The Month-End Report

OK, I couldn't think of a better title than that. It's been a while since I last posted, but it doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I've been quite busy; I just haven't been documenting it in the blog. We go through cycles, and it takes a certain frame of mind to want to talk about things. (At least I've found that it does for me.)

I have 3 new "finished" house designs. One is particularly good. Very attractive and perhaps even practical. Another has a good floorplan/layout, though it doesn't necessarily make good use of the space allotted to it. In fact, I have cloned it into 2 other designs with the same floorplan but radically different facades. One has a flat roof, and the other has a "Florida" roofline. I haven't completed those designs. They are waiting for some inspiration. The third finished design is a narrow lot "Florida" design (perhaps I am in my Florida phase, right now) that I like well enough. It has some rough edges that I need to fix, but I don't seem motivated to attack it.

Once I'm satisfied with the images of these new houses, I will post them on the web site. Of course, the number of designs is getting such that I probably need to reorganize things. Sometimes I wish I were a little less anal, but then, my attention to detail has served me rather well, so far.

I had another computer "adventure" this month when I decided to upgrade my video card. Not that the video card in my new computer was slow, but I thought I could enhance my system's performance by buying a card specifically "tuned" for CAD graphics (instead of using a card optimized for gaming, which most systems would have). So I did some research, and found the ATI FireGL T2 card. It's about $260 (at most mail-order places), and it has markedly better performance on CAD applications than a typical gaming card (such as the ATI Radeon X300, that I had). But ... wouldn't you know that my new Dell computer is "different". Ahem. Turns out the T2 is AGP, and my new Dell 8400 uses "PCI-Express" for the video card. The T2 wouldn't fit. So I shipped it back. And paid $40 restocking fee and $22 shipping. So, it was a $62 learning experience for me. In desperation I decided simply to upgrade the X300 to an X600 (which is about all I can afford), so now I have a new ATI Radeon X600 video card. MSI is the manufacturer. It's faster, but perhaps I should have waited a little longer. Now I learn that ATI is making FireGL technology for PCI-E, in the V3100, V3200, etc., line. They are a little costly, but I may be upgrading my video card again once these cards begin to ship. They are not available anywhere, at the moment. This is typical of computer technology: there's something new and better coming out every minute. You could choose to wait for some future "cool" technology, but even then there will be something even cooler just on the horizon.

You can aim all you want, but you still have to pull the trigger, sometime, if you want to hit anything.

I don't know why ...

but I feel compelled to mention how the "solution" to my most recent problem with Home Designer Pro worked out. Here is an image of the "artifacts".

Last night I finally got the chance to work on the design, so I set about removing all the wall columns I'd placed in the design. Of course, that was not the solution to the window frame artifacts. Not completely, anyway. Two things seemed to be at fault:

1. Windows mulled together at wall corners is a "problem", and I had done that (well, it's supposed to work).


2. "Faulty" window objects that needed to be deleted, and new windows added.

I futzed with the plan for a couple of hours, methodically trying various things (mostly unsuccessfully) until finally all the artifacts were removed. Now I'm tempted to put wall columns back in again, and see what happens. When I removed them I replaced the columns with rectangular "geometric shapes" that were easily be made into brick. At the tops of these columns, which met my roofs at angles, I had to put in smaller pieces of shapes to fill the diagonal under the roof eave. I know it's impossible to visualize what I mean without a picture, but ... suffice it to say, walls automatically cut themselves off at the roof, no matter what the angle, so if you use walls you don't have to worry about how they join to the roof. With other shapes, you have to manually make them fit. PITA.

Doing away with windows extending into the corners of the walls was no great loss, but it makes the house seem slightly more massive and less open and airy. Perhaps I will post images so you can see what I mean. That is, if I remember it when I'm at home. Of course, I'm not at home now. Us corporate wage-slaves don't get that luxury. We have to fight in traffic every morning (and every afternoon) just to have our private enjoyments in relative peace and comfort.

That's enough of that. And this is enough of this.

Click here for an image of this house design.

Progress Report

I spent quite a bit of time working on the "How to design houses with Home Designer" section of my web site. I dunno ... I have about 20 pages, or so, and about 50 images (and this is just the size of the second iteration; the first had about a dozen pages and about 30 images). The design idea I picked, which I talked about before, seems to be somewhat more complex than I really want an example to be. Oh well.

As with any design, there are always problems and "issues" to be resolved. I found myself feeling compelled to travel down several potential paths to a solution, just to be complete, but then eventually realizing that each problem would suggest 3-10 different possible solutions, and if I fully discussed each and every one, I could easily end up with 50-60 pages of design discussion. Too much.

To be sure, design is the most important aspect of the problem. There is a philosophy and an approach (actually several), and even though I am not a practicing architect, I have been designing software for more than 25 years (yeah, I'm that old), and in that time I've learned a few things about the design process. In my mind I can assess (and discard) 80% of the ideas I come up with in just a few moments; others may want the benefit of knowing more about design heuristics, rather than to have me simply say: "I chose this solution", or "I chose that solution" without explanation. It's the explanation of the design process that can't be done in a couple of paragraphs. Explaining how to manipulate walls or doors is easy by comparison.

Now I'm thinking about using my friend's wiki software and building a "Home Designer Wiki". This would be mostly concerned with how to do things with the software, and has the benefit of permitting other knowledgable users to post content, as well. Not only that, but it would permit confused users to post "questions" for discussion (though a wiki is not a forum, per se), and have their questions addressed.

Every time I contact Home Designer technical support (they are always prompt and courteous) I find out one more thing that I need to know, but that is not documented about the software. They speak in terms of "the software likes it when you do this", and "the software doesn't like it when you do that". Yeah. Some things it does very well, other things seem to be large challenges. What may be intuitive to you and me sometimes doesn't translate well when you try to model it. My latest issue concerns some columns (made up of walls) that I placed in the perimeter walls of my current house design. According to the "official" source, the presence of these columns caused the bottom frames of my windows to extend past the edge of the windows and clear across the floor plan. They are quite visible in all the 3D views. So, a "problem" with the exterior walls caused windows to malfunction. Here's the image (TBS) that illustrates this graphical artifact.

Incredible, but apparently true. I haven't had time yet, to go back and revise my design to find out if the proposed solution (use soffits for the columns instead of walls) will work, or not. Of course, if it doesn't, there isn't much I can do except to remove windows until these lines go away. Or live with them.

So, that's the latest word on things. As always, stay tuned.

More XP Fun and Games

Yes, folks. Once again this intrepid IT "professional" (really, I am!!) thinks he can outsmart Microsoft and upgrade his brand new Dell 8400 (3.2 Ghz, 800 Mhz FSB, 1 GB@533 Mhz RAM, HT, 160 GB HDD, and if you don't know what all those buzzwords mean, don't worry--they don't mean that much), from XP Home to XP Pro.

Ahem. Kids, don't try this at home. Dads--this man is a professional. He is paid to do stupid things like this.

Suffice it to say that I have finally succeeded, but not without much gnashing of teeth, cursing out loud, and sending an email off to Dell tech support to help troubleshoot a BSD (Blue Screen of Death) I received during the upgrade install. A BSD, of all things!! Turns out you have to remove the damn modem (huh?!?) to (re)install Windows--why? Don't ask me. But, even after that, the Windows install told me it couldn't find a hard disk installed in my system! Yes, that's right! We are bingo for two, here.

So, I went to the Dell site and downloaded the SATA disk device drivers for my particular machine (I guess Windows doesn't come pre-loaded with drivers for these "new" HDD devices). Well, the drivers were inside an EXE that wrote the drivers to a diskette. Of course, don't you know my new system doesn't have a diskette drive (OK, foolish attempt to save $50, almost as foolish as trying to save $100 by not getting the operating system version I really needed). But, turns out I have a USB diskette drive that came with my company laptop, and lo and behold! it works when plug into my new Dell. The boy is 1-for-3, the slump may be over.

Well, after several aborted attempts to resume the install (all I got was a black screen with a white mouse pointer), or repair the install (same result), (if you're keeping score, that makes me 1-for-5, right at the Mendoza line) I finally decide to blow away the HDD and "start over" from scratch. Keep your fingers crossed, because, bubba, if this don't work you're going to have to send that disk drive off to Dell and have them bring you a new one. This time, it will have the proper operating system version on it. (Yeah, I was really stupid.)

Well, starting over and doing a "from scratch" install finally worked. Who knows what was wrong. Turns out I did need the disk drivers (all you weenies out there with SATA drives, take note). So now I'm sitting here listening to my MP3 collection (2500 songs, or so) and typing this blog entry on my old computer, while I'm reinstalling all that nice, neat Dell pre-installed software. Once that's done, I'm going to have to cannibalize an 802.11g network adapter off one of our other computers so I can connect this new beast to the Internet. And then things will really get weird. But at least I have SP2, so there will only be a few hacks to compromise my system.

*sigh* So little to do, so much time ... strike that. Reverse it. Well, this is RLA (the RLA in RLAEnterprises.net) signing off with his blood pressure now somewhat restored to its normal equillibrium.