Resistance is Futile

Dear Anaheim, Oakland and San Diego,

Go ahead and install the deadbolts on your doors, buy extra ammo and stock up on PBR...while supplies last.

See you in Cali!

 

Generative Design and Parametric Structures

The July 2011 meeting of the New York City Revit Users Group featured a presentation by Robert Otani, PE, LEED AP and Jonatan Schumacher from Thornton Tomasetti.

By creating a collaborative dialog with the designer at the conceptual phase, the architectural, engineering & fabrication models can be developed simultaneously from the same geometric reference model, allowing a holistic design process.  Robert and Jonatan elaborate on this concept with case studies of actual project work with a variety of architectural firms.

Thornton Tomasetti (TT) is an internationally recognized engineering company whose computational geometry and automation team works at the forefront of advanced practices.  TT utilizes a wide range of commercially available as well as customized digital tools and automation procedures to model, simulate, and optimize engineering projects of various scales worldwide.

Note: The TT presenters begin about 7 minutes into the recording.

Starting vs. Starting Over

If you missed Autodesk CEO Carl Bass present his keynote at RTC USA you missed something wonderful.

First of all - he didn't wear of those wrap-around headsets. He leaned into the podium in a way that seemed to "ground" him (after having just descended from northern California) and began to present his case in a refreshing and relaxing manner.

Side note: on the topic of headsets, please allow me to say what everyone else is thinking: it's really hard to take anyone serious while they're wearing one. Madonna got really close and failed. Everyone else kinda looks like they escaped from a call center.

I'm trying...but I think my "come-hither" look is broken.

If only there were a rule of thumb. Well it turns out there is. When all else fails it pays to remember "WWJD": What Would Jobs Do.

Monthly Single Posted

July's monthly single has been posted! "GD Woman" is the title track from 2011's "Freeborn" CD. Rip. Mix. Burn. Share. Link. Just play it LOUD!

Download link at the bottom left: http://about.me/flattires

And yes - the highbrow among us may be go faint at the knees or scowl disapprovingly at the more base and visceral - but I've got news for ya:

Helping Shape the National BIM Standard

One of my 'little' side projects has been getting involved in some efforts at the buildingSMART alliance. Last year I began by participating in a group project to standardize cost estimating through the use of BIM. As you can imagine, that's an extremely difficult problem to solve and our efforts continue. More recently, I was asked to become involved with the National BIM Standard project committee for the United States. Given my prior experience with corporate standards at SOM, I agreed to join.

Since joining, I have been named the Chair of the Design Work Group for NBIMS-US version 2. Yes...in case you didn't already know, version 1 was completed a few years ago and can be downloaded for free from the buildingSMART alliance website. While the first version consisted of almost 200 pages dedicated to introducing the work of the NBIMS committee and the scope of BIM, it did start to address some key concepts towards the standardization of this oft misunderstood paradigm.

"Time's up. Had your chance. Muffed it."

Cudos to whoever posts the source of title of the blog post. Hint: It's a movie that first inspired my love for technology and design at the age of three! It's the story of one man that can design, build and dream. And in the end he gets the hot girl with the foreign accent and gruff father-in-law (that turns out to be a soft grandfather).

Oh shit...the parallels are scary.

Time Is Running Out

Do you make the decisions that your company ultimately implements? Do those decisions effect dozens (if not hundreds) of people and projects?

Are you essential to the success of your business?

Have you registered for RTC North America?

Here's What We're Gonna Do

Get up on my stage one more time...

Times are tough. So here's what we're gonna do.

The first of every month the FLAT TIRES are going to put up a single. Could be a song from one of their albums. Might be a live video from a recent show. Full fidelity. Not some crappy low-bandwith MP3.

You'll be able to download the single for a month. It's yours. Rip. Mix. Burn.

Revit In The Classroom

As many of you know, one of the chapters in "Beyond" section in Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012 is focused on using Revit in higher education. This past year, we had the pleasure of working with Singapore Polytechnic.

Partly Cloudy

Well, there's a lot of buzz over the "cloud" at the moment. Apple has even got all the fanboys wetting themselves like puppies with excitement over Monday's announcement. So before Steve throws the switch on his patented "Reality Distortion Field" I thought it best to inoculate you from all the hype coming next Monday. There's a couple of options (related to Apple) and a couple of implications (for the AEC space).

Time is Money

How's that rollout of Revit 2012 going?

Figured out Revit Server?

How about all the other stuff in the 2012 release?

• New Features?
• New Functionality?
• Best Practices?
• Latest and Greatest BIM-centric Technologies?

Well, there's at least two options:

Hasa Diga Eebowai!

Check out the insightful Terry Gross / NPR interview with Matt Parker and Trey Stone (of South Park fame) on their creative process while developing Broadway's "Book of Mormon". In contrast to taking about a week to completely write, animate and produce an episode of South Park, their Broadway production took the better part of the last 7 years.

Most surprisingly?  It's not two cynical hours of bashing either religion (broadly) or Mormonism (specifically).

Imaginaaaaaaation

What if you could travel back to a time where you had no limits on your imagination?

Like when you were a kid. And you drew like this:

Sloppy Seconds

Wasn't I just saying how it'd be interesting if Apple bought Viber and how established companies frequently grow through acquisition rather than innovation?

And today there's this: Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion.

My advice? Put down the keyboard and slowly, quietly step back and move away from Microsoft stock.

Please Give Me Another Chance! I Can Change!

The last post resulted in quite a few well reasoned comments and even three phone calls (one international). It seems that I've struck a chord. Three questions repeatedly arose:

1. What are you working on?
2. Why makes you think existing software company X/Y/Z isn't working on a disruptive solution to collaborate across domains?
3. What about standards across platforms?

Why Can't We Be Friends?

Hi. Glad you're home. Long day? Sorry to hear. You may want to sit down for the next bit. I've poured you a cold one. Take off your shoes. Relax. You said some things and I said some things which is really difficult for both of us to talk about. And we need to talk. It's not you, it's me. It's not that we've grown apart. It's not that I've been thinking about seeing someone else. Well, sort of. And I really want to be friends. We can be friends, right? Take another sip and I'll explain. There's something I need to confess...

Pencil's Down

"Talk about unhealthy communication: a hospital uses GE call systems for patients, Philips Emergin as an electronic interface for notifications, Cisco wireless to connect communications devices within the hospital and Siemens for its main phone system.

Enter an iPhone pilot program for nurses, which helps them monitor patients and communicate with each other quickly across all of those platforms."

So starts a brief article over at Cult of Mac that discusses a pilot program to integrate the fragmentation that has evolved in the medical space.

He's Still Building Blue Boxes

Before the iPhone came along, there was this thing called the Blue Box. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first digital version and made quite a bit of money selling them to university students. Because if you had a Blue Box - you could make long distance calls to anyone in the world...for free.

In other words - Steve Job got his start by creating technology that was ripping off AT&T.

Did I mention that Blue Boxes were illegal?

Mi Viaje a Santiago

I recently returned from a trip to Santiago, Chile during which I shared my experiences with BIM. It was quite an extraordinary journey that I have documented on Life@HOK. Read more about it…

Happy Monday

Are you sitting at your desk, staring at your screen and already asking yourself how you came to be surrounded by a sea of soul sucking cubicles?

A few weeks ago, a very dear friend who (like us all) periodically struggles to juggle family, career and other commitments was told by a superior that he could either have a successful career or a family - not both. The frank implication of the message was that he needed to jettison his family if he was going to move up the corporate ladder. While the message seems rather blunt, it's strangely familiar. For those of us who have studied Architecture it's not the first time we've heard it.

Friday Reprieve #33

We're done!

over 1500 pages
2 books
OMG. I can't believe it's over.

California Dreaming

FYI! Having quickly reached the "early bird" limit for attendees of Revit Technology Conference this year in Huntington Beach, CA early bird registration will close as of this Monday, 4 April (midnight PST). So far registrations have been received from 17 States across the USA as well as several other countries.

FLAT TIRES @ BONNAROO!!!

Everyone - please help us out! The FLAT TIRES are working their asses off and trying to get to the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, TN from June 9th-12th.

By clicking on this link and downloading the FLAT TIRES song "Pretty Lady", we'll be ranked according to the number of votes received. Only two bands - selected from the TOP EIGHT - will get to play at the festival. Voting ends April 15th so don't wait!

Revit 2012 - New Features

Hey, guess what? A post (or rather a link to a post) that has nothing to do with anything that's not about Revit.

David Light did a bang up job here documenting the new features coming to a workstation near you with Revit 2012.