3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community
We also have a community support web site for our users:
The following content has either already been implemented or is planned for the 3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community pages:
Discussion Forum
Acting as the focal point of our online community, the new discussion forum is a place to meet fellow users and discuss any issue relating to the use of our products and related technologies. The development team at 3am Solutions also visit the discussion forum from time to time, but it is primarily intended for peer to peer support.
Discussion forum categories include:
- Dynamite VSP Specific - discuss issues with other users which relate to a specific version of Dynamite VSP.
- 3ds Max Specific - discuss issues with other users which relate to any Autodesk host application that you are using alongside Dynamite VSP.
- Civil Design Application Specific - discuss techniques for preparing design data for input into Dynamite VSP from your chosen civil design application (such as MX, Civil 3D, InRoads, Geopak).
- Wishlist - nominate ideas for features that you would like to see included in future releases of our products.
- Take Five - Discuss absolutely anything off-topic with any other member of the community.
Regularly Updated Tutorials
We regularly receive favourable comments relating to our existing product tutorials. For many users these tutorials are the first port of call when initially evaluating our products.
It's great to hear that our efforts are appreciated, but we have now made further improvements.
Since the introduction of Dynamite VSP Version 3.0 we decided to move away from the traditional practice of including tutorials
on the product CDROM. The reason for this is that we wanted to devise a more effective way to keep our tutorials updated - and
the answer lies in placing these tutorials online.
Our new online tutorials are updated regularly to correct errors, remove
ambiguities, and even more importantly to regularly add extra content covering additional areas of functionality. For our users, this guarantees that you are always viewing the latest training
material from 3am Solutions. Additionally, users may publicly comment on each tutorial in order to suggest improvements or even compliment us
on our work!
In the future, we also plan to introduce online video tutorials. We aim to use this style of tutorial to highlight specific areas of
functionality which can be better explained by way of a practical demonstration.
Community members may print their own copy of any of the text based online tutorials. All pages will automatically be formatted for print as soon as
the print button is pressed in any web browser.
Tips and Tricks
Through the use of our products, our developers and users often devise simple techniques which can save time, or even open up the product for use
in areas of which they were not originally intended.
This section of the community pages allows us to share these techniques which are often too specialised to include in the product tutorials or
standard documentation.
It is our intention to eventually open up this part of the community site to allow our users to actively contribute their own tips and techniques to share with other members of the community.
Bonus Tools
Occasionally, we develop free bonus tools which are made available to users with valid software maintenance contracts.
These bonus tools are generally
installed by downloading the component and placing it into a specific folder under the main product installation directory. These tools typically
provide solutions to common problems which are not catered for in the main release of the associated product. The primary benefit of these tools is to offer a way for us to rapidly include extra functionality within
any given product without going through a full development and release schedule.
Bonus tools are supplied unsupported and without documentation, and are generally developed as a result of feedback received from our users. Ultimately, bonus tools
eventually find their way into the next full release of the associated product as fully supported and documented functionality.
This section of the community pages provides a library of bonus tools for each of our products, which may be downloaded by any registered
user.
Support FAQ
Here at the 3am Solutions Support Desk, we often get asked certain questions repeatedly. It therefore makes sense for us
to place the answers to commonly asked questions on our web site for the benefit of the entire community.
We therefore encourage our clients to consult the Support FAQ pages before submitting a support question to us.
In common with other areas of the community pages, a facility is included to allow users to comment on each FAQ to further enhance the
effectiveness of each topic.
Development Blog
In this section, we provide an ongoing insight into the work that our development team is currently engaged in. This enables members to
learn about what to expect in the next release of any of our products.
A facility is available for community members to comment on any blog entry allowing them to have a direct influence on the future
direction of our products.
User Gallery
The community user gallery is an area in which members may upload their own work and basically show off! This is also a great
way to share ideas and hopefully inspire other members of the community through the quality work submitted.
Country Kit Repository
The community Country Kit Repository is an area in which new country kit content can be stored that has been generated by users in each territory.
It is envisaged that entirely new country kits could develop from the content uploaded to these pages, but in it's basic form simply allows members to
share user generated country kit content with other community members.
Examples of the type of content that we anticipate being uploaded include:
- Swept Object, Object Placement, Rail Object, Road Marking, and Building Object Styles
- Object Library Content such as 3D models of vehicles, trains, street/rail furniture
- Alternative Material Libraries
- Textures and bitmaps
Links
The links page consists of a regularly updated list of online resources where community members will find related discussion forums, tutorials, textures, 3d models, shareware, and
useful plugins for 3ds Max or Autodesk VIZ which may be of interest.
Some of the content accessible from these links is likely to be free - other content will be chargeable.
Members of the community are actively encouraged to contribute new links to this page.
RSS
Most of the above content is available via a series of RSS news feeds.
RSS is a way of providing news feeds direct to your desktop to notify you
when new content is added to your favourite web sites.
This means that community members can get the latest information from the 3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community pages delivered to their desktop,
as soon as its published, and without having to actually visit the site. Members may decide which parts of the site they wish to subscribe to so that only
updates that are relevant to their individual interests are received.
Click here for more information on news feeds and RSS.
Visit the 3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community Now!
We think you will agree that the 3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community heralds a major step forward in the way that we interact with our users and develop our products.
Please note that to be granted full access to the online community pages you must hold a valid software maintenance contract from 3am Solutions. However, basic community membership is currently open to everybody - whether you are a customer of 3am Solutions or not.
If you wish to check the current status of your 3am Solutions software maintenance contract please contact us at support@3am-solutions.com
To login or register at the 3am Solutions Civil Visualisation Community, please visit:
www.3am-solutions.co.uk/community/