http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/index/ The posts in the site en info@newforma.com Copyright 2008 2008-07-25T19:32:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/fifth_edition_upgrade_training_considerations/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/fifth_edition_upgrade_training_considerations/#When:00:59:00Z Fifth Edition Upgrade & Training Considerations With Fifth Edition now officially released, we wanted to provide you with some information to help you prepare for the upgrade.  Attached is a document with some critical Fifth Edition Upgrade & Training Considerations. We are offering services to help with the upgrade of our software as well as What’s New in Fifth Edition training. On Tuesday, May 27, 2008, you will receive all of the information necessary for the upgrade via a Newforma transmittal. We are focused on providing you with a total solution that makes the upgrade and use of Newforma Project Center as easy as possible. If you have suggestions or comments please do not hesitate to reach out to any of us as our goal is your satisfaction. Thank you, Dan, Renee, and Steve Fifth Edition Upgrade Considerations.pdf Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-05-21T00:59:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/animating_illustrations_of_design_changes_using_newforma_project_center/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/animating_illustrations_of_design_changes_using_newforma_project_center/#When:20:51:01Z In the AECbytes of March 27, 2007, Gould Evans Associates Project Team Leader Tamara Shroll shows how her Phoenix office uses Newforma Project Center to create animated GIFs that show before-and-after drawings for building redesigns. Newforma developed the functionality as part of a quality control process for revised sets of drawings. It shows what’s moved, what’s new and what has stayed the same. Tamara saw that these animated GIFs could show clients how spaces will be transformed, so she embeds animations in slide presentations to stakeholders. You can see an example - and how-to instructions - at Tamara’s tech tip at AECbytes: http://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2007/issue16-newforma.html Tamara’s ingenuity is a great example of gaining even more value from software than it was originally designed to deliver. Learn, Process Insights 2008-02-26T20:51:01-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/read_receipt_and_delivery_receipt_in_newforma_project_center_emails_and_not/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/read_receipt_and_delivery_receipt_in_newforma_project_center_emails_and_not/#When:19:32:00Z I was recently asked the question, “When a Newforma Project Center user sends out an email or a notification email as a result of an action such as an Action Item, a Transmittal or an Info Exchange File Transfer, can it also send a delivery or read receipt similar to the functionality of Outlook? “ The answer is, yes.  Read receipts are supported when a user is sending an email from Newforma Project Center.  Newforma Project Center supports all Outlook functionality for any emails sent by a user through Newforma Project Center.  Examples include transmittals, submittals and RFIs sent through email, Send Change Notifications emails for Action Items or any adhoc email sent from Newforma Project Center.  Email that are generated through the Newforma Project Center Server would not support receipts for notifications generated by the server, however the history tracking of downloaded files provides a similar level of feedback. In order for the request for receipt and delivery notifications to function, the setting needs be enabled in Outlook for all messages.  This is set through the options in the tools menu as show below. Again, important to note, this being a function of Outlook, with this enabled, all emails generated in Outlook and through Newforma Project Center will provide a delivery receipt and request a read receipt. Learn, How To 2008-07-25T19:32:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/manageing_indesign_files_with_newforma_project_center/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/manageing_indesign_files_with_newforma_project_center/#When:20:57:00Z We are often asked about support for Adobe InDesign files in Newforma Project Center.  Of course, if you double-click on an InDesign (.INDD) document file in Project Files or any other activity center in Newforma Project Center, you can view the document in InDesign if the application is loaded on your system.  However, the Newforma Viewer does not support the .INDD file format for viewing or markup, and Newforma Project Center cannot index or search the .INDD file format.  The latter limitation is due to the fact that there is, to our knowledge, no iFilter available for the .INDD file format.  However, with a few tips and a simple adjustment to your work process, you can very effectively manage content created with InDesign in Newforma Project Center:  First, if you want to view an InDesign file, you probably should use InDesign (or InCopy) to ensure visual fidelity due to the graphical nature and complexity of layout that is common in most InDesign documents.  Second, get in the habit of saving your InDesign documents as PDFs as a integral part of your work process.  Some people object to having to separately create the PDF file, but InDesign does make that incredibly easy, and there are many benefits to doing so: • The resulting PDF can be indexed and is searchable via Newforma Project Search. • You can distribute the resulting PDF to other team members who may not have InDesign, yet they can easily mark up the resulting document using the Newforma Viewer and send their review comments back to you as a marked-up PDF. • The resulting PDFs are more portable than InDesign files; for example, InDesign files do not embed the fonts, so if you are using any non-standard fonts, the recipient of an InDesign file may not see exactly what you saw in composing the page.  On the other hand, font definitions are embedded in the PDF generated by InDesign. Third, always place the InDesign document filename in some standard, inconspicuous location in your InDesign documents, typically in the footer of the last page.  If you just can’t put the filename in the footer, at least adopt a filenaming convention for the PDFs you generate in the preceding tip.  For example, giving the PDF the same name as the InDesign file, would enable you to search for a document using Newforma Projecct Search, which would find the PDF, and based on either the InDesign filename in the footer or the file naming convention for the PDF, you could easily locate the corresponding InDesign file. A final tip, if you work with people who routinely send you InDesign files, but you don’t have the application, you might want to purchase a license of Adobe InCopy in order to view InDesign files and convert them to PDF file format.  Although InCopy was designed primarily as part of the InDesign workflow, it functions quite nicely on its own as a tool to view and convert InDesign files to PDF.  InCopy sells for $249 vs. InDesign for $699. 2008-07-24T20:57:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/if_an_ant_can_do_it/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/if_an_ant_can_do_it/#When:14:26:00Z Can you believe it? Ants are in the news again. And once again, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s relevant! Clear Point Consultants of Manchester, Massachusetts, worked ants into a recent newsletter article on best practices for managing remote teams. “Did you know that ants have an instinctive lock on remote teamwork?” the article begins. “They’ve perfected the use of natural chemical messengers called pheromones to communicate over long distances. Without even trying, these tiny insects have mastered one of the most evolved forms of dispersed group communication on the planet. “Okay, so you may not be interested in the finer points of bioteaming, and pheromones are definitely not going to replace your Blackberry as your communication method of choice. But if a little ant can be an effective remote team manager, so can you.” Because Newforma Project Center facilitates remote work processes, we thought it might be a service to link to the article here: http://templates.haleymail.com/haley_templates/index.smpl?sid=21168&aid=518&art=5798&database=company&user=1392411&d_id=10834515 or http://tinyurl.com/5njvqq If you manage remote teams, it may be worth a few minutes to check your practices against those summarized in the article. For example, are you doing things to build trust? And do you meet the criteria for being the right person for the job in the first place? (Newforma Marketing thanks Marge Hart for pointing us to this link!) Enjoy, Ants at work 2008-07-03T14:26:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/using_newforma_to_quickly_save_files_to_any_project_location/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/using_newforma_to_quickly_save_files_to_any_project_location/#When:15:10:00Z Looking for a way to quickly save any file to a standardized project location on your Network? Let Newforma help! With Newforma’s integration into the standard windows save dialog, you can easily and quickly save any file from any program to a project directory without having to navigate through the maze of folders on the network. To accomplish this simply: 1) Save from any windows application 2) From the left navigation bar in the save as dialog click on the My Computer icon followed by a double click on the My Newforma Projects icon. You are immediately viewing your My Projects folder list and are able to select the necessary project to save into. 3) Double click the applicable project folder and you are immediately in the project directory. 4) Select the directory you would like to save into, click the save button, and that’s it! So regardless of what application you are saving from, your project directories are always just a few quick clicks away. Tip: When you are saving a file in any Microsoft Office application you can click directly to your project folder list in lieu of going through the My Computer dialog. Creating New Files Directly From Newforma Project Center Another possibility to streamline the process of saving your information is by creating the new file from directly inside of Newforma Project Center. To do this you need to: 1) Navigate to the Project Files Activity Center. 2) Select the directory you would like to create the new file in. 3) Once In the correct project directory, right click, select new, and what type of file you would like to create. Voila, a new file is created in the correct project directory right from Newforma Project Center. So whether you are saving a file through a windows application or creating a new file from the correct directory inside of Project Center, Newforma can help you streamline your workflow of saving any project information consistently to the correct project directory. Learn, How To 2008-06-23T15:10:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/forget_your_password_change_your_password/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/forget_your_password_change_your_password/#When:19:52:00Z The pictures tell you how to get a new password and change it to something you’ll remember. Learn, How To 2008-06-18T19:52:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/tire_swing_cartoon_has_its_own_website/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/tire_swing_cartoon_has_its_own_website/#When:18:56:00Z Surely you’ve seen it: a series of simple line drawings showing a children’s swing hanging from a tree branch. The drawings show the swing in different forms, perhaps with two seats, another time with three ropes, with captions describing them - “as proposed,” “as specified,” “as designed” and more. Here’s one example. Here’s another. Search on the web and you’ll find people saying this cartoon harks back to a magazine article in the 1970s, although opinions vary - of course - as to who drew it and where it appeared. Whatever its provenance, now a website has appeared that makes everyone a prospective cartoonist. http://www.projectcartoon.com/ At ProjectCartoon.com, you can suggest new panels, write your own captions and save the result to amuse your coworkers and rankle your managers. Here’s hoping we’re all engaged in delivering what the customer wants, as opposed to the variations on view at ProjectCartoon.com! Enjoy, Industry humor and anecdotes 2008-06-09T18:56:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/deploying_fifth_edition_via_active_directory/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/deploying_fifth_edition_via_active_directory/#When:15:45:01Z Newforma has made some significant efforts for Fifth Edition to make deploying Newforma Project Center (client) to your user’s desktop via Active Directory as simple and robust as possible. The method that has been used in the past has changed and we do not recommend you extract an .MSI from the “NewformaProjectCenterSetup.exe”, as the pre-requisites (Visual Studio Tools, Primary Interoperability Assemblies, and Visual C++ components) which are part of the .EXE, are not bundled as part of the .MSI and would need to be deployed separately, significantly complicating the deployment process. Rather, we are recommending that the .EXE remain intact and placed on a network share to be called by a .BAT file which is pushed by the Active Directory process to your user’s machines and set to run on start-up. The details of this process are fully documented in the following files which are included in the Installation and Upgrade deployment transmittals: New Deployments 2. Deployment-Installation FilesNewforma Project Center Fifth Edition Installation.doc Upgrade Deployments 2. Deployment-Installation FilesNewforma Project Center Fifth Edition Upgrade.doc If you are considering push deploy methods or have had difficulty with deploying .MSI files using Active Directory in the past, this document is worth a look. As always, if you have questions, feel free to contact Newforma Support. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-06-06T15:45:01-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/two_steps_forward_no_going_back/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/two_steps_forward_no_going_back/#When:14:30:00Z Read “Two Steps Forward, No Going Back” at AECbytes http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2008/issue_38.html Four years ago, the architecture and planning firm Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas + Company created a strategic technology committee to see what leading firms were doing to improve project delivery. The committee’s formation arose from feeling a high degree of frustration. The people of Hanbury Evans felt that the technology they had, from CAD to communications, was inefficient at a time when clients were demanding more in less time. In this AEC bytes Viewpoint article, Design Principal Stephen C. Wright, who chaired the firm’s strategic technology committee, reflects on the changes that have restored the firm’s operational excellence. Two Steps Forward, No Going Back: How Our Firm is Using Technology to Gain a Strategic Advantage AECbytes Viewpoint #38 (May 8, 2008) http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2008/issue_38.html Favorite Articles 2008-05-15T14:30:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/whats_new_in_newforma_project_center_fifth_edition/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/whats_new_in_newforma_project_center_fifth_edition/#When:18:57:00Z Power Point overview of the new release of Newforma Project Center. Here’s the file Fifth Edition Highlights Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-05-12T18:57:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/searching_all_projects_using_newforma_as_an_enterprise_project_knowledge_sy/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/searching_all_projects_using_newforma_as_an_enterprise_project_knowledge_sy/#When:17:58:00Z Do you ever get the feeling while working on a specific project activity that someone else at your firm (or perhaps even you yourself!) has previously researched, created, designed or completed the exact same task on some other active, completed or archived project? And how much time do you think is wasted re-creating information that already exists in an email, CAD drawing, specification, spreadsheets, cut sheet or presentation in another project somewhere at your company? The answers we typically hear are somewhere between “Frequently” and “Almost every task” for the first question and 10 to 20% of my time for the second question. It begs the question: Wouldn’t it be useful if you could search across every project your firm has ever completed and quickly filter through the results to retrieve the information you need, instead of having to re-create the information? This article will provide some guidance on how to set up Newforma as an enterprise project search tool to do just that. But first, just to whet your appetite, I would like to walk through an example of how your firm might make use of such a tool. Using Newforma as a “technical project knowledge system” In this example, you have received a contractor’s RFI via email: The contractor needs to know if the temporary use of recycled wood in construction qualifies towards the project’s green building certification. If you didn’t have the answer on your finger tips, you would likely need to track someone else down or go hunting through code books. But the thing is, since your firm does a lot of green projects, it’s highly probable that someone in your office, or perhaps someone in one of the firm’s other offices, has come across this before. And information that you could reuse is probably sitting idle in a file or email somewhere. In the past you had no hope of finding it, but now since each of the firm’s active, completed and archived projects are in Project Center, you could use search as follows: 1) After typing the search term, select the Search drop down, and click on the Selected Projects… option: 2) Click on Select All or pick selected projects only. Notice you can filter by project status, type or other columns to only search certain kinds of projects: 3) Notice one of the “hits” containing all three words in my search term is a PDF of a fax received from the completely fictional “Green Building Authority”. Without even opening the PDF, I can see the answer in the PDF preview: 4) So I right click and send the PDF or perhaps add it as a supporting document to the RFI so that I can include it in my response: The hardest part about that workflow was just constructing the search query in a manner that returned a relatively targeted list of relevant matches. If your search term is too generic and you search hundreds of projects constituting terra-bytes of data, it’ll be harder to separate the wheat from the chafe. A search across all the firm’s projects is really an advanced search, so you will want to make use of the advanced search parameters in Newforma, which include many of the standard search options available in other search tools (i.e. wildcards, quotes for phrases, modifiers like -, etc.). Consult Help for details on these options. Hopefully this article has provided a bit of insight into how you might use Newforma’s multi-project search capabilities to leverage the intellectual property that’s currently inaccessible in your firm’s digital project archives. If you are user of Newforma Search, but not an administrator, you can stop here. Setting up Newforma to search completed or archived projects Here are the key steps: Copy any projects you have backed up on tape or DVD back on to a network drive. Newforma won’t be able to index archived projects unless they are spinning on a networks drive. If you already have some archived projects spinning you can get started with those and add additional projects later. If your current Newforma Project Center server has capacity for more projects, you could add them to that server.  Alternatively, you could deploy another Newforma Project Center Server to support archived projects (i.e. an “Archive Server”). If you don’t have access to an “archive server” and just want to get started, you could add them to your existing Newforma server and use “Batch Re-Pin” at a later date when the archive server is available. To automate the archive project creation process, use the same Batch Project Creation templates you used to drive the projects you created at your initial deployment. If you use the batch process, be sure to set the project Status field for these projects to “Archive”.  You can also use Project Settings to set the project status manually as follows: The list in the project status drop down is a customizable. Administrators can add or edit entries in this list from within Project Center Administration: You can enter any value into the Status Label field and use the Status Type field to determine whether the project is active, an opportunity or archived. The Status Type determines which icon is displayed in the interface. Additionally, projects with an Archive status are Read only, meaning users cannot create action items or transmittals, file email, etc. The Status Label is what displays in the user interface. Notice I have added a label called “Completed”, but left the Status Type as Active. This is because even though the project is completed, I want to leave it open for a time so that the team has time to file any post-mortem emails, incoming transmittals, etc. After you create these archived projects, I am betting the first thing you will want to do is dump all your archived project email into them! There are several ways to batch file project email. In most cases, the easiest method would be to open the Exchange public folder or PST file containing the archived project email messaged and drag them into the Newforma – Items to File project folder, as shown here: Naturally, if you create a bunch of new projects and then add tens of thousands of archived emails, the Newforma server is going to be busy for a while and any projects pinned to that server are going to be sluggish. If you don’t have a dedicated archive server, you might want to create archived projects and file emails overnight or over a weekend to minimize the impact on active projects. The good news is that once the archived projects are initially indexed, the server won’t be asked to index them again since they will presumably be read only. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-05-05T17:58:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/related_items_in_fifth_edition/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/related_items_in_fifth_edition/#When:04:00:00Z You are probably familiar with the use of “sticky notes” on filed drawings and documents to alert the team of related bits of project information such as RFI’s, sketches, ASI’s and change orders that might be filed elsewhere. Related Items in the Fifth Edition of Newforma Project Center are their digital equivalent. Here is how they work: Any time you markup a project file or add the project file to a project item as a supporting document, a relationship between the file and its related items is created and maintained by Newforma Project Center. Additionally, when viewing files or other items in virtually any screen, Project Center now indicates the existence of these related items. This really simplifies the information discovery process as you can see these related items in many places, including the Project Files activity center, as demonstrated below: It’s not hard to imagine how useful related items can be. For example, if I were responsible for issuing an updated version of a drawing, it would be very helpful to instantly find any related markup sessions, RFI, Action Items, milestones or other pieces of project information. In the example below, I can see there are open action items and markup sessions, which I can double click or right click to open and/or act on: Best of all, most of these relationships are created and maintained as a by-product of using core Project Center capabilities such as Markup Sessions, Action Items, RFI, Submittals, Transmittals and Timeline.  For example, when you use Newforma Markup to create a PDF sketch and send it to a consultant as an action item, the markup session and action item automatically become a related item of the CAD file. There is no additional tagging or grouping required. Let’s take a look at another powerful way to use related items – the managing and pulling together of an ASI (Architect’s Supplemental Instructions). While Newforma in Fifth Edition does not yet explicitly support the ASI workflow, there are still ample creative ways for teams to use Newforma to manage the ASI process. In the example below, I have created a Milestone on the Project Timeline to manage my ASI. I then added the files to be distributed with the ASI as supporting documents. Notice the supporting document file icons contain little shortcut arrows to indicate they are actually live file links. This is an important characteristic of supporting documents because it allows me to create a working set of ASI deliverables without duplicating or inadvertently creating a different version of these project files.  Also notice that any other project items related to the supporting document can be easily viewed and accessed from this screen shown above. Not only does this provide the team with a single spot to review the current files and activities related to the ASI, but it also leaves behind an organized audit trail for the project record. I can then use the Event Log view in the Project Timeline to quickly filter project events by the type of event. The screen shot below demonstrates the use of the Event Log to quickly flick through the items related to the project’s meetings and milestones: And if I need to publish or distribute this information to external team members, I can generate a Related Items report: As you can see, related items in Fifth Edition are quite a powerful concept. They alert team members to the existence of information related to the project files and activities they are working on, providing important insight that might otherwise go unnoticed. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-05-05T04:00:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/electronically_reviewing_submittals_in_5th_edition/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/electronically_reviewing_submittals_in_5th_edition/#When:16:45:00Z The process of reviewing, marking up and processing a digital submittal has been vastly improved in 5.0 with the introduction of markup stamps and some improved workflow. Here is how it works: 1) In the example below, I receive a “digital” submittal consisting of a PDF shop drawing as an attachment to an email and select the option to file it as a New Submittal: 2) After selecting the project and option to log a new submittal, I complete the submittal information dialog and select OK: 3) Notice in the previous dialog, I could have selected the Next Action option to forward the submittal to another team member for them to review. This would allow me to assign them a “Due Back” date and track their progress. However, let’s assume I am going to review this submittal myself by going to the Submittals activity center, selecting the submittal and accessing the equipment plan PDF from the “Received” action in the History tab, as shown below: 4) After double clicking on the PDF, it opens in the Newforma Viewer. I can zoom around to review the drawing, mark it up and save all my markups as views that are then visible within the Markup Sessions activity center. Saved markup views also become bookmarks in any PDF’s you create from this markup, so it’s a good idea to save each markup to make it easy for the contractor or other team members to find them: 5) Once you have added all your comments, you can optionally add a markup stamp. Markup stamps are actually created from AutoCAD blocks using any version of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. Here is how you add a stamp: 6) Markup Stamps work very much like AutoCAD blocks in that you can add AutoCAD Attributes to create standard text fields within your markup stamps. And there are a series of “smart” attributes such as Project Number, Submittal ID, etc. that “auto-default” when used within certain workflows. The screen shot below demonstrates this. Since I opened the markup session from a project submittal, the current project is set, the active item defaults to the correct submittal and I am able to select the appropriate Submittal “Action” from my company’s standard drop down list of options: 7) Here is the submittal stamp after I insert it into my markup session. This is just a simple sample stamp that ships with Fifth Edition. As I mentioned above, you can change the graphics, fonts and even add your company logo or scanned signature to your markup stamps using AutoCAD: 8) To send the markup back to the contactor as a PDF response, I select the PDF toolbar button and select the option to Send PDF: 9) Again, the context of the current workflow results in the default action to send the PDF as an attachment to the submittal response: 10) I then type in my comments to the contractor and select “Create Response”: 11) Because the action was “Revise and Resubmit”, I am prompted to create an “Expected Re-submittal”. This will log the expected re-submittal, track it as an open item and notify me if the contractor’s re-submittal is coming due or late: 12) Since I chose “Via Email” as my response method, an Outlook email is composed for me with the submittal transmittal and markup attached as a PDF: 13) Before filing it to the project, I check the PDF by opening it in the Adobe Reader – This is what it will look like to the contractor: 14) Right about now, you might be thinking that the workflow I just demonstrated looks pretty slick for submittals containing just a single drawing or document. If life were only so simple! But what if the submittal contains multiple drawings all of which need to be reviewed and marked up as part of a consolidated response to the contractor? In that case, instead of using Send PDF as I showed above, I would use “Create PDF” to create individual PDF files from each of my markup sessions, as shown below: 15) In doing so, I want to be sure to check the “Add to Project Item” option which ensures that no matter where I save the PDF in the project, it will be “linked” to the correct submittal as a supporting document: 16) I repeat this same process for each drawing or document in the submittal, linking each of my markup session PDF files back to the submittal as a supporting document. When I complete my submittal review process, the Supporting Documents tab of the Submittals Activity Center will display each one of these PDF markups, and I can proceed to create my submittal response: 17) And when I select the “Respond to Sender” task, the first dialog allows me to select any or all of the supporting documents to include in my response: From here, the process is the same as before. I fill in the submittal response form, the three PDF files are attached, and I process the response with the “Revise and Resubmit” action. Hopefully this article has given you some insight into how Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition now weaves together elements from Outlook, Submittals, Markup Sessions and Adobe Reader to streamline the digital submittal review process. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-28T16:45:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/the_new_rfi_activity_center/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/the_new_rfi_activity_center/#When:00:10:00Z OK, so the excitement may pale in comparison to some other new product announcements on your radar screen (anyone else been waiting for the iPhone 3G?), but within the circle of Newforma Project Center users, the support for RFI in the upcoming release of Project Center might just qualify as a “highly-anticipated event”. Put another way, I think I have heard the request (plea?) for a Newforma RFI solution from just about every Architectural user of Newforma Project Center. So it’s nice to be able (finally) to talk about it as a major enhancement to the upcoming release of Newforma Project Center Fifth Edition. The Newforma CA Module A little bit of background before I begin: In Fifth Edition, the RFI Activity Center has been bundled together with the Submittals Activity Center as Newforma’s CA Module. Only those Project Center users that need the ability to create, modify or respond to RFI or Submittals require the CA license. Project Center users who are not licensed for CA still gain “View” access to the information in these two activity centers. The RFI Activity Center has a lot of great features so my goal with this article is to simply provide a high level overview: Integrated with Microsoft Outlook These days, you probably receive most of your contractor RFI and consultant’s answers via email regardless of what software the contractor is using (Prolog, Expedition, etc.). With each of these emails, you then have to open the Excel spreadsheet containing that project’s log and/or hunt through the network or paper file system to track down supporting documentation and carry out your next action. Sound familiar? That’s why Fifth Edition now supports logging, assigning and answering RFI all from within Microsoft Outlook. Here is how it works: 1) When you receive an RFI via email, just click the File as New RFI option in Outlook (notice there is also an option to file emails directly as RFI answers): 2) Without leaving Outlook, you can log the RFI and then optionally assign it to a consultant using the “Next action” check option: 3) When you receive an answer from a consultant via email, you can log the answer and respond to the RFI Author, again, all without leaving Outlook: Tracking RFI inside Newforma Project Center Your CA staff can log and assign RFI, record RFI answers and respond to RFI authors all from within the RFI Activity Center. What’s really nice is that all Project Center users, regardless of whether they participate directly in the CA workflow, can gain access and insight into its critical activities and results. Here is how it works: 1) From the RFI Activity Center, all users can view and interact with project RFIs and their related transmittals, attachments, email and supporting documents. Users who have the CA license can do much more, including log and assign new RFI, log consultant’s answers and respond to RFI Authors, as depicted below: 2) You can filter, sort and re-arrange the contents of the RFI activity center, and then output a report to Excel, Word, PDF and other formats. If you enable the option to display details in the report formatting options, the RFI receive, assign, answer and response to author transactions get grouped beneath each RFI record, as shown in the RFI report exported to Excel below: 3) And integration with Newforma Markup Sessions allows you to easily incorporate PDF sketches created using the Newforma Markup application into your RFI responses. In the example below, I marked up two areas on a CAD drawing and selected the Send PDF option, which then provides the option of sending it as a response to an open RFI: 4) The user is then guided through the process of creating the response to the contractor, as depicted in the screen capture below: Integrated with Newforma Info Exchange Many of our customers also asked for a way to command greater accountability from their sub-consultants during CA transactions, so both RFI and Submittals have been integrated with Newforma Info Exchange in Fifth Edition. Here is how it works: 1) When you assign an RFI to a consultant and choose the “via Info Exchange” option, the consultant will get an email notification with a link that takes them to a view of the RFI on your Info Exchange web site: Notice that the consultant can Send a Response to this RFI directly from this screen. 2) Each time this consultant returns to your Info Exchange web site, they will be reminded of all their their outstanding RFI, file transfers, action items and submittals across all the projects they are working with you on from the My Open Items screen: 3) Additionally, contractors who log into your Info Exchange web site can directly submit RFIs or Submittals: That’s about all I have room for here. As you can see, the RFI process touches many different areas of Newforma, including Outlook, the RFI Activity Center, Markup and Info Exchange. Hopefully this has provided a useful introduction to its many capabilities. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-24T00:10:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/the_new_markup_sessions_activity_center_in_fifth_edition/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/the_new_markup_sessions_activity_center_in_fifth_edition/#When:23:47:00Z The new Markup Sessions Activity Center in Fifth Edition allows each Project Center user to easily browse, preview, add comments or PDF publish any Newforma markup session created on the project. Here is how it works: 1) Start by marking up a CAD file, PDF or BIM model as part of a design or CA review workflow. In this example, I will mark up a Revit model by opening it in Revit, using Revit to find a view I want to mark up, and selecting the Newforma Snapshot tool in the Windows task bar: 2) This will prompt me to select two points to define the view of the Revit model I want to mark up: 3) After selecting the two points, the view is displayed in the Newforma Viewer and I can mark it up. After I mark it up, I go back to reviewing the Revit model. When I want to comment on another view, I select the Snapshot tool again and mark up the view. I repeat until my Revit review and markup session is complete. I will end up with a whole bunch of marked up views within the Markup Panel on the right hand side, as shown below: 3) Next, and importantly if I want it to appear in the Markup Sessions Activity Center, I will save my Markup Session. Notice I can name it, keyword tag it, add a description and also “relate” the session to another item, such as an Action item, as shown below: 4) As soon as a Markup Session is saved, it will appear in the Markup Sessions Activity Center within Project Center. Note: unlike Fourth Edition and before, you no longer need to designate a location for the markup session NMU file – Newforma stores all markup sessions centrally within the project, similarly to how it stores transmittals or action items. All internal team members can view and add comments to any project markup session, as shown below: 5) You can then publish any selection of markup sessions to PDF or create a report to communicate any comments or design decisions with the extended project team. In the example below, I am publishing the open and closed markup sessions associated with two source files: 6) The Publish dialog provides an option to combine the markup sessions into a single PDF as well as shuffle the display order: 7) The final, published PDF contains bookmarks and sub-bookmarks for each markup session and marked up view so you can send the extended team members an organized, professional-looking red line set and they don’t need Newforma Project Center to view it! Here is an example of what it looks like in Adobe Reader: 8) One last tip: The Markup Sessions Activity Center is great for reviewing drawing sets and communicating corrections and revisions to CAD/BIM designers. Designers can view markups and comments associated with any drawings they are responsible for: 9) When they want to incorporate markups as corrections in the underlying source drawing, they simply highlight the markup session, select the Related Items tab and open the source drawing in its native application, as shown below: 10) After changing the underlying source drawing, they can add some final comments and close the markup session, leaving behind a permanent audit trail of these design decisions: Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-22T23:47:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/webinar_whats_new_in_fifth_edition/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/webinar_whats_new_in_fifth_edition/#When:16:18:00Z If you’ve come to this page from your GoToWebinar registration, welcome! Don’t worry about being taken away from your confirmation page – GoToWebinar has emailed a confirm to you. If you have yet to register, visit the links below. On April 23, May 7 and June 4, 2008, we’re hosting a webinar to give Newforma users a look at new features in Newforma Project Center.  Here’s part of what we’ll cover in our webinar: Added functionality in Newforma Info Exchange Newforma Info Exchange has added extended means to work with your external team members, allowing the project team to transfer project information, coordinate distributed CAD or BIM datasets, streamline CA and design review workflows and gain access to a common set of project phases, tasks, milestones and meetings in a shared project calendar. New: Sharepoint integration for Search SharePoint® users can now search SharePoint-related project sites directly from Newforma Project Center. By selecting “SharePoint” as the search location on the Search menu, Newforma will retrieve and display results from the Sharepoint project site that contain the matching search term. New: Project Timeline activity center The Project Timeline activity center enables the team to track and manage important project-specific events ranging from phases, tasks and milestones to meetings, phone calls and local holidays. Importantly, you can associate events with supporting documents and related items like Action Items. Improved Action Items The Action Items activity center, formerly Issue Manager, has added capabilities to engage the power of the extended project team to identify and manage critical issues, helping to keep your projects on budget and on schedule. New: RFI activity center Now RFIs can be logged from an incoming email in Microsoft Outlook, received via Newforma Info Exchange or simply entered from the RFI activity center. You can forward the RFI to an external consultant and track the progress and due dates of all open RFI from the RFI activity center, which also tracks any related email correspondence or supporting project files and provides a searchable audit trail for each RFI in the project. And much more! If you have not already registered, do so at these links: April 23: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/911509858 May 7: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/240590124 June 4: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/541670271 GoToWebinar will email your confirmation! Thanks. We’ll talk soon. Favorite Articles, Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-21T16:18:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/virtualization_of_newforma_servers/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/virtualization_of_newforma_servers/#When:16:12:00Z April 2, 2008 - Server virtualization is a promising technology that is interesting to nearly every Newforma customer.  Virtualization promises to lower cost, simplify administration, reduce space and power requirements, and simplify load balancing and backup.  However, many Newforma customers have been unsatisfied with a virtual deployment of a Newforma Project Center Server.  This document provides background on Newforma virtualization efforts and discusses the circumstances where a production deployment of a virtual Newforma Project Center Server may be possible.  Note:  because of numerous problems associated with virtual deployments in production use, Newforma does not recommend virtualization of the Newforma Project Center Server at this time. Virtualization is a storm sweeping the landscape of information technology.  Rarely has a new technology been so eagerly accepted in IT.  Gartner estimates that over a half-million virtual machines are currently in use.  By 2009 that number is estimated to grow to over three million machines.  (Estimates are from http://www.cio.com/article/108403/Gartner_Virtualization_Is_Too_Expensive.) The press and industry ‘buzz’ is so uniformly positive on the benefits of virtualization, that few people are aware of limitations with the technology. Virtualization is most successful when used to combine servers or applications running on hardware that isn’t fully utilized.  By combining many different under-utilized physical servers into a set of virtual machines running on one physical device, IT departments can often gain significant cost savings by getting more efficient use of computer hardware.  Virtualization offers fewer advantages when used to combine fully-loaded servers, or disk intensive and network I/O intensive applications.  This is because all the virtual machines still have to share one set of physical components: i.e.  CPU, memory, disk, and network.  The CPU and memory hardware can be scaled by purchasing multi-core servers with lots of RAM.  It’s harder to scale out disk and network bandwidth, although solutions such as multiple NICs and fast disk arrays connected by fiber channel can make significant improvements.  The disk or network latency imposed by the overhead of a virtual environment can significantly affect application performance.  In many applications this overhead is insignificant.  However, there are applications that don’t work well in a virtual environment.  For example, database virtualization can work well, but only when most queries are resolved from an in-memory cache (see http://www.vmware.com/technology/virtual-infrastructure-apps/oracle.html) The Newforma Project Center Server is an example of a resource intensive server that relies on very fast low-latency connections to the disk and network.  This is the most difficult type of application to virtualize.  Our experience has shown that the virtualization overhead is so large that it prohibits production use in many production environments.  In addition, customers have found that virtual environments hosting Newforma Project Center Server can fail, requiring a hard restart of the physical server.  This type of failure can easily corrupt the search catalogs maintained by Newforma Project Center.  In this case, a rebuild of the search database is required – a step that can take many days. To address the problem of virtualization overhead, vendors suggest purchasing high-end servers with very fast network and disk systems.  In addition, experts agree that a native virtual environment (a bare metal install) is preferable to a hosted virtual environment (a virtual machine that runs on top of an operating system).  The two most commonly used virtual environments are the VmWare ESX Server, which is an example of a native virtual environment and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, which is an example of a hosted virtual environment. Today, the best virtual environment for Newforma Project Center server would consist of VmWare ESX running a virtual copy of Windows Server 2003.  This would be deployed on a dual quad-core processor with enough RAM to allocate 4 Gig to the Newforma virtual server.  The system would reside on a directly attached storage array with a fiber optic connection to 15k rpm SAS disks.  It would also have multiple high-speed NICs.  Note that a system configured like this is significantly more expensive than a dedicated NPCS server!  Case Stories There have been many customers that have tried deploying Newforma Project Center in a virtual environment.  Many have started with the free virtual environments available from either VMWare or Microsoft , and have run them on existing server hardware that often doesn’t meet the Newforma standard hardware specification.  These types of deployments are doomed from the start.  They invariably lead to frustration at the customer site and a rapid change to a real physical server.  Rather than focus on these numerous failures, the following case stories present the more successful virtual deployments that we know of today. Today’s success stories all share the following: 1. VmWare ESX Server 2. High-end computer hardware 3. A relatively low number of Newforma projects 4. A relatively small amount of project data to index A large engineering firm:  One of the earliest virtual deployments on high-end hardware occurred at a large engineering firm that has been a long time Newforma customer.  This firm purchased an 8 core server with 16 gb of RAM and a RAID 5 disk array with 15k rpm SAS drives and used the VmWare ESX Server native virtual environment.  They successfully ran a single copy of the Newforma Project Center Server in this virtual environment for several months.  It was used to index about one terabyte of project data.  Flush with success of running one server, they added a couple of additional virtual servers.  Performance suffered and the Newforma Project Center server was unable to keep the search index current.  Even worse, “lock ups” of the virtual environment occasionally required a restart of the physical server.  This type of failure sometimes corrupted the Newforma search index database, requiring a rebuild of the database that took days.  After months of trials, the customer replaced the Newforma virtual server with a dedicated blade server and there have been no further performance issues. An architecture firm with a small number of projects:  One of our customers deployed Newforma in a virtual environment in late 2006 using the fastest hardware they could buy at the time.  It consists of a HP DL360 G5 computer containing two dual-core 3 Ghz Xeon processors and 16 gb of RAM.  The server is connected to a SAN using two gigabit Ethernet connections and runs the VmWare ESX server. This hardware runs three virtual servers: (1) CAD server licensing and installs (2) Main file server (3) Newforma Project Center Server They have allocated only one core and 4 gb of RAM to the NPC server.  (Note this is lower than the Newforma recommended hardware specification.) The company has 75 users, typically half use NPC each day.  They have only 30 projects, but the project data that they index is nearly 400 gb.  They’ve been running NPC in a virtual environment with no issues for over a year. An architecture firm just starting NPC use:  Another successful virtual production deployment is at an architecture firm with 10-15 users and less than 40 projects.  Their hardware consists of five identically configured Dell 1950s.  Each has a dual quad-core 2.66 gHz processor with 32 gig of RAM.  In addition, each server has 4 network connections, and is connected to a SAN via fiber channel.  They are using the VMWare ESX Server. The company has five of these computers, three are configured as ESX virtual boxes in a clustered failover environment.  Two are dedicated to their production SQL server and their Exchange server. The three virtual boxes run 36 different servers. The virtual box that is currently running NPCS is also running 4 Deltek servers, 2 application servers, print servers, SQL reporting, SQL development, Blackberry Enterprise, and a GIS application server. The IT team noted that their virtual performance markedly improved when they started running virtual machines that were created on the SAN, rather than on the local server disk.  When fully implemented, this company expects to have 500-750 projects with about 500-600 gig of project data accessed by 150 users.  Our past experience has shown that this level of use may cause performance problems in a virtual environment.  We’ve asked the customer to closely watch performance as their NPC use grows. Virtualization Options that work with Newforma Newforma Info Exchange is a server that works well in a virtual environment.  Several customers are running successfully in this mode. A Newforma Project Center Server running on a physical server may have CPU and memory cycles that could be used for other tasks.  One possible way to leverage these unused compute cycles would be to run hosted virtual machines on the server.  In this mode, virtual machines exist on top of the Newforma Project Center Server operating system.  These virtual machines will compete for system resources, but the overhead of running inside the virtual environment is avoided for the Newforma services. Virtual environments with non-intensive needs such as print, license, or applications servers are particularly good candidates for this type of environment. Virtualization research and development at Newforma The Newforma Engineering group is constantly using virtual servers for development and testing.  As hardware and virtual environments improve we will continue our scalability testing and hope to be able to provide improved support for production use of Newforma Project Center Server in a virtual environment in the future. Learn, How To 2008-04-18T16:12:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/track_phone_calls_meeting_minutes_and_all_project_activities_in_project_tim/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/track_phone_calls_meeting_minutes_and_all_project_activities_in_project_tim/#When:21:07:00Z In Fifth Edition, you can use the Timeline Activity Center to log phone calls, meeting minutes, tasks and any other project-related event. You can then display these events in a log, calendar, or dynamic journal view that can also be used to display project files or activities such as transmittals, RFI or action items by date range. Here is how it works: 1) Start by logging the phone call or meeting event in the Project Timeline activity center as a project event. The list of event types you see below is customizable by your company: 2) After adding a client meeting I am prompted to enter the details. Importantly, the Project Timeline is well integrated with MS-Outlook. You can drag meetings from an Outlook calendar or drag phone call entries from an Outlook Journal right into the Project Timeline. And if you have Outlook 2007, you can subscribe to the project timeline to view it from within Outlook: 3) To keep certain Timeline views from getting cluttered, you can control what types of events get displayed where within the Project Timeline. For example, the Client Meeting I just added now appears in the Calendar view shown below: Since each team member may log several phone calls a day, phone calls by default do not show in the Calendar view above. 4) To view my phone calls, I can switch to the Event Log view, which shows all the Timeline project events in a list that I can quickly sort or filter to find what I am looking for. Importantly, as with other items in Newforma Project Center, you can add comments and links to supporting documents or related items to Timeline events: 5) In the example below, the Meeting Minutes Word document was attached as a Supporting Document and action items coming out of the meeting were identified as related info: 6) Best of all, if you then go look at the Journal view, you can instantly generate a chronological listing of ALL activities in the project by selecting any range of dates, weeks, months, quarters or years: The Journal displays any project activity that occurred within the specified period, including project files saved during the period, filed email that were sent during period, action items, RFI or Submittals that were created or closed during the period, transmittals that were sent during the period, meetings, phone calls, etc… 7) You can filter activities by Type or Team Member to further refine your results. For example, if you want to make sure that your markups related to a recent RFI response had been incorporated into the source CAD files, you could filter to display only Markup Sessions, RFI and AutoCAD drawing activity during the period in question, as shown below: Favorite Articles, Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-02T21:07:00-05:00 http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/using_info_exchange_folders_to_streamline_design_coordination/ http://www.newformant.com/index.php/site/postdetail/using_info_exchange_folders_to_streamline_design_coordination/#When:20:54:00Z In Fifth Edition, “internal” Newforma Project Center users and “external” Info Exchange users can easily share, revise and coordinate their referenced CAD or BIM drawing sets using Info Exchange Folders. Here is how it works: 1) An Info Exchange Folder is created in Newforma Project Center by an “internal” project team member. Simply select the project folder or document set, right click and select the “Publish as New Info Exchange Folder” task: 2) You’ll be asked to identify recipients – these are the individual project team members you want to notify and provide with access to the published Info Exchange folder. You also need to specify whether external members are allowed to upload files to the Info Exchange Folder. You can add additional recipients after the folder is initially published, so its not too important to construct a comprehensive list of recipients at the outset: 3) Just like Info Exchange file transfers in Fourth Edition, you can easily restrict access and schedule the published folders to be automatically removed from the Info Exchange site after a pre-determined period. So much easier than FTP! 4) Each recipient will get a notification with links to simply download the contents of the shared folder or to login to view the Info Exchange Folder contents first: 5) If they select the link to login to the Info Exchange site, they can choose to only download selected files and also upload their own files. Any time they log into your Info Exchange site, they will be able to quickly view and upload to any Info Exchange Folders that they are a party to: 6) When external members upload files to the Info Exchange Folder, you receive an email notification with a link to the pending Info Exchange Folder Upload inside Newforma Project Center. From here you can receive the pending upload: 7) If you choose, you can immediately merge the uploaded files into the Info Exchange Folder as well as the source file folder on your internal network. Importantly, you can also play the “gate-keeper” role, if necessary, and review the uploaded files first before merging them: 8) Once you integrate the updated files, all of the other external Info Exchange recipients receive an email with a handy link to download just the updated file(s) 9) And importantly, Info Exchange transparently logs everything in its History, ensuring you have a log of each team member’s design transactions throughout the course of your project. 10) And, as work progresses internally, re-publishing and merging your company’s latest revisions with those of the rest of the team is as easy as selecting the folder within Newforma Project Center, right clicking and selecting the “Re-Publish” task. Learn, Fifth Edition Highlights 2008-04-01T20:54:00-05:00