My AU2015 Wrap-up

The amazing, spectacular, and jam packed learning adventure of AU2015 is over.
As always there are a few stand-out classes that I had the privilege of attending.

The first was Marcello's Dynamo class, More Practical Dynamo.  I've been watching Marcello teach some amazing things for many years, and I'm happy to see that the Dynamo he is teaching this year is in fact Practical for a small scale project structural firm like ours.  I look forward to becoming a Dynamo HERO this year....

Second on my favorite list this year was a fun demo class on 3ds Max and Stingray.  This class, Interactive Virtual Reality for BIM Data sets and Simulation Using Stingray and 3ds Max, was by Alex Horst.  If you have the opportunity I highly recommend watching it online, it's quite an amazing look into virtual reality for us structural peeps. 

As for my class, Beautiful Structure Rendering Structural Revit Models with 3ds Max, things went splendidly and here's a clip from the class shortly before starting.  Also below, the Final Render Image for the class.

Bash to the future

So last night was the close out party for AU2015.  What a great time.   Everyone was treated to incredible food and drinks at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.   There was even an appearance from a couple of Stormtroopers who karaoked The Final Countdown and posed for pictures with a very tall Lady Vader!  I was lucky enough to partake in Stormtrooper photos as well! 

#AU2015 #nerdsgonewild

 

 

 

Yes AU has Robots

And they are serving drinks ....
 

 

And there are Stormtroopers hanging out with Lynne Allen....

 

 

 And Autodesk Expert Elites on the big screen....Hello AU2015!

 

Wood Framing - Parts Visibility 2

Continuing onward, we now have full visibility control over wood walls via Parts and they are displaying their openings correctly in an upward cutting plan.  As nice as this is, we can also see additional lines for each layer of the wall assembly in plan.

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Ideally to keep a cleaner plan, we will go ahead and filter out all the extra layers and linework of the wall assembly.

We'll use a filter so that it can live in our template and also be applied to our default framing plan view template.

Depending upon the wall assembly setup in the architectural model this can be accomplished with as little as one filter.  We'll start with a filter applied to the Core assembly elements.

Wood Framing - Parts Visibility 1

Now, via parts, I have a direct control over walls in the structural model and elements that automatically update with each new architectural model.  The only thing I don't have is doors and windows showing.  If you're very attached to seeing these then this is likely not your preferred solution.  However, it suits me just fine.   With this method there is a lot less architectural plan items interrupting the display of items in my structural framing plans.

A few notes about parts.  No type properties, they don't recognise they're beginning or starting level with their properties unless set by yourself.  While we've gained direct control over these items in our model, we also need to implement a few minor workarounds.  Beginning with visibility.

As I mentioned previously, there are no door swings in the parts setup.  But in actual fact, parts in an upward cutting framing plan, have no visible openings at all. 

CanBIM Calgary - BIM is Your Business

I have recently returned from the CanBIM session and AGM in Calgary.  Highlights of the event included the construction site tours, the AGM, the keynote speech, the roundtable panels and, of course, the networking with colleagues. 

The construction tours were one of my most favorite portions.  Residing on Vancouver Island means I don't have the opportunity to see and tour very many 56 storey buildings under construction like Brookfield place nor to hear and witness all the BIM collaboration from consultants through to sub-contractors taking place in a project of this scale.  The tour of Quarry Park Recreation centre was also terrific, though BIM was more of an after thought process on this one, the contractors will still able to reap considerable coordination benefits and savings through the collaborative BIM process with the consultant's models.  This was a great way to start the CanBIM session and was followed by the CanBIM AGM later that afternoon.

The keynote speaker, Patrick Saavedra, started the second day off with a very insightful look at York University planning strategies and buildings management from an owners perspective.  This was followed by many informational speakers including a terrific roundtable session with many of the team doing Brookfield place that we had toured the day before.  The second day finished off with a roundtable discussion on BIM as a Business Decision.  While I learnt a lot that day, I know I'll never forget Christian Proulx's roundtable response about the future of BIM being to challenge your BIM champions to teach to the younger colleagues, "like a virus, you actually want to spread".  Christian's point was further summed up by roundtable mediator, Allan Partridge as, "BIMfluenza".  :-)
Overall this was a wonderful CanBIM session.  Kudos to all the CanBIM board and volunteers who make it all happen.  If you missed it, note that all the sessions were recorded and will soon be posted to the CanBIM website for viewing and sharing at your workplace.  And while you're on the website, check out the membership and certification pages. 
BIM is not the future, BIM is here.

Wood Framing - Revit Links

Lets now examine the options for working with Revit links in a wood framed building project.

We will begin with using the architectural link directly for our purposes.  The main issue with the architectural link is the visibility of the walls in the structural views.  Specifically, it is typical practice for our local architects to model walls an non-load bearing and hence they are not visible in "structural" views. 

You could set your views to coordination and then these walls would be visible, but then the visibility of the structural items is disrupted.

Wood Framing - CAD Base Plans

One of the first things that I noticed when trying to work with CAD plans in a Revit many moons ago was that the CAD plans would block out structural elements like footings and foundations.  After that I was finding Revit elements blocking out CAD objects.  It's been over 9 years since my first Revit project and I've created several iterations of workflow for CAD in Revit and Autodesk has kindly made many terrific updates in that time as well.  So lets have a review of the more recent and simplest workflow yet.

Step 1 -  Clean the CAD file.

You need a cleanup routine to make the job faster and easier.  Either you already have one for cleaning up architectural files for underlay in your CAD projects and can take that a bit further for Revit implementation.  Or you start from scratch.  I suggest getting your friendly IT person on task.  Our custom command arch_underlay will explode every block and purge everything in the file and place all remaining items on one layer of grey color.  We don't typically show all the toilets and sinks etc, so it's standard workflow to delete all undesired blocks prior to invoking the arch_underlay command.  Failing to do so will result in time spent deleting the linework of these undesired elements in the CAD file.

Wood Framing - The residential kind...

Lets talk about wood framing and Revit...they're not exactly best friends.  Which gives us oh so very much to talk about...especially when we get into those pesky residential condo / residential long term healthcare projects.  How can we keep track of hundreds of moving walls, door and windows openings, their associated columns, beams, headers and joists?   How do we deal with an exponentially greater amount of elements in a model while keeping within a much smaller, tighter budget structure.  To me, wood framing in Revit is the last material frontier, full a challenges, frustrations and workarounds.  It's a continually evolving process in pursuit of a simple cost efficient workflow.

The focus of this next series of posts will be all about wood framing.  Beginning with the first challenge, software.  I would estimate, at this time, the majority of the larger scale wood framed projects are being done in Revit, while some smaller condo / commercial wood framing buildings are still CAD.  This is a very general observation, because just like ourselves, some architects are well-versed in Revit or are even Revit only offices.  This means, we need to work with both types of software and produce an identical finished product and this requires two very different processes.

The second challenge of wood framed projects is graphics.  Whether incorporating CAD or Revit plans, there are necessary workarounds required to graphically display backgrounds and structural elements cohesively.  Thirdly, what revisions and additions to the Revit content will simply your workflow and help get the project done quickly.

Next time, we'll dive right in beginning with CAD plans as Revit backgrounds.

Revit Gifts

 Simple things that amuse simple minds continues....

Here's another sweet little addition to the ribbon.  This is definitely not helpful for everyone, but I definitely have a habit of editing content on the fly. Especially those new things I've just made and need tweaks,  I can have dozens of families open on a template editing day, now which I no longer be manually going back (scrolling that windows list) and then closing each one.

I'm all for eliminating repetitive work, so how about only writing SECTION once, instead of 200 times for everyone of those sections details you made?  Yes please.  So here we have title on sheet, now with the pull-down containing previously used text.

Revit's Latest Gifts - The Search Feature

Now, I'll be the first to admit, I don't always keep up with all the latest and greatest publications regarding every update for Revit, I'm a day in and day out Revit user, so I typically come across most of these things naturally. That being said, I'm really enjoying all the little tweaks and additions of the 2016 release and the 2015 update. I will cover these little additions over a couple of posts, today we’ll start with the search feature.

Who loves all the search features everywhere? Me!

Shall we count the ways that we can search Revit 2015 now? Shall we attempt to quantify how much time is being saved by every one of these search options versus endlessly scrolling lists? Hell no. Let us go forward and never look back.

Autodesk University 2015

It's official!  I'm so excited to be Las Vegas bound early December to present a lab class at AU2015.  My lab named, Beautiful Structure: Rendering Revit Structure Models with 3ds Max, is truly about showing the magnificence of structure.  Beautiful renderings should not just rest within the architects bag of tricks, in this competitive BIM market it's important to market our structural engineering firms via our corporate social media sites, proposals, and marketing avenues.  So if you're interested in promoting your BIM work in the form of beautiful structural renderings I hope to see you in my class in December. 

How One Woman is Leading BC’s BIM Revolution

I was very honored to have Nevin Thompson feature me in an article for YellowSheet.ca a few years ago.  Here's an excerpt of that article.

Despite the move towards LEED and green building technologies, architecture as a discipline can be a very conservative realm. AutoCAD software, first developed in 1977, still dominates even the largest engineering consultancies. Many architects still rely on paper to share designs.

This is in stark contrast to how the rest of the world has moved over the past 20 years and the explosion of the Internet. Information is virtually every other industry and profession is shared instantaneously. And over the past five years or so there is the expectation that collaboration be instantaneous as well.

BIM is aimed to change that.

Welcome

Welcome to the BIMbosS blog, a blog dedicated to project work with Revit Structure and BIM.  The intent of this blog is to be a resource for best practices, triumphs, raves, work-arounds, and general informational posts for my colleagues and you!  Delivered by a passionate and avid long-time Revit Structure user.