3Dconnexion SpaceMouse - Bluetooth Edition!

I recently got my hands on a new 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Bluetooth Edition 3D mouse! Today's post is a quick share out on it.

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AIA Architect: Return to office: How it started and how it's going

I was recently interviewed by Wanda Lau for AIA Architect, along with a few other firms, to share how Lake|Flato's return to the office has evolved post-pandemic. Sharing that and a little more about our desk checkout system in today's post.

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Construction Brothers Podcast - I was a Guest on Episode 181

I was a guest on episode 181 of the Construction Brothers Podcast. Today's post points you to my episode, where I discuss the fun stuff we are doing at Lake|Flato:)

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Dell Features Lake|Flato Technology Strategy in New Video

Dell, with support from NVIDIA and Intel, produced a video featuring Lake|Flato's technology strategy within our newly remodeled office in San Antonio, Texas.

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Dell Visits Lake|Flato with Video Production Crew!

Last week, Dell visited Lake|Flato for two full days to begin producing a video capturing our firm culture, our newly remodeled San Antonio office, and the technology strategy we've implemented that revolves around all things Dell.

I will share some behind-the-scenes photos and a few polished teasers from the production company in today's post.

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I will be a guest on It’s LIVE! later this week - A Dell podcast

I will be a guest on a Dell podcast called It's Live later this week.

Today's post will highlight the topic, the guests, and how to register!

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Digital Inking Made Easy - Architectural Markups in PDFs

Today's post shares a workflow to quickly sign a document or markup a draft architectural detail using a tablet and a newer feature in Microsoft Edge. Plus I share some details about the Lake|Flato technology topography.

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My Interview with Dell - Designing From the Home Office

Last week, an interview I had with Dell was published on their blog... this is the topic of today's brief post.

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Review of Precision 5750 Laptop - What Dell Calls "the World's thinnest, lightest and smallest 17" workstation"

As one of only seven people in the world, outside of Dell, to have hands-on testing of the new 1/2" thick Dell Precision 5750 workstation-grade laptop with a 17" 4k touch display, I am extremely excited to share my review in today's BIM Chapters post... spoiler; this will be a game changer for many architects, engineers and designers in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.

The unit is aesthetically pleasing, light , reasonably powerful, flexible and has an incredible display powered by an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with 6GB of dedicated GPU RAM.

What do you get if you cross my high-end Dell Precision 7730 laptop with my kid's Microsoft Surface Book? A Dell Precision 5750. You can quote me on that:)

The 5750 is not for everyone, e.g. large and complex custom architectural VR projects, but it is very capable as you will see in this review. I have tested everything from streaming 4k movies, to using Autodesk Revit, to Enscape's real-time RTX-enabled rendering engine, to using the HTC Vive Pro for virtual reality.

Disclaimer: I’ve been partnering with Dell and they sent me an early sample of the Precision 5750 for free to try out and share my thoughts.

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Dell Power Manager

A Dell Systems Engineer on the team that supports LHB's account stopped by our office yesterday and shared a few interesting things with us... it wasn't even a sales pitch as we already had access to everything he covered. In today's post I thought I would share the Dell Power Manager installed on Dell systems. It has a couple features I thought were pretty cool.

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Product Review: Dell Precision 5820 Tower - Superior Performance for the AEC Market

I got my hands on a Precision 5820 Tower from Dell recently and have been running a bunch of tests - from benchmarks to trying massive models in VR. It ranked near the top for various benchmarks, including the RFO Revit Benchmark.

Disclaimer: This computer was provided by Dell for testing through their "Try and Buy" program with no strings attached. I was not obligated to write this post nor did I get paid anything:)

First things first, the computer specs:

Precision 5820 Tower
Here are the specs for the computer as tested:

• Processor: Intel Xeon W-2125 4.0GHz, 4.5GHz Turbo, 4C, 8.25M
  Cache, HT, (120W) DDR4-2666
• Memory: 128GB (8x16GB) 2666MHz DDR4 RDIMM ECC
• Storage: M.2 512GB PCIe NVMe Class 40 Solid State Drive
• Graphics: NVIDIA, various units tested (see list below)

Photos
The exterior of the unit looks like the typical Precision tower. I love the built-in handles...

Another Dedicated VR Space at LHB

As part of a recent expansion in our Minneapolis office, we added a dedicated VR space! We had a nice large area previously, but it was shared and required a couple tables and chairs be moved... that old space can be seen in this Dell video: LHB visualizes architectural designs through virtual reality powered by Dell Precision.

This space is fitted out with an HTC Vive using the wireless TPCAST adaptor, powered by a new...

Dell Canvas 27

I had the opportunity to play with the Dell Canvas 27... which is a nice sized touch monitor and drawing surface. This is similar to the Microsoft Surface Studio with Surface Dial.

For those looking to do some readlines in Bluebean Revu, sketch on a blank canvas, or to embellish a rendered iamge in Photoshop, the Canvas is worth a look.

This is more of an "at your desk" tool, and not necessarily something you would haul around with you, given its size. But I imagine the large drawing area is what most would like about this particular product.

As a test, I opened...

Dell Video: LHB visualizes architectural designs through virtual reality powered by Dell Precision

A few weeks back, I wrote about a promotional video Dell was creating, which features my firm's use of Virtual Reality using their hardware. That post highlights the process of creating the video.

You can read my previous post here: Dell Visits LHB to Make Promo VR Video.

I am excited to report that the video is now live.

Click the link below to check it out:

Dell Visits LHB to Make Promo VR Video

Earlier this week, Dell began the processes of creating a promotional video of LHB, an AE firm, using VR on their hardware (yes - Dell, the giant computer company). It was an honor and a lot of fun. It is super exciting to see our efforts implementing VR getting such widespread attention.

Dell hired a media agency, Metia, who captured video of staff, clients and even contractors using VR on a large project we are working on for United Properties. In the image below, LHB architect Karin Stuber is showing our client Gordy Stofer, United Properties’ Vice President, Office Development, the project in Virtual Reality while they are being filmed.

Additionally...

RFO Benchmark; Revit and Hardware Speed Test

If you want to find out how fast Revit runs on your computer and then roughly compare those results with others, you will want to check out the Revit Forum's RFO Benchmark V3.1.

The details...