Animation
6 messages in this thread
Hello, Wayne. I tried in vain to find you at the AEC conference in Dallas
last June, but never could catch you. Your compadres even told me to go to
where you were conducting a session, but I didn't want to interrupt. I
really wanted to connect a face with these messages.
New school year and we've already had some problems to solve with Aflix. A
student had a drawing and when he tried to load the path.lsp the whole
computer locked up. We finally blocked the drawing, called it up under the
new name, and then were able to load the path.lsp. We never did figure out
what he had done when drawing to cause the problem. Any ideas?
We now have nine 386 machines with 80 mg. hard drives and 4 mg. RAM. That
probably doesn't sound like much to you guys, but we are excited. We also
have some donated funds with which to buy more software. We think that we
will get 3DStudio, which hopefully will be much less frustrating for the
kids to use than AutoFlix. What is your opinion?
I would like to put in a good word for John and Marsha West of PCIII, a
company here in Houston that does animated presentations commercially. They
are also AutoCAD dealers. They have been very generous with their time and
technical support for our school. I wish they were our educational
reps–for a couple of reasons. One is that they are local. I don't have to
play telephone tag with them. (Our rep. is in Dallas). Two is that they
use the software and are able to answer questions and actually pride
technical support. Our educational reps are good at selling, but they just
can't provide answers to the kinds of problems we run into. AutoDesk
should consider making them the educational representatives for the Houston
area. Houston is big enough that we should have someone local. (Dallas is
not local.)
Looking forward to "hearing" from you. Hopefully this year we'll have some
animations I can be proud to send you. By the way, both of my students did
place at the state competition last May.
Tired teacher, Tommie Montgomery
Tommy: Not that you asked, but my two cents – YES your students will fall
over when they get their collective mitts on 3DS! Not saying that AFLIX
isn't fun, but then some people enjoy having their teeth pulled!
Cheers….Bill
Hi Tommie! Sorry you we were unable to connect in Dallas, although as
others will no doubt jump in here an tell you, it could well have been to
your advantage! <grin> I am afraid I move at about the same pace that I
talk: FAST and you are not alone in your difficulty to catch me! Seriously
though, you can do so here on the forums with almost 100% success, and
while I too prefer to have faces to match with the names, please use this
medium to its maximum benefit to get to me and the many others that
frequent this great communication highway.
Actually having nine 386 machines in a classroom sure DOES sound exciting
to me! I lived in a classroom in a former life and combined with my visits
of late to classes all over the world, I would say that you are doing GREAT
and should be VERY proud and pleased with what you have.
As for comparing AutoFlix with 3D Studio, …… uhhhh, ….. geeee…..
let's just say that you will want to be sure that all your students (and
you too) have your seatbelts on VERY tight when you fire up 3DS!! This is
easily the most FUN, most "WOW inspiring" piece of software I think anyone
has ever seen. And this effect doesn't seem to ever wear off! But don't
take my or anyone else's word for it, just load it up, have your students
fire it up, let them go through the excellent tutorials that ship with the
package and then get out of their way and watch the sparks fly! Once you
recover, please report back here to us to let us know your impressions, how
it all went, student reactions, etc. We would also be MOST grateful for
your feedback on what we could do to help you and your students work with
3DS in a more effective way in your classroom. Keep us posted.
[More]
Hi Tommie! Sorry you we were unable to connect in Dallas, although as
others will no doubt jump in here an tell you, it could well have been to
your advantage! <grin> I am afraid I move at about the same pace that I
talk: FAST and you are not alone in your difficulty to catch me! Seriously
though, you can do so here on the forums with almost 100% success, and
while I too prefer to have faces to match with the names, please use this
medium to its maximum benefit to get to me and the many others that
frequent this great communication highway.
Actually having nine 386 machines in a classroom sure DOES sound exciting
to me! I lived in a classroom in a former life and combined with my visits
of late to classes all over the world, I would say that you are doing GREAT
and should be VERY proud and pleased with what you have.
As for comparing AutoFlix with 3D Studio, …… uhhhh, ….. geeee…..
let's just say that you will want to be sure that all your students (and
you too) have your seatbelts on VERY tight when you fire up 3DS!! This is
easily the most FUN, most "WOW inspiring" piece of software I think anyone
has ever seen. And this effect doesn't seem to ever wear off! But don't
take my or anyone else's word for it, just load it up, have your students
fire it up, let them go through the excellent tutorials that ship with the
package and then get out of their way and watch the sparks fly! Once you
recover, please report back here to us to let us know your impressions, how
it all went, student reactions, etc. We would also be MOST grateful for
your feedback on what we could do to help you and your students work with
3DS in a more effective way in your classroom. Keep us posted.
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[Continued]
Re your AER: While I understand your desire to have someone local and
someone to answer your technical questions, our criteria for selecting an
AER include many additional factors. Right now it is still seeming to work
best to have one AER look after the educational interests for an entire
state. We do a lot of work at the "state level" with such things as
Teacher Training, CAD Contests, grants, curriculum standards, etc. and
having ONE contact in the state that can coordinate ALL of this has been a
MAJOR asset in getting us as far as we have in North American education.
Of course our world of products is changing and expanding rapidly and
EVERYTHING is subject to change these days, to please keep us informed as
to what your needs are and we will work to provide the best overall
solutions.
Specific to technical assistance, second only perhaps to person-to-person
help such that you may be getting from your local dealer, you are are
currently in the BEST overall technical support mechanism known; the forums
on CompuServe! It has been the experience of everyone I have spoken with
that the kind of support you get here both from the vendors themselves and
especially from the other users, eductators, etc. is flat out the greatest
single assest you can find. Let us know if you need any help or
suggestions on accessing this wealth of resources and in the meantime, be
sure to frequent the many related sections on the Autodesk forums of ASOFT,
ACAD, and ARETAIL.
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[Continued]
Re submissions of student work, YES PLEASE!! We are always looking for
more examples of what students (and their teachers) are doing with our
products and the technology in general, so please send in anything you
have. We also get a lot of internal requests for images for various
publications, CD ROM disks, etc. so you never know where and when your work
will show up! Please use one of the "Send us your best work" forms that
ship with all our products when you send in student work. This gives us
the informtion we need to properly credit the authors and the legal rights
to publish the work. Just make as many photocopies as you need so that you
can send in a form with each submission. Please add as much information as
possible about how the image was created, background for the project, and
anything else that helps put it in context. When we display or use such
work, this kind of information is the most important to help the viewer
understand what they are looking at and what is behind its creation.
Thanks for staying in touch Tommie, keep it up!!
wayne