Friday Reprieve #21

You know it's a bad day when:
Some book that isn't even published yet has more Facebook friends than you do.

I feel SO Southpark. (errr,....not Phil's SP)

SUPERKAFFIRFRAGSADISTICEXTRALLATROCIOUS

Durka Durka

Earth Day

Updated:
Today is Earth day. Happy Earth day!


No, I don't really throw them out the car window. But it is Earth day. It's like a day of remembrance and contemplation. So, while you might walk or drive or drink or eat from the earth every day, today is a day to remember where it all comes from. And where it all goes.

Take flying for instance. Recent news has told you so, so many European flights have been disrupted due to volcano Eyjafjallajoekull (yes, that's the correct spelling). While I sympathize with all the distressed passengers, consider this: The carbon footprint of the volcano vs the carbon footprint of all the disrupted flights. The big pyramid is the European aviation industry. The little red pyramid is how much CO2 the volcano eruption spewed out.

The black pyramid is what we've SAVED in CO2 through all the canceled flights.
You can find out more stats here. I'm just sayin' is all.
Happy Earth day. (Thanks soender for pointing out the updated graphic)

It's all about 2011

As we’ve officially wrapped up the 100% draft last week (right, Phil?) I wanted to share where we finally ended up. We started this process not only as a total rewrite of the previous series, but as an effort to add much more advanced material. See our final Table of Contents below. I hope you’ll agree - we strove hard to get to that goal and I think we really got there.

We are weighing in at a total of 1080 pages making this the biggest Mastering Revit book to date. It’s quite a massive tome. This was truly a process - along the way, we decided to add some content that was too advanced (even for us). We were able to coerce some great folks to lend a hand on the section, Construction and Beyond. While this consists of about 15% of our overall content, it is chocked full of goodness. All of these folks helped with great contributions. A solid THANK YOU to all.

==========

1 Introduction: The Basics of BIM

FUNDAMENTALS

2 Principles of Revit - Tools and UI
3 The Basics of the Revit Toolchest

UNDERSTANDING THE REVIT WORKFLOW

4 Templates and Standards
5 Managing a Revit Project
6 Understanding Worksharing
7 Working with Consultants
8 Interoperability - Working Multi-Platform

MODELING AND MASSING FOR DESIGN

9 Intuitive and Formulaic Massing
10 Conceptual Design and Sustainability
11 Designing with Phasing, Design Options and Groups
12 Analytic and Photo-realistic Visualization

EXTENDED MODELING TECHNIQUES

13 Walls and Curtain Walls with David Light, HOK
14 Floors, Ceilings and Roofs
15 Family Editor
16 Advanced Stairs and Railings

DOCUMENTATION

17 Detailing your Design
18 Documenting your Design
19 Annotating the Design
20 Presenting your Design

CONSTRUCTION AND BEYOND

21 Revit in Construction (with input from the field by Josh Lowe and Mike Whaley, Findorff & Sons and Laura Handler, Tocci Building Corp.).
22 Revit in the Classroom (with input from two architectural students Adam Thomas and Jereme Smith, founders of ArchDesignLabs).
23 Revit in Virtualization (with input from Peter Streibig, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson).
24 Under the Hood - API, Journal Files, Hacking, UI, Scripts (with input from Don Rudder, HOK).
25 Direct to Fabrication (with help from Jeffrey McGrew, BecauseWeCan).
26 Outside the Box - Film and Stage (with help from Bryan Sutton).
27 Revit in the Cloud (with help from Chris France, Little)

============

Hey, sorry for all the links, but well worth the time. So much cool and exciting stuff! Oh, and BTW - Happy Earth Week!

4.15

Yesterday was a big day. I know, there were a lot of taxes being paid and people rushing to finally start that process. I know it was also the day the Titanic sank and Lincoln died.

However, on a more positive note, we hit our 100% draft officially. The book is written and is falling in a just over 1000 pages of Revit wisdom. And not a moment too soon. Revit 2011 hit the streets last night. While I might not have a lot to say about the former release (it shall not be named here) I have a great many good things to say about this one. Great analysis tools, visualization, API, and a ribbon that actually works. awesome.

turn it up to 11.

IKNOWSOMETHINGYOUDONTKNOW!

You guys wouldn't imagine what it takes Lynn to free up enough time to write a foreword to a book, but let's just say the additional expense was financed on credit, sold as mortgage backed securities, underwritten and co-sponsored by the state of California general assembly - and now Nicholas Cage is bankrupt and can't sell his foreclosed mansion.

This is serious stuff.

Lynn Allen
The wooer of doctors
and Obiwan of Autodesk
she who gazes toward wavering customers with
a wave of one hand (and a beer in the other)
"This is the software you're looking for"

Poor Steve Jobs
If only Lynn worked for Apple
Steve would be running the UN
And applauding his
One iPad per Child Campaign
An iPhone in Every Pot
And ending each UN Assembly by saying
"One More Thing..."
To the joy of billions

Poor Bill Gates
If only Lynn worked for Microsoft
He wouldn't have to look at
Steve Balmer making faces
at the iPod
While watching his stock flat-line
for the last decade or make
crazy commercials with
Jerry Seinfeld
that no one understood
Not even Larry David

Poor Jerry Yang
If only Lynn worked for Yahoo
He wouldn't be managing a Starbucks
right now somewhere in Sunnyvale
Practicing endlessly in front
of a forsaken espresso machine
Fearful, pale and shaken from the memory
of Mrs. Bartz receiving her coffee
one degree above or below
the mandatory and contractually
agreed upon temperature
She wouldn't say which as
She personally escorted him
from the building

Lynn Allen
Patient to a Fault
Gracious to the Point of Suspicion
Not just "California" nice.
Not just "Sales" nice.
But Genuine
Believable
Recipe Blogging
Twitterer Following
Nice

And don't you dare cross her. ;)

This Is Brilliant

Or not. Sometimes I'm just easily amused.
I'm not even going to spoil this by describing it myself. Suffice to say it's a very clever hack.

Vanishlab.

Autodesk Releases the SketchBook Pro App for iPad

Apple’s latest must-have techno-goodie – the iPad – will now have a purpose for the digital designers of the world. The iPad will be available at stores today (April 3 – good luck on line, my friends!) and Autodesk has made their SketchBook Pro App avaliable on the App Store.

If you’re interested in previewing this technology before buying it (and you have an iPhone), search the App Store for the free version called SketchBook MobileX.

 

Autodesk Releases the SketchBook Pro App for iPad on the App Store - Autodesk - pitchengine.com

And the Real Winner is.....

WAY back in February, we had a short contest for the best tips and tricks from the lot of you all. I have to say I got pounded with tips. Some really good, some even after working through them I didn't quite understand. Several of you made it into the book and I thank all of you for your efforts to email in your thoughts.

I have to say, we finally have a winner. Well, two actually:

Best Revit Tip goes out to Tobias Hathorn who had a great tip on making poche cuts and taught me a thing about organizing that blasted ribbon. Well done. Should we ever finish writing the book, we'll happily send you a copy.

So, I said there were two winners. Luke Johnson, from Australia pounded me with so many worthwhile tips that I felt compelled to disqualify him from the running just to make things fair to everyone else. So, in lieu of awarding him best tip, we'll still send him a copy of the book and we've added a link to his blog in the book so you can go hit all those tips yourselves.

His blog is named What Revit Wants which, reminds me of a Wham! video, but maybe I'm just dating myself.

thanks for all the great tips! We're wrapping up the copy soon, so not too much longer to shelves.

happy april fools

for those of you who like a good giggle, check out google's homepage today.

after you have your WTF moment, check out the back story here.