Tim Huff - Man, I didn't know Acrobat could do that!

As mentioned, Adobe is releasing PDF to ISO to become an industry standard.  You probably are saying that it "is" an industry standard.  Well, it is more of a "defacto" standard that was held by Adobe, now; the standard will be controlled by ISO thus giving it more play with all.  The Version 1.7 of PDF (that is the version that is shipping in Acrobat 8!)  See the Press release here.  To see a FAQ on this matter, click here.  Adobe will release the full PDF 1.7 specification here.

 “Today’s announcement is the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard,” said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. “By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness.”

So what does this mean for the AEC/EPC industry?  It will consolidate all of these proprietary formats into one, why would a company that is building a collaboration tool, build it's own format, they can now use PDF!  The IFC and BIM can now use PDF as the wrapper for the sharing of Building, Engineering and Design data.  Think of a project where all CAD formats, project documents, and form data all preside in one format PDF.  And since this is an Open Standard, all the thought leaders of the industry will be able to build this functionally inside of their own environments!  Standards based on PDF are not new, with PDF/A for archiving, PDF/X for print, and the under development PDF/E for the exchange of Engineering Data.  These where just specialized subsets of PDF. This is a banner day for our industry; this is the first step to true interoperability with in all facets of the AEC/EPC industry!  This is what I see:

Architect using Vectorworks

Structural Engineer using Tekla

Architectural Manufacturing using Autodesk Inventor

GIS data using Bentley

Mechanical Design using Revit

Architect using Vectorworks 

Instead of using all the proprietary formats of each of the systems, they can use PDF as their Database therefore, Vectorworks PDF would contain all the Architectural data, and then the structural engineer can open the PDF directly and add his/her design information, then save as PDF which now includes all the data, the Architect can now reopen the PDF in Vectorworks and see all the structural data, then the Mechanical Engineer will add the escalators to the PDF using Inventor… you see what is going on here, we can set PDF as the AEC/EPC standard format.  This would not be driven by Adobe, but by FIATECH, or CII (Construction Industry Institute), or an amalgamation of a few organizations.  Taking BIM and IFC to the level.  You will see more on this in future posts.  Let me know what you think!

Thanks all

Tim Huff

Acrobat for AEC Blog

Posted by at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ok, so I went on line and walked through the home builders “Design your Dream Home” Flash site, it was easy add items, the problem was, that it was very limited to the changes you could make to the base plan.  I wanted to add a new room and also a pool room.  I took the online design as far as I could and printed out the designs in PDF.  Now let the fun begin!

I took the designs into Acrobat 8 Professional.  Here I have the full complement of mark up and measure tools, I can even collaborate with the home builder using the collaboration tools inside Acrobat 8 Professional (again for another entry).  My problem is this, in the previous entry, I explained how to measure, get areas, and parameters using the measure tools, but the PDF’s came from a CAD system!  Acrobat 8 Professional retains viewport scale from the 2D CAD files.  Flash doesn’t have viewports, so how do I scale the drawing?  Ah, sit back relax and let me throw a tip or two at you!

I have here the plans of the second floor:

I zoom to the area of interest:

I open the measure tool bar by selecting Tools/Measuring/Show Measuring Toolbar

No matter where I select in the graphics area of the PDF the measure tool bar shows a 1”=1” scale!  If you remember in the previous post, since we carry over the intelligence from the CAD files when I selected in the graphics area of the CAD made PDF’s my scale changed to meet the viewport scale.  Here we don’t have such luck.  But we have a chance to get in the ballpark here.  Look closely at the drawing I have some dimensions here, so, I can try to get a ratio close enough to get me a good estimate of the distance!

Here the rooms rough dimensions are 18’1” x 13’1”, and when measured I get a distance of 1.16 inches.  So, I’ll put that engineering degree to some use here and come up with a scale….

And amazingly enough it is very close to .0635 or 1/16” = 1’0” which is a rather standard drawing scale.  Now I type in my scale factor and can now start measuring the area for my new room.  I get approximately 248.16 sqft. 

This was so easy I decided to get a few more measurements together.  But now, how do I get the information of these measurements somewhere I can do some number crunching, some thing like a spreadsheet.  Well since Acrobat 8 Professional creates these measurements as annotations, I have the ability to export the information to a .CSV file which can be directly opened in a spread sheet program like Microsoft Excel!

It’s easy, go to the option area in the top right corner of the Area Tool and click, a fly out will appear and next to the bottom you will see Export Measurement Markup to Excel….  Select that give it a name…..

…and then open the <yournamehere>.csv file and you can now do take off information for carpet, wood floors, cabinets, paint, that “Oh so Snazzy” wall paper your wife really likes, what ever!


Each measurement can have a label, as shown here in column A.  And let me say this and this is not a small point, if the PDF you have was made with Acrobat Professional 7 or 8 and the creator (the person you got the PDF from) enabled it, you can do these same measurements in the Free Adobe Reader!!!  This means if you are an Architect or Engineer, that is using Acrobat Professional/3D version 7 or 8, you can enable your PDF’s for redline markups and 2D and 3d measurements for your sub’s or customers, and all they have to have is the Free Adobe Reader 8 (more on this in a later blog).  The free Adobe Reader is the most ubiquitous PDF reader in the world, every new computer ships with it installed and more than you know are downloaded every day.  This insures that no matter who you send your PDF to, they will be able to read it, from the Owner, to the CEO, to Grandma; they all know how to open a PDF!  A huge bonus for you!

So as you can see, a very useful tip and trick for you, if you get a PDF from a scan or other formats, and you need to do some measuring, Adobe Acrobat is a tool you can depend on!  Good luck, I hope this gives you a better understanding of the measure tool, and I hope you said to yourself, “Wow, I didn’t know Acrobat could do that!”

Thanks

Tim Huff

Sr. BDM Adobe Systems, AEC Market

Acrobat for AEC Blog

Posted by at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Local Adobe Forums focused on AEC – Where have you been?

Hey all, it’s me again, you know it’s funny, when I started at Adobe, we had just started building a team to support the AEC industry, we now have a full marketing team, product and project managers, sales and SE’s, many AEC flavored products (Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 3D, Acrobat Connect, LiveCycle Policy Server, LiveCycle Workflow…), and then there’s little ol’ me.  I have the best job of all.  Acrobat for AEC-Read on for more!

Local Adobe Forums focused on AEC – Where have you been?

Hey all, it’s me again, you know it’s funny, when I started at Adobe, we had just started building a team to support the AEC industry, we now have a full marketing team, product and project managers, sales and SE’s, many AEC flavored products (Acrobat 8 Professional, Acrobat 3D, Acrobat Connect, LiveCycle Policy Server, LiveCycle Workflow…), and then there’s little ol’ me.  I have the best job of all.  I get to go out and see all of you!  Well, let’s say I try to see all of you.  I do most of the major trade shows, write Blogs, starting to do some POD Casts and Video POD Casts, the list goes on.  But it’s a blast to do these things and hear that it may have helped some of you.

So here is how we can hook up, every month or so I go to a city, rent out a hotel meeting room, drag my SE Jonathan Bowman with me, and we do a 4 hour long session on how to use Acrobat Professional, Acrobat 3d, Acrobat Connect, and some of our other products in the AEC/EPC industry.  The best thing about it, other than the wealth of knowledge you will take with you, is it is FREE!!  When was the last time you got something so cool for free? 

So, I can hear you now, well Tim, what do you cover in this Forum? Here is a high level list:

• Combine CAD drawings, Word documents, project schedules, forms, and rich media content into a single Adobe PDF document.
• Streamline collaborative e-mail based reviews — and track feedback by reviewer — through network folders, WebDAV, or SharePoint.
• Import comments from PDF files directly into Autodesk AutoCAD drawings, and reference comments from PDF documents into Bentley MicroStation XM files.
• Design and create dynamic forms using Adobe LiveCycle Designer software, included with Acrobat 8 Professional.
• Collaborate in online meetings using Acrobat Connect.
• Show how Acrobat 3D can be used to take your 3D designs to the next level

It’s a full morning that starts at 8:00 with a full breakfast, then, we do a deep dive into the 5 C’s (Create, Combine, Collect, Collaborate, and Control) of how Knowledge Workers (that’s all of us) and their documents are supported within these workflows.  It’s an interactive, fun morning that will have you screaming “Hey, I didn’t know Acrobat could do that!!”

If you are interested; here are the next 3 Forums

9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

(Registration and breakfast start at 8:00 a.m.)

February 8 in Seattle

February 20 in Dallas

February 21 in Atlanta

To Register and save yourself a spot click here:

http://www.eventsadobe.com/acrobat_forum07/user_info.asp

For more info click here for a PDF description.

Well it’s late, I hope to see all of you some time this year.  Want us to come to your city?  Just write it in the comments and for that matter jot down anything you want in the comments, I would love to hear anything from come to my city to wish list items, to…. Well you get the idea! 

Take care and I’ll see you the next post!

Tim Huff

Acrobat for AEC Blog

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Hello again, well, things have been going well, Acrobat 8 has launched and I'll be hitting the road soon to bring you the new cool features of Acrobat 8 Professional and Acrobat 8 3D. I was asked recently that someone needed to do some measuring to make a couple of changes, so in this edition I want to discuss a little known or less used feature for Acrobat for AEC: The Measuring Tools!

Ok, let’s take a step back; did you know that if you publish a 2D PDF, using the PDF creation button inside of AutoCAD or the PDF command inside of Bentley MicroStation, that Acrobat will maintain viewport scale!!!  Also, if you have multiple viewports Acrobat understands and associates each viewport with its scale, very cool!  So let’s take a look at the Measure tools from 2 perspectives; one from a PDF that is created with AutoCAD 2006 (and in a later post) another PDF I got from a website.

PDF from AutoCAD 2006

Here I have a Dim Layout from a Crate and Barrel Store, it is a single viewport and I will use the PDF creation button that Acrobat 8 Professional (note you will only get a PDF creator in AutoCAD with Acrobat 8 Professional or 3D) has installed in the AutoCAD interface;

Also note the viewport scale is ¼” = 1’-0” or a ratio of .0208.  Now let’s select the PDF creation button from the Acrobat tool bar and create a PDF.  I selected to get only the paper space sheet, and I kept all layers.  I now get a PDF that is has 100% fidelity, and has kept the layer info and all scale info

Now I get a PDF that looks like this.

I want to zoom to an area of interest and do some measurements and do a quick area calculation.  

Ok let’s get the measure tool bar up; go to Tools|Measuring|Show Measuring Toolbar

So now I just select the measure tool and you will see a dialogue pop up

Now just add a couple of distance measurements, (here I used the layer control in Acrobat 8 Professional to turn off all the drawing dimensions for a clearer view) the dimensions here are shown in inches.  

Now select the Area tool and just drag around an area as I have shown here.

Notice that the area here is shown is Square Inches, I can set it to be Square Feet or Meters, or Centimeters or almost any thing.  There quite a few setting you can set to enhance your measurement experience, if you go to Edit|Preferences then got to measuring (2D) you can set to your liking; the help system has a really good description on this.

Ok that’s enough for now, have fun and give this a try.  I will be adding another side of the measure tool later this week.  Stay tuned!

Come see us on the web at http://www.adobe.com/aec

Posted by at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello all, I would like to introduce myself; I am Tim Huff, the Business Development Manager here at Adobe. My job here is to focus on the AEC industry and see how and where our products help you the AEC Professional. Look at it as an Acrobat for AEC Blog plus all the other cool stuff!

• I am a Mechanical Engineer from the University of Texas, Austin
• I spent a few years trying to play soccer for a living then noticed “Hey, I’m just not that good!”
• I worked in the Aerospace industry for 2 years and then in the Chemical Processing industry for 5 years, I made the jump to technology going to work for a major CAD company for 7 years where I helped developed it’s mechanical 3D CAD product, then jumped ship to the competitor and spent 2 years there running there 3D CAD product.
• I have been with Adobe for over 2 years focusing on the AEC industry 2D and 3D.  

Posted by at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)