My “BIM rant”, on adoption and setting expectations “Thoughts on a Train”, or “Mind the BIM Gap” was picked up by the blog All Roads Lead to BIM. I feel honored to be alongside such a cast of excellent authors whose work is collected on that site. Check them out on the information super highway, otherwise known as the inter-tubes: Digital Vision Automation Blog
Why so quiet? What’s going on with the blog? I’ve heard lot’s of this in the more than six months since I last posted. It’s nice to know faithful readers care. Besides being very busy at NBBJ, I’ve been a part of a team working on a project that was in the works since December of 2009.
With great fanfare…I’m pleased to announce that the big project is finally published. Over 700 pages of scripted material were written, then recorded to produce these tutorial lessons. But you don’t have to read them. Narrated by yours truly, I hope you enjoy and learn something new.
CADLearning Revit Architecture 2011 Tutorials
Go check them out here, or login in with a free membership to view samples: http://www.member.cadlearning.com/
These projects are truly collaborative efforts. Many thanks to Dan Dolan, David Cohn, David Harrington, Matt Murphy, David Redding, Michael Bass, Temesgen, and the entire production team at 4D Technologies. A special shout out to Phil Read for putting me back in touch the team after having worked with them on ADT videos way back in the day – was it really 2004?
Most importantly, thanks to Betsy, my sweet and understanding wife, for putting up with those long nights and weekends and me forgetting to take out the garbage.
And now… some final work to polish up the more advanced content, and back to my day job (and more blogging). Autodesk University is around the corner, don’t you know.
Read the press release here: CADLearning Revit Architecture 2011 Tutorials Published
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
- Zig Zigler
Every once in a while we need some inspiration to take action. Plan, Prepare, Expect. A simple formula. Unfortunately, most people who begin using Revit expect success, while simultaneously skipping those first two steps. The outcome is invariably failure. Persistence sometimes prevails, but you end up with a headache when it’s all said and done. Planning costs time and preparation costs money. Since most architects have an inversely proportional abundance of the former, rather than the later these days, it seems appropriate to plan for your future success.
I’m a big advocate of planning. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a complex process, consisting of many things. The right tools can help you adopt this process, and Revit at its soul has the ability to be a transformative technology in the architectural and engineering communities. Ultimately, when used to it’s potential Revit can affect the way buildings are designed and built. That scares non-technical architects, because “tried and true” methods have always worked for them. Have they really though?
The landscape out there is shifting. the design, technology and communication paradigms are shifting. So, if you haven’t bought a ticket on the BIM train yet, or you there, but feel you are simply along for the ride, you need a plan to upgrade to business class. Incorporating BIM into your firm, or from an owner’s perspective mandating BIM on projects is not simply a technology solution. More importantly, it is a cultural, and management issue. Players at all levels of your organization need to be involved in the decision-making process. Additionally, when starting a new project, you need to understand the potential of a BIM workflow by creating an execution plan. The Penn State BIM Project Execution Planning Guide version 1.05 was released last month, and there are some excellent organizational documents there to help you capture critical path information about the project. But this isn’t your only source for this type of information to allow you to develop organizational and project strategies for using BIM.
Autodesk has just this week publicly released a plan to aid in the successful delivery of BIM projects. Titled the BIM Deployment Plan, it is a great framework for starting to have the conversation with your firm project delivery and technical staff. The process is well documented, and incorporates many best practices and experience from my former colleagues in Autodesk Consulting. Read more, and download your copy here. Give it a try and maybe, just maybe, everybody wins.
The official press release can be found here, for those who are interested in the marketing spin.
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:
Good to Great – “First Who… Then What” – Jason Grant Blog – Adaptive Practice by Jason Grant.
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:
Interesting times. Be Visual!
No, not that kind of cloud!
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.
Graphisoft has done what no other BIM software vendor has been able to do: reduce the time and space gap to project collaboration. But, what does it all mean? ArchiCAD 13 Makes Ground-Breaking Leap in BIM File Sharing | Cadalyst.
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.
Source: Revit Space -> Washington School and Revit.
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:
Integrating: Revit with EcotectLooking 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:
View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com
Secrets of: Revit Conceptual MassingRevit 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:
View the full course information, and sign up today at EventBrite.com
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.
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!
Click through to have a taste of Italy:
s h i f t: Digital refining: new winery for “Consorzio Vini Tipici di San Marino” _[boards].
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.
