheers!

Design Patterns

Hello,

I would like to share a great experience I have been facing with software development. Since last year I have been using “Design Patterns”. Ok, you don’t know what it is and would like a human explanation? Let’s do it!

Design Patterns are some kind of recipes to implement software solutions. It can be simple as 5 lines of code or too much complex as 100 pages of code. The fact is that Design Patterns are being applied into several development environments and producing great results.

You may think about it as a cake recipe. Every time you would like to cook a chocolate cake you go into your recipes file and read that chocolate cake recipe. Almost on 100% of times you make this cake it will look like the same and will have that delicious smell.

When dealing with software you may face situations that will demand the same effort to build an efficient solution and apply it fast. Most of time developers dig deep into their archives to found old solutions. Once it was found, they copy and paste them into the new code. Sometimes this piece of code has an undiscovered bug and this come with the code and implant itself “for free” into your new solution.

To avoid this kind of situation most of software development “thinkers” build a lot of Design Patterns to guide developers to implement a standard, tested and bug-free solution. We have today a great sort of patterns for several different languages, solutions and operational systems.

If you plan to develop software or manage a team of developers you should pay attention to this and try to use it!

As my habitat is Microsoft Windows I would like to recommend a good PDF about Patterns (it includes other types of patterns) available at Microsoft’s web site:
Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET

Hope you enjoy this reading.
Cheers!

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Great blog about AutoCAD

Hello,

I would like to share a great web blog of an Autodesk member who I met on last year at AU2004 in Las Vegas. His name is Shaan Hurley and he loves Brazil and our "Guaraná" soda. He is a nice guy and loves to take pictures of the events he attend.

You will find much information about AutoCAD world there:

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/

Monday, January 24, 2005

Solve a problem or an old solution?

Resuming my comments about Dean Kamen's presentation, I would like to talk about something he said and we can easily proof on our day by day.

Dean tells his company story about a dialysis machine. People who created this machine ask his company to reduce its size (it was big as a refrigerator). Dean and his team worked a lot on this project and after some months the company ask him to stop the project. Dean stop to think about what that company wants and have concluded that they are hiring his company to turn an old solution better instead of create a new solution with a small machine.

So he starts to analyze the problem (dialysis) and not the solution (company's machine). From this point he took about one more year to create a new portable dialysis machine and that company acquired his project.

On our specific business we can face several situations as this one. Most of time people come to us to ask to solve its unsucceeded solutions instead of solve the real problem. It is much confortable to start from an existing point than invent a new solution but I can guarantee that you only will become a better professional and feel that taste of success if you invent a new solution every day!

If you would like to know more about Dean and his invetive mind, take a look at:

http://www.segway.com/ and http://www.dekaresearch.com

Cheers!

Sports Managers?

Hi there!

Last year I have attended the Autodesk University conference in Las Vegas. The keynote speark was a great man called Dean Kamen. He is the inventor of segway machine (that machine that runs on two wheels without fall) among many other goodies. On his presentation he talked about how many professionals are graduated in USA and how many of those are cientists and sports managers.

This came to my attention when he told the numbers which are very different in favor of sports managers. He was very concerned about what will be the future of USA...maybe a most powerfull sports nation? Maybe the world largest cientists import nation?

I'm just don't know. I agree with Dean about this problem and guess it is happening in so many nations that our world is loosing very important people (people that could contribute with a little piece of mind) to make our world a better place to live!

See you on my next article also extracted from Dean Kamen's presentation! It is much more tech and is about to solve problems...

Cheers!