Volume 10.1, January 2004
Spam Control for Good Business
Welcome to 2004, a world that SPAM is creating! Here at IES we get a ton of junk email. It is mostly unsolicited garbage that has nothing to do with our business or purposes. We have come to the point where we are suffering:
 | Customers miss support emails! |
| Inboxes contain 200 junk emails per week! |
| We must adjust and check our filter settings! |
| Emails are still sent to junk folders incorrectly! |
| We must 'confirm' our replies to customer emails! |
All of this leads to wasted time, miscommunications, angry customers, delayed responses and frustration. While it is entertaining to observe how the SPAMMERS keep finding ways a-r-o-u-n-d the filters and blockers, it is becoming more and more of a nuisance.
We have some tips & tricks for those having similar problems:
| Keep your email a closely held secret. Don't publish it on a web page. |
| Use the privacy and email options available at web sites where you use your email, like asce.org or amazon.com or expedia.com. |
| Don't reply to junk email, it only 'confirms' that you are using this email address. |
| If using a major email provider, like Yahoo or MSN, be sure to find their privacy "opt-out' options. |
| If your ISP offers filtering options, make use of them, but be sure to verify they are not catching good emails. |
| If you have SPAM filters in place, be sure to add iesweb.com to your list of trusted domains. |
| Upgrade to the latest Outlook 2003 for a smarter junk email filter system. |
| Download and install the free "SpamBayes" plug-in for Outlook, which can be 'trained' to recognize your good email. |
As an email-based company, we at IES want to make sure that we are not sending you junk mail that is adding to your problems! Here is what we currently send to customers:
1. A monthly newsletter with support news, engineering topics, and new product announcements, etc. (You are reading it now.) These can be obtained by visiting our web site at www.iesweb.com/news/index.htm so you do not NEED to get these via email.
2. Periodic announcements of new products that you may wish to purchase or upgrade to. These will rarely come more than once or twice a month, except during very brief periods.
3. Periodic product updates or surveys. You will probably only see a few per year.
We never sell, rent or distribute your email address. We also make it easy for you to "opt-out" of sales emails (other than this newsletter) or all non-response type email from IES. Use the links at the bottom of this newsletter to find out more or to change your preferences.
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Upgrading Tips & Tricks
We still have quite a few customers who have not discovered the benefits of our latest upgrades. If you are considering an upgrade you might consider the following "tips" to make the process go more smoothly:
Keep existing projects in the same version. Especially projects with looming deadlines. Our new versions run side-by-side with the old versions, so you can experiment and test with a free-trial version before you purchase the upgrade.
Backup any customized data before you install an upgraded product to avoid accidental loss. (Typically this is any file in IESCommonFiles). We protect these files to some extent, but you need to take ownership.
Report all problems in new versions quickly. We generally release patches once a week for a month, and once every two weeks for another two months after a major upgrade. So the sooner we hear about problems the sooner they go away. (Our new updates are MUCH smaller too!)
If you are not considering upgrades, you should! Check out the available product upgrades and start working more productively.
[to Contents]
More Survey Results
We have collected the responses to our most recent survey and we have gathered both the good news and the bad news. We would like to thank all those that participated in the survey: Thank you! The results will help us better serve you and provide products to meet your needs.
Here are some new and updated results:
| 86% run Windows 2000 or XP |
| 83% have DSL or faster Internet |
| 10% requested wind load features |
| 5% requested masonry design features |
CONTENTS
Spam Control for Good Business
Engineered Wood Design
Animated Tutorials
Upgrading Tips & Tricks
More Survey Results
Support Notes
Quick Links
Engineered Wood Design
VisualDesign 5.1 has just come out and it does not directly support the many Engineered Wood shapes that exist on the market like LVL's and ParaLam's and I joists. It has been suggested to IES that we could support these better with one or two minor modifications to our code or material database.
We would like some feedback from customers wishing to design engineered wood sections regarding what you think is required or necessary for the kinds of design work you do. Also we would like to know which shapes you use and who produces them.
The latest release of VisualAnalysis 5.1 Package includes additional help for customizing the shape or material databases (see the database editors for this new help) and there is also information in the VisualDesign help regarding wood customizations and support for engineered wood.
One of the problems we have is the calculation of the CF factor, which is normally a function of shape size and material chosen, but is manufacturer-determined. At least a few manufacturers use an equation for LVL shapes like:
CF = (12/d)(1/x)
where x is a manufacturer specific coefficient (ranging from 7.5 to 9), and d is the depth of the shape in inches. It has been suggested that we could hard-code this equation, and allow the x values to be placed in the material database for the design software to access.
Is this enough? Do you have other needs or ideas for engineered wood design? What about other shape types? What about the other overrides for wood factors, do they work or not?
We need customer expertise to get this right. Please send your comments and suggestions to IES Technical Support.
Animated Tutorials
Do you need more help? Would you be interested in purchasing animated tutorials? We have produced a few basic tutorials to show some techniques in our software. You might check them out and see if they would be helpful to you. Let us know if you would like to see more. Perhaps a few more freebies? Or many more for sale?
| ShapeBuilder Circular Shapes | ||||||||
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VisualAnalysis Tutorial 1
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Support Notes
There is a new update release for VisualAnalysis 5.1 Package, posted January 20, 2004. There are new features, better help, and bug fixes:
| Click here to read about it. |
| Click here to download it. |
There are hot-fixes available for ShapeBuilder and AnalysisGroup. Get these free updates.
The new shape database has TWO types of cold-formed shapes. The new shapes are in the categories: HUD41, LGSI41, and SSMA41. The 41 refers to the 4.1 version of the CFS program that we use (behind the scenes) to check cold formed shapes in design. The older categories are for backward compatibility only and are to be avoided in new projects.
Quick Links:
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Product Information & Pricing
Latest Updates
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Sales phone: 800-707-0816
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