All Things BIM / DC

If you are currently in school and looking for either student version of Autodesk software or training materials, them you want to visit Autodesk's website for the student community at www.students.autodesk.com

REVIT ARCHITECTURE 2009 Known Issues Revit Architecture 2009 Rendering • Revit® Architecture 2009 software contains a new rendering engine that makes major changes to the previous workflow. See the Revit Architecture 2009 Feature Summary, What’s New in This Release, and Help documentation for information and instructions. • Currently, Decal bump image maps fail to import at the correct scale for cut-outs. • The Plant Height parameter may not scale the nested component correctly (RPC Content). • When rendering an uncropped 3D view, geometry may appear shifted. Workaround: turn on crop region for the view. • For lights, the “Emit from Line Length” parameter may not work properly unless the user has Soft Shadows enabled. • Non-English builds of Revit currently display RPC ID’s instead of names for downloaded RPC content. Upgrading very large files from previous versions of Revit • Upgrade of some very large Revit files (~200 MB and greater) may cause Revit Architecture to crash by excee

Craig Parton of Mid-West CAD let me know just found a new Revit MEP Resource Center site from Autodesk. I have not had much time to explore it, but I thought I would put it out there for others to see.

I just found a new Revit Architetcure Resource Center site from Autodesk. I have not had much time to explore it, but I thought I would put it out there for others to see.

I would like to thank Debbie from RISA Technologies for taking the time to present to the Kansas City Revit User Group at the offices of HNTB in Kansas City. We had a turn-out of about 50 people. I would also like to thank HNTB Architecture for providing the space for the meeting and providing lunch and MidWest CAD for assisting with the mailings.

If you are planning on attending the RISA -Revit Seminar on April 18th at HNTB, please see the following graphic for recommended parking location. Click on the graphic to see a larger view. ----------------------------------------------------------- Deborah Brisbin, P.E. of RISA Technologies will be visiting Kansas City and making a presentation to the Kansas City Revit User Group on RISA and their Revit Structure link. The date for this presentation is Friday, April 18 over the lunch hour and will be held at the offices of HNTB at 715 Kirk Dr, KC, MO . The session shall begin at approximately 12pm and will end roughly at 1:30pm. Pizza and beverages will be provided. The date and time have been confirmed by RISA Technologies. For more information, please visit http://www.risatech.com/emails/kcSeminar.html If you are interested in attending, please send an email RSVP to pat dot davis @ kcrevit dot com

The following rquest is sanctioned by and related to the International Code Council SmartCodes effort and is not an advertisement but a market evaluation effort. The International Code Council (ICC) is in the process of developing a new product that will facilitate automated code checking. This product is called SMARTCodes and it has the potential to highly impact the efficiency of code checking and by extension the permit issuing timeframe. In an effort to explore and understand the market for SMARTCodes and to ensure that customer needs are well represented in the final product, we would like to speak with Architects, Engineers and Building Owners. This should take no more than 30 minutes of your time and will be instrumental in our research of and development of a go-to-market strategy for SMARTCodes. If you are interested, please contact me directly at < mailto:gwhitmore@obscidion.com > gwhitmore@obscidion.com to express your interest and to schedule a time to talk. Thank y

For those who have asked, Daniel Hurtubise has graciously provided a sample faux dimension . Once loaded into the project, the faux dimension is a Detail Component. ------------------------------------------------ This post started an interesting discussion with a fellow Revit user (No, it was not Daniel Hurtubise ) about using fake dimensions. My friend does not work in the design community, he works for a GC that also self-performs and they use Revit . Is opinion is that you should never "fake" anything, anytime. In a perfect world, where fees reflect the amount of work that goes into creating and documenting a design, I would agree. But we don't live in that perfect world and sometimes design team members need to be creative in order to save time (and money) without sacrificing accuracy and detail. Take the example below. A detail could be created for each option, but if conditions changed, each detail would have to be updated. Creating a detail like what is shown

If you are doing sports work or other non-rectangular shaped structures, then you may have noticed a problem with Revit's Grid tool. It does not allow you to make a single Grid line that consists of multiple line and arc segments. We have come up with a few creative ideas that allow us to use multiple grid lines to make a single grid line. For example, if need to create Grid line "A" that consists of four grid line segments, we call the first segment "A", and the following segments ".A", then "..A" and hide those bubbles. Not elegant, and it does cause some problems. I have been fighting this problem since 2004, so I would be interested in hearing how others are addressing this problem.

For those not familar with the product, Autodesk Impression allows you to turn your DWG and DWF files into an impressive hand stylized rendering without having to break out those smelly ink markers, pencils, or talent. Unlike other methods you can update your rendered image when your DWG file changes instead of having to start all over again in the process. Images stylized in Impression provide another way to see the project instead of a exact 3D crisp rendering which communicates to some as a completed design, the 2D or 3D DWG files in Impression can give an impression of in process, quality style, and still pre-construction thinking and convey a different impression and much faster. Give it a try as you will see how fun and easy it is to impress others and sometimes it is hard to tell which was a watercolored, pencil sketched or inked marker rendering from what you output with Autodesk Impression. The products that get this Autodesk Impression download benefit are: AutoCAD, AutoCAD A

Steve Stafford on his RevitOpEd blog has an interesting article on Googles future plans