On August 12 2010 President Obama of the US signed into law a Border Security Bill that increases the fee for H1-B visas by US$ 2000 – 2500. This was clearly intended to shield unemployed US IT specialists against "imports" and is a blatant protectionist measure.

India has been exceptionally victimized by the Bill since it has thousands of H1-B IT specialists working in the US at any one time. The US should have first thought of raising duties on Chinese imports (which have taken away thousands of manufacturing jobs from the US). But then, of course, why would it, since China has loaned the US $844 million (by buying US Treasury Bonds, see http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt).

There are several ways in which India can counter this discriminatory move:

1. India could choose an imported product for which the US is the primary source and increase the duty rate on it (an example would be diamonds; India imports $1.4 billion of them from the US annually)

1. India could take the matter to the WTO (there are already plans to do this)

1. The Bill is expected to cost Indian companies around $200 million. India could ask for this much additional discount next time it makes one of its massive defense purchases from the US.

Of the three above alternatives, in my opinion the second is preferable; the others suggest behavior similar to that of the US’s… why should India seek to emulate that which it condemns?

Users, whether they be engineers, architects or interior designers, need to know whether your company’s products are a good fit for their designs. Increasingly, what users are doing is wanting to download a 3-D model from your website, position that model in their larger 3-D model of a machine or architectural project and check for the fit.

Downloadable 3-D models should be provided for a good reason: they make good marketing sense. By playing with your 3-D models, users are subconsciously getting familiar with them and getting to like them. This increases the likelihood of them buying your physical product when their design is done.

An innovation in downloadable 3-D models is for websites to provide what are known as parametric 3-D models. A parametric model is a model whose design is controlled by a list of parameters. The parameters are offered to the user in a table, the user chooses the parameters he/she wants, the model is drawn on the fly and the user downloads it immediately.

There are two variants of parametric model provision: in one variant, the user goes to your website and chooses parameters from a table of parameters on your website. Your website instantaneously creates a 3-D model based on those parameters and makes the 3-D model available for download.

The other variant is a ‘client’ version of the same system. Instead of choosing the parameters at your website, the user downloads the table of parameters and your model creating software into his/her machine. He/she launches the program, is presented with a table of parameters and the 3-D model is created on the user’s machine without the Internet.

Regardless of which variant you provide, the user is made familiar with your product. It is almost as if the user is given a free sample of your product, the difference being that it is not a physical sample but a digital sample. The effect on the user’s mind, however, is very similar to that of the the physical sample: the user knows what your product looks like, he/she uses it, he/she likes it and he/she wants to buy it.

The takeaway: provide downloadable 3-D models of your products and if possible make them parametric. Your users will appreciate this facility and will be more likely to buy what you are selling.

Our latest guest on TMG’s Engineering and Architecture Video Show was the architect who designed the soon-to-be-opened, spectacular spa at the Trump Soho Hotel in New York City.

Anthony J DiGuiseppe, member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and a charter member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) talks in depth about the challenges his firm faced in the project and the outstanding features of this hammam (Middle Eastern bath) in the middle of one of the world’s busiest metropolises. Do not miss this 10-minute tour-de-force!

DMI College of Engineering is a relatively new institution about 40 kilometers out of Chennai, India (where incidentally where TMG’s office is), and the Computer Science Association very kindly asked me to inaugurate their activities for the year. It was a complete privilege for me to address part of India’s IT future. Here are several pictures of the event:

Walking in to a hero’s reception…

Lighting the inaugural lamp…

Sister Teresa, the Secretary of the College, gifts me a gold shawl…

  Rajeesh Rajagopal, a key member of the Organising Committee, asks me to speak…

I give the audience some value…

The Organizing Committee gives me some value

***

Interior designers who want to use your product need to know if they fit in the locations they want to put them in. The designers could download your 3D models, place them in the 3D model of the space they are designing and check if your products fit in the intended space. Also, once they place your model in its intended space, they can block off the usage area of your product and not attempt to place anything else there.

In the ideal case you would make parametric models of your products available. A parametric model is a model that comes along with a sort of spreadsheet. If you change the numbers in the spreadsheet, the drawing changes accordingly.

For instance, one cell in the spreadsheet could contain the length of the object. If you changed the number in that cell, the length of the object would automatically change. Sure simpler than modifying the model yourself!

Many manufacturers already offer downloadable parametric models because it makes designing with their products easier than with products of manufacturers who do not offer parametric model downloads.

Give parametric downloadable models serious thought… because they could lead to some serious business!

To your success,

The Beluga Airbus is the world’s most volumetrically cavernous aircraft and is named after the similarly shaped Beluga whale. This Airbus is almost exclusively found in the skies of Western Europe and has been well documented by scientists. Considering that only five exist, one might consider it an endangered species.

The specifics:

• This monster of the skies measures a humungous 56.15 m ( 184ft ) in length and 17.24 m (56ft) in height, with a wingspan of 44.84m (147ft). It’s vast insides measure 37.7m in length, 7.1m in width and 37.7m in height (which racks up to a 1,400 square meters, roughly 14,000 square feet)
• It weighs 86 tons empty and can carry a volumetric payload weight of 47 tons
• One of its main uses has been the transporting of large Airbus parts
• It can swallow helicopters and international space station modules whole.

At first we thought it was an ordinary Airbus fuselage with a gigantic box bolted on the top… but then we noticed how the front section tilts downwards. Perhaps it’s bending under the weight of all that stuff on its head… 

Nevertheless, TMG looks forward to the day when its expertise in mechanical engineering will play an important part in the design of such landmark machines!

Image Specification

• The rendering we create will be of an external view of a building
• The building should have between 10,000 and 100,000 square feet of covered space
• The turnaround time will be industry standard

To Be the Recipient…

• You should be a US-based architectural firm
• You will permit us to display the rendering on our website (you can opt for your firm’s name and URL to be displayed as well)
• If you like the rendering we deliver, you will give us a testimonial and a LinkedIn recommendation

How We Will Choose the Recipient

We will combine two factors:

• The online visibility of the firm
• The reputation of the firm

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To be considered a possible recipient, please enter your name and email address below, then click ’Submit’:

Name:
Email:
Your URL:
Security code:	«-

April 30th is the last date on which we will receive requests for the gift!!

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We look forward to hearing from you and to creating a top-class rendering of your building!

TMG has been a long-term user of Camtasia (we started with Camtasia 5 some years ago) and has been upgrading to all newer versions as and when Techsmith announces them. They announced Camtasia 7 last week and we immediately bought and downloaded it. We’ve tried it out by creating a video on it. Here are the observations that came to mind during the process:

The codecs are significantly better than in Camtasia 6. We’re not sure if new ones have been added or the earlier ones have been improved… all we know is that MOV files play properly when loaded into the timeline (in Camtasia 6 the audio and video would be out of sync). This is an important improvement for us, since we recently bought a Kodak Z1-8 mini-HD video camera. The output of the camera is in MOV format.

The user interface has changed drastically… there used to be text menus on a menu bar at the top of the screen… now there are icons with text in a toolbar right on top of the timeline (in addition to the top menu bar). Not having to pull down commands from the old menu bar certainly is more convenient. The one icon lacking, though, is the ‘Save’ icon, which Camtasia 6 had and which we regularly used. Wonder why they left that out…

The noise removal feature is more effective than the one in Camtasia 6 in terms of the resulting filtered audio… however, we found the manual noise removal procedure slightly puzzling (we removed the noise, but did not know how or when).

There are other new features which we will doubtless be using in the near future, and we will update this post with our findings soon after we come across them.

When all is said and done, we are very happy with Camtasia 7. As in the case of earlier versions, it is easier to use than comprehensive video editing programs and generates output an order of magnitude faster than those programs do.

For the purposes of this explanation, we categorize 3D visualizations into two types: interior visualizations and exterior visualizations.

Recognizing an Interior Visualization

Any three of the following criteria prove that an image of the interior of a building is a 3D visualization and NOT a photograph:

• Lighting not consistent: objects next to each other are illuminated to different degrees
• Shadows of objects are entirely missing (!)
• Furniture legs cast no shadow on the floor near their feet
• Objects (especially people) do not have depth
• People have zombie-like expressions
• People are all dressed very neatly
• People are the same height and no one’s overweight (!!)
• Plants are identical to the last leaf
• Objects are not scaled consistently: some pieces of furniture look out of proportion to others. Some of the people look out of proportion to one another and out of proportion to the ceiling height or furniture (use this to judge people’s heights: door openings are usually seven feet high)

Recognizing an Exterior Visualization

Any three of the following criteria prove that an image of the exterior of a building is a 3D visualization and NOT a photograph:

• Trees and plants are repetitive
• Lawns look like astro-turf… no loose leaves, no color or texture variation, no bald spots
• Objects next to each other are illuminated to different degrees (as in the case of interior renderings)
• People have zombie-like expressions and lack visual depth
• People are all dressed very neatly
• People are the same height and no one’s overweight (!!)
• There are not enough people in the scene (populating the scene greatly increases the time a computer takes to create the visualization)
• Objects (especially people) are out of proportion (use this to judge people’s heights: door openings are usually seven feet high)
• Trees in the foreground cast no shadows
• People cast no shadows
• Shadows of objects are cast in different directions or to in different proportions to their parent objects
• There are no blemishes on road asphalt or on sidewalks
• There are no loose leaves on the ground near trees
• The interiors of buildings are not visible through any windows (if the image is a close-up)
• Window panes appear painted

If you use the above criteria, you will never again mistake a computer-generated 3D visualization for a photograph!

To your image expertise,

For starters, we maintain a constant slack in our in-house workforce to absorb moderate increases in client assignments. Whenever this slack is completely utilized, we resort to overtime. If we find that over time occurs too often, we decided that it’s time to augment our workforce.

We can augment our workforce in two ways: either add people in-house or set up off site contractors.

Adding people in-house entails advertising, interviewing and training. Adding off-site contractors involves the same steps, only we usually ask for external drafting services with specific experience, thus obviating the time and expense of training.

The off-site drafting services whom we identify as contractors are of course firms who have the necessary skill but are unable to project themselves into the international market. But India has a large number of such firms and finding them is only a matter of time.

The fact is that computer penetration in India is constantly increasing, and it is getting the point where having an office with in house staff is becoming less and less required. Reliable online contractors are becoming less of an option and more of a necessity for all drafting services active in the international marketplace.

This is just one of the several state-of-the-art methods that TMG employs to ensure a rapid, timely response to its valuable clients. Why not become a client?