CADforum.cz now in AC Cloud on Microsoft Azure

The popular international web portal by CAD Studio - CADforum.cz - is one of the most visited web sites in the category CAD. E.g. Alexa ranks it currently on the 8th place worldwide, and in some countries, e.g. in Germany and Czechia, on the 1st place. Over 710.000 registered users and monthly traffic with more than 650.000 visits, 3 million pageviews and over 1TB of transferred data puts demands on hardware performance of the web server machine behind this portal. This was one of the reasons we decided to replace the aging but still reliable HP NetServer with a modern cloud web hosting service.

We have choosen the AC Cloud service operated by our mother company AutoCont on the Microsoft Azure platform, from a Czech datacenter. The servers (besides CADforum.cz we were moving also CADstudio.cz, Helpdesk and a couple of minor web services) were transferred in two phases - you may have noticed a planned 6-hour outage last Saturday which was used to upload the data contents to the cloud, and yesterday evening (CET) we have performed the final update of files and SQL databases, plus the domain switch. All transferred web domains (there were over 20 of them) are now running from the new cloud hosting.

We wanted not only to increase reliability but also to increase performance of the web site, preparing it for further development. You may have noticed faster responses of our web sites running in the AC Cloud since today. We plan to employ the performance reserves for planned enhancements of user services. We already use the AC Cloud and Microsoft Azure platform for our other web services - e.g. for the mobile GIS application twiGIS, for the cloud service BIMforMe or for our BIM portal BIMfo.cz.

If you see any unusual responses on our web sites these days, please let us know.

New software projects released by CAD Studio

CAD Studio has recently released a couple of interesting new software products. All these tools can streamline your workflow for handling CAD and BIM data in AEC projects and in GIS/mapping.

BIMsign for Revit

BIMsign is a new Revit add-on application. It can protect your BIM content by adding a unique permanent invisible watermark signature to all your Revit projects and families. You can use it to protect your intellectual property (IP) as you can prove the ownership of the original content in any future BIM files which are based on this signed document. You can "sign" individual RVT/RFA files or your company templates.


More on BIMsign

BIMForMe - facility management on top of BIM data

BIMForMe is a new cloud application which opens BIM data from Autodesk Revit for all types of users. BIMForMe is an advanced software that helps investors, owners, contractors, managers and users of buildings to easily navigate in a building information model (BIM) and quickly find any requested information. This web tool does not require any knowledge of complex BIM authoring and 3D modeling systems and so it opens valuable BIM data not only to building professionals but to all non-technical users.

The application BIMForMe brings features for working with BIM data created in Autodesk Revit software and any accompanying documents - all in an intuitive and user-friendly environment suitable for both experienced professionals and laymen.

More on BIMForMe.com

twiGIS - freedom for your mapping data

twiGIS is a new web mapping application by CAD Studio. It enhances existing slow, complex and hard to maintain mapping portal and GIS clients which are often incompatible with modern touch-based mobile devices.

The main advantages of twiGIS are the quick and intuitive user interface, compatibility with mobile devices, handling graphical and textual data, independence on your enterprise GIS system, low requirements on IT infrastructure and a very wide range of supported data types. Any untrained person can immediately start to use twiGIS.


More on cadstudio.cz/twigis (in Czech)

BIMfo - BIM portal

The latest member of the CAD Studio product family is the today released web portal BIMfo.cz operated by the CAD Studio and CASUA companies. It helps Czech and Slovak architects and AEC professionals implement BIM standards and processes. You can find here the latest BIM news, best practices, a catalogue of Czech BIM-ready companies, sample BIM projects (screenshots, photos, BIM data in an interactive A360-viewer) and other BIM-related goodies.

Visit BIMfo.cz (in Czech)