WorldCAD Access

Tiny Power Supplies

I recall a fellow instructor at the local technical collage showing off to me his brand-new, high-power, Dell workstation-style laptop. Then, he unhappily showed me the monster power brick. It was the size of a brick, and heavy as one, too. Then the GaN revolution occurred. Gallium nitride allowed us to have tiny chargers, tiny because they need fewer components than older style chargers (fewer heatsinks, filters, other circuit parts), and produce less heat, meaning they are more compact. I got got one that comes with three ports: one USB-A and two USB-C. Being small, it’s the ideal travel charger,... Read more →

The Webinar on BIM for Dassault's DraftSight

Opinion I'm took in Dassault Systemes’s "Understanding the New BIM Module in DraftSight" Webinar. You can watch the replay at https://youtu.be/-Y1bmFIJmhI. Dassault, like PTC, has long longed to get a toehold in the AEC/BIM market, but usually did not make it. There is an AEC version of CATIA that starts at (just) $4,500/year, which includes Draftsight and the BIM module. This BIM module is not new. It is licensed from Graebert, upon whose ARES Commander DraftSight is based. Graebert has been developing the BIM model for some years now. So, it is new only to Dassault and DraftSight. BIM is... Read more →

Replacing Eudora with eM Client

Opinion We Eudora v7.x email enthusiasts have been nursing along this unsupported email client for 18 years, with fixes issued from time to time, to keep up with increasing security requirements. Last month, Google forced OAUTH on email clients, which caused my Eudora to fail to collect email; it still can send emails. (My ISP uses Gmail, so my Eudora has to get its email from Gmail.) I spent several days trying to figure out how to get OAUTH 2 working with Eudora, but gave up. If you want to take a look for yourself, check out this post on... Read more →

Remarkable USB-C Products That I Found Useful

Opinion I still recall when USB v2 was launched, promising faster data transfer speeds. That was nice, but not fast fast, given that Firewire 800 was faster still. It took until USB v3 to finally kill off Firewire, whose cables tended to be expensive; since most computers didn’tcome with Firewire, there was a higher cost in buying the adapter. Then we discovered USB-C v3, and how it had become the connector to end all other connectors. It did everything: USB-C port extenders handling anything High data transfer speed Supply power to computers (aka PD, power delivery) Handle ethernet networking Read... Read more →

Graebert neXt 2025 Q&A

Opinion Graebert produces the ARES Commander DWG editor, and is one of the very few DWG editors that does not depend on IntelliCAD. Graebert wrote its own CAD engine, which, like Bricsys, allows it do more than other CAD systems based on code written by the ITC. Graebert has produced probably the most advanced Web-based and tablet-based DWG editors, as well as ones that run on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Last week, Graebert launched ARES 2026, and I captured the Q&A from the Webinar. Questions and answers were edited lightly for clarity and brevity. Cedric Desbordes is head of marketing... Read more →

Cleaning up Windows context menu

Opinion I get irritated by the context menu (right-click menu, shortcut menu) for Windows file explorer getting cluttered with functions I never use. The long list of functions slow down the display of the menu, and worse, makes me take too long hunting through the list of options for the one I want. Mine, right now, looks like this. There's five entries I'd like to get rid of. There is no place in Windows to edit remove them, other than editing the registry, which I really don't want to do. There are some utilities, like CCleaner, that offer to remove... Read more →

Asking AI Useful Questions

Opinion The AI that's popular these days (LLM) tends to be a search engine summarizer, finding stuff and then summarizing it in a folksy writing manner. Questions are being asked by industry thinkers why AI can create cutesy artwork but not summarize business expenses. So, I've come up with two questions to challenge AI systems with more than one dimension of knowledge. If answered correctly, they would provide actionable information. So far, all AIs I tested have failed to answer accurately. Q1. Which financial institution in Canada offers the highest interest rate? From this sentence, AI has to understand the... Read more →

Drafting Tips From a 1970s Drafter

Opinion Stencil for drawing common shapes quickly My father was a drafter for a time, so it was natural for me to take the one drafting class offered by my high school. On the first day, a dozen guys showed up. For our first homework assignment, we had to practice lettering. For me, having already been exposed to the neat lettering required for drawings, this was a natural. Nevertheless, the assignment had its intended effect; the next class, just three of us showed up. The instructor wanted only those truly enthusiastic about drafting in his class. That was 1972. I... Read more →

Finding that Second Screen

Opinion During an extreme cold spell earlier this year, the 12V battery in my car died, and so I replaced it. Imagine my surprise when the car’s clock no longer displayed anything; it was blank. On the car’s interactive screen, the menu item for setting the time was grayed-out. I could no longer set it. See the image above. Same for the calendar display. For me, this is a problem. When I drive, I frequently glance at the clock to gauge time remaining. I did find online a bunch of "solutions," but none worked. The local Ford dealer offered to... Read more →

The Machine Never Had a Soul

Opinion Tracy Kidder's groundbreaking 1981 "The Soul of the Machine" book described the speed at which Data General's Eclipse MV/8000 mini-computer was launched. The "soul" consisted of the engineers who brought the machine to life. Today, however, we realize the machine, which now dominates us, has no soul. Robert Sterling expresses our frustration for us. (Robert Sterling’s cry against the machine with no soul was first posted on Twitter at https://x.com/RobertMSterling/status/1889097312103747776.) --- I don’t want to connect my coffee machine to the wifi network I don’t want to share the file with OneDrive I don’t want to download an app... Read more →

Why We Didn’t Take Screen Grabs in the 1980s

Opinion We couldn’t. The operating system on our micro-computers (today known as PCs) was text-based DOS [disk-based operating system], so there were no images to grab. (You could use the DOS '>' redirect function to save screen text to a file, such as dir /s > dir.txt.) So, marketing firms would send out prints and slides of their software to show off the products, in the hope that we magazine editors would use them in their print publications. Marketing slide from Nth Graphics of its software running in AutoCAD A very few programs included a screen grab function. WordPerfect for... Read more →

How fast can a microSD card be written to?

Opinion I got a Samsung microSD card rated at up-to 130MB/sec write speed, 'cause it was on sale. I use cards like these to put (big) movie files on them, for viewing on my Windows laptop or Android tablet while travelling. The cards need to have a large capacity, It’s not unusual for single seasons of a tv series to take up 15GB to 28GB. Multiply that for multiple seasons. At first I grabbed the nearest microSD adapter, and began copying files onto the card. It was taking forever, and I noticed the speed was about 16MB/sec. So slow! So... Read more →

Trying out Haiku, the operating system

Opinion There are basically only two operating systems popular in computing, Unix-derived Linux and VMS-derived Windows. (MacOS is Unix-based.) So, it's semi-interesting to try out a unique OS like BeOS-derived Haiku, which, due to the universal WIMP -- windows, icons, menus, pointer -- interface, is easy to pick up. The two big differences in the BeOS/Haiku interface are the Deskbar (upper right in the screen grab) instead of a taskbar, and the tab-like title bars. To access apps, right-click the Haiku icon, and then choose System > Apps. It comes with a large number of simple apps and system apps,... Read more →

In Early Reviews, GPT-5 Flops

Opinion AI, the Theory: As it grows, it grows exponentially, until it eclipses the human brain. AI, the Practice: As it grows, it grows asymptotically, until it grinds to a halt under the weight of its innate limitations. - - - People on Bluesky had a hoot upon learning OpenAI's GPT-5 [which I've, for a hoot, nicknamed Generic Plagiarism Technology] Is behind schedule Suffers high computing costs Has access to limited high-quality training data (according to the Wall Street Journal [source]). - - - seed-corn-thoughts: Well, well, well, looks like we're probably at the top of the exponential growth curve... Read more →

The Wonders of the USB-C Port Extender

Opinion I really only cottoned on to the amazing properties of the USB-C port in the last year. Sure, my five-year-old phone has one, but that’s just for charging and data transfer, right? -- just like the prior standard, microUSB. Wrong-o! I’m surprised at how slow I was in taking full advantage of USB-C. It finally hit home when I realized my Dell laptop, which has the standard round-pin charging port, could also be charged through its USB-C port. I have two laptops on my desktop, and so I used a single multi-port USB-C charger to power both of them... Read more →

I Replaced My 14-year-old Desktop (Finally)

Opinion After 14 years, my Acer desktop computer needed replacing. It was a remarkable beast. Quiet, handsome, and powerful: 3.1GHz back when it was built in 2010. I updated the hardware a few time to maintain its speed over the years: Samsung solid state drive, a discrete graphics board for triple monitors, a USB 3 port expansion board, and the full 16GB RAM. Windows 7 is still being supported with regular security updates, surprisingly enough. But in late 2024 I made the decision to switch. One program I depend on -- Chrome Remote Access, to access this computer during my... Read more →

How I Came to Write 39 Books About BricsCAD. And Make 161 Videos

Opinion Sometimes, it’s useful to look back to see where you came from, and why you are the way you are today. You may well find a thread of events, of decision trees, and of opportunities taken -- or avoided. The most convoluted for me, perhaps, was how I came to produce so many books and training videos about BricsCAD. Each time an outside event changed my direction, I've noted it below as (Decision Tree). 1991: From AutoCAD to Corel Draw It began with Corel Draw. Or, rather, it didn’t. (Decision Tree.) In 1991, Wordware Publishing asked me to write... Read more →

Snaptrude AI Render

Opinion At a Webinar last week, Snaptrude, the company, introduced its rendering command. AI Render is part of Snaptrude, and not an add-on or external program. It works like this: 1. Provide it with a detailed model from Revit or Rhino, or else a massing model from Snaptrude. 2. Enter text that describes the kind of rendering you want. 3. Wait for the rendering to be generated. 4. Renders can be saved to disk or as views in the model. (The image at left shows three kinds of output from AI Render. All images are from screen grabs I made... Read more →

AI’s Alignment Problem

Opinion Geoffrey Miller wrote on Twitter [source], “If you understand the AI alignment problem, you understand that advocating for AI accelerationism means betraying humanity” [my italics]. He’s a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico. As I pondered the tweet, I began to realize that there is a vast gulf between the two, as they can never be reconciled: Alignment is an unsolvable moral problem Accelerationism is an unsolvable technical problem What Alignment Means Alignment means “encoding human values and goals into AI models to make them as helpful, safe, and reliable as possible,” IBM tells us... Read more →