It's Time for BIM After Dark with the Revit Kid!

Got an email a few months ago from Jeff Pinheiro, better known as the Revit Kid. I've been following his blog posts for years, and is one of the premier bloggers and experts on Revit that I've ever seen. He's had a veritable "who's who" of Revit hacks, instructors, developers and general gurus on the topics in our world that we hold so dear featured on his blog, therevitkid.blogspot.com. 

I'm incredibly honored that Jeff invited me to join him on his BIM After Dark program on March 17, 2022 to talk about Revit, specifically in regards to Revit MEP systems lab I've taught for years at AU, Perfecting the System. We're going to take a look and how systems can alter a designer's perspective towards the design tools in Revit, and how the four step process of system design can help them understand the tools and the workflow at the same time. We're also going to discuss the failure of current CAD tools in our world and how to overcome it with newer technologies and vision. We're going to wrap the session up talking about how the deliverables to our clients are changing (yes, we need to kill sheets and CAD standards).

I'm sure we're going to have a great conversation and some fun at the same time - so join us Thursday, March 17 at 9:00pm EDT! You can subscribe here:

https://www.bimafterdark.com/

AU 2017 and End of Year Wrap Up…Time’s Flying!

When I started this article, I was just getting back from the Thanksgiving break, and busy pulling out Christmas ornaments. One of the things I’m liking the best is moving AU from after Thanksgiving to before, as it gives me more time to spend with family and friends over the holidays, and not feel so rushed. So this, we took a little pre-vacation, and spend some time in Park City, UT before driving down to Vegas.

If you ever get a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. The Waldorf Astoria we stayed in displayed that customer service, done correctly, is what makes a trip like this a memorable experience. The items that don't cost a thing - like remembering guest's name, saying hello in the halls, and making sure everything is perfect for your stay...reminds me that it's the little things found in kindness that makes a difference.

So a couple of personal notes. 2017 was my last for producing training videos for 4D Technologies and CADLearning.com. I really liked working with the crew, and learned a heck of a lot about producing a web-based training program. In my eyes, Dan Dolan and Matt Murphy have the best online training program for Autodesk products out there.  My leaving has more to do with finding the elusive item known as “free time”, as my projects around the house have been piling up lately. Combined with my involvement with the Expert Elite and Directly programs, plus expansion efforts with technology at work, had me working way too many hours, nights and weekends. I’ve also been itching to get back to writing for the blog, as the industry is going through some pretty serious changes now.

On AU 2017. You ever have one of those days where you know you can do better than what you do, and wish you had done things a little different? That’s how I left Vegas this year. Adam Sopko and the AU staff are really starting to push the boundaries of what a tech conference should be, and the additional benefits and features really leave me believing that 3 days (plus a pre-day) aren’t enough. I’m wishing we would go back to a 3 ½ day full event, and get the labs back on Fridays again that would go 3 ½ hours.

Part of that is my own fault. Last year’s Perfecting the System for Revit lab, we were able to cover everything, but this year, I couldn’t get it done, and wanted to apologize to all the attendees. I should have shortened up the first section to focus on the system behavior, but hope that the handouts are detailed enough to fill in the gaps. My other regret was agreeing to take on some new technology for a lab – the attendee interaction tool, Freeman XP Touch. Before you react, I want to point out that I really support this – I like the idea of attendees being able to ask extra questions and poll questions during the class, but the technical hiccups basically amounted to a dry run during the class. The attendees shouldn’t pay the price on the time we’re allowed, so next year, I would encourage the AU staff to plan this out a little better. Two weeks notice on this type of change isn’t enough, even though we had worked the kinks out by the last class.

The other thing that it convinced me to do was to shorten up my presentations. Here’s a note to all speakers – you can put all the detail you want in the handout, but if you’re writing novels like I do, don’t try to present it all. Shorten it up to the key points, and keep the live parts to main areas, without doing too much. I’ve been speaking long enough that I should have known better, and probably would not have stressed out as much as I did this year. I’m also going into self-cap mode – four classes is a little much, and took away from my time to enjoy the event. There’s so much going on, that I really need to get back into more classes myself, especially on the Forge/Quantum side of things.

Back to the event – the AEC keynote was the only one I could attend, but I’m really excited about seeing where my industry is headed. As I look at all the different programs, getting them all to play together in the same sandbox is challenging. I think the best way to simply the concept is to break it down into a couple of ideas.

The data associated with any physical representation of an object – such as dimensional, electrical, mechanical, etc. – is one of the most critical components of a design. Regardless of the delivery of this information, keeping the data in silos – Revit, Inventor, AutoCAD, etc. – is what keeps projects bloated and slow, as well as uncoordinated. Pulling the data out in a cloud database, where the design models can access it directly and without duplication – is a critical step towards true generative design. Just the act of syncing this data across multiple applications that all handle the information differently, is incredibly time consuming. But pulling it out of the modeling program and into its own environment could free up the modeling programs to focus on the design itself, and allow more parts to interact with other.

Generative design represents the next evolution of BIM, and with Quantum on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how 3D modeling evolves. But as an MEP user, it can be tough to quantify, so what would I look for in this realm?

A few features of generative design I would like to see may look like this:

- The MEP geometry should recognize rules on interferences, so they can automatically prompt, or even respond, and reroute, without having to spend excessing time working out alternatives that don’t alter the design criteria of the system, such as air or fluid flow.
- The electrical connector should recognize the available resources, such as panels, and be able to create connection during placement (as opposed to a post-placement editing task), as well as maintain electrical design criteria, without having to depend on spreadsheet and hand-based calculations. For example, the electrical code states what apparent load in VA is translated to for a circuit, based on the horsepower of a pump - adding that table based on rules should be an easy add, rather than through tedious if/then programming in an external text file.
- Control systems in the model should be able to be maintained out to the end user, and integrate with the control software. Water, wastewater treatment, chemical and biological manufacturing and more should be integrated into the BIM environment – and the data related to usage be able to provide feedback in real-time to the designer that needs to make modifications and improvements over the life of the equipment. This requires better integration between Inventor and Revit, eliminating the “conversion” process that’s currently required.

These were just a few of the takeaways I had after listened to the keynote, and talk to other attendees. So what do you look forward to in 2018? Where do you think the future of making things is taking you? In my case…hopefully towards a fish that knows where I am and when to jump on hook…and then fillet itself and season just nicely so.

Overall, AU 2017 was a blast. The Venetian/Palazzo/Sands is a perfect place to hold this event, and the crowds were well served. The exhibit hall this year included a caricature artist - and yes, mine is my new avatar. The special events, where users got to meet with and share ideas with product managers, like Martin Schmid, help give us the sense that Autodesk is keenly interested in your input to help make the products better.

AU is also about connecting with friends, cohorts and like minded geeks. This year's Wednesday night event was a little hectic (way too many people in Tao), nothing beats sitting down with some of my friends and mentors, and catching up. Always great to see these guys - they're the best in the industry, and make AU the great event it is.

Two of my coworkers that attended came back motivated, and loaded with information and ideas that could help them produce higher quality work. It’s great to see younger people (i.e. those a couple of generations removed) really get into the technology that has made my career. This year looks to be promising, so stay tuned…

Happy New Year! David B.

Revit Technology Conference is upon us...Sign up today!

The Revit Technology Conference for North America is fast approaching, and Washington, DC will never be the same. RTC is a mini "AU" conference that focuses strictly Revit and its associated programs. This really helps the user get focused on the tasks we need to improve on, and gain more efficiency when using the tools.

The event, scheduled for July 23nd-25th at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, and includes some awesome speakers, including Paul Aubin, Jim Balding, Jason Boehning (one of my co-authors at CADLearning), Don Bokmiller, Matt Murphy, Brian and Desiree Mackey, Kate Morrical, Marcello Sgambelluri, Beau Turner and a whole lot more...that I'm humbled to be a part of.

So here's what I'll be covering, in a lab on Friday morning. We're going to review some advanced Revit family editing tips, focusing on the MEP side of things, but are also applicable to other disciplines as well. We'll spend time reviewing nested families on a rotational basis, as well as 2D annotations. We'll also cover key shared parameters and how to edit vendor content to clean this data up, and manage it as well. Time permitting, we'll show a few tools you can use to help you manage your content more effectively, and cut down on project production time.

There's a lot of great classes that I'm really excited to be attending, and hope you'll be able to join us. sign up early and often, and we'll see you there!

Attention All 3D Model Creators and Vendors...for Revit Users - Stop making my life a pain...

OK, it's time for a quick soapbox post.

First up, to all the manufacturers that are making content for us pain-in-the-rear Revit users. We're a whiny bunch, especially when we want our models to closely represent real world conditions.

For the most part, your stuff is good. The end of line guys - making the equipment, the targets and sources...We don't need every nut, bolt and clip, so when you put a preliminary model together, you can leave all that stuff out. I'm going to take it out of the model anyway when I get it to Inventor, since I really don't want a 1gb family. But if the overall skin detail is good, and when you get me a model, I make sure you're at the top of the list for the recommended vendors (even when there's three required).

For the other guys...that are using companies like ARCAT, SmartBIM and others. It's time for some ground rules.

1. First and foremost - I will jealously guard your intellectual property -as a designer, that's what defines us as well. But you need to work with your content developers and understand the chaos you cause with your shared parameters.

Every time I get a family that includes copyrights, trademarks, links to your website, your content developer's home phone, webpage, Mom's maiden name, that are defined as shared parameters, I start to use words that will make my preacher blush. STOP DOING THIS! I'm cool with you adding them as family parameters, since those don't show up for schedules and tags. You've got to understand that most of our users don't care what 04 CSI is used for, since we already have schedules defined with our standards anyway. So I wind up wasting a lot of time cleaning your mess up - and looking to either make my own version, or go to another vendor's site - which is not why you do this in the first place. You want to market your products, and we're cool with you doing that, as long as you're not making more wasted work for me and the users.

2. Second of all - I'm cool with you adding design criteria data as well - again, make it family only. And use the right format - like electrical Phase - this is NOT the same as number of poles, so don't create a shared parameter that's named one thing and used another way. Make sure it's related to the category and use as what's defined in Revit.

If I want to use your data in a schedule or as part of a load calculation, I'll use a custom shared parameter that matches my schedule, but is set to equal your data. It's easy to link family data to shared parameter data as long as the formatting is the same. You can do this with a schedule or with a formula in the type properties of a part, and they can be instance or type.

3. USE THE DEFAULT TYPE AND INSTANCE PARAMETERS! Like Model, and Manufacturer - anytime we have a deviation between examples, we make a different type - because, gasp, they ARE different - even if it's something simple as a voltage, or connection size. And stop adding your own model numbers in 3 or 4 different shared parameters. Again, make them family based so the guys making our schedules don't see the word Model show up five times when making a new schedule.

4. And last but not least - be CLEAR when it comes to type names. We edit all of these to include a descriptive name...like, Air Handling Unit. If you haven't heard, we use a really neat tool called Navisworks, that allows us to export our models into a format that can be used for collaboration. When a project is exported, Revit will assign the type name to the solid - if no name is provided, then it uses the family name. But it's equally important in the Revit model to make sure it's clearly named, so we can sort and filter schedules easily. If you name your family type 1234-FRGST-LH-BS-UAUMF-L-2, nobody else knows what the heck that means. Be clear, because my IQ isn't high enough to understand this goobletygook.

Again, I can't thank you enough, but you guys are winding up like the good Samaritan on the side of the road with a toolbox, When they try to help you change the flat tire, they strip your lug nuts when they use a pair of channel locks to loosen them up. Use the right tool for the job, and life is better for everyone.

I'm done, you can all return to your jobs now....and, guys, don't forget that Valentine's Day is in less that two weeks!

Later - db