No excuse for the absense, but a nasty cold and a trip to Chicago for Manufacturing Week conspired to keep me silent for a few weeks.

I missed National Manufacturing Week last year, due to my getting sidetracked into writing about video game development after the demise of CADENCE magazine, and was quite surprised at how small the show was compared with my last experience two years ago.

In fact, the whole show was small enough that everything—NDES, the Plant Design and Engineering Show, and everything else—fit into a smaller space than NDES alone used just a few years ago. And the shrinking size of the show has led Reed Exhibitions to move next year’s event out of Chicago to Rosemont, which is closer to O’Hare, is less expensive, and apparently has fewer union hassles.

I’ll have more details about what I saw at the show that was interesting or surprising over the next few weeks, along with, of course, my perspective on AutoCAD 2006 and the blogging goof.