Hello again, anonymous yet valued readers of my monthly contributions... I have no doubt that you are, sitting with eager anticipation, with perhaps a hot beverage in hand and probably without a clue as to what exciting things I will be talking about this month.
Well, here’s a taste of what’s to come; www.specifyaws.com.au... Actually that taste is basically the entirety of the meal you will be consuming in this sitting. But my goodness, is ‘meal’ the correct metaphor for this resource - and boy is it a good one.
For starters (yes this is a metaphorical meal and you need to keep up), if you’re wondering what SpecifyAWS is... Allow me to break it down for you; it’s a huge bank of information about the products available at AWS, presented in such a sleek, crisp and inviting way. And when I say huge bank of information, I’m not exaggerating, I absolutely mean it. The amount of visual and written information available is incredible (from my experience anyway).
So, there’s three ranges of products presented here; a residential range (Vantage Residential), a commercial range (Elevate Commercial) and a range of hardware. All of these ranges, have a respective set of series of products within the range. Now, this is different to simply viewing a range online of products available, no, this is an entirely different kettle of fish.
The resources available to you on SpecifyAWS go into the sort of detail you don’t come across freely on the internet these days. As a student the thing I appreciate most is that there really is no limit to the level of detail that’s made available. If you see a product in a picture, a drawing of its detail is to follow, the drawing as beautiful (I mean it, it’s a delight to look at) and easy to understand as it is, is accompanied with information as to how it works. Allow me to flesh out why that’s important. Have you ever been in the middle of drawing a detail, or wondering how a window works, or what it looks like in section and realised that actually you have no idea. Your next step is to simply ‘have a quick google’ and be on your merry way. Then, three hours later, after typing ‘glazed aluminium window detail’ into google a thousand different ways, you find yourself on a spanish window forum, wading through pages and pages of false (spanish) information, with an occasional glimpse of a small graphic, alluding to a window detail, only its’ made up of 12 pixels and has a lovely big watermark covering it and preventing you from understanding the detail at all. WE HAVE ALL BEEN THERE! Well, If you haven’t I am very prepared to allow my experience to deliver an important message; it’s awful and why bother when you can just go to SpecifyAWS and experience zero of that frustration I just explained.
Clicking on icons, which lead to details and the real, actual cad file of that window detail (I know right, this is ground breaking and astonishing) is nothing short of a completely satisfying experience. This is an amazing resource for students. Students who have an acute understanding of how little detailing is available online, this is the place for you - run wild. Get all of the information you need without restraints. I might just need to re-iterate; there is a CAD file... If that is not amazing to you, then you really have not spent enough time trying to look at, understand and draw window details. Even if you’re not looking at installing the product, this website is such a simple and easy way to learn about the way window systems work. It’s all set out really intuitively too, so it makes navigation really straightforward and to be honest, completely enjoyable. It’s all there people, spelled out, referenced and specified and you need only click it, look at it, read it and say with some amazement ‘ahhh, that’s a window’.
I’m sure you might be tempted to explore the little world I have just talked about, it’s actually great and you can trust my opinion because lets face it, students aren’t really into things that aren’t great, easy or somehow beneficial in decreasing the amount of work they have to do by themselves.
Until next time!
Your faithful S.C (just shortened my student correspondent title to the initials because, well it’s time)
Rebekah.
