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Design Master September 2017 Newsletter

Table of Contents


Weekly Training

We are trying something new starting this month: free, regularly scheduled, weekly training for our software. We are hoping this format works to help teach you all more about what our software can do. No registration is required. Just show up and learn.

The training will be every Thursday from 1pm to 2m Eastern Time. Each week of the month will have a specific program of ours that is covered. The first half of the training will cover a topic related to that program. The second half we'll open it up to any questions about that program you want to ask.

Go to our Online Training page on our website for instructions on how to connect to the training.

A certificate of completion for 1 hour of continuing education is available for $50. The training is always free. This cost is only for official documentation of your attendance. The continuing education credit is valid in all 50 states, including New York and Florida (which have slightly more stringent requirements than other states). You can request a certification of completion either at the end of the training class or by emailing us.

Here's the general weekly rotation we plan to use for the training. We look forward to seeing you at training!

1st Thursday: One-line Diagrams (Electrical for Revit and Electrical for AutoCAD)

2nd Thursday: Electrical for Revit

3rd Thursday: Electrical for AutoCAD

4th Thursday: HVAC for AutoCAD

5th Thursday: Photometrics for AutoCAD

And here's the specific topics we plan to cover for the next two months:

September 7, 2017: One-line Diagrams (Electrical for Revit and Electrical for AutoCAD)
One-line Diagram Customization

September 14, 2017: Electrical for Revit
The "Edit Family" Command

September 21, 2017: Electrical for AutoCAD
The "Circuiting" Command

September 28, 2017: HVAC for AutoCAD
3D Modeling for Collision Detection
A lot of techniques we will be talking about will be relevant to our Electrical for AutoCAD software users too.

October 5, 2017: One-line Diagrams (Electrical for Revit and Electrical for AutoCAD)
The "Generate Riser" and "Generate One-Line" Commands

October 12, 2017: Electrical for Revit
Voltage Drop Calculations

October 19, 2017: Electrical for AutoCAD
Dwelling Unit Load Calculations

October 26, 2017: HVAC for AutoCAD
2D Ductwork Drafting


Take the Eighth Annual BIM MEP Survey

It is time for our annual survey of engineers and designers in the MEP industry to learn about their experiences using building information modeling (BIM). We would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill out our survey. The results, including a comparison with the surveys from the previous years, will be discussed in a future newsletter.

(Editor's Note: The survey has ended.)

You can read the results of last year’s survey here.


Support Articles from the September Archives

General AutoCAD

Master and Standards Customization Databases: How the master and standards databases work for storing your customization settings.
Crashes: What to do when Design Master crashes.
Alignment Points: How to use multiple alignment points on a single drawing.

HVAC for AutoCAD

Inserting Ductwork Transitions: How to manually insert a transition in a duct.
Inserting Turning Vanes: How to insert turning vanes on square elbow and wye fittings.

Electrical for AutoCAD

Devices Come in Too Big or Too Small: How to fix your customization if your blocks are coming in at the wrong size.

New Wishlist Requests

Below is a list of recent ideas on our wishlist. 

Customers regularly share ideas about what they would like us to add to the software. What we don't know is how many other people are interested in the idea. If you see something that looks interesting to you, vote for it. We prioritize features based upon the number of votes and the difficulty to implement. Knowing whether other people are interested in an idea or not helps us know if we should spend development time on it or on something else.

Electrical for AutoCAD

Better default panel clearances

Copy equipment connections in equipment group

Separate column in the feeder schedule for the service grounding electrode conductor

HVAC for AutoCAD

Print Load Calculations: Have a Select All/Unselect All checkbox