E-Specs Demonstration

As part of the new Philadelphia Revit Users Group we will be hosting a
presentation by the makers of E-Specs on Monday evening April 9th. This
will not be a sales presentation by any resellers, rather it is meant to be
an informational gathering.

I encourage all Revit users (arch/struct/MEP) to come out. Also anyone
interested in Revit and some of the powerful uses of the BIM model should
come too.

For more details and to RSVP please go to the Philly Revit Users home page
whose link can be found in the left hand navigation bar.

Thank you,
-Robert

Smart Geometry

Recently (well in the last 2 months) I had the opportunity to go to a one day conference in New York City titled: Smart Geometry 2007. The conference was partially sponsored by Bentley Systems, makers of Microstation and other products. (Now I know my blog's title uses Revit, but really I'm interested in all things BIM). The conference was focused on the use of some relatively new software that has been built on top of Bentley's Microstation platform: "Smart Geometry". This software is a very dynamic and parametric software package that has the potential to allow a user to build extremely flexible, rule driven models. Unlike Revit where the programmers give the user certain access to certain functions with regards to control of your model (whether you're in a project or the family editor), Smart Geometry essentially gives you control over just about anything. When you're working in Smart Geometry it's part coding and part 3D modeling. The potentially uses of such a platform are near limitless, anything which has rules to it can be "modeled." Some of the current applications are: stadium design & seating configurations, curtain wall panel size optimization, structural design and derivation for export to analysis packages, form design and modification based on rules (FAR, proforma, programmatic requirements), adaptable and manipulatedable skins/shells. You can learn more about this unique software here:

http://www.smartgeometry2007.com/

There are some very intriguing possibilities with this unique and powerful software, and I firmly believe that it is simple another tool in our chest of BIM tools.

Its been awhile... Using your Project Browser & Project Template

Yes I know, I've been AWOL for quite sometime. quite busy here are my firm, so that is how life goes sometimes.

Recently I've been working on several project, news doors, re-visiting standardized casework and updating our project template.

Today I want to focus on a very minor change I've made to our project template. I've added two shared parameters, one called "view classification" to which it is assinged views, and the other "sheet classification". The purpose of these two new parameters is quite simple, it allows us to sort/filter our project browser by both. In the case of views, each view would get classified under 4 or 5 typical "categories"; Coordination, Presentation, Documentation, Working and CA (Construction Administration). While similiar information is conveyed in a number of ways via a number of other parameters in views, this makes it very easy to set up a Project Browser filter to quickly sort out all the views under these "global" headings. Coordination views would be preset views that would generally be exported to DWG for coordination with outside consultants. I think the next two speak for themselves, Working are the views that we encourage team members to actually "work in", this is typically quite important for floor plans, and sections (where your docuementation sections might be split and moved with break-lines added, etc...). Construction Administration is of course for the random extra views that get created during that process. Teams are welcome to define different, new or more classifications as they see fit. For sheets we start the team out with two classifications, Documentation and Presentation, I suspect however that most teams will find it handy to create a third "CA" when the time is right for their project. Once again the intent here is to get a team started by providing a simple set-up in our projec template. Hopefully teams will take this concept and run with it, and make it their own.

Cheers,
-R