Top 10 Architectural Software Recommended For Students

Architectural design professors won’t be successful in building the educational foundation for their students without introducing a reliable architectural design software.

However, there’s no guarantee that a single program will give you everythingyou need, and this is why most companies use several tools for this kind of operation.

Hence, we created a list of outstanding architectural designing tools to get you started. Here are 10 programs we recommend:

10. AutoDesk Building Design Suite 
Building Design Suite allows you to edit and view saved designs through the cloud where you can visualize, organize, and clean large file sets. It features built-in BIM (Building Information Modeling) software which also includes integrated structural analytical tools.

Other features include clashes detection, intelligent 3D accuracy, and extensive quantification tools. The only downside we see here is that you need to purchase the ultimate version to enjoy all its features.

9. ArchiCAD 
ArchiCAD has a built-in rendering program known as Artlantis which creates 3D renderings in high resolution. It has green building designing tool to assist you in analyzing alternatives for environmental efficiency. Its virtual building explorer can also help you develop effective 3D presentations for design communication.

However, the software is only available for specific regions.

8. Chief Architect 
This software features both manual and automatic designing tools including truss and stick, dimensioning, elevations, and other task-specific CAD tools. You can use its style and finishing toolsets to create interior designs like kitchen and bathrooms.It can import AutoCAD files and other formats including PDF, DXF, and DWG. You need to buy the premiere edition to get all its features.

7. SoftPlan
SoftPlan has a wide list of symbol layouts, giving you an array of 3D renderings and furniture models from the leading manufacturers in the market.

All light models in this tool are embedded with light sources. This allows the program to automatically calculate shadow and lighting as you add 3D models to your design. The pricing varies from one-time payment of monthly subscriptions.

6. Home Designer
Home Designer has at least 3,600 landscaping models which include plants and trees for outdoor designing. Its built-in Cabinet Designer gives a list of more than 1,000 cabinet designs for interior modeling.

Home Designer also includes How-To videos to familiarize beginners with the program. It comes in academic release, allowing you to save more without removing any features.

5. Envisioneer Construction 
This architectural design software has integrated quote generator to help you manage gross profit, selling prices, and markups which you can export in PDF format. Its 3D framing has additional features like steel and wood frames, rafter layout, and ceiling or floor layout. Its 3D modeling engine can help you insert stair railings, ramps, and easy-to-adjust stairs.

The software comes in 4 versions, including the Construction edition, which offers every feature you need.

4. SketchUp
SketchUp features pattern fills and enhanced zoom-in function which you can use to specify details in your designs.

You can also export your designs as presentation in several video formats including WebM and AVI. You can get a Pro license at no cost for teaching purposes by simply visiting their website.

3. Autodesk Revit
Architectural features of Autodesk Revit include building energy analysis, work sharing for multiple users, and enhanced API for accurate designs.

Its structural engineering functions include materials modeling, structural reinforcement, and parametric components. It has cloud-based rendering tool, high-speed visualization, and design preview in photorealistic view.

If you want all features, you should go toEducation Reseller of its ultimate version.

2. Punch Software
With Punch Software, you can instantly create customized rooms and columns with base styles and shafts. The drag and drop 3D function allows you to easily add, edit, and rotate models through its user-friendly interface.

There are also thousands of models for electrical outlets and switches, complemented by improved drawing tools for customization.

1. Vectorworks Architecture
Vectorworks allows you to immediately publish your designs in different formats through its cloud server. It features interactive viewing where you can zoom in and out, pan, select objects, and walk through your interior models.

Its new feature called the Twist Toolwill help you twist solid models to create stylish angles. Free trial is available via the official website.

Your Turn

Do you use one or more of the programs listed above? Tell us about the architectural design software you currently use by leaving your comments below.

This highly-informative blog post is brought to you byVagueware.com – a website that gives unbiased review and important information about software and programs that will make your life easier, more efficient, and more profitable!

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How The Remote Control Has Let Do The Downfall of Society

A remote control does not have to be large to have a very controlling influence over individuals’ lives. What began as a novelty in 1898 when Nicola Tesla produced a remote-controlled boat has now morphed into a major technology. One large area in which these controllers are used is in the military.

The first drone airplane was developed in 1916 by Peter Hewitt. Since then, drones have become much more highly developed and are used throughout all the branches of the military for surveillance and for safety behind enemy lines. As soon as these drones were developed, the face of warfare changed for all of time. Today, analysts worry that war has become dehumanized as military personnel rely on remote control technology for aircrafts, bombs, missiles, sensors and more. Even civilians can be affected and towns can be destroyed by a remote-controlled device.

It concerning to many that remote controls can keep people apart and can destroy emotion-based decision making. Both military personnel and civilians are put at risk today by this otherwise fabulous piece of technology. This infographic helps people consider whether remote controls have brought more harm than good to modern societies.

This infographic was produced by Pannam Imaging.

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Are You Textually Active? What Your Texting Means

Some form of texting has been around for the last twenty years. However, it has become much more widespread in the past five to ten years. In fact, users sent an amazing 14 billion texts each month back in 2000; however, that number became over 10 times more by 2010 with a surprising 188 billion texts per month. Obviously, texting has caught on as one of the best ways to keep in touch with family and friends.

However, there are some trade-offs to this awesome phenomenon. Sadly, people are unable to communicate true emotions via text messages. Body language and tone of voice are two major pieces of communication that cannot be conveyed via a simple SMS message. Some people are even worried that relationships can suffer when only text messaging or a majority of text messaging is used for communication.

On the other hand, there are definite benefits to SMS. Many people feel more comfortable conveying awkward messages or difficult information via text messaging than in person or over the phone. With almost 70% of those studied believing that they would have a difficult time staying in contact with others without text messaging, this once-unfamiliar technology has become widespread and much beloved.

This infographic was produced by Scratch Wireless.

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The History of Hacking Culture

Hacking culture is changing and developing all the time. The modern world is full of flaws to discover and secret places to explore. It makes sense that people are fascinated with the subject, but how has it progressed over time?

In 1975 the “Robin Hood and Friar Tuck” programs were installed on Xerox machines by Motorola staff which meant every time the program was deleted, it would re-appear after the computer rebooted.  This virus was the first of its kind and paved the way for a long line of internet virus hacks that we see today.
As for today, hacking culture has matured and more recently the ‘free online school’ hack believed that ‘information wants to be free’ and so this saw a rise in code literacy and naturally made people even more aware of computer security, which can only be beneficial.

What will happen in the future? Will the elite hackers go underground and start working for the government? Who knows! Either way it’s clear that hacking will always have security perks. If there weren’t people to uncover pitfalls, we wouldn’t be making online security tighter.

By James Duval, business and technology editor at GKBCInc.

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Things You should Remember when Redesigning Your Website

Things change. Businesses change, directions change, audiences, trends and attitudes change. As the face of your business or service, your website is the window through which your clients experience you, and as such, if it doesn’t adequately reflect what you or your clients are after, then you’re out of the loop. This is true if you’re looking to design your fledgling website, or if you’re looking to update and re-haul your existing site. The list of tips below should help website owners – new and old – know what to look for when giving their online presence a facelift.

Purpose
First, what’s the purpose of your website? Why is it out there in the first place? Find the essentials, and convey them in a clear mission statement. If your website is clogged with meandering information and distracting tangential stuff, there’s no way your clients will be able to easily figure out where you want them to go. If your purpose isn’t easily noticeable, it’s assumable that you don’t know your own purpose. And if it’s overused, it seems weak and unconvincing. But with clearly designed, easily navigable website design that brings out your purpose clearly, simply and concisely, you’ll be onto a winner. In combination with consistent, well chosen color themes and font choices, your site will present purposeful content and clearly understood images.

Audience
Know who your target audience is, and speak to them on the same level. Don’t dilute your site with self-promotional flattery – write from the point of view of your audience. Why should they take the time to devote their attention to you? What’s in it for them? And to make it a lot easier, don’t saturate your writing with overly technical, ridiculously complex jargon and babble. Speak simply.

Know your competition
Take the time to do your research; look around at your competitors’ websites, and take notes on what you like and don’t like. Explore their sites as if you were a potential client, and your pointers will direct you well.

Copywriting and SEO
Copy is super important, and so is choosing the right kind of writing for your site. As mentioned before, you ought to view all the copy on your website as an invaluable resource to state your mission and ideology. However, there’s a fine balance between over- and under-saturated, and you should be careful with how to work it into your website. Search Engine Organization (SEO) is also important – good SEO will keep you high up on related searches and increase your traffic, and it’s important to stay updated.

Read the Fine Print
There are virtually hundreds of web hosting packages on the internet that you can possibly selectF from. However, make sure that you scrutinize the fine print because there might be some limitations that might surprise you especially when it comes to data transfers, bandwidth usage and other purported unlimited features that comes with your web hosting services.

Plan ahead - web hosting packages
Build your website with growth in mind – you want it to grow, right? You should add in enough space for extra pages to be added later. And to make your site constantly fresh and relevant, schedule maintenance and content. This will make launching new promotional or marketing campaigns that much more easy.

Website design really is a deal breaker – take the time to do it right.

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Chat Wisely: Softros LAN Messenger

Whether you run a small web design agency or a large-scale enterprise, corporate network security should be one of your major concerns. Establishing bulletproof security isn’t a one-time action, but an ongoing commitment that encompasses various activity aspects, one of which is communication. You’ll be surprised to learn that your most sensitive information can be easily stolen by hackers due to the vulnerabilities of public messengers. All your best-laid antiviral measures might be for naught if you use a ‘not-so-safe’ piece of software. So, which messenger does your company use? Are you sure it is secure enough?

LAN Messengers

Computers belonging to a single network (Local Area Network or Wide Area Network) can effectively interact with each other (exchange messages and files, chat, send notifications etc.) in real time even if the network has no Internet connection. This was made possible thanks to LAN messengers that work as stand-alone client applications which don’t depend on any central servers (there is no need to set up those for LAN messengers). LAN messengers have proven successful for intra-office communication due to their enterprise-level security measures, ease-of-use and functional flexibility. Join me reviewing Softros LAN messenger, one of the highly rated IM tools to explore the benefits of this type of software.

Softros LAN Messenger

LAN messenger by Softros Inc. is one of the major players in the market. It has bought the heart and trust of many business owners for a wide range of handy features:

• Ease of use. Softros LAN messenger works out-of-the-box and requires minimum user intervention. It can be easily configured by non-tech-savvy users.
• Full Windows support (XP, Vista, 7-8). Works seamlessly on large and small TCP/IP networks.
• Secure LAN messaging. All messages are protected by the AES encryption algorithm minimizing eavesdropping and leaks. You get full control over who and when accesses the messenger.

• Requires no Internet connection. Softros helps you save the bandwidth, as well as prevent external attacks and keep your employees from chatting with friends and families.
• Private and group channels. File transmission.
• Sound alarms for incoming messages.
• User grouping: you can recreate the structure of your firm through grouping users by departments and teams, for instance Devs, Sales Department, QA etc.
• User rights management. You can selectively assign different rights and thus restrict certain functions of the messenger for normal users.
• Message logging. All correspondence is archived and can be looked through anytime.

• Easy importing/exporting. If needed, you can export your LAN settings to a file and then use them on any other PC on the network.
• Multi language interface. Included languages: Spanish, French, German, Polish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and more.
• Affordable pricing: $10.95 per copy. Quantity discounts are available.

It is better to see once than to hear about it a thousand times, so you may want to try the application yourself free of charge through downloading a free trial version.

The core advantage this piece of software is security. You should never skimp on it. When it comes to business, enterprise-level software isn’t a whim, it’s a necessity.

Featured images: Both Images are owned by the Author.

Robert is a passionate blogger. He's the owner of http://yourtechlib.com/, a website covering various technology topics. Feel free to contact Robert via his social accounts anytime.

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New Choices for Domain Names for Your Website

In the spring of 2014 a vast range of new domain name extensions are going to open up, with industry specific extensions becoming available after the dot, such as .photography, .london and .wedding.

It's likely that in time what's after the dot could become as important as what's before the dot and it allows for the whole of your domain name to have meaning.  Some of the most popular domain extensions that will be available are:

• .photography
• .london
• .web
• .services
• .ltd
• .blog
• .hotels
• .football
• .wedding
• .training
• .media
• .holiday

The Business Week article - New Domain Names are in the Works has more information on the latest domain names.

This gives you a wealth of extra choice in deciding what you want to name your website and it's likely that these extensions will be become important for SEO (appearing high with search engines) too.

Given that there's more choice in what to call your website, how do you go about deciding on your domain name?  The infographic gives some suggestions that are important to consider when deciding what to name it, both from a user-friendliness perspective and from an SEO perspective, whether you're looking to launch your website locally, nationally or internationally.

The "New choices for domain names for your website" infographic was designed by Allison Carmichael at Indigoextra Ltd, a creative multilingual web design and SEO company.  Allison has 2 boys and created the infographic to compare naming a new baby with choosing the name of your website.  It wouldn't surprise me if people put as much thought into both!

Allison lives in Montpellier, South France and is a film fanatic of all genres (although there's only a few French films she likes) and is home educating her two boys.  For work, Allison is the Art Director of Indigoextra Ltd and runs the graphic design team.

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Best Products to Buy from Apple in 2014

The year 2014 is going to be an year of much enthusiasm and it is going to deliver some amazing products from the giant tech company Apple. Apple has decided to create some extraordinarily effective and great products for this year as per the CEO Tim Cook. The most highlighted and awaited products for the year 2014 from apple. These products are anticipated to really rock the tech market.

iPhone 6

The next iphone from apple is expected to come with larger screen size that can come between 4.7 to about 5.7 inches. According to the information received it is said that the product is going to get released in two varying sizes for attracting users with different needs. The new iphone is going to be larger than the previous version released by the company. The ipad 5 cases will be available along with the product in the market so that you can keep your gadget free from any kind of problems. This larger iPhone is going to make use of A8 chip which is much faster and available at 20 nanometer. The display is also expected to come in curved shape. The gadget is expected to be in market by September or in the month of October.

iPad Pro

Along with larger iPhone, apple is expected to release larger iPad along with the tablet lineup that it has. This is going to be something really bigger and much efficient compared to iPad mini and iPadAir.TheiPad Pro is expected to have a display which is about 12.9 inches in size and is almost similar to the size of MacBook Air which is about 13.3 inches. The pixel density that you are going to acquire from the display is going to be much higher and it is almost near to the ultra high definitions. It is not yet clearly known about the features that you can expect from this amazing product but the whole tech world is awaiting the release of the product.

iWatch

The rumors and the news related with the iWatch was a great buzz among the tech savvies. The product is expected to get released by the year 2014. The smart watch that is going to get released can work as an accessory along with the iPad and iPhone. This watch can provide accessibility to iOs functions. The biometric functions are also included in this watch. The screen that is available with the watch is expected to be of sapphire glass which is ultra durable. The accessory is expected to go well along with iPad mini cases too.

Apple Television

The upgrades to Apple TV is going to be a reality this year and that is what most of the owners of the apple TV are waiting anxiously. The company is expected to release some new kind of set top box or are expected to put new features into Apple TV through which this particular product can become a fully blown TV that is suitable for all the users.

Author Bio:
Subramaniam is the author has been writing number of articles on different subject.He wrote more articles relating to Android phones.

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Infographic : The Worst Films of 2013

Producers and actors embark on movie projects with the best intentions. The screenwriting will be snappy and memorable. The costumes will be accurate for the time period. The script will grab viewers’ attention, not letting it go until after the final credits roll.

Yet some movies just flop. The reasons for their failure range all across the spectrum. Let’s mourn these movies:

1. The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp blames film critics for this movie’s failure. No matter why it flopped, it only took in $89 million in box office sales.
2. Second is R.I.P.D. This movie did even worse, with box office sales of only $34 million.
3. Third is After Earth. This film starred Will Smith and his son, Jaden. A rare flop for Smith, this movie only took in $34 million in box office sales.
4. This one is a surprise. Elysium, a follow up to District 9, failed. Its premise was good, but taking on income equality and immigration in a two-hour movie is a huge undertaking.
5. The Training Farm is a New York based instruction center where instructors train creative professionals on the latest media software.

This infographic is provided by TheTrainingFarm.

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