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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Interesting times. Be Visual!

Being the first AU since 2005 where I’m not just a customer, but also an attendee. I was determined not to submit any class proposals this year, and will be enjoying the learning/networking and fun like most everyone – such a welcome change of pace.

I’ve put together a final, but tentative schedule. Hey, anything can change this week. If you are teaching a class and I didn’t register for yours, it is only that there are so many to choose from this year – over 600 including the virtual sessions. Below is primarily an organizational attempt at figuring out where I need to be in addition to my Google calendar which I can happily read on my phone. The second, perhaps more compelling reason to share is that some of you may wish to meet up at one of these events to discuss Revit, Ecotect, the Mac, or simply come over and say hello. I resemble the image to the left on this blog’s sidebar, albeit with slightly higher color depth.

So, here it is:

Mon Nov 30, 2009

• 6:30pm – 8pm AU Bloggers Social - invitation only

Tue Dec 1, 2009

• 8am – 9:30am     | CP104-2 The Basics of the Autodesk® Revit® API | Where: MB Ballroom F
• 10am – 11:30am | KN108-1 AU Keynote and Welcome Address with Carl Bass | Where: North Convention Center, Events Center (Arena)
• 11:30am – 1pm ||Lunch || Where: South Convention Center, Level 2 Shoreline A
• 1pm – 2:30pm | AB114-1 Insanely Great Stairs and Railings with Autodesk® Revit® | Where: MB Ballroom C
• 3pm – 4:30pm     | DV118-1 Optimizing Your Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design Models for Project Newport | Where: Jasmine F
• 5pm – 6:30pm | Private Meeting
• EXHIBIT HALL – FIRST LOOK
• 8pm – 9:30pm | DS128-1 Cut&Paste: AU Design Slam, Preliminary Rounds | Where: MB Ballroom G
• 9pm – 10:30pm   | AB9130-1 Autodesk® Revit® Collaboration: Shared Coordinates for Projects Big and Small | Where: VIRTUAL

Wed Dec 2, 2009

• 6am – 7am | CR9200-1 Introduction to a BIM Execution Plan | Where: VIRTUAL
• 8am – 9:30am | CP204-3 Deep Dive on the Revit API: Advanced Topics | Where: Lagoon G
• 10am – 11:30am | AB208-3 Autodesk® Revit® for Urban Design | Where: South Seas H
• LUNCH/EXHIBIT HALL
• 1pm – 2:30pm      | CP214-2 Creating and Analyzing New Conceptual Massing Geometry With the Autodesk® Revit® API | Where: MB Ballroom C
• 3pm – 4:30pm      | AB218-4 Autodesk® Revit®: A BIM Manager’s Guide to Revit-alizing Your Office | Where: MB Ballroom D
• 5pm – 6:30pm | MA222-4 Content Is King: Working With Autodesk® Inventor® and Autodesk Revit® | Where: Banyan F
• 6pm – 6:30pm | Private Meeting
• 6:40pm – 8:15pm | AB226-1 Sustain Yourself With Revit® Architecture Certification | Where: South Seas F
• BEER and AUGI stuff…
• 8pm – 9:30pm | DS228-1 Cut&Paste: AU Design Slam Finals

Thu Dec 3, 2009

• 6am – 7am | ED9300-1 Incorporating Software Simulation Into Web-Based Training | Where: VIRTUAL
• 8am – 9:30am | AB304-1 Autodesk® Revit® for Film and Stage | Where: MB Ballroom B
• 10am – 11:30am  | DV308-3 Virtual Cinema and Architecture: A New Method of Client Visualization Is Born | Where: South Seas I
• 11:30am – 12:45pm | SB311-1 Autodesk Subscription Customers Help Shape Autodesk University 2010 With Lynn Allen | Where: North Convention Center, Lower Level, South Pacific E
• 1pm – 2:30pm | CM314-3 BIM Management | Where: South Seas B
• 3pm – 4:30pm        | AB318-4L From Fabulous to Fabrication: Real-World Digital Fabrication and BIM | Where: MB Ballroom H (Lab)
• 5pm – 6:30pm        | MA322-2 Taking the Dysfunction Out of Your Autodesk® Revit® Families:Best Practices for Manufacturer BIM Content | Where: Jasmine A
• 6:30pm – 9:30pm  ||AU Party AU Party – Food and Fun! | Where: South Convention Center, Level 1 Bayside B, Bayside B Foyer & Shark Reef

Fri Dec 4, 2009

• 9am – 10am | DV9406-1 Parametric Design Modeling with Autodesk® 3ds Max® | Where: VIRTUAL
• 11am – 12pm  | FM9410-1 Don’t Get Floored In Your Facility: Autodesk® Revit® Architecture as an Effective Facilities Management Tool | Where: VIRTUAL

Webinar classes:

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.

I’m not sure about you, but I love watching movies, often for entertainment. My wife usually manages our Netflix queue, which consistently has 300+ titles on it, and I’m piling up more as I think about what I want to see. Occasionally, I like learning new things by watching videos. There are so many providers out there, and as I mentioned earlier, Autodesk now has there own YouTube channel, but then again who doesn’t? You can even watch previous years’ Autodesk University classes online at au.autodesk.com.

Also, for those that are interested in learning Ecotect, I’ve been pointing them to the training packages available for download (see image to the left). These really give the student a head start, and when I come in to provide training, we can cover in-depth the topics that matter most to them.

Which brings me to my own efforts to reduce communication barriers through the use of free video clips, as in the past three posts. I’ve been posting on YouTube and Screencast.com. My reason being: they both have their strengths. Screencast.com is much higher quality, and I can keep it ad free for a reasonable cost, while YouTube offers more ways to stumble upon my work. Of course, no sooner do I start using the free Jing (a free Windows and Mac OSX screen capture utility), that it’s maker, TechSmith also now has Camtasia for the Mac, and it’s only $99 until the end of the year. It’s very full-featured for such a great price.

Now you can easily stitch together shorter videos made with other tools or other platforms, or capture the screen directly and craft highly professional looking videos, on a Mac. I especially like the “Smart Focus”, zoom in effect. This will make creating tutorials formatted for smaller screen, like an iPhone much easier to read – so look out for those in the future. Check out the tutorials, especially the getting started series to learn more: Tutorials for Camtasia for Mac. There’s also news on the site that they are in the process of developing Snagit for the Mac as well.

I’ve been using products from TechSmith for years now on the Windows platform for creating learning videos and visual help files for architectural firms, similar to content offered at CADLearning.com. Check them out, these videos are a great complement to instructor-led training and can increase your ability to retain concepts learned. There are courses for most of the popular Autodesk products, and more are coming on line regularly. Full-disclosure: I was involved in working closely with instructor Reid Addis for the CADLearning “AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Tutorial Series”, and have authored earlier versions of the course.

I’ll continue posting free lessons here at “Paradigm shift”, while I continue to explore new and interesting ways to combine video with live instructor-led training. It’s just another way of adding value, and helping you be more productive, at 30 frames per second.

If you wish to concurrently work in Revit for creating construction documents, and visualizations, you must learn to separate logically. Digital entourage such as RPC content, or people cars and trees can coexist in your building information model. This video shows how you can use worksets to contain elements you do not want visible in all views.

Warning: I finally picked up a new headset for creating these recordings, so the volume may be a little higher than previous videos. Enjoy.

View directly on Screencast.com or YouTube

As an added tip: If you forgot to uncheck the box “Visible by default in all views”, no problem, just carefully follow the steps below:

• Create a brand new workset to contain the model components you wish to control visibility of, being sure this timeto uncheck the ‘visible’ box
• Be sure to ’synchronize with central’, or ’save to central’ depending on your version of Revit, reliquishing all borrowed
• Make the workset you wish to convert ‘editable’
• Choose the old workset containing the objects you wish to make invisible in the project views
• Click Delete
• Now the important part here is to choose the new workset to move these items to, we certainly don’t wish to delete our model components
• Now just use Visibility/Graphics Overrides (keyboard shortcut VG) to change the visibility in selected views from the Worksets tab.

For other cool tips, or more information on this method described above be sure to go to http://au.autodesk.com, sign in and search for the Autodesk University 2008 class I co-authored called “Horrible Hacks”. If you are attending AU this year, hopefully I’ll see you there.

Working with background images in Revit Architecture is not difficult, if you know some basic techniques.

Revit does not support background images directly, but does allow background effects. This video explores the possiblities within Revit, and what you can do with the images post-process in image-editing software. What better way to integrate your project site context, or insert your project into otherwordly locales; 3ds Max not required.

View directly on Screencast.com or YouTube

Just so you all don’t think I am all Apple, all the time; I must admit I do have a sweet tooth for Office. It’s perhaps the best thing coming out of the offices in Redmond, and it just keeps getting better. Sure, there are choices out there these days, other competitive, and free software, and some that isn’t even software at all, but a service. None have ever fully done the job compared to Office, even though there are attractive reasons for using all of them. I need not go into my reasons, that would be another, and lengthy post. Maybe some other time.

Just installed the newest version of Office. It’s beta software, running on my laptop with Beta Windows 7. I think you need to be invited to this, but since there is no longer a gag order non-disclosure agreement, I will say this: I like where Office is heading.

Mini Review

Three things:

• The interface is much less cluttered looking, which is hard to explain without seeing – image included below.
• The ribbon, done right. Colors are easier on the eyes, and fit better with the Windows 7 themes. The text is very readable. No shifting tools, very fast redraw, and context only changes when you double click. Very elegant.
• But here’s my favorite part, I counted the number of seconds to launch Word, Excel, PowerPoint  and Outlook, individually. It’s Fast. *

Time Trials

For a year old laptop, and a Mac running in BootCamp I wasn’t hopeful. Here goes: One… One. That’s it! One second. Well, I am not sure what  is happening under the hood, and maybe I don’t want to know.

 Voodoo, black magic, or maybe they re-employed Clippy to run a virtual hamster wheel or something. All I know is, this can only help with productivity. Unless or course like me, you also get writers block staring at a blank page. Maybe it’s time to edit the Normal.dot to include some encouraging words.

Road to Recovery

Autodesk, listen up. Future versions of software should be more responsive, load quickly and just work. Revit Architecture 2010 now takes, 1 minute and 5 seconds to launch and manually open a blank project document. AutoCAD Architecture (yes I run both), takes 59 seconds. Word is nearly 60 times faster than either.  That is just unacceptable. If I had been writing in Word, I could have typed 45 words in that time. I know, I’m not a pro touch-typist by any stretch, but just the same it would be nice to have a nearly instant clean canvas from which to work in Revit.

We all know that project files, which can be very large in Revit, also take a while to open and parse the database. Any user who has worked with the tool has come to terms with this. It does seem that Revit has taken longer to load with the last successive releases, and it’s hard to justify why. If we could just eek out a little more performance, especially with regards to launch and the Ribbon redraw, life would be great. Just 30 seconds faster, is all I ask. This would be like a small economic stimulus package for all 300,000+ Revit users in the world. Imagine it. We could all get on with economic recovery by saving and estimated 4 hours, per user, per year. If you conservatively assume that a user will launch Revit 2 times per day, 5 days a week, for 48 weeks, you get 240 minutes, or 4 hours, equalling $340 at a billable rate of $85/hour. That’s the equivalent of half the cost of a subscription renewal right there. You could use the money saved to buy a full seat of Office Small Business edition. Getting that time back would be the equivalent of about 24 blog posts like this one… or four more hours a year to be more productive, have more fun, or take up yoga. Makes you think.

* Individual results may vary.

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

I hope to see you there.

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.

If you’ve loaded up Revit and were looking for the help-based tutorials and the associated training files to go along with them, never fear. Go to the menu bar and click Help > Tutorials, and there will be a link that takes you directly to the content downloads. The instructions are simple to download and replace your current help file, and choose Imperial or Metric content for the training files.

Where do I find the archive of Webcasts, presented by Autodesk?

Resource Centers to the rescue.
If you’d seen some of the web tutorials presented by Autodesk, but have lost the various URLs, this site that collects them all: www.autodesk.com/get2bim. Choose your discipline and click the “Learn More” button. You’ll have access to the full archive of all webcasts, and links to sign up for any upcoming events. This is a great way to find out about new versions of the Revit applications, and is full of time-saving tips and tricks.