RobiNZ CAD Blog

Vale Rich Sales (Salesoft CAD Solutions)

I am sad to hear Rich Sales, founder of NZ Autodesk Reseller Salesoft CAD Solutions, passed away unexpectedly, but peacefully, at his home recently. Rich was an Architect who saw the potential in this thing called CAD in the early 80s and pioneered use of AutoCAD for design in NZ. That grew into becoming an Autodesk reseller, customisation/extension/application development, and an extensive knowledge of the entire Autodesk portfolio. I knew of Rich from those early days but really got to know him, and see his genius, when I joined The Warehouse in the mid-1990s. As we transitioned from AutoCAD LT... Read more →

Not all CEO's can be Carl Bass

i was listening to this, podcast link below, and the recent news of tech CEO pilgrimages to Florida to meet with the incoming... Conversation with Carl Bass - Former CEO of Autodesk and Maker of All Things Awesome | Manufacturing Spaces By Pete Oxenham This week Carl joins us to share his story - programing some of the first 3D software, being the CEO of Autodesk, and using the very software he created to build everything from canoes and self-driving vehicles. If still at Autodesk I wonder what he'd do? I bet he would still be this (2016) Carl Bass: Read more →

upFront.eZine CAD industry legend Ralph Grabowski retires

The final upFront.eZine #1.138 This email, the final upFront.eZine #1,138, marks a significant event in the history of the CAD industry and media. I don't remember when I first read Ralph Grabowski's eZine but it long pre-dates meeting him in 2003. He presented at a CAD Productivity Conference in Auckland NZ and I have stayed connected, as a reader/commenter and meeting occasionally at US cad conferences, ever since. Ralph's in-depth coverage and straight talk about the CAD industry, often deep into the core technologies sitting under the end user products we know so well, is second to none. I was... Read more →

The art of Gifford Jackson

I was browsing the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) site, saw a poster for a Boeing Above and Beyond Exhibition while cycling today, and stumbled upon an exhibition of one of my mid-1980s UNITEC (was then Carrington Technical Institute) Product Design Diploma Tutor’s work. Gifford Jackson taught us design drawing (a mixture of illustration, rendering and drafting) sharing his decades of experience working in the US (New York in the 1950s – 60s) and his own New Zealand practice. He was old school, everything by eye and hand, and used his incredible portfolio of maritime and industrial design drawings... Read more →

Bravo Carl Bass

Not all CEOs can be Carl Bass, bravo for saying this (screenshot below) (about Donald Trump) Read more →

RIP AutoCAT

Back in 2005, while I was "kitten-sitting", my Aunts Birman kitten discovered AutoCAD . Sadly, Carlos was struck by a car last weekend and, after a brave fight to survive, died yesterday. RIP AutoCAT.... Read more →

Goodbye Randy

Via Joel Orr , I was sad to learn Randy Pausch has died. I was only reading his update page a couple of nights ago so it wasn’t unexpected. Goodbye thanks. See: Advice for a future Engineer, everyo... Read more →

Shutdown Week ends, back from "the Maniototo"

Shutdown week is over. It was a brilliant week of cycling in the South Island, mainly an area known as “the Maniototo" . It’s a remote part of Central Otago which is hardly crowded itself – covering a... Read more →

Shaken, not stirred! - Auckland just had a little earthquake

Was having a late’ish dinner and thought that’s odd, felt like the house moved back forth slowly several times… and it had! There was a Ricter 3.7 – depth 6km quake about 20:30, a bit later one of Ric... Read more →

It's easy to be an expert

This is a little off topic, but was prompted by a recent CAD event. Sometimes you look at amazing work and think I could never do that. The thing is, you probably can as there is often only one difference between you and the expert and it’s never too late to change. I once asked a fellow cyclist, on a South Island tour, how long he’d been biking. Since he was over 80, and still happily riding 80km+ per day, I expected the answer to be in decades… “About 5 years” was the reply. Creating Passionate Users: How to be... Read more →