Article of Interest

I'm not usually a big fan of the Architecture critic our local rag here in Philly, but for once she has a decent article: Changing Skyline: Building a McMini

Interestingly they're using SIPS, which is what we intend for our house (see previous post). Now I realize that prices don't scale linearly, but given their cost (around $100,000, not including land, etc.) I'm hopeful that we will be able to bring our house in at a reasonably price point too (do the math and they're somewhere around $100/sq ft).

House Renderings

Thanks to some tips from Buildz I've generated these recent renderings of our house design, doesn't it look warm and welcoming!


Also ran this interior rendering awhile ago:

2010 Graphic Error

This may just be my machine but when I switch scales I get the following image until I hover over the button with my mouse.




-K-


Edit: This happens with both hardware acceleration turned on and off.

Days of Our Revit (the software serial soap opera)

So just in case you've been hiding under a rock somewhere...

If you didn't know it, as a Revit user you are a supporting character in what has become a bit of a melodramatic soap opera. I've pretty much stayed out of the Revit 2010 debate for a variety of reasons, most of which I'll be happy to discuss in person, but not here.

However in case you didn't know, there is a bit of a raging debate that has hit new highs in the last few days. To catch up, you merely need to keep abreast of the following sites:

the main character

the brash, devilishly handsome male lead

the overprotective parents

the younger child, with an independent streak

the introspective old man

and lastly, you the supporting cast....

I never liked soap operas, and still don't. There are very valid opinions and thought out there, on both sides of the "issues". Some people might stir the pot a little more then others, but it seems foolish to not address the issues head on and in a civil, reasonable way. Action, reaction, and re-reaction are neither.

There are more links out there, and more blogs, this was just a sampling of what I tend to keep my eye on.

Batch Render for Revit....

Friend of mine has posted this handy script (modified journal file) for doing batch rendering out of Revit. "Set it and forget it" to process multiple views over the weekend on your powerhouse machine at work. One note, while testing found out that you need to have your project browser set to the default that comes standard in the ADSK project template. I see this as particularly useful for doing more in depth sun studies. I was recently wanting to do every 5 mins for about 2 hours for an interior room on our house design. Currently you can only do a minimum of 15 minutes over a 24 hour period. Using this script, you would have to set-up views for each moment in time, but would give you far more control. Think of it as "stop motion animation" for Revit... :) You could even animate doors and other stuff!

http://buildz.blogspot.com

Vote for AU

Vote for AU courses.

Robert Manna's Courses:
Good Revit Project Templates
Finding Value in Revit When You're Not Doing IPD
What makes a Good Project Template - Unplugged

Krista Manna's Courses:
Revit in Living Color
The Standardization of Revit: Are you stifling your firm's creativity - Unplugged

And last but not least our joint venture:

Residential IPD: How to use Revit with Pre-fabricated Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs)

Please feel free to vote for our courses. We're both very excited about these courses and look forward to teaching them.

Submit AU Courses

Don't forget that AU courses are due this week. That includes Un-plugged sessions.

AU Courses


-K-

Revit Apps

Handy Revit apps a colleague of mine collected on his blog.

STC is the way of the dinosaur

In response to Steve Staffords Blog post:

STC is no more. Now it's SWC. To me this is harder to say and awkward. I think I may just stick with saying "sync" from now but am saddened by the loss of the revit language. STC was one of those phrases that you knew you were part of an exclusive club being a "reviteer". Say the password and you get to join our club. Oh well. Autodesk obviously thought it was confusing to users. "Syncronizing" is more appropriate to what you are actually doing.

-K-

Electrical Families 2009 vs. 2010 Comparison

Recently I've been working on a project that required a ton of electrical families. Now before all the engineers out there have a fit, We're doing an interior fit out where we are showing the locations of all the power devices. The MEP engineers are not in Revit so we're have to do this coordinating ourselves.

Because of this I was called upon to create a ton of electrical content for us poor architects and interior designers to use in 2009 mind you. So I open new electrical family and go to town. Only to find out my annotation family I have loaded in doesn't maintain it's orientation. So I go to the "Category and Parameters" to see what I can find:

...... Nothing Useful ......







MEP has this option why don't I?

So with getting 2010 "officially" installed (aka not beta anymore) I figured I'd check out what I get in that.


I can see it .... but I can't check it.







Seriously, what the use is that going to do me? I would rather you had left it not visible at all. That way I could live in ignorant bliss.

The one good thing that has now been added is that I can place MEP connectors in Arch. This option is now available when you create a new electrical family.






While this is useful, I'd also like to be able to maintain the orientation of my annotations. Oh, Revit. Why do you tease me so?

-K-

Metamorphic Tag

I have a tag that when I zoom in on it, it seems to change the angle of the symbol once you get past a certain zoom level. Didn't know my tags were shape shifters. :-) Maybe I should just call this tag Odo. (I'm really showing how much of a geek I am and if you know what I'm talking about so are you!)





-K-

Missing Room Tag

This morning I had a teammate come to me and ask why a room was not showing up on her plan. I jumped in to investigate. Here are the parameters of the issue:

-Room & Tag could be placed on a ceiling plan
-Room & Tag could not be placed on Floor plan (received the check your visibility graphics error message)
-Room has all the same parameters as the rooms next to it (workset, height, etc.)

Q: Why would this room tag not show while all the others would?

A: Plan region.

A plan region had been placed in one location of this room to show the clerestory that was above the cut plane. The plan region was bigger then the wall thickness so cut into the space the room was in and was preventing the room from being visible. I don't fully understand why the plan region would do this considering the height the plan region was taken at would also cut through the room. I know of plenty of errors that plan regions seem to cause such as hatches in walls suddenly showing up as the wrong hatch because it has a plan region in one area of the wall. And there are plenty more. Just as a forewarning be careful where & when you use these. It may cause you more grief then it's worth.

-K-

RE: Link, The quest continues ....

Just a quick note about rendering with linked models.

In order for your linked model to render properly you need to :

A) make sure your model is linked to the current construction phase or your view is set to show complete. Otherwise everything in the linked model will render as grey.

B) Any custom material you create & assign to your geometry in the linked file needs to also be created in the file you are rendering from. They absolutely need to be called the same thing otherwise you get the following (unless you want to have red & black checker board wall finishes):




-K-

Link & the quest for the princess

Ever get this message? The real problem? Well when you get this message it means that you have files that have been linked into that linked revit file that can no longer be loaded into the project. This reinforces my belief in limiting the number of cad files linked into a project to one or none. The solution to solve this message is simple: unlink or relink any & all cad files in the linked revit file.

-K-

And now there are two: Part 1

In the beginning there was only Robert blogging. Now there are two.

Finally, after a long week at AU and pushing for a deadline as soon as I got back, I get to post my first post on this blog.

As some avid readers of this blog (and people I met at AU) already know Robert is my husband. So because most of you know his story let me first start off by telling you a little about myself.

I grew up in Albany, NY. I met Robert while attending RPI in Troy, NY. Came to work in Philadelphia, seeing as I wanted to actually live with my husband and he graduated first so I had no choice of location. I started working for a small 5 person residential firm in the area. After about a year I decided that I wanted to work on larger projects so I started working for Burt Hill with Robert. My first two weeks there I was thrown onto their first Revit project 2 weeks before CD’s were due. Talk about sink or swim strategy. :-) I fell in love with the program and have been an avid “evangelist” ever since. I now work for NELSON, a 500 person mostly interiors firm implementing Revit. Currently, we have two projects in Revit (well we’re back to one now that my deadline is over). The ongoing project is a 200,000 s.f. ground up project where we are doing the interiors only.

Now that I got that out of the way now on the more interesting topics: AU Unplugged. I really enjoyed my first speaking engagement at AU this year. It was a little nerve racking seeing as I’m not the best public speaker (thus why I’ve been staying out of the limelight thus far). But for some reason when I got that Unplugged email I felt compelled to submit.

It was really interesting to hear the debate about how much people model vs. don’t model. Some people were under the category of modeling everything save you time. Others were under the modeling everything makes the files too big. Both are very valid points. As far as me, I fall somewhere in between. If I’m going to cut a ton of sections through stuff or I’m going to render something, I tend to model it. But for other stuff, such as public bathrooms, nobody cares if they see the toilets in 3d. I mean unless you’ve designed some really hot looking bathroom, you’re not going to need to render it. By the way, I was on a project where we did end up rendering the bathrooms to show the client.

TO BE CONTINUED ....

-Krista-

Design Symposium (afternoon)

For those in the UK or designing for temperate climates, check out www.carbonbuzz.org. You can upload data anonymously, or let people know who you are, you can also benchmark against published standards. Either way, it helps you determine how you're doing on carbon use for a building. The trick is account for this type of information as you design (which is where the computation part comes in).

Earlier in the morning saw some interesting real examples of active facade elements designed by Hoberman Associates (Chuck Hoberman).

AU 2008 - Computational Design Symposium

So, Krista and I arrived yesterday. We're now attending the inaugural "Design Computation Symposium" hosted by Robert Aish. So far we have had a a fascinating presentation by Neil Katz of SOM, showing examples of 20 years of "Computational Design" work and application to a variety of scales from skyscrapers to interior "transparent" walls made of metal or corian.

After that we've seen some hints of what is coming in Revit Structure and Robot (Structural Anaylsis) to help Architects work with engineers to better understand how to derive efficient, elegant structures to support our building designs. By using analysis and permutation to understand various possibilities meeting different criteria.

Most recently we just saw a great "demo/review" of Ecotect by Dr. Andrew Marsh and the possibilities of scripting with Ecotect to generate "realtime" parametric anaylsis to understand the impact of passive sustianable design strategies on one's building design.

So far, an eventful and interesting morning, with more to come.

Andersen Windows

Anyone who has been around Revit for awhile knows that a long time ago Andersen Window and door came out with some families that impossibly complex and overbearing. So, since we're modeling/designing our own house, and we want Andersen Windows and Doors, I broke down and built some for myself. I've loaded them up on Revit city, you'll find single, double and triple casements & awnings (which share the same basic details). I followed the 200 series, but that generally matches the 400 series too. I did type catalogs for the casements. They all use a "core" casement or awning family that is shared nested. The cores are built with simple sweeps based on simplified Andersen details, so feel free to make more detailed if you desire. You'll also find simple interior and exterior trim that you can easily modify if you want. Find them here.

Happy Thanksgiving, and see you at AU!
-R

AU 2008 UnConference

If you follow the AU blog you know the UnConference Schedule has been released. This is the second annual UnConference at AU and for a second year in a row I will be running a session. You can also find out more information here.

My session this year is entitled: Size Doesn't Matter: A Discussion on Strategies for Complex Revit Projects Large and Small

So what would I like to see this discussion all about? In the last four years of working with Revit, I've come to realize that any number of conditions—such as multiple design firms, Integrated Project Delivery, multiple 3D models, phasing or early bid packages—can transform a straightforward design job into a knotty Revit problem. In that time I've discussed, observed and participated in several projects exploring a variety of techniques to address these issues.

This session is meant to be an active conversation by the attendees about their experiences and expertise. This will allow a broader and more detailed discussion of what works, what doesn’t, and when and where various strategies are appropriate. I'm expecting participants to use example project and conditions from their experiences to focus on Revit techniques, which may be influenced by hardware considerations but are fundamentally about selecting approaches when working in Revit. Be prepared to actively participate if you come.

My wife Krista will also be running her own UnConfernece session: Pros & Cons of 3D
Modeling vs. 2d Detailing in Revit

Hope to see you there.

A new favorite software & toy

Awhile back I bought myself a small little Bamboo tablet from Wacom. For those more familiar with the larger versions, this little $70 toy, is nice, it slips in my laptop bag effortlessly, and only requires a USB cable (no wall wart!). I can use it on my lap or at a desk without a problem.

The problem was, outside of Photoshop, I didn't have any good software to use it with, my laptop doesn't have TabletPC Edition on it, and most other programs (even sketch-up) are not really tablet friendly. You may recall I talked about Moi awhile back, adn while it is built for tablet use, I never have gotten into it, and I don't really need a modeling program like that at this time.

What I was originally hoping for when buying the tablet, was the ability to do some sketching, either on digital printouts (like PDF's), image files or freehand. Enter Autodesk, this summer they showed us a cheap little program called "Sketchbook Pro".

Sketchbok Pro is a nice little sketching program. Nothing fancy really, Autodesk says they benchmark against Photoshop as they develop Sketchbook. What is extremely nice is that its built for use with a tablet and stylus. The interface requires no right clicking and the gestures to manage the interface are tablet friendly. I've been using it primarily at the moment to work on our house, while we have a beautiful Revit model, it is often nice to sketch out ideas (check out the screenshot).