18 January 2022
The Carlin Approach: Organized Lightning and the CAD Genius
If you’ve ever witnessed a team of CAD designers, architects or engineers bring an abstract concept to life, you know how the room can literally fizz and pop with creative energy. Creating a new building, power plant or bridge is the embodiment of genius. Much respect is owed to members of the AEC industry for shaping the world in which we live, both now and in the future.
George Carlin, a genius in his own right, was one of the great comedic philosophers of the US and was the man who cleverly posited that electricity was really just organized lightning. A discussion in our office led to the analogy that perhaps CAD users were really just organized collective genius, and that got us wondering what George’s approach to all things CAD and BIM would have been. One can be fairly certain he would have had a humorous and philosophical approach to the whole subject.
Electricity is really just organized lightning.
All those comedians who stand up there on the stage at one point did nine-to-five jobs (well, maybe not Jerry Seinfeld), so it is totally feasible that your drafter — in an alternate universe — might have been John Belushi or your senior architect, Bill Hicks. Humor might make the day easier to get through and it might make those repetitive tasks a fraction more bearable.
“Some people see things that are and ask, ‘Why?’ Some people dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’ Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.” See, George Carlin could totally be talking like an engineer looking at a problem other people might not even know needs solving.
When you are neck-deep in title blocks that need to be updated, or you are still tinkering to get that data you imported from your Excel spreadsheet into your design file looking good, a sense of humor is vital.
Looking at these huge repetitive tasks might be easier if you can step back and take a Mitch Hedberg viewpoint. “Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.” He could be talking about that huge set of files you are working on: “Fixing title blocks is great if you like doing two thousand of them.” If you can laugh at it, it’s not going to feel so bad.
But maybe you aren’t in a joking mood, and it sure can start getting tiresome when you have to tell the same joke over and over. You get to a point where the joke about the repetitive tasks makes the muscles you use to smile unresponsive.
You could always invoke another great quip from Mr. Carlin: “One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor,” but we obviously can’t guarantee your continued employment in that condition. (Perhaps better to save that form of recreation for the weekends.)
So, if you want to stop frowning despite what you’re doing and want to start smiling because of what you’re doing, we have something that will help you. You can have those title block attribute texts (AutoCAD®) or tag values (MicroStation®) in your title blocks changed quickly, automatically and on dozens, hundreds or thousands of files at a time. It’s like happiness without the hangover.
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away,” says Mr. Carlin, and we know our products can do that. Speak to one of our team today to discover which of our tools will have you smiling again.
Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something. – Mitch Hedberg
