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

Alan James Wooldridge

Greg Arkin

Jay Zallan

More details, and a review to come in a later post.  Perhaps I’ll get some good CadLearning.com video script writing for Revit 2011 done at some point during my 14 hour flight to Shanghai next week. As Alice said, “What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?”

We’re getting so close to concurrent design and visualization. I wonder what the current state is of Project Newport anyway?

Source: Revit3D.com – BIMBoom Revitlution: FBX File Link with Revit Architecture & 3ds Max Design – Have to see this video.

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.

1. Constraints on elements will bust the group, whenever the conditions of the constraints change. My best example of this is: You cannot have walls with level-attached tops inside a group if any floors you wish to place those groups on another level that has a different floor to floor height.
2. Instances of Groups must be composed of identical elements. Like an AutoCAD block, if you remove an element from one, it is no longer contained in any other instances of that group. (R.I.P. April 15, 2008, with the ability to Exclude elements from an instance of a group – Hooray!) But, there’s a catch. Beware of hosted elements.

For this article, let’s focus on Rule #1.

The sneaky thing is: You may observe the behavior for walls inside groups is benign. As you may know, elements such as a wall can be given either an explicit height, or have its upper extent constrained to a level, floor or roof element, or a reference plane. Since nested elements must remain consistent in every instance of a group, those which contain walls that are top-constrained to a level, attempt to respect the resultant height of the constraint to the next adjacent level. At least the walls do not break the group if placed on levels whose floor-to-floor height varies. An override for Top extension is auto-magically placed on the new nested wall instances to keep them consistent, and no warnings are displayed. You have to be mindful of what really happened. A properties override, if you will, was assigned to the new walls during their creation. Looking at the walls from an section or elevation may not show any difference. The original constraints are still present so… can we do it?

Not So Fast! Remember this: If you attempt to change the height of your levels, you will be in a severe amount of pain. The feared warning will come up stating: “Group instances of the same type do not contain identical members.” When you are presented with the option to Fix Groups… Revit simply asks you to ungroup or make unique groups for the naughty thing we just did. Rule number 2 still applies.

Recommendation: Be cautious

So, it might be best to create groups for large room-based compositions which include walls to be designated by the level the were created for. New groups should be created for the other levels, and so on… You should ask yourself whether the walls are helping or hurting you if inside a group. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but you should consider the consequences. Because of all this chicanery, I still recommend for cases such as demising walls, or any other conditions where walls are to be stacked one on top of the other, don’t model these per floor, and certainly don’t place them in groups. You may be better served to model them with a single-spanning wall starting on the lowest level and connected to its uppermost limit. This is easier to make changes, and accomplishes an efficiency with less geometry in the model. Think shaft walls, plumbing chases, and tenant separation walls, as these are critical to be sure they actually stack. Unless you are building a construct-ability model, don’t build it the way it will be constructed in reality, but to convey design intent. Structural engineers and contractors will probably argue with me on this one, but at least in the early stages of design, it is a far easier thing to manage the building model this way.

Got any best practices of your own that you wish to share? Feel free to add comments, or drop me a note from the contact me page.

in three easy steps:

#1

Step # 2

Step #3

Any Questions?

Let the games begin. Today marks the torch lighting and opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC. Now, although it is technically winter, this part of the country has seen so little snow.  You have to wonder why the climate change deniers still continue to talk conspiracy theories, when all I have to do is see the brown topped mountains where we have previously held the world annual snowfall record. Yes Mt. Baker, practically in my backyard, had a record 1,140 inches of snow fall on it’s peak during the 1998-1999 season. Put your calculator away, that’s not a typo – it was 95 feet! This year, snow needs to be trucked in to Whistler, and the other locations. Well one sport that suffers from no ill effects is speed skating.

Perhaps I’ll see Stephen Colbert practicing for his bid to take all the gold. Seriously, we wouldn’t even be taking part in these events had it not been for his generosity in getting a leg up, and sponsoring the team along with donations from fans. Apollo Ohno may not be favored to take home the gold for Team USA, but always a fan of the local underdog, I’m routing for him. The five-time Olympic medalist, and 2007 Dancing With the Stars champion is back. There are so many taleted athletes in the men’s and women’s speed skating, I just think it will be interesting to watch. I grew up playing hockey, and how could I not, growing up in Boston and watching the likes of Bobby Orr, and Raymond Bourque glide across the ice, and occasionally crushing bones. Go Bruins! Although never as good as this guy, I really enjoyed the sport, and especially the feeling of the cold air and the pungent smell of the ice and sweat in an arena.

Which finally leads us to…

What do you think? Photo or Fake? Is this a clever rendering technique? Think about it, then hit the Read More link if you are on the main blog page. Otherwise, scroll down, when you’ve decided.

What you are seeing is not a model, but a long-exposure photograph. Andrew Doran, has taken some amazing photographs of the Richmond Oval, where the Speed Skating competitions heat up over the next two weeks. Designed by Cannon Design, another Revit firm (they seem to be everywhere these days), this project is an interesting one is its focus on sustainable design, and local materials — a real challenge when creating a giant icebox. The building received a LEED Silver rating, and the design team should be applauded for creating such a dynamic space to watch a sporting event. It’s only about an hour from my house, but during the olympic events does not allow cars to park in the lots. You must buy your bus tickets, if you were lucky enough to get access to an event, for security reasons and in the interest of reducing traffic congestion. Andrew’s blog discusses the process of how he produces these very interesting and emotive images. I wonder if anyone can create similar images in Revit or 3ds Max – hmm, I’ll have to give that some thought? Read on for a description of the photographic technique and more facts about this interesting building:

Expanding your style – Apply what you have learned

2010 Olympic Oval up for World Building of the Year award

http://www.cannondesign.com/#/expertise/project_catalog/40

The Proving Ground

The post on Grasshopper and the Revit API: importing points into a Conceptual Mass is brilliant. More please!

The Proving Ground by Nathan Miller: Streaming Grasshopper Points into a Revit Conceptual Mass.

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.

Archiculture Teaser from arbuckle industries on Vimeo.

FILM SYNOPSIS
Archiculture is a feature-length documentary that explores the role that architecture and design play in our daily lives. The film follows five architecture students through their final senior design projects in order to shed light on the critical issues impacting our built environment.

The Revit Kid.com!: Archiculture – Movie.