Explorations of Digital Design Software Technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a catalyst for change in the architectural profession. Where do we go from here?
A blog
by Sean D Burke
I and 50 other architects, designers, engineers, consultants and construction professionals just attended the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Seattle Ecotect® User Group. This meeting, sponsored by IMAGINiT and Callison Architecture was held at the Seattle offices of Skanska. Surely this will be the first of many exciting collaborative, and community-building meetings to come.
For those not familiar with Autodesk Ecotect: It is an early building performance and design analysis tool for use by architects and designers. Its primary purpose is to aid in the iterative design process and gain valuable early insight in to cost and performance measures of buildings, and can greatly contribute toward reaching energy efficiency and sustainability goals. Ecotect is very graphical in nature, and thus provides those sexy images that help sell complex ideas to the client while working with a broad suite of environmental analysis tools. Ecotect plays somewhat well with others, as it can import files from SketchUP, Revit, and other 3D CAD and BIM applications using the gbXML file format, and can also export data to many precise engineering tools such as EQuest, Radiance and EnergyPlus.
Some folks joined the meeting as an exploration of available technologies, and are studying their options for sustainable design tools. Others, approximately 25%, were current Ecotect users and expressed a desire to share experiences and best practices to take back an implement in their work.
A presentation and model sharing was given by Teresa Burrelsman of Callison, discussing the need for quick design simulation during a schematic design for a new tower in the city of Riyadh, and showing how Ecotect was used to determine energy cost savings and occupant comfort (especially reducing glare) by various schemes using shading devices. There was some discussion of these quick, down and dirty, ’shoebox models’ and how invaluable they can be to drive design iteration.
Olivier Pennetier of Symphysis, a leading regional Ecotect consultant, joined by phone from his office in San Francisco and offered advice on modeling practices, as well as providing food for thought on how the community can begin to share information learned from the informal conversations these types of meetings generate.
Based on those in attendance, it was determined that the next meeting will take place on the second monday of the month, July 13th. The location is still to be determined. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to add to the discussion on this post. As more information on the next meeting becomes available, I will provide an update here.
So, while waiting around for lunch to cook yesterday, (the joys of working from home), I decided to try a little experiment. Warning, don your geek sunglasses, if you have sensitive eyes.
Given that Windows 7 Release Candidate is still available legally for public testing, and Microsoft has wisely switched to Akamai as their provider, I thought “hey, let’s download this thing during lunch”. Well, was I surprised that in 25 minuted I had the whole 3Gb ISO of the 64bit version in hand. Plenty of time to spare, so being that I had recently read that VMWare Fusion will install it, I fired it up and created a new virtual machine in only 20 minutes, after only 3 reboots. I love that my Macbook Pro can mount an ISO with no additional software. What more could be done in the time remaining? The only answer to that would be install Revit 2010. So I grabbed the DVD and bing, 14 minutes later, with one minute to spare I had a newly configured, ready to test system.
The verdict? Very fast boot times, runs better than Vista-64, however, Revit 2010 is very sluggish under virtualization in both OSes. Curses, foiled by the Ribbon yet again. I will next be recreating a Boot Camp partition and report back my findings and some hard numbers. Stay tuned…
Why are you showing me an image of a greenhouse? It’s a house, but a different shade of green. And it’s not for growing in the way you’d think. Huh? I will explain.
Perhaps a good reason to start pushing for software vendors to get animation of building components into their BIM or CAD applications, besides the cool factor, is this notion of biomimicry. Autodesk has formed a mini-web dedicated to the topic, which seems to have slipped by unnoticed. The concept is wonderful. Why not use nature as inpiration to build buildings that add to, rather than take away from their environment. Is sustainability simply just getting to a balance on the tipping point to success or failure? What has been gnawing away at the gut of BIM is the ability to design and simulate the design features in-place. It’s no fun to pull the design into Max and start adding “ik” controls just to understand the impact of an operable feature. Concurrent design and analysis becomes critical in the AEC world as designers become more sophisticated about the questions they ask their software to answer. Much like an industrial designer can test out moving parts of a machine with Inventor, architects should have the same level of sophistation in their own tools. Perhaps we are soo good at borrowing without complaint, that we are a good target for ‘upselling’. Don’t give us your laundry list of things that might do the job, let’s get the tools to do what we want internally, to avoid the asynchronous nature of exporting and importing peices and parts of a moving puzzle. Oh, yeah… so back to our little green, er red house.
So here, I present the house of the week – yes, it’s the same view as above. Then where did all that glass go? Why, it’s underneath the sliding roof form. Cool. Why? Be patient, and I’ll explain.
While not necessarily an example of biomimicry, this house certainly has the ability to react to it’s environment. When the living room is too sunny, slide some shade over the patio, change the view… it opens up some very interesting possibilities. Click through to see the whole progression.
OK Zach, we all know that you’ve had many months jump on the rest of the community, but hey working at the factory should have it’s perks right? Stop making it all look so easy. Great blog, and excellent video post on creating seamless panels. This is superb inspiration to get people excited about rational form making.
Consider yourself on the list. We are most certainly all grateful.
Recently, I attended a presentation by Brad Liljequist, the project manager for the zHome project. His talk, part of the Sustainable Connections series of conferences in Bellingham, WA, was a very interesting discovery showcasing the efforts of a complex and intriguing project, right in my own region. Located in the Issaquah Highlands, just East of Seattle, WA, this project is aiming at becoming one of the first zero net energy affordable residential projects to be built.
Yes, there actually is sun in Seattle, and outside of the darkest winter months, is plentiful enough for energy production. If everything goes as planned, construction should begin soon. Can’t wait for the availability of site visits. If you live in the area, go the the website and sign up for the email newsletter. I’ll certainly be following this more closely over the course of construction.
Subscription and ADN members can download the RTM (Release to Manufacture) of Revit Architecture 2010 as of yesterday. For those in the US, happy Tax Day everyone!
I’m traveling this week, so I can’t download mine until I get home from the train tonight. Enjoy.
Believe it or not, this new Autodesk download manager tool not only seems to be speedy, but works in Safari, on a Mac no less. Wow, was that a pleasant surprise. Now that many of the new products are available for a free trial download, simply itchy waiting for my physical DVDs to arrive, and being the major geek that I am I thought – let’s give it a whirl. Low and behold, it worked.
OK, so the image points to the soon to be announced evidence that I am not solely dedicated to Revit. There are many customers out there, who still use and love AutoCAD Architecture. There’s a project in the works, which I’ll discuss when the time is right which involves ACA 2010, and training. Now, where was that line command again? Just kidding.
Exhibit A.
Earlier in the week, I also successfully logged into my Autodesk Subscription account through Safari, and there was no hint of the typical warnings of browser compatibility. Now, we just need to work on that pesky legacy Buzzsaw accessibility.
Kudos to the marketing and web teams at Autodesk for increasing support for browsers other than IE. Job well done.
I have been excited about the new software release for some time, but of course there’s still an NDA. Rather than providing small snippets of what I can say is in the upcoming new 2010 software, especially Revit, I direct you to some really cool official videos that show it off. Video is certainly the best way to learn new software tools, so let’s just sit back and watch the folks from the factory tell us their tale.
Wow… Excitingly cool stuff! That preview should help prepare those of you that have expressed anxiety of the inclusion of a Ribbon UI in your favorite design tools. I really think it’s going to be OK. Once you get used to the changes (which might take less than a week of use), you will be productive. When the software is officially released, I give the lowdown on how you can best take advantage of the Ribbon in Revit, AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Architecture.
And by the way, if you want more: Autodesk now has a You-Tube channel with HD content here: www.youtube.com/Autodesk
2009 may well just become the year of the video blog. Cheers.
I recently purchased Spore Galactic Edition, and yes it’s really a time drain. I had not realized why I like this game until recently. You get to design things parametrically, for fun!?
OK, this is silly, I know. But very addictive. The controls are interesting and so easy to learn to use. If you are unfamiliar, I’ve embedded a link to one of their tutorials on YouTube. Be prepared for silly-tecture. The return to serious posts will be soon, promise.
For many, many releases, customers have asked for Service Pack technology like AutoCAD-based products… And now, without further adieu, here it is! This is a much smaller download, but includes Web Update #1 as well. Along with that pleasant change, there are many improved stability and performance gains to be had by deploying this update.
I try to remember to back up my personalized settings before installing any updates to applications like Revit which are critical to my work (particularly “Revit.ini” and “KeyboardShortcuts.txt”). That being said, the installation will now backup your files for you. Any files replaced by the Service Pack will be copied to backup folders named XXX_SP2 according to the Readme file.
The Web Update 2 can be found under the Revit Architecture/Structure/MEP 2009 product download pages:
Explorations of Digital Design Software Technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a catalyst for change in the architectural profession. Where do we go from here?
I and 50 other architects, designers, engineers, consultants and construction professionals just attended the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Seattle Ecotect® User Group. This meeting, sponsored by IMAGINiT and Callison Architecture was held at the Seattle offices of Skanska. Surely this will be the first of many exciting collaborative, and community-building meetings to come.
