By Steven Blackwell, 8th June 2011,  

I'm told that a good way to attract more visitors to our web site is to write a blog. Trouble is I've never followed blogs or written one and dont really know what to blog about. So I'll start with what I know and give you a bit of information about why I'm qualified to do the drawings and training shown on these pages. 

I started drawing on an old fashioned drawing board in 1981 when I done my "O" Level in Technical Drawing. When I attended Braintree College in 1983 to do my B-Tec in Engineering Design and Manufacturing my lecturer said that I would never make a draughtsman, he was probably right at that time but fortunately for me I used my first CAD system at Colchester Institute in 1985 and the rest is history. I can't remember the CAD system the institute had, the name is in my college papers in my loft, do any of you lot remember? I won a Design award for my CAD project at the end of my HNC at Colchester Institute with a Distinction pass in CAD. 

After my apprenticeship in Engineering I joined Myson Fans on the first day back of 1988. It was here that I used my first full time CAD system, Renishaw MAE (Micro Aided Engineering) MAEDOS was the CAD system on an old Xenix system. This was integrated with their CAM sheet metal program called MAECAM and MAEPUN. Mysons replaced this system shortly afterwards with a brilliant CAD/CAM system called Tangram Swift. Even after twenty years of CAD development there are many things that Tangram could do that AutoCAD still does in a heavy handed manner. 

I was made redundant in 1992 and used my first AutoCAD system in my next job. The version was 11 for anyone thats interested in those things, I was at that company long as I wanted to get back into engineering but continued using AutoCAD from home as a freelance CAD operator for the company I had left, so I have been using AutoCAD extensively since 1992. The owner of that company is now my business partner. When I left I joined a company called Carier in Braintree. They used ME-10 which at the time was heavily marketed by HP and Trumpf for their CAM systems which was TC-APT I believe .  

I returned to Mysons at the end of 1992 as Drawing Office Manager and was responsible for bringing in ME-10, ME-30 by this time marketed by Co-Create and Cadtek. I also bought a licence of Radan's Radraft, Radpunch and Radprofile which is still a very good sheet metal system today. 

I set up CAD Bureau Southern in 1998 using AutoCAD 14 and went Limited in March 2002. I've used every version of AutoCAD since, taught myself 3D shortly after 1998 and set up training courses in 2002. 

I've just passed my AutoCAD Certified Associate Exam and will be doing the professional exam next month. 

 

 

By Steven Blackwell, 28th July 2011, 

I passed a practical exam today to be an AutoCAD Certified Professional. When you register you can go onto Autodesk's web site and search for other Certified Professionals and Associates. There are only 24 registered Professionals in the whole of the UK for AutoCAD 2011 many of them working for Autodesk approved centres. I'm the only one in Essex/Suffolk/Norfolk & Cambs registered for the 2011 Professional. There is one other person working for the Ipswich NHS who has the Associate (but not the Professional). This is further proof of our expertise and capability, if you want quality drawings and training then come to us. 

 

 

I have now completed writing our Training Manauls for this course. If you cannot get onto our Level 2 courses then provided you have attended on of our courses before you can purchase these from us. Visit our training manual page or click here for further information. 

 

 

 

 

By Steven Blackwell, 17th July 2011, 

Our new sotware arrived on Thursday and I've left it insatlling over the weekend. The suite of programs include 

 

 

Its going to take me years to learn all this lot, I have some limited experience or 3DS Max and hopefully we have got a couple of sub contract orders in the pipeline to try this out. I am going to start withe the Revit MEP software as I have exisitng customers who I can use this for. I ope to get 70% funding for a 5 day 1 to 1 course on this so I can start using the software early in September. The types of drawing that I hope to do using the software are Whole House Heat Recovery Ducting Systems, Water Pressure Booster Pump Plantroom Layoutsand other Mechanical Service Drawings 

 

 

 

By Steven Blackwell, 22nd June 2011,  

Does anyone use this software that can help me decide which package I should buy? I'm told that BIM is now the way forward and that some of these packages fully comply with Building Information Management. I reviewed these products with one of my customers the other day and though that the MEP software was very good. Price wise the Design suite is a no brainer as it is vitually as cheap as the Revit MEP suite and has a lot more software. However the training cost of all that software is pretty hefty. CAD Duct from MAP Building Software was reasonable, however I found that if you were an advanced AutoCAD user you could do pretty much everything this could do. Albeit CAD Duct was a lot more automated. For the average user I guess it would seem very good. Any thoughts an opinions would be appreciated, so please e-mail me. 

 

A couple of links to help our google relevance, www.bella-pais.co.uk , www.firststrokesswimmingclub.org.uk , www.cad-training.net , www.autocadtraining.net