Excel: Automatic "Last Save Date and Time" Stamp

Show the last save date and time in a cell automatically with VB code
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We have a standard excel file at work where we track the bidding process of each project with subs. It basically shows who was sent what and when, have we received anything back, etc. One of the points to fill is when was the document last updated to check how recent the file really is.

I wanted to get that "last modified" to be automatic. The idea was, that a cell would show the date of the last time someone saved the file. So I searched for how to do that, and I found this here. The code there described allows you to get a cell in excel that shows your last saved date (and time with a few tweeks)

The process to get that is as follows:

First of all we have to create a macro. Press Alt+F11 and you will get the Visual Basic Editor. When it opens double click on This Workbook and paste the code on the right. I have added a new line to the code to show also the time on a different cell. See the image, the code is after it.

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeSave(ByVal SaveAsUI As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
Sheets("Sheet1").Range("F4").Value = Date
Sheets("Sheet1").Range("G4").Value = Time
End Sub

Once you have entered the code, just close the VB Editor and save your file. The cells specified as Range in the sheet specified after Sheets will fill with the Save (F4 in my code) and TIme (g4 in my code). If the code doesn't work be sure the Sheet name is spelled exactly as the name of the sheet in your workbook.

You will probably get a message like this when you save. Just do as you think best.

The final result should be something like this.

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My First Published Paper

My first scientific paper has just been published online
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Some of you might remember that a couple of years ago, I talked about my Master Thesis here. Since I was told the Thesis was quite good, I started publishing parts of it here. While I was doing that, one of my Thesis tutor's, Jürgen M. Volm put me in touch with DDavid Bryde who told me there was potential to turn part of the thesis into a scientific paper. So me and David started to work together to turn my MT into a paper. Now this is done and the paper is available online on the January at ScienceDirect.com. You can access it here (if you have access to ScienceDirect, or paying the price...).
The paper is called "The Project Benefits of Building Information Modelling" and analyzes the benefits and challenges of using BIM in 35 case studies. It was a lot of work but I have to say it is very rewarding to have it up there in the scientific sphera. Hopefully there will be more coming.

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Potential Business Oportunities with BIM (UK policy)

See UK's advice on how to grow using BIM. Català - Castellano - Deutsch
The UK Government Released by the end of 2012, a paper named Building Information Modelling - Industrial strategy: government and industry in partnership, a very interesting paper on the possibilities for growth for companies doing BIM. If you are on the BIM market, read it, plenty of inspiring ideas in there.

Considering that the BIS BIM Strategy is regarded as the most ambitious BIM strategy in the world promoted by a central government, the advice in this paper should not be taken lightly. The BIS BIM Strategy is a long term strategy that for now is forcing the government's AEC clients (architects, contractors, engineers, etc) to jump on the BIM wagon to not fall behind.

In the paper, you will the opinion of AEC professionals on the role of BIM and how it will help the AEC Industry. Finnally you will find several actions to be taken by the government together with the industry to help UK be a worldwide leader in BIM, and so, to help UK companies to gain business worldwide.

All this, seen from Barcelona now, seems like a dream really. Although some things are going on regarding BIM in here (Last June the Spanish Chapter of BuildingSmart started to roll officially) most of the fuzz right now in the insdustry is focused on the "hard times" and more recently on the new draft of the "LSP -L ey de Servicios profesonales" (Law of Profesional Services). This draft seems to change the atributions kept exclusive for Architects and Engineers and is creating a lot of movement from Architects' Boards and Unions trying to defend our parcel of work in the industry. I will try to talk about this draft later on another post, but for now it seems to me that while other governments like UK's is trying to create policy that will enable better ways to collaborate, the Spanish government (always so smart) is creating disruptive trouble and fighting between parts instead of promoting strategies that will help sell our services worldwide that is what the country needs the most.

via BIMTaskGroup

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The Architect's Alphabet

A visual Alphabet of Architects and their works
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Just saw in Vimeo this cute animation made by Federico Gonzalez, Graphic Designer and Visual Artist from Colombia ( but based in Barcelona ) and Andrea Stinga, from Argentina and also working in Barcelona. It shows 26 very important architects and one of their most popular buildings. Excellent work and really fun to watch.

You can see more of Federico's Work here (vimeo) and here (tumblr)

Andrea Stinga is one of the two partners at OMBÚ Architecture.

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Download Adobe Photoshop Free and Legit

Get Photoshop for free at Adobe-com.Català - Castellano - Deutsch

Adobe is allowing users to download a free and legal copy of Photoshop from their website. I got the heads up from Gizmodo (actually via twitter user Jason Howden ‏@RTVTools), where it is said that Adobe's tired of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of the 10-year-old CS2.

Well, no idea if that is the reason, but there it is, free for the taking. You will not be able to use all the new cool features that new versions have been adding, but still, a perfect legal way to get photoshop on one of your slow machines or simply to stop using unlicensed software.

You can alse get Adobe Premiere for free, Adobe InDesign for free, Adobe Illustrator for free, Adobe Acrobat Pro for free, well, All CS2 Versions for free. So if you don't mind using 10 year old software, you got a good option here.
I installed PS in my Laptop running Windows 7 x64 and it worked with not a single problem.

Here's the download page.

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Top Visited Posts in 2012

2012 Summary
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#01. List of SketchUp Plugins: A post dated from 2009 but that has been (or used to be, when I had teh time) updated regularly with all the SU Plugins I have reviewed on this site. It needs some link updating which I will do soon, but it is still the favourite post for most visitors to CAD Addict.

#02. Using AutoCAD autosave files to recover lost work: This post explains what can you do after one of those moments when apparently you've lost part of your work in AutoCAD. It is the post with the most number of comments and all of them positive, so it is the one that made my work here feel more rewarded. Thanks to all who spend the time wirting down a comment, good or bad, it's great to know someone is reading.

#03. Plugin to Make faces from lines in SketchUp: I have toc onfess I am a bit puzzled by this post being so popular. The plugin was very useful back when the version of SU was v.6 or so and the program was not very smart creating lines from a closed set of lines. I think this was pretty much solved in later versions of SU, but oddly the post keeps getting a lot of visits. If anyone knows why the info will be very much appreciated.

#04. Volume Calculator Plugin for SketcHup: A post explaining how to use this old plugin to calculate volume of entities in SketchUp. A simple post about a simple plugin but that has had a lot of visitors and comments during these last months.

#05. How to install plugins in SketchUp: This is simple tutorial on how to get your plugins working in SketchUp. Sometimes the posts you think are too simple become the most wanted ones.

#06. List of BIM Software and Providers: Back when I was writing my Master Thesis, I started researching on all the scope of providers that have Building Information Modelling related software. This posts gathers most of that info and organizes it in different categories. One think this post taught me: People love lists.

#07. Converting 3D objects into 2D drwaings in AutoCAD: THis post explains the use of the FLATSHOT command in AutoCAD that allows you to flatten 3D Objects into a 2D drawing.

#08. Representing section cuts with solid fill in SketchUp: Another simple tutorial with images to get a nicer representation of the section cuts that SketchUp allows us to do very simple.

#09. Converting lines into tubes / cilinders in SketchUp: A post explaining the use of two different plugins that allow you to do this operation very fast.

#10. Mirroring objects in SketcUp: THree different methods to do the mirror operation in SketchUp. The oldest post (it dates back from 2008) to appear on this top ten list.

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Happy 2013 - End of year thoughts

The most innactive year comes to an end, hope next one is better.
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2012 comes to an end. It's time to think about all those new year's resolutions and of course, after checking that I only posted 6 times on this blog in 2012, my new year resolution seems obvious, POST MORE. I already explained the main reason why I was not having time to blog at all here. Well, good news for the blog (not so much for me) the construction is over and I am temporarily back to office. It is a more relaxed sort of job I am doing right now, but of course not so interesting. So apparently it seems I will have more time after work (and more energy) to think on posts and to write them. That is my new years resolution. Of course, there are others, but can't publish them here ;-). On the mean time, I just want to say thanks to all readers who keep coming here on purpose or just by chance through a google search during 2012, you are my motivation to keep the blog active. Cheers and happy 2013 to all! I have though one good news coming soon, will post it already in 2013!
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[Guest Post] MS Excel: How to find the corresponding value for a given entry

Using the VLOOKUP function in Excel
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Another Guest post by my brother about Excel. Imagine you have this list, where each letter has a value

Then you have a given list such as, and you want to have the value for each letter:

You just have to write the following: =Vlookup(value you want to find; matrix where the value has to be found; number of column where the value is;”false” if you want to find the exact value) In our example, this would mean you write in Sheet 2, Cell B2 the following: =vlookup(A2;Sheet1!A:B;2;FALSE) And the result would be:

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[Guest Post] Some useful shortcuts for Excel

Some useful shortcuts for Excel. A guest post by my brother Jordi.
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This is a guest post by my brother Jordi. A list of useful shortcuts for MS Excel that will make your workflow much faster. Here they come:

• Ctrl+”+”: Add a new column or row. Click on the column/row where you want to add and press “Ctrl” and at the same time the “+”.
• Ctrl+”-“: Delete a new column or row. Select the column/row want to delete and press “Ctrl” and at the same time the “-”.
• F2: Modify a cell. When you are in a cell, press F2 and you will be able to modify directly the cell without the need to double-click it.
• F4: Repeat an action: When you want to repeat and action you just performed, press F4 and the last action you made will be repeated.
• F9: recalculate the values. Sometimes the excel sheet are put into manual calculation, if you want the sheet to calculate and show you the values, pres F9
• Ctrl + “up arrow”/“down arrow”: Move to the first/last line with values: Press Ctrl + “up arrow”/“down arrow”

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[Updated Old Post]: AutoCAD Image Frame

Settings for image frames in AutoCAD
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This is an updated verion of a previous "guest post". I've been asked to remove that post, but since the topic is relevant I will just summarize it here.

Images in AutoCAD have frames (even if you don't see them). Playing with the "IMAGEFRAME" system variable allows you to toggle from seeing or not seeing the frame. THe three settings for the IMAGEFRAME system variable are these:


If you set it to 0 it means the frame is completely off (not seen nor printed), setting it to 1 means the frame is on (seen and printed), and finally setting it to 2 means that the frame is on in the drawing, but it will be off in when you print.

Also, you can switch from Visible (number 1) to invisible (number 0) frames by using the TFRAME command. It doesn't allow to control the variable to set it to number 2 though,  but this gives you the flexibility to switch on and off the frames quickly.
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Ferrovial's Handbook Against Waste [1962]

A Handbook against "waste" dated back from 1962.
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Recently, I got news of the realease of the "handbook against waste" written as an internal document for Ferrovial (one of the biggest general contractors in Spain). I had heard of this docuemtn for a while but had not had the chance to read it. Now it is available for everyone from this link. [The handbook is in Spanish]. I am also keeping here a mirror copy just in case the link goes down and I am not available to update it. Click on the image below.
It is a very interesting read, and what is specially interesting is that it dates back to 1962. Sometimes we tend to think that all the fuzz about Lean, Last Planner or Location Based Scheduling is something new that just came out of nowhere just a few years back. 
This handbook is the proof that some companies and many professionals have worked with better standards and processes for a long time, they just didn't publish it openly. Competition is fierce in the construction sector, and maybe this fierce competition is what for a long time has made it impossible for companies to share their knowledge and improve so the Construction Industry as a whole. Luckily, I think the internet and the advent of Social Media, has changed this, and more and more companies are sharing part of their better processes.  I am back! ;-) 
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The reason i am not blogging

Can't find the time to blog sorry, too busy.
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Been to busy recently to keep on blogging, the reason? Last december I prepared a presentation for a project we were bidding to be the general contractors, and it seems the presentation was good enough to win the bid. You can see part of the presentation below.



SO now I am the Project Manager on site, dealing with all subcontractors, writing contracts, controling costs, taking care that we keep on the tied schedule we have, all that! So no time to blog at all other than this few lines 2 months after the last posts. At some point I'll be back, can't tell you when yet. Hope you don't leave the blog forever.




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