Jason you hit the nail on the head with this statement: “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” So true when it comes to transforming a business. Especially when adopting BIM. What a great observation, and an invaluable tool the book “Good to Great” is in our current challenging business climate. With the profession experiencing the single highest unemployment rate, and good firms closing their doors forever, there is an army of eager talent out there waiting for the right opportunity.
Revit is a disruptive technology, which makes it frightening for some, but exciting to others. Revit and the BIM workflow it fosters has the power to transform the practice of architecture, in conjunction with IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) and sustainable design. With these tools, we need to figure out as a collective industry how to go from good to great. Read on for more of Jason’s insight, which is the first in a series of drawing parallels to the lessons from this excellent book:
Some very amazing things have been shown and talked about at Autodesk University 2009 this week. If you have been hiding under a rock, then you may not know that the attendees, both in Vegas and virtually have invaded the Twitter-sphere or Tweet-Zone or whatever… Go to Twitter, sign up now and follow the conversations by searching for #AU2009.
So, on to the Tuesday Keynote and three ah-ha moments:
It’s not about Revit… or BIM, but Digital Design tool synergies! Best of breed products that work well together to create new opportunities and break new ground. Use things not necessarily as designed. Maya can make buildings, Revit can make movie sets. Put everything in a bowl, mix and see what pops out. These are exciting times.
Sustainability, talk by Amory Lovins, co-founder and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, approaches design with whole systems thinking. If a design feature can have more than one purpose, and is efficient, it can drastically reduce energy use by leaps and bounds over traditional design, engineer, then build workflows. If you can make an SUV that is just as luxurious as a traditional model, but gets over 80MPG, why aren’t we all doing this now? If you can build a building that is so efficient you require no conventional systems to be comfortable, and it costs less to build, why not do it. Renovate the Empire State Building such that the energy savings are $4M annually and has a three year payback? That’s how you fix the economy. If we can upgrade just a portion of the existing building stock… think of the potential for jobs, increased profits, and reduced need for imported energy.
Jeff Kowalski from Autodesk showed some radically amazing possibilities for integrated workflows within Revit. Sustainable design in the tool is a natural next step. The API in Revit 2010, thanks Matt Mason, already has the ability to cast rays and analyze points in the model which is much of the power available in Ecotect today. This has the potential to enable thermal, daylighting, visibility, and acoustic analysis in Revit. Let’s hope it’s in 2011… Time will tell. Along similar lines, which validates this assumption, Jeff talked about the current disconnected workflow of Design -> Analysis. Obviously, this removes the ability to iterate through design ideas either quickly or often. When he turned that workflow around with the idea of Analysis -> Design people literally had their tongues on the floor. The scenario went like this (with fabulous imagery): input some criteria about the site, and the building, and the analysis engine test many iterations of form, orientation, and massing. Comparing these to hit the sweet spot for efficiency, or daylighting allows the designer to move forward with a concept quickly.
BIM and cloud computing have traditionally not been very close friends. What is interesting, is that there are companies out there innovating. There are model servers, data exchange formats, cumbersome and expensive hardware solutions that don’t really address all the issues.
Does this mean that the competition is moving ahead. Maybe, but technology leaps come in shifts, not incremental change, and the development of the BIM sharing in ArchiCAD 13 is simply a redo of a tool they already had. If you managed to click through and watch the video on Teamwork, it is less impressive than the article makes it out to be. Revit can add color to worksets as well with filtering, and while doesn’t have chat, there are already many standalone technologies for this. All of this seems really distracting to getting work done. There has to be better ways to manage a project and improve communication. It may not be the right path.
Is that a pie in the sky, or SAAS?
One possible alternate future in Autodesk Labs may be just what we all need: Project Twitch. Sure this is being touted as a way to try before you buy AutoCAD, Inventor, Maya and Revit without the ability (yet) to save and print. There is a real potential for this to become something beyond play. This is true Software as a Service (SAAS), which seems to hold the possibility of reducing many obstacles to adoption. What obstacles? Well, collaboration, as in the solution above, would be a hurdle not requiring a lot of hardware or convoluted rights management to access parts of the building, it would just work. It would remove the barriers of geographically dispersed teams, and allow better and more reactive collaboration the way Revit currently works.
SAAS when done well, can help reduce hardware and operating system upkeep and could potentially become much less of a burden on IT departments and cost-concious design firms who could use a bit of a break after the last 18 months. This would open up your favorite design tools, like Revit to any platform you wish to use such as; Windows, Mac OSx, Linux, PS3, or whatever… OK maybe not a Commodore 64, but most anything.
Again, this is just a possibility. Two things need to happen; there needs to be an increase in trust from the industry that hosted data and applications are secure and highly available, and secondly there needs to be an improvement in performance. While just a technology preview, Project Twitch is not yet ready for replacing a locally installed application that works even when the power goes out. Someday… just maybe it will. OK, stop daydreaming and get back to work.
It always fascinates me the way folks who use Revit on projects are so willing to share their work, their process and their joy with the rest of the AEC community. This project, by _Space Architecture (http://www.spacegroup.co.uk/), really shows how the whole project team benefits from using Revit as their BIM solution to the benefit of better architecture and a happier client. View the video, it’s really informative as there are interviews with the design and construction team members right down to the tradesfolk getting the work done and resolving collisions before they happen in the field.
Looking for ways to save money on training? Why not attend a short focused event that will provide high value at an affordable cost? The following topics are announced:
Nov 13 @ 10AM PST – Integrating: Revit with Ecotect – 2 hours
Nov 23 @ 10AM PST – Secrets of Revit Conceptual Massing – 2 hours
Integrating: Revit with Ecotect
Looking for ways to integrate sustainable design into your current workflow, or simply a way to work smarter? Perform analysis of building designs when it has the most potential rewards, during conceptual design. Seating is limited, so sign up today.
Topics Covered:
Using Revit conceptual models
Preparing a Revit project model
Export options for gbXML
Compelling reasons for exporting to DXF
Optimum Ecotect import settings
Considering site and weather conditions
Applying parametric rules to Ecotect objects
Performing early daylight and thermal analysis
Iterative design and optioning
View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com
Secrets of: Revit Conceptual Massing
Revit Architecture 2010 has some very powerful conceptual design tools, but for those migrating from earlier versions of the software using these new tools can be daunting at first. If you want to understand how to create flexible, parametric building forms this class is for you. We will cover the essentials of the conceptual mass editing environment, as well as how to create sophisticated organic forms. Seating is limited, so sign up today.
Topics Covered:
The Conceptual Design environment
The Importance of building jigs
Pros and Cons of choosing a modeling method
Working with legacy massing objects
From box to organic form
Subtleties of the environment
Surface rationalization
Creating and extending panel families
Extracting data for design analysis
View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com
Other News:
Additionally, full course sample agendas are now released for Revit Architecture 2010 and Ecotect Analysis 2010. For more information visit the Training page.
The Revit Architecture production training is part of the Productivity. Fast!™ implementation system. This allows you to get up to speed quickly by combining training with a live project and applied concepts. Mentoring and project assistance is provided ‘just-in-time’ so you can get your work done and capture lessons learned. Below is this four-part system of implementation which allows an entire office, or just a single pilot project to be completed with confidence. Each of these activities is a four-day period, which may be delivered all at once, or as project and team needs require.
Essentials Course
Advanced Course
Project Mentoring and Best Practices (Checkpoint)
Project Quality Assessment (Post Evaluation)
For more information, visit the Services section of the main website.
OK, so it’s not really a house, but perhaps a really good house wine. Every once in a while you find a very intriguing use of technology in architecture schools. Lately, the amount of good work has been not scarce. In this example, however there is evidence of biomimicry, parametric scripting, simple rendering using ambient occlusion, and using Ecotect to present sustainable analysis data in very compelling and rich ways. Bravo Andrea!
There should be a content bill of rights or something to ensure that you are receiving the best quality Revit families for use in your projects. Good content can really add value to the design and documentation process, and bad content can make working in Revit less than fun. I’ve downloaded some really unusable items and even had the unfortunate experience of watching poorly built content sail through a QA process. Why does this happen? Is it lack of training, experience, communication, or is it a result of lack of documented process and specifications?
COMMENTS WELCOME
I’m working on co-authoring a series of articles, whitepapers, or some guide that will assist in the process of finding, evaluating, and augmenting Revit families for use in your firm. Ultimately, it comes down to identifying what is most important to you, the users. I would really like this to be a conversation, to aid in the planning of this work. Please add your comments to this post, sharing your horror stories, pet peeves, or ah-ha moments as you work with Revit families.
The expression “fail to plan, plan to fail” can have tremendous relevance in the design and construction of any size projects. When implementing a technology such as Revit in your firm, you really must plan. Blindly marching forward as if it is just another CAD application will certainly lead to failure. Understanding the shift to a building information modeling approach is not just a technology change; it is also a cultural change both internal and external to your firm. Most importantly, Revit and BIM both facilitate and demand a process change.
BIM in itself can be classified as a way of working, not just the tools that get you there. It’s about: communicating differently and more often, understanding how work completed today affects future participants in the process of building, operating and ultimately deconstructing a building, and finally it is about reducing waste. Understanding process and the impact of planning can be very time consuming and challenging effort.
If you are just beginning to think of how to incorporate new processes into your organization, you have to think like a consultant. Research and document current processes, challenges, and bottlenecks within your firm. Develop an implementation plan that determines your needs beyond obtaining the software and training. Implementation plans that I have developed for organizations often involves getting buy-in from management and the staff prior to moving forward. Also, determining who, what and when are important aspects to solving what you need to get started. Choosing the right team members, what type of project it is, and understanding the schedule have a tremendous impact on the planning and ultimate success of your pilot project. Do you need content (Revit families, details, templates, tutorials, standards, etc…) in place before proceeding with a pilot? Who receives training? When and how much? Every organization is different and you need to plan carefully.
Once you have made BIM a priority, have completed a pilot, and hopefully a formal evaluation of how things went, the planning does not end. In order to maximize the benefits of BIM on your projects, you really must create a BIM Project Execution Plan. By identifying the purpose and needs BIM will fulfill for the project, and clearly communicating roles and responsibilities, you better ensure success.
All of these topics require additional time to discuss. I will outline BIM planning in further posts.
To get you started in thinking about the process; this planning guide and it’s associated tools are available for free from the Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) Research Group at Penn State. It’s a component of the building Smart alliance (bSa) National BIM Standard™, or NBIMS.
As a contributor to the July SeaRUG meeting, here’s my slideshow… as a teaser. For those who couldn’t attend live for the presentation or the step by step demos, I’m producing some videos to share with you this week. Stay tuned for more, and enjoy the slides.
My favorite 5, presentation techniques using Revit:
Exploded Axon
Elevations with Depth
Concurrent Workflow
Design Intent Imagery
Working with Backgrounds
The slideshow was prepared in Keynote, and is approximately 9.5 minutes in length. To view on Screencast.com, follow the link: Presentation Techniques in Revit
The July 22nd meeting of the Seattle Revit User Group (SeaRUG) will be co-sponsored by sdb consulting and United Reprographics. I will be providing the lunches to this month’s meeting. I will also be presenting and host a panel discussion along with Pat Byrne of Byrne+Works Architecture, and David Redding, an HVAC designer. The presentation topic will be “Presentation Techniques with Revit”.
From the announcement:
Meeting Information:When: Wednesday, July 2, 2009 (add to Calendar) Time: 11:30am – 1:30pm Where:Seattle Public Library – Central Branch
Microsoft Auditorium – Level 1
1000 4th Ave (corner of 4th & Madison)
Seattle (Map It!) This presentation will explore a wide range of presentation techniques available in Revit. Whether you are an engineer or an architect you will learn new ways to represent your projects and discover techniques to refine and improve your current presentation methods. Revit beginners will be exposed to a wide range of tools while advanced users are sure to discover something new. A panel discussion will follow the presentation. This presentation is suited for all AEC professionals using Revit.Thank you to those of you who contributed images to this presentation! For those of you who want to submit images, it’s not too late…please forward any images and/or techniques you would like to share with the group to admin@searug.org.
Please bring Revit related questions to ask in an open forum setting or forward relevant topics to admin@searug.org.
Please RSVP by noon on Monday, July 20, if you plan to attend, so we can have an accurate head count for lunch. You must be a registered member on the website to submit your RSVP. Please visit our website at www.searug.org for membership information and registration. Register Here
