AutoCAD Library: AutoCAD blocks for download vol.2

Here are some more websites where you can find AutoCAD blocks:

Thanks to Alessandro:

Hi all,
I was doing my studio project and I found in internet a few good website where you can get a free blocks for Cad. Maybe that help you to save some time.

http://www.archweb.it/dwg/dwg.htm
(this is an italian website, to download the blocks you don't need to register)

http://www.freedwg.eu/index.htm
(free and easy download, english)

http://www.cadforum.cz/catalog_en/?fo=DWG&cat=11
(to get the blocks you have to register)

Thanks to Federica for the translation (regarding the first website):

FYI

Bagno / Bagni = Bathroom/s

Cucina / Cucine = Kitchen/s

Abitazioni = Dwellings

Arredo = furnitures

Commercio = retail

Edifici = Buildings

Bar - Ristoranti = Bar - Restaurants

See also: AutoCAD Library: AutoCAD blocks for download vol.1


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Enlighter - Lighting Design and Light Art Magazine

ENLIGHTER

Enlighter Magazine provides a high-quality and objective information service for the Lighting Design community. It is a regularly updated online magazine that publishes work by the leading lighting designers and artists as well as emerging new talents in the field.
Enlighter Magazine is a leading and the most up-to-date Lighting Design media. Projects are published here many weeks before you will read about them on other information sources.

via Enlighter Magazine.

Handbook of Interior Lighting Design

Handbook of Interior Lighting Design to be downloaded here via 4shared. You don't need to have an account in order to download file.

The Style Files

The Style Files is another great blog about interior design and more!

The Style Files is Danielle de Lange’s daily weblog about design and (life) style. The Style Files is dedicated to search the globe for inspirational finds. Observations and ideas related to design, interiors, art and other life enhancing subjects are posted daily. This is a place to absorb new ideas, find new products & designs and to get inspired!

Based in The Netherlands, The Style Files gives worldwide coverage from a European viewpoint, with an emphasis on Dutch and the –not so standard- design.

via The Style Files.

Rough Luxe Hotel, London

Rough-Luxe is a new way of looking at luxury as a moment in time and not only part of an object of consumption. Luxury is an enriching personal experience and not only an ownership of an expensive object.

Therefore, the Rough-Luxe definition of Luxury is: time for reflexion, personal encounters with people, nature, architecture and environment as well as food and social and cultural experiences linked to geographic locations. It is also, the intellectual solicitation, listening to ones own feelings as well as comparing objects and time and thinking of their hierarchy.

Rough-Luxe is about the experience, the surrounding, the intrinsic value of objects, art, culture and the people surrounding us as well as the ‘‘consumable’’ items, that you come across in a Rough-Luxe hotel or affiliated business or event.

 Philosophy of Rough Luxe.

Rough Luxe Hotel

ROUGH LUXE HOTEL IN LONDON

This is Rough Luxe. Half rough, half luxury. A little bit of luxury in a rough part of London. A little bit of rough in a luxurious London.

 via hotel website.

Designer: Rabih Hage

ROUGH LUXE HOTEL
1 Birkenhead Street 
London, WC1H 8BA

+44 (0)20 7837 5338

stay@roughluxe.co.uk

More pics here.

Belgo Centraal, London

Belgo Centraal is totally unique in its design, especially its industrial lift, which transports guests over one of the busiest kitchens in London, where dishes from a menu of high quality are produced. Situated in the hub of Covent Garden, Belgo Centraal has been a hit since it opened in 1998 and a destination for tourists and Londoners alike ever since. Well known for its high quality Belgian food and drink, accompanied by unbeatable service and a stimulating environment, it has won a Best London Restaurant Award and was also runner up in the Best Family Restaurant Award 2000.

Source Restaurant Guide.

Designed by Ron Arad in an industrial style, one entered across a gantry and was transported to the basement dining area in a large lift, as if descending into a mine.

BELGO CENTRAAL 
50 Earlham Street 
Covent Garden, London 
WC2H 9LJ


More pictures here.

Colour: Colour Lovers

COLOUR LOVERS - another great website with colour palettes. Here you can't really generate any colours, but you can browse millions of colours, colour palettes and patterns. You can create your own palettes, you can rate others and you can add different palettes as your favourities.

Search for colour

Explore palettes

There is also section TRENDS, where you can find latest trends (and palettes) in Fashion and Interior Design!! Browse thousands pictures of interiors! Isn't it cool? :-)

Home trends

Colorful Ideas & Inspirations - BLOG. 

"Our team of writers brings you daily trend coverage, new products, inspiration, information and fun ideas. With an archive of more than 1,428 articles, you're sure to find something you love."

Colour lovers home blog.

 Colour Lovers includes also channels like: Business, Craft, Fashion, Print, Web and Weddings!! Lots of inspirations! :-)

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Prada Flagship Store, New York

New York’s Prada Epicenter – an exclusive boutique, a public space, a gallery, a performance space, a laboratory – is part of OMA*AMO’s ongoing research into shopping, arguably the last remaining form of public activity, and a strategy to counteract and destabilize any received notion of what Prada is, does, or will become.

As museums, libraries, airports, hospitals, and schools become increasingly indistinguishable from shopping centres, their adoption of retail for survival has unleashed an enormous wave of commercial entrapment that has transformed museum-goers, researchers, travelers, patients, and students into customers. The result is a deadening loss of variety. What were once distinct activities no longer retain the uniqueness that gave them richness. What if the equation were reversed, so that customers were no longer identified as consumers, but recognized as researchers, students, patients, museum-goers? What if the shopping experience were not one of impoverishment, but of enrichment?

The New York Prada Epicenter is a conversion of a 23,000 square-foot space in SoHo formerly belonging to the Guggenheim museum. The Wave – a curving space scooped out of the ground floor and opening it up to the basement – is the main element facilitating experimentation in what a fashion store can be. On one side, the slope has steps – ostensible for displaying shoes and accessories – that can be used as a seating area, facing a stage that unfolds from the other side of the wave. The store thus becomes a venue for film screenings, performances, and lectures.

The northern wall of the store runs uninterrupted between the entrances on Broadway and Mercer Street (which offer a new pedestrian link directly through the city block), and offers itself as a surface for a giant mural – the Prada wallpaper – that changes on a regular basis. The wallpaper defines a theme for an exhibition that infiltrates spaces throughout the store: videos on plasma screens hanging on railings between items of clothing, books piled next to shoes, interactive monitors.

Experimental technology, intriguing materials, and innovative display methods are utilized everywhere to enrich and transcend the shopping experience: customers touch a button to make the glass doors of the changing rooms opaque, and see their new clothes from various angles on video projections; a circular glass elevator serves as a display area for accessories as well as a means of transport to the basement; unfinished gypsum board walls on one side of the store contrast with a translucent polycarbonate wall overlaying the original brick structure on the other; movable large metal cages hang from the ceiling for the display of clothes; an all-white 'clinic' area contains VIP rooms and tailoring and catering facilities.

Source OMA website. 

FACT SHEET

Project:
Prada Epicenter in New York

Client:
Prada (I.P.I. USA Corp.)

Designer:Rem Koolhaas
Year:
2000 commission, 2001 completed

Status:
Built

Type:
Retail

Location:
575 Broadway, New York

Site:
Groundfloor and basement of the former Broadway Guggenheim

Program:
Total area: 2,190m2

Cost:
$40 million

More pictures here.

Designers: Philippe Starck

Philippe Starck was born on January 18, 1949 in France. He is a product designer and a very well known designer in the ‘New Design style’.
His designs range from interior architectural designs to mass produced consumer goods such as toothbrushes, chairs, etc.

If you're not familiar with this man or you want to learn more, click here for Wikipedia, here for his website and here to shop for stuff he designed (very expensive though!).

He also launched his own TV show on BBC in 2009 - Design for life:

In an effort to find a new generation of British design talent, Philippe Starck, one of the world's best-known product designers, invites 12 hopefuls to a school of design he has set up in Paris. Over coming weeks, he will whittle them down until one fortunate student wins the opportunity of a lifetime - to work alongside the master for six months at his agency in the French capital.
Ranging from unemployed retail worker Jess to college lecturer Ilsa, the students meet Starck for the first time and discover what a larger-than-life character he is. And they face their first challenge - to head to a local hypermarket and find examples of good and bad design. When they explain their thinking to Starck, he critiques them and selects the weakest five for a further nerve-wracking test. When it's over, the group of 12 is now 10 and the school of design can begin in earnest.

via BBC.co.uk

If you haven't seen it - here is the first episode of Design for Life via Vimeo. Highly recommended.


Design for Life from design on Vimeo.

As you can see, you don't need to have perfect English to become world super star designer ( phew! )
:-)

Update:

I found all episodes on Vimeo! Whoo hoo!! :D


Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

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Colour: Perbang Colour Playground

PERBANG.DK

Welcome to the dumping site and play ground

At this site a lot of different things are tested (search algorithms, dynamic color shemes, SEO, information structures, performance in general, various hosting solutions, etc., etc.).
The content is not entirely usefull. It also includes annoying features, absolutely useless shit (see an example in the margin), outdated material, garbage and plain old stupidity. Features may be incomplete, inaccurate, broken, insane, unstable and/or disfunctional... you get the picture.
Expect nothing ... If you don't find what you are looking for, search somewhere else...
If you DO find what you need.... great!

That is an author's description of the website.

 However I find it very useful, especially the Color tab. You can browse color charts, generate color schemes (many different schemes, but for us, interior designers, monochromatic and complimentary would be the most important ones).

Perbang.dk

You can only search colours by entering HEX value, and then get the colour description (too bad you can't do other way around). But you can always google the colour name first, get the HEX value (ie. from Wikipedia) and type it into any colour scheme generator.

You can also check on this website what is the Color of The Day, according to the Color Calendar :-)

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Colour: Colors Palette Generator

This is a great tool!! It basically generates colour palette based of the image's primary colours. So you can upload any picture that you used for your mood board and use the generated colours in your design!


COLORS PALETTE GENERATOR

Colors Palette Generator

 

You can upload file from your computer or simply paste URL address of any picture you found on-line.



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Colour: Color Scheme Designer and RAL color chart.

Recently, we have been working on colour in our Design Principals 2 class. Most of you have probably done their research about the chosen colour, but the information below may be useful for the future reference as interior designers we will be working with colour a lot.

Choosing a colour palette for your project can be a challenge task.
Fortunately, there are a TON of colour resources on the web for selecting, testing and even STEALING (ha!) colour combinations.

 

 COLOR SCHEME DESIGNER

Color Scheme Designer

Petr Stanicek's Color Scheme Designer is a web-based color scheme selector that allows you to select a color, generate a palette of color combinations, view the palette as a sample web page, and with color deficit simulators. The color palette you generated can be exported as HTML/CSS or as a Photoshop palette.

Color Scheme Designer contains a vision simulator (maybe not very useful for interior designers, but very interesting feature), which shows an example of what the normal population sees, along with examples of what persons with various forms of colorblindness see, such as protanopy, deuteranopy and others.

That's how the colour palette looks like for a person who is colour blind. 

The site uses a color wheel to allow the user to select the base color to be used for the color scheme. The tool allows the user to select from a number of scheme types, including mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic.

It also has an option to view colours as RAL palette - which is very useful for interior designers. Just find the colour you like, get it's RAL-HEX symbol and you can find exactly the same colourof paint in a DIY store :-)
Of course the result may differ from the colour you picked online, but it all depends on your monitor settings.

 ***

WHAT IS RAL ?

RAL is used for defining standard colors for paint and coatings. RAL is the most popular Central European Color Standard used today The colors are standard used in architecture, construction, industry and road safety.

You can see RAL charts in DIY stores when you are looking for a paint. TONS of colours. No wonder it's difficult to make a decision :-)

On an official RAL website you can find all the colors and you can also match your HEX symbols from Color Scheme Designer with the most commonly used in decorating RAL symbols.



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Venice Cityvision Architecture Competition for Students

Venice City Vision Competition is the second edition of the international competition series promoted by City Vision Mag.
The purpose of Venice’s competition was to give the opportunity to architects, designers and students to activate their creativity to stimulate the contemporary potential of the city and besides wanting to enhance the historic texture of the city, sees on the aquatic identity of the lagoon a fundamental starting point to create new visions about a possible development of this component.
The imagination of the participants, the use of parametric software and eco technology will be the main driver of Venice’s visions and the proposals will shown how to create new digital landscape for a city so connected to classicism and tradition.

 via Venice-Cityvision competition website

Participation in the competition is open to Architects, engineers, designers, students and creatives world-wide. Individual or group entries are permitted.

Participants can register at www.cityvision-competition.com

- before the 04th April, 2011 paying via paypal with a fee of 50€ (early registration deadline)
- before the 27th May, 2011 paying via paypal with a fee of 70€ (late registration deadline)

Submission deadline - 6th of June 2011

The roman edition has attracted more than one hundred participants from all over the world and has amazed us with an upload page completely full of very interesting projects, which were judged by a jury of international architects led by Juergen H. Mayer and members as Francesco Gatti, Francesco Lipari, Felipe Escudero and Michael Caton.

Just to give you an idea of what is expected from contestants, here is some work of previous edition winners.
Read more...

1st place

2nd place

 

I completely forgot to mention the prize! :)

1st  place.  € 2.000

2nd place.  € 1.000

and 6 Honorable Mentions.

I think it's worth investing 50 quid if you have a good idea! :-)

Online portfolio

An online portfolio is a way to showcase the skills and work samples of both freelancers and full-time workers. Designing an online portfolio is one part of the process; making it work is another. A good online portfolio attracts the attention of prospective employers, stands out from all others, and transforms visitors into clients. 

via eHow

Here are few FREE (yeah!) great online community portfolio sites:

 CARBONMADE - Your online portfolio.

Carbonmade.

BEHANCE NETWORK - The Creative Professional Platform.

Behance Network

COROFLOT - The creative world at work.

Coroflot.

FINALCRIT - Create, update and showcase your online portfolio.

Finalcrit.

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AutoCAD library: AutoCAD blocks for download vol.1

A block in Autocad is a collection of all of the line and arc entities that create an object, 'moulded' together to make one selectable object. Selecting one particular entity (such as a midpoint of a line for example) will select all objects contained within the block. They can be moved, rotated, mirrored etc and will always be treated by Autocad as one whole object.

Why use Blocks?

Blocks are an invaluable way of quickly arranging complex pieces of a drawing. Selecting the object is a breeze, it is no longer neccessary to painstakingly select each indivdual line. They also prevent accidental modification of parts of the object, as they cannot be modified unless the whole block has been exploded. Blocks also make it easy to duplicate the same object throughout a drawing, and as Autocad recognises that each copy of a block is identical to the previous, the memory & processing time required byAutocad is reduced.

The most impressive feature of blocks is that if a block detail has to be amended, simply changing the detail and 'redefining' the block applies the changes to EVERY instance of the block in the drawing! 

Here are the two good websites with a huge blocks library of 2D and 3D objects:

CAD Corner

CAD Forum

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Photoshop CS5 for free!!

Big thanks to IZA!!! :D

Here's an e-mail from Iza with all the instructions:

Hi guys!
I found a way of getting Photoshop CS5 for free so i tought i'll share that info with you and you can do the same (if you dont have Photoshop yet)

First you have to download a trial version from adobe page, or if you did so before and it expired then just use that. It will ask you for a serial number in order to use it. There is a loads of serial numbers available on the net but they will only work for a few minutes (untill the number gets sent back to adobe for verification)
The way to get around that is to block the connection between your computer and adobe, you can do it in few different ways, but this one worked for me best:

1.Go to start menu, then in the run box type:

 C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

(if you dont have run box in the start menu, then type run in the search box to find it)

2.When it asks what to open it with choose Notepad

3.Then at the bottom of the hosts file you can copy these:

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com

4.Then go to file save, and you should be adobe connection free.

Now, some computer may reject that and when you want to save it they will give you message like "Make sure that the path and file name is correct" or something like that, then you'll have to do all thouse steps again, but a bit differently:

1. Go to start menu
2. Type NotePad in the search box
3. When it comes up, right click it and choose ‘Run as Administrator’
4. When NotePad opens, click ‘open’ at the top then type C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts in the run box then click ‘open’
5. Paste this under the other text :

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com

6. Then click save
7. You can now exit NotePad and Adobe programs can no longer connect to the internet to verify serial numbers!

After doing that you can enter to your photoshop one of the serial numbers you find on net, or one of those:

1325-1558-5864-4422-1094-1126

1325-1263-0034-6192-0472-9778
1325-1157-8207-7707-9798-6532
1325-1319-1010-6434-1955-4619
1325-1870-2938-9873-5356-2624
1325-1174-1834-0596-8505-0323
1325-1271-7898-3364-1803-3655
1325-1823-6020-0958-5549-2729
1325-1177-2533-5307-9327-8593
1325-1960-8746-4023-7312-2320
1325-1095-0854-7085-2679-7165

1188-1702-9219-4234-2059-4581
1330-1281-8916-6015-7348-5124
1325-1558-5864-4422-1094-1126

Hope it worked for you and you can now enjoy your free Photoshop:-)
PS. I am not sure if that works for Mac, i have windows xp

                                                                                 via Iza ( thanks a lot again!! )



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