Friday, July 30, 2010

In the Wild, Part Whatever

It looks like MARA is really making the rounds.

Robert Yori had a couple sightings -
MARA out with friends enjoying a candle-lit dinner:


And doing what MARA does best: teaching Revit. Note the attentive (slightly confused) eyes of the students.


Finally, my own personal sighting. Angiela and I enjoyed sitting a spell during a hike on our vacation to Upper Mohawk lake. Elev. 12,100'. MARA decided to enjoy the lake view too.

In the wild, ey!

Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 is finally starting to ship to our brothers up north in Canada. Jay Polding sends us a couple of shots plugging the Ontario Revit Users Group as well as Canada’s main export…

masteringrevittfc

masteringrevitcanadian

Mmmmmm…beer.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

In the Wild, Part 5

I recently took a day off (imagine that!) and spent the day with my family at our local water park. This would have made for some interesting new ‘in the wild’ pictures, but you can imagine what the water slide would have done to a copy of MARA 2011… Here are some of the latest entries from our readers.

Sean Burke from Seattle poses a copy of MARA 2011 in front of the city model at NBBJ:

MARA2011-burke

One of my personal favorites…another submission from David Light getting quite literally ‘in the wild:’

MARA2011_in the wild

So don’t be a tortoise…make like a hare and pick up your copy now! If you already have, please write a review on Amazon.com.

Monday, July 26, 2010

One small step...



...will become a wonderful, slippery slope. :)

More info here. This ruling is really big news. In part this will:

-- allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

-- allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.

-- allow college professors, film students and documentary filmmakers to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism, commentary and noncommercial videos.

-- allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

-- allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

iPads are next. And speaking of iPads...Mastering Revit 2011 looks amazing on it. That's right! Downloadable versions should be available as eBook and Kindle versions in a few days or so. Here's a screen grab from the Table of Contents.



FULL color (where we used color images) were used in printing the e-versions. We didn't want to simply reuse the same converted gray scale images used for printing the physical book. What's really neat is the figure references are hyperlinks to their associated image. And you can even double+click an image to 'zoom' in for more detail!

Here's and example from chapter on Film and Stage, showing details from the "Watchman" movie of the Karnak fortress and armatures from Dr. Manhattan's lab.



Been holding out for an iPad and need something to help push you over the edge? Think of it this way: if you buy Mastering Revit 2011 for the special price of only $550 we'll throw in the iPad for free! ;)

In the Wild, Part 4

Before we get to our latest ‘in the wild’ pics, we’d like to toot our own horns just a bit more…please forgive us. In the product details for Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 on Amazon, we have been holding steady as the #1 book in the categories of CAD, Drawing & Modeling and even Autocad! THANK YOU to all of our early adopters!!

MARA - No 1

Moving on to our ‘in the wild’ submittals…Steve Stafford creates a surreal composition of beer and scale architecture while attending the SCRUG meeting…

MARA2011-scrug

Our own MARA 2011 contributing author, David Light, got his copy today and shows it off in the London office of HOK…

MARA2011-light

Thursday, July 22, 2010

In the Wild, Part 3

In today’s episode, Brok Howard from St. Louis gets some rest and relaxation with his copy of MARA 2011 in the beautiful Citygarden:

MARA2011-citygarden

But what should you do with your previous editions of Mastering Revit Architecture? Don’t throw them out! Take Tobias Hathorn’s suggestion for MARA recycling…

MARA2008-recycle

Keep those fun pics coming! See our original post for instructions on how to submit your own ‘in the wild’ photo.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

In the Wild, Part 2

We’re getting some great responses to our call for pictures of your copy of Mastering Revit Architecture 2011 out and about. Here are the latest entries.

Court Myers from Oklahoma City spotted Yoda brushing up on his Revit skills… “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

MARA2011-yoda

Robert Yori from New York makes sure that his copy of MARA 2011 gets the proper amount of fresh air and exercise…waiting for the bus:

MARA2011 bus

And soaking in the sights on Wall Street:

MARA2011 wall st

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Mastering Revit ‘In the Wild’ pics

As of Friday July 16, Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 has been shipping in the continental United States – all 5-1/2 pounds of it! We know we have some really creative friends, so let’s just see how creative you can be…

Step One: Get a copy of MARA 2011 here or here.

Step Two: Take a photo or short video of the book out ‘in the wild.’

Step Three: Email it to us

Step Four: Don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon…please!

If your entries are creative and cool – remember, we’re big South Park/Futurama/Family Guy fans – we’ll post them right here for everyone to see.


Our first pic is from fellow Revit guru, Mark Schmieding. He snapped this self-portrait while the film crew for Transformers 3 was causing mass destruction outside his Chicago office. We like to follow the words of director Michael Bay who once exclaimed…”I demand things to be AWESOME!

MARA2011 Transformers

Not from Mark, but on the Transformers theme…

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Mastering Revit in the wild!

The first sighting of our new book – Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 – has been reported in the US! Eddy got his shipment of promo copies today and just take a look at the size of this one…

IMG_4396

  IMG_4394

Eddy, Phil and I are really proud of the content we’ve developed for this year’s edition. We hope you’ll enjoy it, too. As always, feel free to drop us a line at MasteringRevit or visit our Facebook page.

It’s still available at the discounted preorder price on Amazon.com, so hurry up before it goes up to regular price.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Happy 50th Birthday, Etch-A-Sketch

On July 12, 1960, the Etch-A-Sketch went on sale. An article in WIRED explains more about how this timeless toy does what it does.

Simple: “An internal stylus is used to…sketch onto a glass window coated with aluminum powder.”

Complex: “…employs a fairly sophisticated pulley system that operates the orthogonal rails that move the stylus around when the knobs are turned.” Try making a perfectly diagonal line on one!!

Anyway, I was immediately reminded of an image my friend Eric Bobrow of Bobrow Consulting once shared with me:

CAD-Etch-a-Sketch

Are you still using CAD? Have you ever thought of what CAD really is? Think about it…

Friday, July 9, 2010

Event: buildingSMART in Architecture

Just a quick note that I will be giving a lecture in New York City at the Center for Architecture on July 13. My presentation is titled “buildingSMART in Architecture” and will be focused on how the design profession needs to step up to the plate and provide more relevance to the building process before builders and fabricators take over our services – and fees.  Several project case studies from HOK will be presented to support the notion of using BIM and integrated design and delivery to support life-cycle information stewardship, rather than just the latest way to deliver paper documents.

Registration is free, but you must RSVP at the AIA NY website by clicking here.