It would be safe to say that our Framework for Civil 3D products employ and create a lot of the common and more popular standards in the US marketplace for Autodesk Civil 3D. As they say - a large part of success is just surviving and staying around. Focus and practice can also be a good thing. These have a dark side as we shall see.
The people who manage the Civil 3D production environments for organizations often toss me interesting questions. The CAD Manager folk tend to be “smarter than the average bear” to quote the famous Yogi bear. “He knows best about those things, Boo Boo.”
These folk are well-informed and often very opinionated about all things Civil 3D. This make sense. They are good at that. The nature and natural selection of the job requires it.
“You talk about the need for Adaptive Standards in Civil 3D?
That idea seems to only create more problems for me.”
My first response is:
“Ask the Project Managers how much time and energy they spend hashing out the standards mess in their projects. Oh. That’s right.
How much time do you personally spend hashing the all the conversion stuff out?
If you don’t do that, that tells us both something else very important.
That might be good news. Sadly, often it is not.”
Adaptive Standards of better or worse are neither illusory or unnecessary.
Be careful. The of in that sentence is not a typo. I too might want to correct the phrase.
From here on I’ll try to quote Yogi. I remain a fan of Hanna and Barbera cartoons.
“Boo Boo, you’ve tried to stop my brilliant ideas with common sense a thousand times.
Has it ever worked?”
In principle, the Framework for Civil 3D is built around the concept of meeting the diverse needs of the many not just the few or the preferences of the boss of you.
This principle separates the Autodesk’s classic My Customization Myth from the type of managed system that builds a framework.
Can we concede that given a framework of better or worse, a managed system of standards is possible? A managed system of standards is obviously more flexible and adaptive. It must be robust and easy to maintain or our first CAD Manager’s questioner above is correct – it creates more problems than it is worth.
Flexible, Adaptive and Robust become mission critical in the creation and maintenance of a framework.
These framework essentials are usually practically ignored in a classic internal Civil 3D customization.
“Boo Boo. They have donuts. DONUTS!”
CAD Managers are human. We are all human. We see mostly what we focus on. Factually, we must ignore most of what’s really there when we aim to get to our target. This attention system is hard-wired into our brains. This is much like Yogi’s obsession about pick-nick baskets or the demonstrable success of Crispy Cream, Duncan Donuts, (can we say it?) Starbucks, and a host of others.
I might guess some of you have caught onto the fact that this focused attention issue applies to all social media platform companies, the legacy media, and to many other technology company products too.
“I’m so smart it hurts.”
In my People Skills classes at past Cad Manager Bootcamps and Autodesk University, I always tried to remember to bring up the work of Daniel Simmons, a cognitive psychologist, whose work initially rocked the world starting almost 20+ years ago.
Ground breaking? Most, if not all, of the major car manufacturers, insurance companies, and software companies now sell product based on principals discovered in the doctor’s work. There are laws on the books in CA and most US States because of it.
Simmons investigated something he called “sustained inattentional blindness”.
Many have seen the now famous Man in the Gorilla Suit You Tube videos. The 14-year-old version on YouTube has received millions of hits.
If you ask people to count basketball passes between white team members in the video, more than half of the people will never see the obvious man in the gorilla suit walk through the scene.
“No way.” Yes way.
“A goodly bunch having lunch.”
All magicians, riverboat gamblers, and politicians understand and employ this slight-of-hand principle on a daily basis. For reasons known and understandable it appears of have gotten the undivided attention of most media newsrooms. “Watch me. Watch this.”
Most state-of-the-art sales processes and internet stores tend to employ the counting trick in one form or another. Amazon took the application of these principles about human focus to a whole new level.
Dr. Simmons didn’t stumble on something new but something fundamentally human.
I hope you take notice.
“Let’s go-go-go! Boo Boo!”
The Framework for Civil 3D is about making better sense, and cents, out of the nonsense of Autodesk Civil 3D customization. We understand the compulsion, passion, and real-world need for better Civil 3D customization.
A different focus on framework creation and maintenance produces some more inventive tools and workflows. Creative tools and resources are made visible and therefore possible.
If our Adaptive CAD Standards make us scratch our heads and ponder, it’s good news.
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