[Tom D. Davidson]

Landon, I take it you received formal approval form UNLV? Congrats!

This concept is practiced by engineering schools all over the nation. I think the only reason more architectural schools do not have programs all ready implemented is that there is a perceived disconnect with the inventor role of an architect. I say perceived, because I think it is a fallacy (although one that may often be a self-fulling prophecy).

While I think our patent system often cost society more than what it worth, I think every architectural school needs to have such a commercialization of innovation program. An existing tested and proven framework most likely exists within everyone’s engineering schools that could merely be adopted with few modifications rather than starting from scratch.

Even if such opportunities are only used by a few, the mere existence will hedge up the role of invocation with in the curriculum.

I agree, design is universal, but “marketing”…. lets just say I rarely, if ever, appreciate the number one selling song and fads have a devastating effect on intelligence aggregation.

[Tom D. Davidson]

non-compete contracts are going to be fairly standard at developed firms and not likely to be negotiable. It is important to understand all such contacts so 1) you do not commit an accidental breach -hate it when that happens and 2) so you can weight the total cost/benefits of an employment op.

Some state courts do not recognize non-competes on face value because such restrictions on a system creates inefficiencies and because they are often quite abusive. Many economists hypnosis the location of silicon valley is because of the lack of non-compete enforcement in CA provided a common workforce as apposed to a bound and regulated workforce.

Since these contacts are 99.999% a one-way benefit to the firm, the outcome is firm protection at the expense of your freedom. These restrictions can include the moonlighting lighting you mentioned, client contacts, firm methods and operations, and even “intellectually property” – aka gov awarded micro monopolies.

I think it would be unethical to work for a competitor after hours, but the non-compete could keep you from donating your ksa. I do not like this because it could give the firm ownership of your activity, even when your off the clock. What if the firm reduces your hours to 20 per week?

An area to watch out for is the duration of the contact. Most will specify a certain number of months, say 12, after employment termination that you could not work in the same market or for a potential competitor. Pretend you work at a firm for 5 yrs, hit the ceiling, turn in your notice and start your own practice in the same town – you maybe liable for damages or may have to wait for the contact to expire because they can still own you even if you no longer work for them.

IP is a big deal. A contact could specify that the company owns all your ideas and works – even those created and developed outside the office, on your own time and with out any company resources.

I would also look out for arbitration clauses that favor the company. Courts can be pretty jacked up, but so can a arbitrator cherry picked by your opponent – at least the courts have defined processes and can be appealed.

Finally, its a contact and any damages need to be specified in the contact or proven in court. Proving damages from a breach of non-compete contact can be hard so it is likely that the contact will specify a min amount as well as legal cost. This is fine, but make sure it is for the prevailing party and not just of the company, other wise even if you win in courts, you will still be liable for the $20k+ in legal cost. The DutCo NDA I use for all vendors and subcontractors specifics 100k and legal to the prevailing party.

Non-competes are a very big deal and much bigger than moonlighting. They have been designed to give the company the most leverage possible (under the principle of “no free lunch” i claim at your expense) by at least one legal professional, if not a team. You will have no legal expertise. If in doubt, pay the $100 and have it reviewed by your own representation. Its not likely that the firm will redraft for you, but you can balance just how abusive or how fair the contract is with the rest of the job offer.

[Tom D. Davidson]

I misspoke. ArchiCAD does do terrain modeling and it is native for OS X, but it is a 3rd party plug-in http://www.graphisoft.com/products/productivity-tools/architerra.html

[Tom D. Davidson]

I hate running virtual machines – specially for windows because it consumes so much resources running both the second operating system AND the program. But when I do, I use the Open Source solution VirtualBox – http://www.virtualbox.org/ I like open software but I also find VB to be technically superior than Parallels or VMware. What ever VM you use, the guest program is not going to run as well as it it were ran on the host system because of all the extra resources needed for the second operating system and hardware abstraction. If you have to use a VM for heavy hitters such as CS, then make sure you pick one that supports OpenGL or DirectX or you will not be alble to use the power of your video card in your guest OS.

Since it sounds like you have a windows version of CS, you can run many windows programs on Linux of OSX with Crossover or Wine. This solution doesn’t run an entire virtual machine so you do not have to run windows at all. Instead it provides a translation layer that will load windows program, “tricking” them that the OS is windows and thus does not use as much CPU and RAM. http://www.codeweavers.com/ or http://www.winehq.org/

Photoshop is somewhat supported by WINE – takes some extra effort, but if your concerned about the cost (or flexibility) of photoshop, you may also want to check out the GIMP for your raster image editing/composing. http://www.gimp.org/
The UI is different than the familiar Adobe feel and it is different than photoshop, but it is a very very powerful and solid program.

As for CAD your SOL – best to dual boot with bootcamp. There are a good handful of CAD solutions that run on POSTIX operating systems (Unix/Linux/OS X) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CAD_software but none of them have the landuse type features that can be found with microstation or autocad.

If your adventurous, you can set up your dual boot of windows and OS X with bootcamp so you can have the power of running autocad natively, but also install Virtualbox in OS X and set up a virtual machine up to boot your windows partition. This will allow you to run autocad via Virtualbox with out leaving OS X but still have the option to reboot into windows when needed and with out the wast of a two separate windows installs.

The key is to set up the second hardware profile in windows before booting in Virtualbox. Also, you may want to set up a third partition that is natively accessible by both windows and OS X for project files you want to access from both systems and to sync bookmarks and what not.

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