1)
Turn off all the layers
May 2001
You've spent many happy hours getting all your data into Aperture, drawing your drawings and inserting symbols. But is everything right? Here's a few tips on how you can run a quick audit of your project to make sure that you haven't missed anything. We're going to use three Aperture tools to do this - Layers, Select Via and the Report writer.
"Have I drawn everything on the right layer?" If you've copied the symbols supplied with Aperture into your drawing then they are all on the right layer. But, if you have drawn your own objects, it is quite possible that some of them are on the wrong layer - I do it all the time myself. Or maybe you have imported an AutoCAD drawing whose layer names don't match the ones you want to use. All you need do is this :-
1)
Turn off all the layers
2) Turn on just the first layer in the layer list
3) Do any objects show up on the drawing that you didn't expect to see on this layer?
4) If so, select them, change the current layer to the one where the objects belong and reply "Yes" to the message asking if you want to shift the objects to the new layer.
5) Now repeat the process for each layer.
In this example, someone's drawn some new walls on the EQUIP OUTLINE layer. To move them to the right layer, select them, click on the layer name you want in the attribute bar and voila, as they say in Italy.
Select Via
"Have I attached a Device record to everything that should have one attached (or is there a Furniture record attached to all my furniture etc)?" Select Via Database will soon show you. Turn off all layers except one where all your devices are drawn such as the Equipment Outline layer. Go to Select/ Via Database and select every object that doesn't have a Device record attached. What you're hoping to see is an error message saying that nothing has been selected, meaning that everything does have a Device record attached. If anything is selected, you can zoom in easily by using View / Current Selection. You can then attach Device records either one at a time or in bulk using Data / Modify Selected Objects (described in the previous Inflight Magazine).
Report Writer
Both
the previous methods work on one drawing at a time - great if
you've only been working on one drawing. But what if you have
a project with 50 drawings and you want to make sure every device
in every drawing has a Manufacturers Device Specs record (MDS
for short) attached to it? What we need is the report writer to
create a report based on all drawings in the project. To keep
the size of the report manageable and to save unnecessary work,
we'll get it to report only on those devices with no MDS record.
(If you've never used the Tabular Report Wizard, do. I never create
reports any other way since I discovered it.)So we create a report
showing the manufacturer, device type, which drawing it's in and
its grid location. We then go to the Report menu and choose "Use
data from all drawings". Finally, we set up a "Where"
option : (Count('Device'.'Manufacturer' , ATTACHED) >0) AND
(Count('Manufacturer Device Specs (T)'.'Manufacturer' , RELATED)
= 0) to say we're interested only in devices with no MDS record.
Now we run the report, hoping to get a blank display to tell us
that we've got MDS records for all our devices.
The report we've got here shows we have a few problems to fix. Someone's accidentally typed a serial number in the manufacturer's name of our silo. Someone can't spell "SUN" and there doesn't seem to be any data in the MDS table for FREDCO cabinets. So all we need to do is to find the errant devices in their respective drawings (not hard as we have the drawing name and grid location) and get the info on FREDCO cabinets into the MDS table.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could just zoom to the objects directly from the report rather than having to open the drawings manually? Yes, it would - watch this space in a few months for what's new in Aperture version 7…Oops - I'm starting to sound like Bill Gates.
Vapourware delivered! PC Key/Master version 7 has arrived and, unlike Debbie, it does Windows. The Key/Master screen painter has been Windows-based for years (and, given the choice, even I would always prefer to use the Windows screen painter to using the mainframe-based screen-painter). Now the data entry screens are Windows-based, too. That means that all the nice Windowsy bits like pull down lists, cut and paste and so on are all available for your data entry people. And, if you like, they can use the mouse to move around the screen, too.
The timing of this announcement couldn't have been better as we'd been discussing Datamail's old Nixdorf key-to-disk equipment for some time. "Datamail is New Zealand's leading provider of document, image and mail management services" according to their web site (www.datamail.co.nz) and I wasn't going to disagree. Steve and John had put together a PC-based version of a couple of the old Nixdorf applications as a demo and everything was burbling along nicely.
The decision to move to Key/Master versus other products was made sooner rather than later when the Nixdorf started having problems. Datamail's Data entry manager Peter Dick wasn't going to waste any time. It was a Monday, he had clients' needs to look after and a team of data entry ladies all ready to go and was already convinced that Keymaster was the product. .
So, pausing only to pack my wife and kiss my suitcase goodbye, I was on the next flight - by 8 pm we had the first applications in production and, with Steve taking over the difficult ones, the whole lot was done by Thursday night.
Peter Dick declared it "our finest hour," as he painted the Nixdorf in the red and black stripes of his beloved Crusaders before consigning it to the bottom of Wellington Harbour (which is where you'll find the fortunes of the Crusaders this season).
...it was safe to go back in the water and that all the Y2K rubbish was behind us. Last Friday at 3 pm, as I was weighing up the relative merits of tidying my desk, having a sneaky game of Civilization or trying to beat the traffic, an old friend phoned to say that the module they use to advance dates by a number of days had started giving the wrong answer. "Hmm - email me the source and I'll take a look." The source code was intriguing, not because it was written in COBOL (a language I have taught but never used) or because it didn't contain a single comment or because it was full of GOTOs (which made it easy to follow). What was really amazing was that they could find the source code of a 26 year old module. A few hours painstaking fiddling revealed that it thought that 2001, 2002 and 2003 are all leap years. It thought the same about 1601 etc but nobody ever asked it. So I fixed it by removing one IF statement with the dire warning that the module will only work until 28/2/2101 (but we'll be off the mainframe by then…)
So don't throw out your old Y2K simulator (unless it was a load of junk). You never know when it might come in handy. Of course, you could always talk to us about SIM2000, Track and Xray.
It would be too easy merely to
whinge about the Auckland weather this summer. Could I just point
out to the folks at the Met Office that I didn't order this muck?
No, I'm going to indulge myself with a true luxury whinge - one
that ends with "Now, the way it's done in England …"
How can I describe Melbourne taxi drivers without using the word
"Bloody"? They are without doubt the worst in the world
or at least the worst I have come across. The last two taxis I've
ridden in had drivers who didn't know where Caulfield Park and
Brighton were - that's like a London cabbie not knowing where
Regent's Park is or a San Francisco cabbie not knowing where Fisherman's
Wharf is. So they either blunder around aimlessly until they accidentally
arrive at your destination or get you to direct them. In future
it's the tram or a rental car for me. And I think I drive more
safely drunk than a Melbourne cabbie drives sober. Now,
in England, you can get into a London cab and ask to
go to the most obscure little street and be delivered there by
the shortest route. Next time you're in London, ask to go to Milk
St instead of St Paul's or to Of Alley (which isn't called that
any more) instead of Trafalgar Square. I don't aim these comments
at all the cabbies in Melbourne, only the dozen or so I have ridden
with in the last year.
PS - Steve thought I was being too harsh. But that was before he had to call me on his cellphone from a cab in Melbourne to ask directions to two of our customers...
Here's a neat little routine I pinched that converts a Julian date (DDD,YYYY) into Gregorian (DD,MM,YYYY).
IF YYYY is a leap year and DDD >59, ADD 1 to DDD IF YYYY isn't a leap year & DDD >58, add 2 to DDD DDD= DDD - 1 MM = INT((DDD + 0.35) / 30.55) DD = INT(MM * 30.55 + .65) MM = MM+1 DD = DDD - DD + 1
Ain't that neat?
Many years ago, I totally screwed up an IT project, wasting 20,000 quid. I've often pondered / fretted about this until I found the wonderful therapy at http://www.actscorp.com/technologyshowcase/boothill.htm . In case you're interested, my project was eventually completed totally successfully (and on a grander scale) though the final price ticket was 2 million. Buy me a pint sometime and I'll tell youthe full nauseating story. And, if you're looking for something less than politically-correct, painfully honest and unashamedly one-sided, take a look at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mil.millington/things.html.
As always, if you've got this newsletter by snail mail and would like to save a tree, send us an email and we'll email you future issues. And if you don't want to get future issues, send us an email and we'll organise that, too. As a public service, you can be as abusive as you like in your email so feel free to vent your spleen. I can't promise what Bev will say about you when she reads it but that's her problem.
In our next rivetting issue, we'll be bringing you news of what's new in our Vital Signs VisionNet performance monitor (check it out at www.sdsusa.com/vsv if you can't wait). There will also be a run down on a very easy way to web enable mainframe programs without your having to change any of your source code. Again, if you can't wait you can read all about it at www.mycroft.com.au/zwebhost.htm.
Or "Would you like fries with that?"
Over the last couple of months every PC in the office has been upgraded, a job that went without a single problem worth relating. Makes for a very boring story but I am not complaining.
I have a rule that after buying an electrical appliance, (Stereo, TV etc.) I will never look at its price again; it's the only way to avoid the "Now look what it does/ costs/ comes with, I wish I had waited…." scenario. So after spending all that money on the PCs, I knew I should have stopped looking but I didn't.
So this week SDRAM memory prices fell below US$4 per chip and thus approaching the lowest level ever of $3.90 (reached in March) . Last Monday, Intel introduced its 1.7GHz Pentium 4 at $352, cheaper than its 1.4GHz processor. A full round of Intel Price cuts to remedy this are set to take place on the 29th of April and on the 30th AMD are set to undercut Intel in what is sure to amount to a price war. Add to this the recently announced Graphics Chip prices from Nvidia, 20% decrease in price on their top of the line chips and complete boards starting at US $99, rrp, and a week or two from now we could have bought new machines for the price of the upgrades. [Does this mean my machine can now crash twice as fast? - Ed]
There is some small comfort, at least, in the thought that with the current rate of price reductions by the time we are ready to replace the current PCs, McDonalds will be giving away a new PC with every Happy Meal ™ .
And, if you think that sounds far-fetched, go to http://firingsquad.gamers.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=2994
