Autodesk University 2017 Top Sessions and Tips on Speaking

This past November, I had the good fortune of presenting a session at Autodesk University 2017 with my office neighbor Donnie Gladfelter. Our session, Overcoming the Seven Deadly Sins of Corporate Training Programs, was just tagged as one of the top rated sessions at AU this past year.

First off of, I am really proud of the hard work that Donnie and I did and I am so excited that others seemed to enjoy the session as well. It was a topic we are both very passionate about, we feel is very important, and it looks like others agreed.

With that, I thought that I might take a detour on my usual blog topics (which are a little few and far between) and share some tips that helped me out getting up in front of people and speaking. Career wise, speaking at conferences is still new to me, but I am getting a lot of sessions under the hood at this point. Most of these tips you are going to find other places, but I will emphasize the ones that I found especially helpful considering many of my (and maybe your) presentations involve some software demo too.

Do your research

I don’t mean research on your topic, which is a no brainer. I mean you need to watch and attend other similar speakers. You get great ideas on how to present and see how other folks manage crowds, pace themselves, etc.

Prepare prepare prepare

This is the no brainer. Spend the time. Run through your session several times. Ask someone else to look over it. Especially if you are teaching a topic on how to do something in software, it’s always good to walk someone else through it first. You probably know 100% how to do the task, so having another set of ears and eyes on it is very helpful to let you fill the gaps.

Love your topic

Do a presentation on something that excites you. Your audience will see your enthusiasm and be excited by it.

Test your software

Are you demo’ing software? Test it out. Then test it again. Then don’t upgrade Windows or your software or anything at all. I will never forget the first time I presented at BILT Europe and I had a beta version of the Classification Manager on my laptop that it was testing. You know where this story is going. The software didn’t run right. And someone mentioned it in the class feedback, as they 100% should have. I screwed up and I will work very hard to not let that happen again. In fact…

Get your handouts done

You are probably talking about very technical steps during your presentation, and everyone will pay attention, but they are definitely going to need help after to follow the steps.

Think about recording your demo

A recent trend I’ve noticed (see “Do you research” above) is the recording of demos in small chunks and playing the video instead of “doing it live”. I like this idea and am planning on trying it out soon.

Get there early

On the day of your session, get to your room early. Be waiting at the back of the room for the next session to end. When it’s done, your strike! Well, just go up and start plugging your stuff in.

Know how to manage folks

You are the MC for this presentation. You are hosting everyone in that room. If someone starts to take over the conversation, you need to delicately shut that down. Be polite, but be sure everyone knows you are the captain. A benevolent and kind captain, but the captain nevertheless.

Just do it

If you want to share your knowledge with the world, this is a great way to do it. But you have to start doing it. And honestly, you are not going to be comfortable the first time, or even the second. It’s gonna take a couple of these under your belt before you feel like you are in the groove. Luckily, your audience is VERY forgiving as long as you are prepared and enthusiastic. They aren’t going to notice the tiny little things that you will.

So get out there! Spread the word! And have a blast doing it!

BILT and Workset1

In the world of the Internet, I definitely waited too long for a BILT NA 2017 recap. Here’s my summary: I went, I talked, I learned a lot, it was awesome. Seriously, it’s a fantastic conference if you have any interest in technology and the design and construction of buildings.

I might have forgotten to put my name on some slides so I updated my tag to match

I am a nerd at heart, and I am one of those nerds that isn’t exactly “at home” in social situations. But I really have to say that one of the best things about BILT is meeting the people and hearing all their great new ideas.

One of those people I got to meet was Amber Young, an engineer at Affiliated Engineers. We’d bump into each other every so often and as happens, the conversation would turn to Revit… you know… like happens EVERYWHERE.

So, I don’t remember exactly what led to this particular point, but we got to talking about Worksets. I am not a fan of them, especially when used for visibility control. They aren’t layers, and they are one of the most “manual” things in Revit. It’s like a folder that you dump elements into, and that’s not what I want to use to group things in my model; I want to use the data INSIDE the elements. So, I always push for a very limited amount of Worksets, but follow the usual lines… maybe make worksets per geographic areas, maybe do an interior vs exterior, maybe have one for FFE, etc.

Amber kind of blew my mind when she dropped this on me: she said they only have ONE WORKSET in their models these days.

One workset?! I was stunned at the gusto of it. Then my mind clicked into a list of a million questions, but unfortunately, we parted almost immediately, heading to different sessions…

• Literally just ONE workset?
• Do you merge Shared Levels and Grids?
• Surely, you must have a workset for links, or DWGs?
• Do you just leave it named “Workset1” (because that is kind of a cool rallying cry)?

I love the beauty of this idea, and I love that someone is trying it out, but I do need my questions answered! Is anyone out there doing this? Who else has been brave enough to throw of the shackles of worksets and cry “no more will I be a locked down to a manual system of organization inside my database!”?

If you are doing this, I’d love to hear from you. I need to know more.

For Your Consideration…

Autodesk University has introduced voting for its courses this year, and I have made a handful of submissions that I would love you to think about voting for.  It’s just like the Oscars!  Sort of!

You can get to the voting site here, and you can search for my proposals by their names below.  It would be awesome if you’d click VOTE on them…

• COBie and Classification Systems in Revit
• Enhance Your BIM Workflow with the Autodesk BIM Interoperability Tools
• How NOT to be a CAD Manager: Battle-Tested Secrets for Success
• Maintaining Revit Model Standards: Autodesk Model Checker for Revit and Configurator
• Overcoming The 7 Deadly Sins of Corporate Training Programs

I appreciate your time and hope to see you out at AU!

My Webinar Setup

It’s been a bit longer than I like since I’ve made a post here. In truth, I’ve been putting a lot of my posting effort over on blog.caddcommunity.com, beefing up the technical posts on that site. It’s been fun, but I have missed dropping a note or two over here.

I figured there’s not much need to offer up Revit tips, but there are certainly tech and industry related things I’d like to write about, things that don’t fit in over at the other site.

I’ve been doing a lot of webinars lately, and for the presenter it is an odd way to present. It took a couple runs, but I finally don’t feel TOO weird talking to an empty room, and pretending there are people there. It also took me a couple runs to finally get a setup that makes me feel confident in presenting online. I had to steal a neighbor’s monitor, but he hasn’t noticed that it’s missing yet.

Above is what I see when I present. The left most monitor, the laptop, is the actual screen that is being presented. I found that some programs can throw me some graphics glitches when GoToWhatever is running and the program is not on the primary monitor. So anything on that screen gets shown. I typically also dial down my resolution a bit when I present.

Working our way right, the first stand alone monitor I have split: the left half shows me the PowerPoint presenter view with my notes, upcoming slide, etc. But even if I am mainly doing a software demo, I keep that running because it has a big clock on it. Next to that is OneNote that has the outline of the presentation I am doing, to make sure I hit all the key points.

On the table next to that monitor is my Cthulhu mug… Always good to have an Elder One keeping an eye on you.

The landscape oriented monitor has a couple of functions. I keep most of the GoTo windows open there including the chat window, the questions window, the audience view window, and then the main menu so I can click the record button, or make sure my audio is going through. If I have multiple programs to demo, I will also keep them open and cascaded on top of each other so I can just drag and drop them onto the presentation monitor when I need them. I prefer that over Alt-Tab or Windows-Tab. I always seem to miss the program I want when I Tab through. This gives me a lot more control. THen typically I just close the program when I am done with it.

So that’s my layout. If you need to do online presentations, maybe you can grab something from this. Does it justify me having three monitors? Probably not. But it does make it easier for me to keep an eye on everything I need to when I’m in my room talking to nobody. 

Making COBie Sexy

I’ve had the pleasure of being part of the team responsible for the Autodesk Revit Interoperabiity Tools, and it’s been a treat helping to figure out how to make the best tool and continue to refine them. They have been in development and available in one form or another for a couple years now, but our website www.biminteroperabilitytools.com has only been live a few months and we’ve gotten a tremendous response. Couple the with the recent UK BIM Mandate, and the need to get our Revit models to work with other applications has never been greater.

I was only loosely familiar with COBie before I got involved with the tools, so working on the Autodesk COBie Extension for Revit has been a great way for me to learn more about it. Put simply, COBie is a standard format for sharing data between applications, in this case from Revit to… whatever application you need it to go to. COBie is not software specific, and that’s is strength and why it’s being adopted by so many government and public entities.

I had to give an presentation recently on all the tools, and I wanted to quickly sum up what impressed me about the COBie Extension. To be frank, COBie by itself is kind of lackluster. I mean, it shouldn’t be exciting, it’s about data exchange and it needs to be fast and efficient. But a little glitz goes a long way in selling a concept.

That’s what the COBie Extension does, it makes COBie for Revit users sexy. The utility is a Revit add-on that does the best job of any COBie tool in collecting and creating applicable COBie data. I say “applicable” because the extension will generate as much data directly from the Revit model as it can, but a lot of the information is simply impossible to get from the model; you don’t track that kind of stuff in Revit.

Where possible, the tool has added some great features to enhance the model and keep track of things that COBie cares about, but Revit doesn’t understand (see the awesome Zone Manager feature).

The big thing for a lot of folks I imagine, as it was huge for me, is simply integrating the creation and collection of that data into a Revit interface and relating it backs to the model. As a Revit user this was HUGE in helping me understand what COBie wanted and what it didn’t.

“Sexy” may be too strong a word, but the COBie Extension certainly make COBie more accessible and easier to use for Revit users.

A Little Dash of IT Magic for Deployments

The nature of deployments means that they will most likely end up on a network server somewhere. But for one reason or another, you might not want to just dive in and create those deployments right on the server: you could be running out of space, you might be testing out a new configuration, or it’s often just a good idea to test these things out first anyway.

Two assumptions with this trick. First, you are using the Autodesk Deployment tools with your software. Secondly, you are going to be deploying from a mapped drive (that has its own potential issues, but it’s a very common practice).

I like to be able to have my cake and eat it too. In this case, that means creating a test deployment in a sandbox, but being able to use it for my final deployment if it works. Let’s say we want to make our deployments on the network L: drive. Being good software folks, we don’t want to create our deployments on that drive directly. It’s easy to disconnect the drive, but how do you convince your local PC that it has that L: drive?

Time to crack open the Command Line! Good old DOS. The command subst allows you to set a local folder as a new drive letter, spoofing it so Windows sees a new drive.

I’ve used this all the time to build deployments. I have to make sure my folder tree matches the real network drive… so if my network deployments live under L:\Autodesk, I make a folder on my C: drive called Deploy, then I use subst to make my computer think that C:\Deploy is L: and then I just need to create an Autodesk folder under C:\Deploy.

So I create my Autodesk deployments, say the administrative image path is L:\Autodesk\<<whatever>>, and I am creating test deployments on my hard drive, that I can then just move up to the network location if they work. All the paths will align properly and users can then run the install from that L:\Autodesk path.

It’s Time For Color Construction Documents

How long has it been since you saw rows and rows of giant rolls of 30×42 sheets bound up in butcher paper, waiting for the Fed Ex guy to come and pick them up (and try to not break his back)? Every time a job was put out to bid, I remember the admin staff filling up half their office with drawings. Now? Doesn’t happen anymore. I don’t think it’s a shock that the amount of large format printing has dropped drastically over the years. You will still see physical drawings on a job site, but even the amount of those has dropped as well.

With faster data speeds, local governments accepting digital signatures, and better review tools out there like BlueBeam, everyone is just using PDFs. It’s faster, cheaper, and way easier on your back.

So why do we insist on limiting the amount and clarity of information we put into our drawings because of an issue that might not really be an issue anymore? Ask anyone why we still do black and white CDs, and the answer will most likely be “color is so expensive”. Color is definitely more expensive than black and white plotting. But there are two factors here to consider: 1) as discussed above, we just aren’t printing as much as we used to so printing budgets should be dropping anyway and 2) the cost difference between a black and white versus a color line drawing has been dropping as well. Part of this depends on the hardware your repro firm has, but many of them are starting to purchase exclusively color hardware. It might just be time for a real conversation with them about what the actual costs are.

It probably seems odd that I am writing about this. I’m 100% in with Revit. I love the software, I love its potential, and I love the benefit that the industry is going to gain by embracing the model. But I also like to solve problems, and this is a big one that I have seen in the industry for years.

What is the first thing many contractors do when they look at an RCP? They highlight every light fixture. How much time could be saved if this is what they already looked like? And now we know one hasn’t been missed.

Find all the lights

NOW find all the lights

I’m sure everyone’s seen those photos of construction issues floating around the web, the ones where they cut the concrete to match the call-out tag or the renovation cloud. It would be much easier to distinguish between tags and work if all the annotation was in a single color, say blue.

And how about demo drawings? Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what is being demo’ed and what stays around. Let’s make all demo in red, and all existing in green.

Piping folks have been distinguishing things in color for years. Some local authorities are requiring their permit drawings in color, making fire rating very easy to tell apart. It should be obvious how much easier to read CDs would be if we just added a tiny amount of color.

There are some issues to work past. We need to get some consistency, we need to take into account people who experience color deficiencies, and we need to figure out why Revit won’t let us set some categories projection patterns (I’m looking at you, ducts) but these seem like easy things to get past, and I think the benefits we will see from this are huge.

Character Map and Family Names

A very astute coworker dropped me an email the other day, referring to an old post I did about naming your families so they won’t mess up Windows naming conventions. He mentioned that one of his favorite trick is to use the Window Character Map to get fractions into your family names without having to break the Windows naming rules, plus it keeps your Project Browser nice and tidy.

Me, being the know-it-all I am, thought “Well, I had looked into that before, but the fractions in Character Map only include halves and quarters. What happens when you need to name a wall family and you need that 5/8? You don’t want half your families named one way and the other half another way.”

So, I opened up Character Map… just in case… and you can easily see the halves and quarters, no eighths. I’m so smart.

And then I scrolled down.

Yup, as you probably guessed or already knew, you can easily use the Character Map in Windows to generate single character text for a whole slew of fractions, up to (down to?) eighths. Architecturally, that’s probably as far as you need to go. Keeps things nice and clean and helps save space when looking at your Type Selector.

Scroll down for more fraction fun!

Need a hand with Character Map? Check out this link.

No More Lunch and Learns

I see it all over the place, and you might have it happening at your firm. Need to do some Revit training? Let’s have a Lunch and Learn! It’s great. Everyone brings their own food, and someone sits down with a laptop and projector and goes over some good tidbits about Revit. What could go wrong?

I obviously have a beef with this training format. I 100% believe that consistent in person training one way or another is critical for continued success with BIM projects and Revit specifically. For some reason, Revit (and other software) training gets relegated to happen over lunch time. This has to stop.

Sticking a training session during lunch tells the attendees two things: first that what you are about to learn isn’t important enough for a firm to spend time on it, and the second is that if you have to miss it, go ahead and miss it.

It is not uncommon for a production person to spend 5 or more hours a day in Revit. Having an hour long “come together” session once a month, or even every other week should not be too much to expect. The time invested in training is important, and learning how to use Revit effectively is crucial. Having to try to learn in between bites of sandwiches and growling stomachs lessens the perceived importance of what is being taught. The time necessary for two hours a month for training is negligible and tells the users that this is important enough to have a “real” meeting for it.

Beyond that, the lunch hour is the typical time (for U.S. folks anyway) to run errands and take care of personal business and to just get away from the desks and recharge. Lunch and Learn sessions take away from this potential personal time, and the sessions will usually lose out to an essential errand that just has to get done.

Pick a time during the workday, and put it on everyone’s calendar. Use that time to go over new procedures, changes in the template, or just cover an issue that a lot of people have come to you with recently. Make it a “real” meeting and that makes it important and a proper place to focus on what is an important task: learning to be more effective and productive in Revit.

Make Your Model Look Like a Model

I saw a Tweet recently (I think it was a Tweet, I can’t find it again) that had an interesting workflow to make your Revit model render in a single material. The post had a rendering look like a hand made model fashioned out of wood. It was a neat idea, but it implied that the single material rendering inside Revit was not possible, mainly because you can’t override materials with View Filters. And while that last part is true, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it right inside of Revit. It takes a little cheating, but it’s cheating in a way that probably won’t hurt anything.

While View Filters don’t allow for material overrides, Phase Filters do. Taking a look at my Phases dialog box for the default Revit template, there is no default Phase Filter that has the New phase state set to overridden; and that makes sense because when do you want to override thew new work? You just want it to look like it normally does.

You can probably see where I’m going with this. I made a new Phase Filter called Single Material and set the New phase state to “Overridden”. Then for quick access, I went to the Graphic Overrides tab and opened the “Phase – New” material. My project didn’t have an appropriate material, but the installed asset browser got me a “good enough” chipboard material from the Autodesk material library. I didn’t bother making a new material, I simply replaced the asset for the “Phase – New” material. I did tweak the bump map, dialing the scale up to 40’x40′ since I was applying this to my whole model and I wanted it to look like it shrunk.

Sidenote – decades ago in architecture school, I was working on a model for a project up to the last minute (shocker) and I took a nice slice through the side of my thumb with a utility knife. I wrapped my thumb in those crappy brown paper towels you always had in school, and taped it up with masking tape. I did my charrette for that project with a hack job wrapped up bleeding thumb! Immediately after I presented I asked my professor if I could go to student health. She hastily agreed and I went and got stitches! You can still just make out the scar…

Back in 2016… In this specific case, my entire model was in the New Construction phase so it was pretty straightforward, but the same could be done to the other phase materials because honestly, when do you ever need to use those materials.

The results weren’t half bad:

Chipboard! I usually don’t say this, but it actually does look better full size, so click away!

Apply a touch of tilt frame effect…

Blurry chipboard!

I was pretty happy with the results considering the minuscule amount of time I spent on this thing. If I understood how exterior shadows worked, I could probably get those adjusted to look more appropriate. There are a ton of tweaks you could do if you wanted to apply this process to your own models, but you can easily start right in Revit for your rendering.