Last Minute Gift Idea

Whether you’re celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah this time of year, consider this for the architect or designer in your life…

Both Mastering Revit Architecture 2012 and Revit Architecture 2012 Essentials are still on sale from most online retailers and in your local book store. They are also available in the iTunes Store (Mastering/Essentials) and on Amazon for the Kindle (Mastering/Essentials). There are some really great prices available now…(check out Mastering on iTunes!)

‘Mastering’ is the perennial best seller that takes the casual Revit user above and beyond the basics into Jedi status. This is much more than a ‘picks and clicks’ book – it includes so much insight into the reasons and workflows for using various tools and settings.

‘Essentials’ is a new venture for the Mastering author team. It is designed for an academic or training environment and is targeted for beginners who have had little or no experience with Revit. Each chapter contains detailed step-by-step exercises that can be used in 90 minute lessons. Various chapters can be combined to create a customized 3-day training program to get yourself, your students, or your employees up to speed with Revit Architecture.

It's That Time Of Year (Again)

Intolerant people accusing intolerant people of being intolerant. Fortunately we have Mr. Hankey to remind us all to try and get along and bake cookies. Enjoy!

We used to celebrate Festivus. But the annual "Airing of Grievances" got to be too damn much. Not to mention that scotch and pumpkin pie is a dangerous mixture before demonstrating "Feats of Strength".

Lose the Battle, Win the War

I'm with George. Those Twilight books are a menace. Milly (12) says the books are full of "romance and intrigue...but little more". Yet she can't put them down.

Protect the fluffy kittens

Have you ever been frustrated when people say "ATM machine" or "department of redundancy department?" I feel your pain. Since the building industry has adopted the acronym BIM, it has generated a new phenomenon...the "BIM model." If you're reading this and thinking to yourself, 'hey, what's wrong with that?' then perhaps you mean to say 'building information model model?' Some of my friends and colleagues have suggested that saying 'BIM model' implies the verb interpretation of BIM so you get 'building information modeling model,' but I think that's a thin argument.

In an attempt to relieve some of our pain and mental anguish, some of us have taken to social media channels to clarify this sampling of techno-speak. John Tocci, Jr (@tocci2) tweeted: "Every time someone says 'BIM model' a fluffy kitten dies.' Being a big fan of dramatic statements as a vehicle to get a point across, I shared this theory during my presentation at the Washington, DC BIMForum and it seems to have gone viral. Check out the hashtag #fluffy_kittens.

The 'fluffy kitten' theory has even expanded beyond the borders of 'BIM model' into the realm of Levels of Development or LOD. Jim Bedrick now evokes the kitten theory when someone refers to an 'LOD### model.' This will be a full topic I'll discuss in a future post, but let's just say Jim gets equally upset with this as he does with 'BIM model!' Other folks such as Dan Russell from Sundt Construction prefer to apply a more positive spin to the kitten theory. Instead of 'killing kittens,' Dan says that every time someone says 'BIM model,' a coyote gets lunch!

Now, before you go out to the next BIM conference and start heckling the speaker by meowing every time he or she says...that phrase...let me explain a better solution to the problem. As an involved member of the National BIM Standard-US project committee, I have been a staunch supporter of the definition of standard terminology for industry BIM uses. Although BIM uses, workflows and information exchanges have been under specific development by buildingSMART international for quite some time, definitions were published in Penn State University's BIM Execution Planning Guidelines (bim.psu.edu). Without describing this effort in too much detail in this post, I encourage you to become familiar with these definitions.

Instead of abusing the redundant term 'BIM model,' perhaps we could start using some of the following terms:

• Design Authoring model
• Energy Analysis model
• Existing Conditions model
• 3D Coordination model:
• Discipline Design Model
• Aggregated Design Model
• Trade Fabrication Model
• Aggregated Fabrication Model

Of course, the industry is gradually starting to look at model servers to support collaboration and information exchange, so these ‘model’ terms may be short-lived. In the meantime, do the world a favor and help protect our fuzzy, little feline friends...don't say 'BIM model.'

RTC USA Prospectus Released

The exhibitor and sponsor prospectus went out last night around 11pm on the east coast. If your company didn't get the email, please click the above image or this link to download the PDF. Then get back to me ASAP.

And in other news, registration links open soon. First 100 "early birds'" get last years pricing.

Come on Wes! Get those links going…James' and Eddy's mouse button fingers are poised!

Performance-Based Design at NYCRUG

The next meeting of the New York City Revit Users Group will feature Matt Jezyk and Zach Kron from Autodesk. They will be speaking about advanced form finding techniques in Revit and Vasari that are connected to performance analysis work flows. If you’ve seen Zach’s blog at buildz.blogspot.com or his class at Autodesk University with William Lopez Campo, you’ll know you’re in for a treat!

When: Weds December 14 at 6:00 pm

Complete details can be found at nyc-rug.com, or you can register for the free webcast!

BIM Content for Revit

This post contains a listing of known websites hosting content for Revit. We’ll try to keep this post updated as sites change or new ones are created. This information was partially compiled from Mario Guttman’s AU 2011 class “Revit Family Counseling” (visit Mario’s own site whitefeet.com for custom Revit tools).

Manufacturer’s Content

Autodesk Seek – content aggregated by Autodesk; contains default Revit families as well as manufacturer-specific content, low to moderate quality control; content in a variety of formats, search can filter for specific formats; free, no registration required.

ARCAT – generic and manufacturer-specific content; modeled by ARCAT, high quality control; free, no registration required.

bimstore – manufacturer-specific content; modeled by bimstore, high quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

SmartBIM – manufacturer-specific content; modeled by SmartBIM, high quality control; free, no registration required.

Sweets – manufacturer-specific content, modeled by manufacturers, quality control unknown; various formats, can’t filter by format type; free, registration required for download; much of the 3D content is in SketchUp format.

RevitComponents – manufacturer-specific and general content, mostly modeled by site author; quality control unknown; free, registration not required.

ArcXL – Revit and CAD details (2D); drafted by ArcXL, quality control unknown; free, registration required for download.

Content for Sale

Broutek – buy and download content; purchase content credit packs which range from $32 to $60 per credit; content custom made by request/payment.

PinnacleCAD – custom content creation for fee; samples available.

Yellowbryk – premade Revit content and custom content services.

RevitBay – premade Revit content.

FormFonts – subscription site with a variety of content and formats, can’t filter for specific formats

TurboSquid – variety of general content; high quality. (Hyperlink will direct to Revit content)

ArchVision RPC – wide variety of rendered entourage; high quality.

Community Content

RevitCity – downloadable user content, no quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

RevitForum – downloadable user content, no quality control; free, registration required for downloading content.

Project Sauron

AU2011 was wonderfully successful. Quite a few people have been asking about M-SIX and VEO™. Unfortunately, unless you attended one of our closed door presentations, I can't go into any detail at the moment.

However, I can say this:

When you're building the world's first truly integrated, collaborative and cloud-based platform for the design, construction and operation of building and infrastructure…not just any dataset will do.

-Mort

Making More $$$ in Tough Times - AB2340

PDF Download: http://tinyurl.com/bsoyp2l

iPad Download: http://tinyurl.com/87d8w39

Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments.

Up, Up and Away

Update!

Calling All Abstracts!

Great Location:

EVERGREEN MARRIOTT CONFERENCE RESORT
STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA

Dates:

THURSDAY 28 – SATURDAY 30 JUNE, 2012

Abstracts Due:

WEDNESDAY 30th NOVEMBER 2011

Links to Abstract Submission:

HERE

One More Thing (™)

Building Pumpkins

Zach Kron has done it again! His annual “Parametric Pumpking Carving” contest has drawn out the absolute best in Revit modeling ability. Check out the winners posted on the Buildz blog:

http://buildz.blogspot.com/2011/10/happy-halloween-iii.html

Happy Halloween!

Viva Las Vegas!

Have you guys seen this!!??

3Dconnexion is offering a trip to Autodesk University in Las Vegas on Nov. 29 through Dec. 1. This includes airfare, accommodations and a SpacePilot PRO 3D mouse! But you have to register by midnight PDT on November 7, 2011.

To enter this drawing, please complete fill out the brief form over at 3Dconnexion.

Link here.

The winner will be contacted by email or phone on November 8, 2011 and will have 3 days to claim prize.

And if you get to go to AU 2011 compliments of 3Dconnexion via the link on this blog, you hereby agree to share the goodness by offering to have a drink with James, Eddy and Phil. Okay - this last paragraph is not found in the official terms and conditions of 3Dconnexion's offer, which can be found over here.

BIM+IPD Ensure Success at HOK New York

The latest monthly meeting of the NYC Revit Users Group was a joint event with the NYC Metro BIM Group and featured a panel discussion about the use of BIM and Integrated Project Delivery for the relocation of HOK’s New York City office. We had a fantastic turnout and many fantastic questions to feed the dialogue. We chose a few key representatives of the project team as follows:

• Architect/Owner – HOK; Jason Zoss
• Engineer – Flack + Kurtz; Cheryl Massie, Frank Padilla and John Gerney
• Construction Mgr – Structuretone; Arash Yaghoubi
• Subcontractor – ABCO Peerless Sprinkler Corp.; Patrick Bowe

Here’s the recorded session (note that the formal presentation starts around 10 minutes into the recording):

We were also delighted to have attendees view the live webcast from the following locations: Boston, California, St. Louis, Chicago, Alaska, Egypt, Vancouver, New Jersey, Alabama, and Washington, DC! Watch for our upcoming meetings at http://nyc-rug.com

RIP Steve Jobs | 1955-2011

How easy to criticize something. How difficult to make something. How much more difficult to make something beautiful and how uncommon to make a difference.

Interoperability is Cool

Who says it’s not hip to be “OPEN?” Have a listen to this diddy and be sure to check out the new database of software with IFC import/export capabilities.

Autodesk in the cloud

This is interesting, especially in the light of what's happening lately. Rumor has it that Dropbox turned down a $800M purchase bid by Apple earlier this year. Apple is releasing their own iCloud later this month (www.apple.com/icloud). Now it looks like Autodesk is getting in the game with a 1 GB option that will allow you to post and share files to their cloud offering.












What makes this really interesting to me is the race to host your data. Microsoft has a 25GB option, Amazon has one for 5GB. They're seemingly everywhere. Do you use one? Will you use ADSK's?

UPDATE: Just because this is important to me, it doesn't seem to work on a Mac. which is odd for a web-based platform. Maybe v1.2.

All The Right Enemies

Good news from FLAT TIRES HQ: "All The Right Enemies" has been accepted by Pandora's Music Genome Project. Here's a list of the straight-up rock and roll goodness (all available here on iTunes):

1. Drink It Dry
2. Rock & Roll Weekend
3. All the Right Enemies
4. Trailer Daze
5. Pretty Lady
6. She's Alright
7. You're Gonna Like It
8. See See Rider
9. Fornication
10. Rag On
11. Carolina S**t Stomp

So to celebrate - here's a link to download the opening track "Drink It Dry" (NSFW).

Enjoy!!!

And as an added bonus Eddy will be pleased to know (as I was going to the post office anyway) I've gone ahead and dropped off my share of the signed contracts for Mastering Revit 2013. Here we go!

Job Opening

Let's see if Netflix CEO Reed Hastings can make it out of the company before the screen door hits him.

• Strike One: Raise prices too fast too soon and without believable explanation. Lose 1 million customers.
• Strike Two: Walk away from negotiations with 1st run content provider Starz.
• Strike Three: Further confuse your customers by splitting your business into separate content delivery models.

Result? Piss off your customers long enough and you'll eventually piss off your share holders that don't like watching their investments fall by nearly 50% in 8 weeks.

I predict more hemorrhaging is on the way. Usually the only thing that'll slow the bleeding it is announce the person that keeps driving into the ditch has been told to let go of the wheel and get out of the car.

Crashed and Burned

I installed Bootcamp this week to get better Revit performance on some rather large files. I also installed an application to allow access to my OSX partition from Windows 7.

And in the process corrupted my OSX partition.

Carbon Copy Cloner saved it all and 24 hour later I'm up and running. I could have restored from a 2 week old Time Machine backup - but wasn't willing to lose two weeks of effort.

If you have a Mac - Carbon Copy Cloner rocks. Grab it.

And go ahead and grab Tinker Tool while you're at it. Great for showing access to all the hidden files and such.

Now's Your Chance

Mark your calendars! The FLAT TIRES are headed to California for three days this week:

• Thursday @ The Doll Hut in Anaheim
• Friday @ Eli's Mile High Club in Oakland
• Saturday @ The Shakedown Bar in San Diego