Maybe I’ll Write Something

It’s been a year and one day minus one month. A conversation last night at a User Group Meeting made me realize that I like to write stuff here.

Maybe I’ll start doing that again.

That’s Why It’s Called ‘Mirror’

Being the IT/Revit guy in my office means lots of things.  It means that chances are I am a giant nerd.  It means I get to help people work through their problems.  It does NOT mean that I have a Batman style red phone to call Autodesk and tell them what I want.

Sadly, not me

For some reason, people in the office seem to think that if they tell me something to change in Revit, I can just contact the developers and snap my fingers to have it done.  It doesn’t work that way.  The closest thing I get is to vote on the AUGI Wishlist like everyone else.

Here’s a “wish” that I get a lot.  And this post is my therapy to try to work past it.  You see, I can’t answer the people how I want to answer this.  It would be… unprofessional.  So you get to read it.  Lucky you!

We have multiple disciplines under one roof here: architects and engineers.  So, when it makes sense, we create one piece of content that works for everyone (SYNERGY!!!!!).  This problem always comes up when folks are using our lavs and faucets.  The architects LOVE to mirror these things around the plan to save time.  What they forget is that the faucets have hot and cold on them and when you mirror those, they get flipped around, because, you know, MIRROR.

Got an email from someone the other day complaining about this, and how I needed to get in touch with Autodesk to let them know that this is wrong and it should never do this.  I gnashed my teeth and filed the email away.  What I wanted to tell him was this:

The definition of mirror is “to show a reflection of”.  When we mirror elements, we see a reflection of them along the line that the user defines.  If this tool were to simply rotate the elements 180 degrees, then IT WOULDN’T BE CALLED MIRROR ANYMORE, WOULD IT?!!  And if ONLY Revit had a tool that could ROTATE AN ELEMENT.  Wow. That would be fantastic.

Thanks for letting me vent.  If you have to deal with these folks, keep your chin up and just keep fighting the good fight.

Revit Is Getting Personal

A user emailed me this wonderfully obtuse Revit error message today:

Since when did Revit start handing out medical advice?  Is this even advice?  Is it saying “good job”, or is it telling me (much like my doctor does) that I need to pay attention to it?

Custom Add-Ins Complaints, Icons, etc

Did I mention I was going to start playing with the API?  Hard to tell.  Well, I have, and I’ve had…mixed results.

I simply don’t have the time to dive in and create uber-awesome and extensive add-ins, so I’ve been making little things that focus on one task or one annoying lack of functionality.

Where we find Revit lacking quite often is with the documentation end of things (last 10%).  I understand that Revit is a BIM application first, and documentation application second (or even third or fourth) and the documentation end of things gets put to the side often.  I get that.  That’s why I wanted to go in and make some little programs that can help us speed up our more lengthy tasks.

Unfortunately (for me), a lot of the non-model functions get put to the side with the API as well.  For example, it was only in the 2013 version that you could actually create a filled region.  I certainly am no developer, so I don’t know the hurdles it would take them to incorporate the annotation tools, but I do miss some.  Sometimes.  Or possibly I’m just too dumb to figure out how to do it.  There is a HIGH probability of this one.

I have had success with a couple baby tools, however.  And now it’s time for me to get snobby.

I’ve looked at a lot of add-ins trying to figure this thing out and so many work AWESOMELY.  But the icons they create for the tools?  Ghastly.  I’m no icon pro, but there is an Autodesk approved icon creation guideline out there, and I’m not sure anyone actually reads it.  (Here’s a nice blog post discussing some of it)

Well, I read it.  And I thought I’d show off my icons.  I’m kinda proud of them.

Fun, right?

I guess the best test would be if you can guess their function.  Without mousing over and peeking at the ALT text.

Grown Men… Playing With Bricks

This post really has nothing to do with Revit.  It barely has anything to do with technology, but bear with me.

I gotta tell you.  It’s been a rough couple weeks at the office.  I’m not going to go into detail, but let’s just say it all comes down to a word that rhymes with… um… OK, nothing rhymes with economy.

In order to keep some sanity, I took some “me time” and played with some toys I got for Christmas.  I’m a little surprised that it took me this long to get them out of their boxes.  But it was worth it.

Putting together Lego sets has always been therapeutic for me, and I have absolutely dug the Lego Architecture line.  This Christmas, I was lucky enough to get the Brandenburg Gate, Burj Khalifa, and the gorgeous Farnsworth House.  That last one took a LONG time getting all those little tiles to line up nicely.

It was nice adding them to the collection.

So, being the completist I am, I now just need a couple more sets and I am up to date.

Strange for a middle aged man to play with Lego sets to unwind?  Maybe.  Could some therapist have a fun time establishing a connection between playing with Legos now and attempting to retreat into a childlike state by fixating and obsessing over toys that someone might have enjoyed in his youth?  I don’t know, but I bet that was a run-on sentence.

Sometime ago, I was inspired by my first Lego Architecture set and thought I would try my hand at creating our office building as a Lego set.  Well, I didn’t have nearly enough Legos, but I did have access to Lego Digital Designer, which gives you a virtual box of unlimited bricks to create with!  Beyond that, it will also let you upload your design, check if it meets certain criteria, and then get your own custom Lego set sent to your door.

This last step ended up being quite expensive, however, so instead, I tracked down an open source rendering engine that was specifically tweaked to render exported Lego models.  There are many resources on the web to help a nerd out getting started in POV-Ray.

Anyway, after about a weekend of modelling and then another figuring out how to render, I came up with the below shot and was pretty happy with it.  Thought you might get a kick out of it, too.  It was fun abstracting the features down to toy-size and figuring out what was architecturally important and iconic.  I had to stick our mini green roof in there, for example, and while there might not be precisely the right number of skylights, there are enough to properly evoke the design intent.

So, yeah.  Some technology stuff sneaked in, didn’t it?  Lego Digital Designer is quite the fancy tool.  I would be pushing it if I tried to compare it to Revit, but they are on the same family tree… just on branches that are very very far from each other.

Quick edit: turns out you can’t buy your custom designs from Lego anymore.  That makes me a little sad.  Seems like it took a step backwards in time there.

I Want a 3D Printer!

I took my kids to see a movie this weekend, and my oldest wanted to watch the credits at the end to see who performed a song from the film.  While dutifully watching the credit scroll, I saw credits for “Rapid Prototyping”.  I had heard of other movies using 3D printing, but this was the first round of credits I had seen for them.  Granted, this was the first round of credits I had watched in a while…

This simply leads me to calmly stating, holy crap!  I want a 3D printer NOW!

The MakerBot guys intrigue me.  I love their outlook and their attitude.  And I love the price.  It is, however, more money than I have in my discretionary funds at the time.

I truly believe that 3D printing is going to be a huge game changer, not just for entertainment, or the AE field, but everything.  I try to explain this to my friends.  I tell them that I want a 3D printer, and they ask “Why?  What would you make?” and I reply “Shut up, that’s what I would make!”  Currently it is limited to doodads and small items, but getting in on the ground floor and starting to understand the limitations as the technology is kicking off is intriguing to me.

This leads us to Revit.  My other approach was to try to buy one for work.  I have yet to find any good examples of Revit to STL to printed from MakerBot.  Most of the samples are simple compared to the complex geometry that Revit would spit out.  I’d like to be the pioneer, but nasty ROI and some other work acronyms pop up and halt my progress.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of in the field custom printing.  Large scale automated fabricators with higher quality materials is going to allow designers to really let their brains stretch, but there are plenty of other articles about this topic.  Right now, I’m trying to focus on the “smaller than a breadbox” end of 3D printing.

Are you using a MakerBot successfully for small scale architectural work?  I’d love to hear from you.

Oh, and the song was performed by Flight of the Conchords.  You can stop holding your breath now.

Wow. A Whole Year. And Patterns

A year since I’ve written anything.  Nuts.  I’m not one for resolutions… so I’ll just leave it at that.

I was struggling trying to make some fill patterns manually today.  Have you ever tried to do those by hand?  Yeah, I think Rainman worked up the syntax for those files.  So, making them by hand is obnoxious.

Quick Google search found a piece of software that I could buy for around $180 to make the pat files.  Come on!  There has to be something free!

Then I came across this post.  The post is old, and it forces you to use ACAD, but it gets the job done very nicely.  I had to remember how to draw a line, but once I did I made some pattern files to pull into good old Revit.  And it was MUCH faster than doing it by hand.

Ideally, I would think that the geniuses at Autodesk Labs would make some online HTML5 application that lets you draw and save a pat file right in your browser, but that’s me dreaming again.

Hey!  I’ve dipped my to into C# and done some coding for Revit!  I’ll try to share that fun soon!

Something-IM: Newforma Cracking Into Revit

I’ve received no fewer than six emails about the announced features for the next release of Newforma Project Center. We use that package at my firm, to varying degrees of success. Some of it we use religiously and some we couldn’t bother with. It’s like that with any software, though. You figure out what part of the tool works for you, and you tip toe around the rest (I’m looking at you, Keynotes).
We’ve always been watching for Newforma to get their hooks into Revit, and we had some ideas about what would make our dream list. This list wasn’t based in any kind of fact or logic, but it was our list. And we liked it.
Lo and behold, finally the clouds have parted, the skies opened up and angels have sung from on high that Newforma Project Center 8 will have Revit integration (to a limited degree, sings that one angel that no one likes)!
I don’t want to comment on it until I actually get to sink my paws into it, but I will say from watching their videos that I am cautiously optimistic. Is it my dream list? No . Does the idea of creating an action item right from Revit seem awesome? Yes. Because I am big nerd? Of course.
So take a peek at the videos and see what you think. I will follow up when we actually get it installed.

http://www.newforma.com/Project-Center/Newforma-Revit-add-in.

Oh, and let’s slow down with all the IMs. Newforma is pushing “PIM” – Project Information Management. So now we have BIM and PIM. I’ll soon have to go to a TIM “Totally Important Meeting” to discuss our CIM “Crappy Initials Manifesto” and we will be eating DIM “Donuts In Marshmallow”
Sorry. Kind of lost steam on that last one.

The Next Steps – 2011 Is Here!

I am starting to feel (somewhat) comfortable about where our firm has gotten with Revit.  There are still some individuals and techniques that are WAY off in left field, but for the most part, 2010 has been a really good year in bringing everyone up to a certain speed.

We’ve started to look at expanding the “I” in BIM.  Last year we dabbled with using our models for lighting analysis with mixed results.  I expect that to continue.  We are also starting to play with integrating specs, investigating some FM integration, and just paying attention to any acronym that we haven’t heard of.  (Be careful, there are some acronyms out there that you NEVER want to know about).

I hope over the next year I can dial up the usual tips, but also keep everyone posted on our progress with our next steps.  They will be baby steps, but they are steps nevertheless.

And the geek part of me is pretty darn excited.  Happy new year, all.

Haikus Galore… Sort of

Thanks everyone who posted an entry for the Avatech Utlities.  It was surprisingly tough picking out one of the haikus to be the winner, but sadly, only one could be picked.

Like a hawk grabbing
Its prey, each grid I touch is
Numbered in order

Congratulations, Joe!  Your words made my heart swell with pride, I could feel the air blowing through the noble bird’s wings!  I yearned to be outside in the cool mountain breezes… instead of sitting in front of this computer under these flourescent lights.

Again, thanks to everyone who entered and everyone who read the posts.  I hope you had as much fun with them as I did.

And be sure to check out the Avatech Utilities.  They have a batch of them free, and those are all quite useful.