Undernda blog

My colleague and friend, William Lopez Campo has finally decided to unleash a blog on us. You may well remember William from last years AU 2009 design slam, he was also the winner for the Berlin design slam with this little beauty…

A quick chat with William today and this is his vision for the blog…

“I’m hoping to capture some of those little developments I start but never finish, like the Inverse Kinematics application in Revit, or some scripting ideas that never progressed. Hopefully the comments and feedback will keep me going and I may get help to go past the tricky bits where I get stuck or inspire other explorations.”

Be sure to check out his blog at http://undernda.blogspot.com/

I promise you, there will be some high level stuff here! Welcome William, to the world of blogging. :-)

Another UK Revit blog appearance

Chris Senior from Revit Factory dropped me an email yesterday to say that he has started a blog called http://revitelemental.blogspot.com/.

“I’ve decided to setup this blog to discuss anything and everything Revit but primarily focussing on Revit content creation. I’ve been creating Revit families for the past 6 or 7 years and learnt a lot about what should and what shouldn’t be modelled as well as defining the appropriate level of detail. This has primarily been for Architectural firms I worked at in the past, then in more recent years for manufacturers and private companies”

As a long time user of Revit Chris has some good advice, so be sure to check his site out.

How did I miss this blog?

A slap wrist for me! With so much going on in the blogger sphere I haven’t a clue how I missed out on this blog, but be sure to check our Peter McCarthy’s http://revit-detail.blogspot.com/ blog, especially for those that say Revit can’t detail! Peter does a great job and changing that urban myth!

LRUG (London)

What the hell is “LRUG” you may ask? Well LRUG is short for London Revit User Group. Not more Rugs!!!! Unlike the US, the UK has always had a bit of a problem getting User Groups off the ground. They start, then run into allsorts of issues with funding, politics, goals etc etc. Been there, done that. So a couple of months ago I reopened a thread about a need for a UK group driven by users on Linkedin. It went along the lines; If I managed to get a room and a projector and every body threw in five quid for a beer and pizza, how many would actually turn up? The overall response from everybody was that it sounded like a bargain. So off the back of this, the LRUG was born. With the help of Carl Collins of Arup Associates and Alan Woolridge of Scott White Hookins and  Revit Learning Curve fame; we now have a London User Group. We are even organised enough to have a web site! wow! For more details go to……

http://www.lrug.org.uk/

The group plans to start smallish and hopefully grow into something which is sustainable….often these groups fall apart after a few meetings. But I (we) are keen that this group can grow and flourish. It has no secret agendas, it is trying to go back to grass roots; a group for users to share knowledge and learn from one another across all disciplines of Revit. We have been speaking with AUGI in the UK, so hopefully we will get some support from these guys. Whilst internet forums are a good place to share knowledge and learn from others, sometimes there is nothing like a warm beer and a dodgy pizza and face to face conversation to share your Revit tales. The first meeting is today 17th March 2010, this will be hosted by Arup Associates in London.

What I’m also hearing, is that a user group called BIM up North for northern UK users is in process of being formed as well as a Scottish user group. So 2010 could be the year of the Revit user group for the UK! :-)

Redesign London???

Fancy redesigning the London Skyline? If so checkout this interactive tool from Hayes Davidson. Hayes Davidson are one of the UK’s premier visualisation houses and have provided imagery worldwide to many of the worlds leading architectural firms.

http://www.hayesdavidson.com/skyline/

The Sustainable Design Toolbox blog

Good Revit colleague of mine, Simon Gillis from Autodesk, has started a great blog called The Sustainable Design Toolbox; which as it says, provides a European view on sustainable design and Autodesk sustainable design tools.

I have known Simon for ages and is employed as a technical sales consultant for Autodesk in Northern Europe, focused on Revit Architecture and Ecotect Analysis. He has worked for Autodesk for 11 years and before that various architectural practices in the UK. All round good guy with a wickedly dry sense of humour, check his blog out here…

http://thesustainabledesigntoolbox.typepad.com/

HOK BIM Solutions

Just a quick update to say that HOK CAD solutions Blog is no longer; its rebranded as HOK BIM Solutions and can be now be found at……

http://hokbimsolutions.blogspot.com/

This is part of HOK’s firmwide effort to drive forward with Building Information Modelling.

Newforma blog

Thought I'd share this with you, but a good friend of mine and ex colleague / manager, Tim Bates has started a blog on Newforma. Tim was never a big fan of blogs, but over the past few years I have managed to win him over; check out his post on I Hate Blogs!. :-)

Tim is well respected in the UK AEC community and helped drive the use of ADT in the UK in the early days on such projects as T5 and Barts in London. Prior to joining Newforma as Director of EMEA Operations, Tim was technical director of Excitech Ltd where he employed me as a Revit technical consultant. He was also a member of the CE Avanti Committee and secretary of the UK AEC Community Group, and has published several CPD-approved articles on technology-related topics in the Excitech Design Productivity Journal. Prior to joining Excitech, Tim founded and managed his own Autodesk dealership, T B Design Systems, based in Bristol, England.

Check out his blog here.....

http://pimintheuk.blogspot.com/

Building Coder and Revit Form Creation API

Jeremy Tammik's Building Coder blog has a amazing article on form creation using the API in Revit Architecture 2010. Not being a programmer, most of its gone over my head (need to get on a API class I think!!). But check it out here.....

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/revit-form-creation-api.html

CADwerx RevPac 1.0

A good friend  passed this on to me last week. This looks set to be a very useful tool!

"RevPac is a new set of productivity tools for Revit. For this initial release of RevPac the concentration will be on user interface enhancements. Later, tools to automate common tasks and streamline existing tasks will be added."

Check it out at:-

http://www.cadwerx.net/default.aspx?Path=RevPac

Excitech Blog - technology4design.com

My former colleagues, Excitech have started their own blog called technology4design. It focuses primarily on Autodesk software solutions and you will find some good information on all aspects, from Architectural through to Civils.

Its worth checking it out at www.technology4design.com

Autodesk Dragon Fly and Revit

You may already know about this, but if you haven't taken a look at Autodesk Dragonfly, you should!

http://dragonfly.autodesk.com/

Dragonfly is one of the many preview technologies that can be found at Autodesk Labs website. Dragonfly is using cloud technology and is a 3D environment which allows you to create simple 3D architectural floor plans.  The cool thing about this, is that once you've created your design you are able to export to Revit!

The Web app will then email you a link where you can down load the resulting Revit model. It would seem Revit elements are mapped to elements drawn in Dragonfly. Considering this is a preview technology, it works very well. This certainly provides an insight into the future direction of using the cloud for architectural design.

buildz blog

You've must check this blog out!!  http://buildz.blogspot.com/

Zach Kron is a Architectural Designer and Software Analyst for Autodesk and he pointed me in the direction of his blog today. You will find some really cool stuff here. I particularly like the tip he gives on Photographing BIM. :-)

Also, check out the batch script he has created which is a render queuing script for 2009 and 2010.

http://buildz.blogspot.com/2009/05/render-queue-ish-for-revit.html

Revitstore

If you are looking for Revit content, especially UK content, its worth visiting Revit Store.

http://www.revitstore.com/

Revit Store has been setup by Ian Howard, who used to work for Revit Technology as their EMEA Trainer before Autodesks acquisition of the company. Ian has worked in the Construction Industry for the past 30 years and 15 of those have been as a professional Trainer and Consultant. He original qualified as a Structural Technician and later moved on as an Architectural Technologist. He had a fundamental role in the early days in the creation of Autodesk Revit content, helping drive the UK market.

Ian's business is now based around Training and Implementation of all Revit platforms. Also he is a Content Developer creating numerous Content Family Libraries for a large international software vender and a number of Architectural and Structural companies.

Take a look at his website, also check out the tricks and tips pages.

What a mesh!!!!

I don't know how I missed this one! But Guillermo Melantoni, the Senior Product Manager for Autodesk, has started a new blog dedicated to AutoCAD's 3D capabilities. This is a useful read for anybody working with AutoCAD and Revit, especially around the freeform.

http://whatamesh.typepad.com/

In fact it was Guillermo who pointed me in the direction of this article posted on the Autodesk Area website, which shows the workflow improvements between 3dsMAX 2010 to AutoCAD 2010 and finally into Revit.

http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_ken/blog_detail/3ds_max_design_2010_improved_dwg_interop

Revit 2010 video tutorial

Dave Fano at Design Reform has released a great video tutorial which introduces the new mass environment in 2010, expect more video tutorials soon, check it out at....

http://designreform.net/2009/03/26/revit-2010-new-features-conceptual-mass-make-form-lofting/

So much going on.....

Ok, it would seem that now I have a real job I'm not posting as much as I should, hopefully this will change once the NDA comes down on Revit Architecture 2010. :-) Anyway there is loads of stuff going on in the Revit blogging world. Here are a couple of highlights I picked out recently.

Inside the Factory

Most of you probably know about the new Autodesk Inside the Factory blog, if you don't, take a look at it here:-

http://insidethefactory.typepad.com/my_weblog/

This should be essential reading for all Revit fans.

Revit Kid

Another blog which caught my attention is Revit Kid. This is a cool blog and has some great video tutorials. It seems to be geared towards those in education, but to be honest it has some great information and looks set to be a good learning resource. Check it out at:-

http://therevitkid.blogspot.com/

 

Revit-Programming

If you are into programming Revit, you should check out Ed Pitts'

http://revit-programmer.blogspot.com/

Ed is the technical director at CADsmart. "He has been developing in VB and VB.net for several years with Revit, AutoCAD and MicroStation. When he is not doing this he is either being a good father, a devoted husband, a competent builder, an impatient decorator, a keen photographer, a rusty guitarist or an expert Lambretta mechanic". The site includes VB examples and workthroughs and as Ed suggests  "I've decided to setup this blog to share the tips and tricks I learn on the way, as well as discuss the unresolved problems that highlight gaps in the API (or gaps in my knowledge!)."

Revit Factory re-launches

I bumped into Chris Senior from Revit Factory whilst I was at AU2008. He informed me that the website has been re-branded and re-launched.

Chris let me know that they are currently developing a corporate library section for Companies to host private libraries alongside the public library and this should be completed by the new year.

They have also included an RSS displayer for the site and this is allowing them to like back to over Revit web resources. If you want your site reference, drop Chris an email.

Chris also mentioned that the content section has only been live for 1 week but they are now receiving 100+ hits per day. There member sign-up rate has quadrupled in the last few weeks from an average of 10 members per week to 40. The content is very much UK focused, so for those that are struggling to find suitable UK content for Revit, check the site out.

http://www.revitfactory.com/

TopMod

I visited a well known architectural practice this week who specialize in freeform organic architecture. They  had asked me come in to present Revit Architecture 2009 to see how they may be able to incorporate into their workflow. However, in our discussions about software that they currently use they advised me to take a look at an application called TopMod. I wrote down the details and Googled it when I got home.

 http://www.topmod3d.org/

This is an amazing application! As the website says "TopMod3d is a free, open source, portable, platform independent topological mesh modeling system that allows users to create high genus 2-manifold (watertight) meshes". I knocked this up in about 2 minutes!

Agreed its not Revit, but I would certainly recommend you take a look if you like creating organic forms within a computer environment. TopMod has limited export capabilities, but I was able to save the file in .obj format and was then able to import this into 3dsmax.

I then exported the form from Max as a DWG and was able it import it into a Revit mass family. This is only a mesh, so you won't be able to cut floor plates from the mesh.

Quick draft render in Revit......

The Building Coder blog

This looks very interesting if you are into the Revit API and code development.

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/

This blog is devoted to developers working with Revit and is written by Jeremy Tammik from the Autodesk DevTech Team. To be honest this is all beyond me! But if you are into pushing the Revit API an SDK its well worth a visit.