So, we had the talk from Harry McKinney of Clancy & Theys last week and I promised a follow-up, um, write-up. And this is it!
The talk was great. Harry did an excellent job of pointing out some specifics about how contractors are starting to use BIM and Revit and touched a little on how they are trying to work with designers to get the single model approach.
One example would be the sandwich wall. For simplicity and ease, the architect will typcially just create a wall type with all the materials sandwiched together – brick, air gap, insulation, CMU, etc. Harry told us that they often will create individual wall types that line up together. One reason is that they are using BIM for staging and construciton timelines and the different wall types let them simulate the construction cycle more accurately. The other reason is more control over cost estimating.
I am not going to go recommend to my architects that they start breaking all their walls up to place as individual walls, that would be a waste of our time. But if we have a design-build project, it is certainly something we will need to consider.
Or maybe Autodesk can build in a nice function that will break up a wall to its core components as separate walls, kind of like you can break up a stacked wall to its subwalls.
Anyway, Harry was very well informed and more importantly very excited about the topic. I’d like to thank him for his time coming out and sharing his knowledge with us.
I find myself looking at anything in the Real World now and trying to figure out how to model it in good ole’ Revit. I imagine that it is some mental affliction with a complicated name.
“Solid-void perception integration disorder” us what I’ll call it. SVPID for short.
One of my biggest beefs with the current 3d export of DWFs is that you can only export a single view. The ideal DWF exporting from Revit would allow you to create “channels” of different 3d views to export into a single DWF file. You send the DWF to the not-so-Revit-capable folks on your team and they switch from “channel” to “channel” to look over the latest design issues. Currently, in 2009 (the version, not the year), that is not possible.
I have mentioned already that I am under a nice NDA embargo for the 2010 beta – maybe, I haven’t read the stupid thing entirely because I cannot find a copy of it. Well, I didn’t mention it outright, but come on… This isn’t CSI here. Anyway, I am not at liberty to discuss, since yes, features change blah blah blah, but man wouldn’t it be awesome if in 2010 (the version, not the year) you could export multiple 3d views into one DWF to allow “channels”?
Yes. That would be awesome. I do wonder if that might happen. Hmmm…
It would be unfortunate if while creating those “channels” (or bookmarks, maybe) it would not create some way to maintain a “home” for the view. So if, hypothetically, you switched to a bookmark view, rotated, but could not then somehow get back to the default view. Wouldn’t that be a shame?
Yes. That would be a shame. In theory, I suppose, one could simply close and re-open the DWF, but that’s no fun. The HOME button should, hypothetically, be tied to the initial bookmarked view.
It’s nice to have these hypothetical conversations, isn’t it?
I have not fully embraced DWFs in our firm, but I do believe that 2010 (again, version, not the year) might be when I make the switch. I have always liked the file format, especially when compared to PDFs (which seem to HATE large format docs) but the software for DWF has not been up to snuff. I think it might be there now.
On Thursday, my local Revit User Group is hosting a talk by Harry McKinney of Clancy & Theys. Harry has graciously offered to come up and discuss how he and his company are using Revit, Navisworksand other BIM-goodness to do what they need to do.
The Rainbows & Unicorns of BIM that Autodesk sells has always been lacking connectivity between the major groups – designers, builders, owners. I am really looking forward to this discussion to see how we can start to bridge the first gap. In my opinion, until Autodesk comes out with a better piece of software than FMDesktop, it will be a long time until we bridge the final gap. I cringe at some owner’s trying to open Revit. It’s just not the right tool. It’s like trying to mow my lawn with a circular saw.
My understanding now is that we, as designers, are putting data and information into the BIM model that we need to get our jobs done. Makes sense, right? Well, that information isn’t necessarily what the contractor needs to get his job done. If they even get the model, sometimes they just scrap it and make their own.
Like I said, I am really looking forward to this meeting and will absolutely post my impressions after.
We had a demo of Avatech’s BIM Review the other day. I think it’s a really interesting approach to standards enforcement on Revit projects. Unfortunately, something is tickling in the back of my head that I can’t seem to put my finger on. It feels almost that it’s reach is way beyond it’s grasp. Or maybe that most users will expect a magic box, when in fact, even with the wonders of Revit, a magic box is not within the realm of possibilities.
The one feature that was nice, but limited, was the ability to include and autofix button. So, the software would find the problem and then fix it, if it could. Some issues obviously could not be fixed immediately, but it’s still a nice tweak.
I am trying to get a demo to do a nice full review, so clearly I am still very intersted in it. I think at the very least it would be nice if Avatech provided a mechanism for users to share the standards sets that they create. Also, if the software could scan a Revit template and create certain standards based on that – check view templates, check line styles and weights, etc. And I am extremely excited to see some more third party apps get worked up. Now, I do NOT want to see customization and software creation go crazy (ala AutoCRAP) but some really well done add-ons would really help the workflow.
Second day of training wrapped up. I always get a bit panicky, looking over my notes and thinking that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that I can cover all the material. But we always seem to make it through.
Each time I do the class, I find myself adjusting the emphasis on certain sections. With the economy in its current state (opposite of “awesome”), our firm has a larger percentage of renovation work than we typically have in the past. In previous classes, day 3 of training has had a 20 minute discussion of the phasing available in Revit: “Hey, look that each element has a phase. Neat? Neat. And, no, that demolish button doesn’t mean delete. DELETE means delete.” Tomorrow I intend to spend at least an hour on it.
We have not seen much need to go beyond the standard “Existing” and “New” phases. Mainly the way the phase filters forces us to display things pretty much exclusively based on chronology, we just weren’t able to produce the documents we had expected. There are workarounds, but overall, I would love to see a revamp of the phase filter system. Instead of seeing it as “now” or “prior”, I would like each phase filter to be able to control the different phases and phase states individually. Basically, the chart would get more columns based on the phases in the project. Then one could select on, off or some override settings for that phase and state.
Ah, to dream.
And while I’m dreaming, a root beer float would be great right about now.
Tomorrow I’m starting three days of training for some of our architects and architectural staff on Revit Architecture. I’ll be teaching, as I’m doing once a month now. It’s surprising how exhausted you can get of just standing/sitting and talking for the whole day. I am pretty much wiped when 5:00 comes around at the end of teaching day. I know, I know. Your heart breaks for me.
We are lining folks up to get trained and will start their first project in Revit within two weeks of training. Most of these folks are coming from CADD, some from Sketchup (ahhh… my anger toward Sketchup in a firm’s design and documentation process will be laid out in a later post). The shift is so drastic, that we want to make sure they are trained and then POW! jump into a Revit project. We give plenty of support as they start working, but we have absolutely found that Revit (or our other CADD platforms for that matter) is not like riding a bike. We will have spent significant resources getting these people trained and if they don’t use the software, they forget it. And these are smart people. The process is just so different from what they are used to, you need to nurture the part of their brain that it gets plugged into.
I enjoy getting the feedback and the conversations and ideas from the class. What I don’t like is halfway through the third day when their eyes are all glazing over and they don’t answer any questions. I don’t blame them. I would go groggy too, if I had to sit and listen to me speak for 8 hours straight.
I also enjoy seeing the light-bulb click on for some of them. Working in a BIM production cycle is a drastic change. I give most of the folks three weeks of using the software before the light bulb goes on and the realization that “hey, this is cool.” A few of the folks have the switch thrown during the class. They’ll be peering into their monitors and a smile will slowly cross their face.
“Welcome to the party,” I think. “We’re glad to have you along.”
So I thought I would take a stab at the rendering side of things for an easy Sunday morning. It’s Super Bowl day and I am an idiot, so I give you…
THE SUPER BOWL
Where are the chips?
The materials dialog has gotten an upgrade from 2008, and it is using the same back-end as Max now. So if you are familiar with Max, it should be a piece of cake. I am not familiar with Max, beyond a courteous “hello” to each other as we pass in the hall.
Modeling the bowl was easy. Since this was a quick test, I just made a generic model in-place family. A simple revolve of a hand sketched shape, and the bowl was done.
Then it was onto the material. I found a nice cheap looking white plastic and used that as the base. I started a new material based on the plastic, and modified the RENDER APPEARANCE of the new material.
I added the IMAGE FILE of my recently downloaded logo (thanks, Google Images!) Started to look OK. But it needed some depth.
I then took the original file into Photoshop and took a stab at making a bump map. A bump map is imply a black and white graphic that will add “depth” to the rendered material. Black means low and white means high. Grays are the in betweens.
I added this to the FINISH BUMP of the material, noting that there is also a BUMP PATTERN listed below it, with the same potential settings. The help file was a little vague on what the differences were, so that is something to add to the research list.
I applied that material to my bowl and did a render.
Something was clearly wrong. There is no ways I would have eaten my Saturday morning cartoon cereal out of a bowl with upside-down S logos. Revit was applying the material in one quick swipe over the entire bowl, starting at the outside and “draping” it over the whole thing. I had upside-down “S’es”. Or, “S’s”. Um… The “S” was upside-down.
Luckily, the materials dialog box allows for rotation. Obviously, if I were to simply rotate the material, then the outside would be upside-down, and that would be wrong as well. I created another material and rotated the IMAGE FILE and FINISH BUMP. I cheated a little and opened the in-place family and simply did a paint bucket of the material on the inside face of the bowl (the rest had been applied by and instance parameter).
The whole process took about 15 minutes. I seriously think that it took me longer to write this post.
I’ve always like the render engine in Revit ’09. It comes across with very nice results without much tweakage. I definitely would put some more TLC into this thing if it were going to go in front of a client (we don’t have that many clients requesting comic book inspired table settings), but it’s nice to know that the basic steps for creating and modifying materials are not that difficult. We have been trying to make sure all our default template materials have the corret rendering information assigned to them. That way, the designers can click a few buttons and get a very reasonable rendering to make design decisions with.
I’ve always said that there is a voodoo artistry needed for an excellentrendering, and that is still completely true; lighting, materials, camera angles… these all need to be massaged and then massaged again until the final product. But it’s nice to know that Revit makes it very easy for a good rendering to be done without much work
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