SketchUp has been Googled!

Balita lang po: Google has acquired SketchUp.
Don't know what that means for SketchUp, but hopefully that means a lot more kalokohan available soon.
Read the press release at http://www.sketchup.com/index.php?id=1439.
Sana magkaroon na sila ng internal light sources! :D
If you don't use SketchUp, try it out! It's very easy and quick. Ayan, di na tuloy ako marunong mag AutoCAD.

ang galing ni venus!

lalake pala siya, hehehe. :)

anyway, i would just like to say...

Lesley, super thanks for lending Taz the Venus reviewer, and Taz, super thanks for lending them to me in turn.

I would never have found out about this if not for you guys. So, let's spread the word! :D

I don't know all the details, but apparently Arch. Venus Pagdunzulan is a kind (and very organized) soul who has compiled a bunch of reading materials to help reviewees out when studying for the board. The entire compilation has, as far as I can tell, 6 modules:

1. Professional Practice
2. Building Laws
3. History
4. Planning, Tropical Design, Theory, Housing Agencies, DENR Regulations, and Landscaping
5. Utilities (I suppose this has Mech/Elec and Plumbing, but this volume is still with Taz, so I haven't reviewed it yet)
6. Building Materials

I scanned everything and I am very very impressed at the effort and attention to detail that has gone into this compilation. Aside from the usual summary notes provided by the review centers, there are magazine and journal articles, product brochures, and things like the listing of the first 100 licensed architects and members of the UAP.

What's more, he has actually noted which items have come out in the previous boards and when they came out! I find this totally useful becuase normally when I scan through materials, I make judgements about whether or not something is likely to come out in the exam and is therefore worth remembering: he has taken a lot of guesswork out of this process!

Anyway, Joyce, Taz, and Lesley can tell you more about Arch. Venus; I think they took the mock boards by him today.

For those who are interested, I have 5 out of the 6 volumes and I plan to have them photocopied in UP tomorrow or some time next week. Let me know if you want copies too, and I will see what I can do. Disclaimer lang: I can't spring for the payment, since the number of pages runs into the thousands, and I don't have the money, hehehe.

I also hope I will be able to make a skeleton summary of the materials covered to post on the site (as in key words lang and if possible links), but I'm not sure if it will be all that easy to do.

This is a great learning resource. I don't usually gush like this, but there you go. Galing talaga. It has saved me days and days of work (I planned to do something like this on my own, but now that I look at the compilation, I could never have come close) and the fact that I have scanned everything helps calm me a bit.

Again, super super thanks Les, Joyce, Taz, and Arch. Venus (whoever and wherever he is)!

QUERY AND GROUP REVIEW

Can anyone help me identify the uses of different plumbing fittings?

Mumty and I are planning to have a group review to consolidate what we've read. Our first module shall be building laws (and prof prac kung matapos naming basahin). Tentative schedule shall be the last weekend of March. No specific method yet.

Readings / topics included are the following:

Building laws:
1. NBC
2. Fire Code
3. BP220
4. PD957
5. Condominium Act
6. Arch 57 readings

Prof Prac:
1. UAP docs 201-208
2. UAP docs 401-402
3. Cdep reviewer
4. RA9266

Please inform me if my reading list isn't enough. I did not include the laws on taxation coz I haven't heard about them in the reviews nor seen any sample exams with such topic. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

CONSOLIDATED TIPS FOR THE BOARD EXAMS

I already deleted the previous entry of the same topic. Here is the new update of consolidated tips from the 3 people I interviewed regarding the Jan2006 exams:

1. Third day… design
2 elevs and 2 sections required.
Parang may leakage sa JPT. 3 out of 5 design days nila… office building ang pinagawa. So we should check kung ano yung binigay sa JPT.

2. Building tech
Check product brochures
Parts of Spanish tile roof
Parts of acoustic ceiling system
Different types of nails
Different wood mouldings like ovulo, quarter round, half round

3. Tropical design
Read the book of Manahan
Analytical problems… like which is a more efficient design

4. Urban design / planning
Concentric, sector theory
Erness Burgess
New plans and projects of the government

5. Building laws
IRR
Percentage of open spaces

6. Prof Prac
Relation of owner-contractor / architect-contractor
Items in the contract
Number of days so and so

7. History
Know the architects / other data of the following buildings:
Einstein Tower
RCBC – local counterpart
Window type of a particular building
Interiors of Notre Dame (take note, there are 3 Notre Dames, 1 highrise, 1 by Lecorb, 1 yung may hunchback)
Buildings by Breuer, Gropius, Le Corb, Van der Rohe, Meier, Santiago Calatrava
WTC Terminal
Past board exam questions
German churches
SOM Buildings in the Philippines
New famous buildings
No Philippine Churches

8. Theory
DK Ching’s Dictionary

9. Plumbing
Pipe size of floor drain
Colors of pipes, polybutelene
Which pipes cannot be used as water drain due to corrosion
No need to read the entire plumbing code

10.Electrical
Madaming lumabas… pero oks daw utilities sa CDEP
11.Structural
Get notes from Capricorn
Terms / definitions from NSCP
Design standards from NSCP
Elastic modulus of steel and concrete
ASTM nos.
No computations

12.Others
Practical questions like… if something went wrong with the mechanical plans, who should be the 1st party to be informed… (owner, contractor, mech consultant?)
Read the Illustrated dictionary of DK Ching at least thrice.

what i studied for... (a rationale)

hey folks. support group tayo diba? :)

one way i think we can help each other out with the review is to share the books, materials and concepts we've studied for a particular topic. naturally, there's the basic review center materials, but in addition to this, we all have a LOT of extra reading to do.

obviously, we can't read all the books we'd like to, nor do we have access to all of them. it's also difficult to decide which books we'd be better off reading, given a choice of shelves full of thick books on the same topics.

enter the "what i studied for..." posts. if you're finished a particular topic in your review, please do share with us: your thoughts, what books and additional materials you read, and what you found useful (mnemonic devices, resources, etc.) while studying.

i know that we all have the naturally human tendency to keep our hard-earned knowledge to ourselves. but if you think about it, nobody loses if you share what you know: in fact, everyone wins! you get to teach others and as a consequence understand what you learned even more; your support group gets valuable information; we all get a chance to cover more books than we ever could alone; and if you ever forget what you learned, there are people out there who can repeat it to you.

so ano, game? :D looking forward to your feedback.

speed read through review :)

...or at least i hope i can. :) eto kwento nyan...

one of the many things on my plate is working with prosec, a professional skills training center in pasig. recently i finished their basic speed reading course. obviously my primary motivation in taking the course was to get through the mountains of reading materials that we have for the board.

syempre after ko matapos yung course tatamad tamad pa ako, di pa ako nagpa practice ng speed reading applications. in other words di pa ako nagbabasa, hahaha. but the other day i had to do super major cramming for a certification exam for soliciting investments and mutual funds: tama ba naman yun, na cancel yung exam last year around september, tapos bigla na lang silang tumawag last wednesday to tell me the exam was on friday! crazy talaga.

so ayan. first major trial for the speed reading skills i learned.

grabe. sobra akong na impress. :D dami ko sobrang appointments nung wednesday and thursday, so i only got a chance to study thursday around 7 pm. i went to a nice quiet pizza place in bf (hahaha, kahit kelan bf loyalist ako, diba rish?) and breezed through the review booklet and the sample exams. total time: 6 hours.

syempre, wala pang results so di ko pa ma back up yung aking claim with effectivity, hehehe. but at the very least, nung nag exam ako, feeling confident naman ako kahit papaano. and that confidence helped in actually taking the exam.

how does it help, aside from getting you to read at more than 4 times your normal reading rate? it helps you focus totally on the topic, so you don't dawdle. ayan sakit ko yan, yung supposedly nag aaral pero ang daming ibang inaatupag. titingin dito, kakain, iinom ng kape, ganun ba. you read three lines, drink your coffee, and then go back to the same three lines, not remembering if you read them or not. i know, ganyan na ganyan ang experience ko nung nagrereview ako last year. anyway, the actual time you read is shorter, but if you do it right, you should be able to remember more. and they have a very useful study method that they teach in the course.

look at me, plugging shamelessly, hahaha! but i really am finding it very useful, so i thought you guys might be interested. the basic class is 5 modules long, and each module is just three hours. we have sessions at the office in valle verde 1, before the caltex gas station and the bridge along c5. here's the schedule:

march 27 - 31 / daily / 1:30 - 4:30pm
april 1 - may 6 / saturdays (no class on april 15) / 9am - 12nn
april 17 - 21 / daily / 1:30 - 4:30pm
april 26 - may 3 / daily (no saturday) / 9am - 12nn
may 4 - 10 / daily (no saturday) / 1:30 - 4:30pm
may 15 - 19 / daily / 9am - 12nn
may 29 - june 2 / daily / 1:30 - 4:30pm

let me know if you're interested, i can tell you more about it. if you're willing to try it, i think it really will help a lot with the review process. again, good luck sating lahat!!! :D