Notes from AU - Days 2 and 3

I would have posted last night, but it was definitely a bear of day. AUv has some promise, but with technical glitches in all four classes yesterday, (including the wrong video playing in the first session), I understand the frustration. There were two areas Autodesk has got to get right:

- make sure whoever is running the stream starts the sessions on time, and doesn't cut the video off until the presentation is actually finished. If it's the technology there were using that did that, then get other technology. It was embarrassing to me on behalf of the attendees. Also, the lack of good, consistent, real time communication with the attendees (aka Goto Meeting), where I'm not having to restart moderator panels, constantly refresh would definitely make this a smoother event.
- do a better job of QA on their own work - there's no excuse for editing in the wrong video. All I could do was laugh, because I was too big to crawl under the table.

Don't get me wrong - I love the idea of Virtual training, but based on the comments I got, and the fact that I had absolutely no control or ability to fix the glitches, makes me want to personally apologize to those that had to sit through it.

Back to AU live - what keeps me coming back and wanting to present are the people that attend, It's very humbling to see the same people coming back year after year, and taking the time to sit in on my sessions, Yeah, they can get hokey (one person said to lose the gimmicks), but the idea is to separate what you do from other instructors - and 99% of the students get engaged and participate. I never wanted to be the teachers I had - boring, dry, and detached - those classes drove me nuts. This stuff is not the most entertaining stuff to listen to - add a deadpan, monotonic instructor, and you've got students sleeping their way through your class.

So, with this year's scores on the Revit MEP classes and my highest score ever on a lab, those will continue to be my main focus for AU 2011 (if they'll have me back). 6 virtual and 6 live was too much, but I like one student's suggestion to run a progression series - I like that, so maybe next year we'll run a process stack of sessions. Also, I do take to heart the idea of breaking up classes by discipline, although the classes have to have enough to register to get them to make, so that's a reason why having just electrical or just HVAC only in a class may not work.

Some great tips that came from the students and other instructors:

- create an area schedule that sets program area versus actual area - if you get over, the schedule reports it (I'd add a conditional format to the data to make it jump out).
- Same instructor also uses areas in Revit Architecture to define cube names and numbers, as opposed to using rooms for these parts of a building. They use the room to define the overall area or conditioned area, so the space in the MEP links to that instead of hundreds of cubicle spaces.
- If you need to export parameters from a family to a shared parameter, you can do this from the family editor - parameters tab - there's any export option I hadn't tried, but I'm going to.

Got several others I'm trying out - as I can get some to work, I'll get them posted here.

Long day, but good event - and I'm excited, because we're headed back to the Venetian next year - woo-hoo!

have a great evening - David B.

Posts from Vegas - AU 2010, Day 1

Well, it's not really day one for me, got here Saturday to do my virtual recordings. Eventful flight - before takeoff in Nashville, plane had to go back - cracked windshield...that's a problem you don't want to have at 38,000 feet.

Spent about 14 hours prepping for 3 hours of recordings. There are three AUv sessions that I had (for the first time this year) - one for AutoCAD Architecture, one for AutoCAD MEP and one for Revit MEP. Managed to hit Revit and ACAD A right on the time frame, but was a little short on ACAD MEP. Interesting note - these sessions are recorded in one take, so you have to a) own (not know) your material, and b) don't be afraid of mistakes - dwelling on them only points it out, so it's best to just keep moving. The hard part was watching final part - man, I gotta lose some weight...

 Hats off to Autodesk and the AU staff - the speaker social was actually a great event, sponsored by Ford. There are awesome views from mIX at theHotel, took a few pics. Matt Dillon, good friend and mentor,got recognized for his years on contributions and classes at AU. I worked for him as a lab assistant at my first AU, and learned a lot from his style and rapport with the students. He's coined the perfect description of AU - "it's the running of the nerds..." - man, that cracked me up. As for the AEC mixer, watched the Autodesk Employee band - not too bad, but guys, "Comfortably Numb" is a party killer...

Had 5 classes total today - 2 virtual (of which the first one was cancelled - server issues - got to the Speaker Ready room at 6:45am, they said "didn't you get the email?" - had to laugh) and 3 live sessions, on Plant, Revit MEP and AutoCAD Architecture. And the Arch crowd was the best, followed closely by the RMEP group - but I got two more shots at that crowd on Thursday and Friday.

The exhibit hall is a great reflection of the current economic times. Met countless people that had changed jobs, left the channel for the design market, left Autodesk...but the real tell was how many fewer exhibitors there seemed to be. Not as many third party developers, and a much smaller crowd (looking like about 1/3 less) that AU 2008 at the Venetian. But the positive aspect was the determination of those present to take their current tools and process to the next level - they're all finally understanding that you have to stay on top of technology if you're going to survive as a business. Those that can't or don't evolve will be left behind...as well as those using outdated techniques and business practices.

Had a little dinner at House of Blues with a great house band, and got to finally meet some fellow bloggers in person. And for those that came to the classes - thank you so much for being there, and taking the time to attend my classes and participate - you're what makes doing this worthwhile!

 So, that's the first report from the floor at AU 2010 - I'll try to do updates tomorrow and Thursday as well.

Happy modeling! David B.

AU Virtual - Get ready for a whole new experience!

For the first time, I'm participating in AU Virtual, an online version of Autodesk University. Spent a little time cruising the site tonight - all I can say is, wow...the slick interface, dashboard, and ease of use blew me away...now if I can just get my classes to live up to the professional level of the site (ugh...none of my usual jokes will fly on this...)

The lobby is slick on the level of detail - here's an early preview (umm, yes, I'm asking for permission - but I'm also promoting the site - ok?) - when you're ready to hit a class, join a chat or register, just pick a tool on the dashboard at the bottom of the screen. You can also navigate the lobby to visit keynotes, lounges, etc.



Only a week to go - see you in Vegas!

And have a happy Thanksgiving this week!

Plumbing fixture connections...who hates this?

Okay, I've heard enough - plumbers, and plumbing designers, ya'll are the crankiest people I've ever met. We know - you can draw a line faster, it's all figured out in the field, the program doesn't work, yada-yada...

So what does the plumber really need (besides a belt)? Rough in connections! He doesn't need connections on the bottom of a sink, or on the side of a urinal - all of that really does get worked out in the field...so how do you help these guys get into BIM?

There are two big things:

1 - Change the location of the connections to inside the wall (thank you Melania Sibley at Enfinity Engineering in Nashville, TN). She had a sink that was giving her fits - so we made a new family. All of the connectors sit 2" inside the wall. They are controlled by vertical and horizontal work planes - the water connections can be 4" or 8" apart, you pick - and the waste connection, centered, can be moved up and down vertically in the wall to the stub-out location. this maintains the system - and eliminates the need to draw out the p-trap, trap primer (call these out in a shared parameter for scheduling).

2 - Check the fitting families - for annotation scale sizes, most fittings that show a tick have a "Tick Size" parameter - check the default, it's a formula - change the scale factor to something smaller if needed (i.e. 0.4 to 0.2) and see if it makes you symbols look better. Do the same thing with the ride drop symbol scale - and the drawings will look better! (BTW - I posted this tip earlier, but we still had people asking, so here's an image)

You now have my permission to whip your plumbers into shape...and get them BIM'ing...

See you at AU!

David B.

Content, Content, who's got the content?

Okay, so I've been here a month, and one of the first tasks I've taken on is getting as much relevant Revit content as possible as it pertains to MEP and what we do...and man, it's been interesting. In my Revit MEP Tips class, I talk (briefly) about leveraging the Internet to go out and find what you need. I found a few things:

1 - Manufacturers for the most part are still lagging behind, especially in the industrial and process equipment sectors. Most of what I found was either a) overmodeled or b) non-existent. There are some manufacturers that are really ahead of the game - I've talked about them in the past (i.e. Victaulic, nicely done - Bell and Gossett - awesome, but got to consolidate a little).

There are two aggregators I want to give a shout out to - CADWorks, where my buddy Bernie Duncan (formerly with Autodesk) landed. He's got the piping library I need - so we're moving forward towards purchasing his product. He's also got a really nice library control front-end, so it'll be interesting to see how and if we implement this across the board. Check it out - http://www.cadworks.com/ - they'll have a booth at AU this year.

Another one that we used to sell (or tried to) is the SmartBIM library (http://www.smartbim.com/). Lots of good content, some of the more random pieces - I really like the space portion, where you can download whole rooms. I have hard time justifying paying an annual subscription for this unless they're actually helping us produce content that can't be found anywhere else - but they at least have the foundational pieces I'd be interested in using.

As always, you can find tons on Seek (seek.autodesk.com) but it needs to have its categories expanded. The quick look is a bit too generic, and the front end is starting to get dated. Better search capabilities and results would really be helpful.

2 - I went ahead and made a few families for our water treatment team as a way to prove concept (added a mud valve from scratch, used some ACAD MEP parts to temporarily get me a representative part for Revit, and made a UV Unit with just connection points and engineering parameters). Each one of these types required a different approach, so keeping it simple is the best practice.

We also created an industrial equipment family template. We use this to define owner provided equipment, where we need to see a model of their content, but the connection points may be a receptacle, a nozzle, or a drain that we engineer and provide. In this case, make sure the template includes what the load data, fluid requirements and air requirements are - and then create an equipment schedule to replace your spreadsheet. It's always good to have this in one place.

3 - Organization - if I can offer one good piece of advice - separate what you download and create from the out-of-the-box content. If you edit a OOTB part, then don't put it back in the default folder - put it in a custom folder. There's some debate whether you start a new folder completely separate from the default content, or create custom folders under the default content structure. What you don't want - if you're a full service firm - is duplicated content. Take the MEP items out of the architectural folder - have the architects use your content, so you can take advantage of the copy/monitor functionality for these fixtures. And I stay away from anything MEP that is wall, ceiling, floor, roof based - and even sometimes face-based. Any non-hosted object can still be constrained to another - for example, a non-hosted light to a ceiling grid - so I'm moving away from using any hosted that has to be shared or edited by others. The KISS axiom applies...

Next up - tackling process projects - and getting old dawgs to learn a few new tricks....see you at AU!

thanks - David B.

First things first...Starting up the implementation...

Now that things have settled down a bit, it's time to start posting...the first things I've been working on since moving to Gannett Fleming is to get an understanding of where we are, compared to the industry. First thing - we're fortunate to have an executive team that believes in getting the most from technology, and making it work for the people in the firm. As we start looking at how to bring the team up to speed in BIM, I can't say enough about how valuable that support is. If the owners and executive believe, then it makes it easier for the team to believe.

One comment - I've heard from companies all over the company how about important moving to BIM is, but most firms only give it lip service. Building Information Modeling isn't just about drawing in 3D or adding data to parts - it's mainly about a process, an approach to how we design buildings, structures and systems. In order to be successful at BIM, you have to be willing to change your design process. The training we're working on emphasizes that concept. If you have an engineer that's fixed in the way they've been doing things for 25 years, we have to demonstrate how the BIM process benefits them - in earlier design decisions, in better visualization, and fewer field conflicts. It's all about doing a better job in design - not just making CAD better or faster.

Which is why it's so critical to train management and engineers at the same time - just training CAD and BIM users won't cut it if the pilot, the captain and the coach don't understand how the plane flies, the ship sails and the game is played.

Which brings me to the first thing I've found that will help. Autodesk seek has a document set called the
Autodesk Revit Model Content Style Guide (http://seek.autodesk.com/revit.htm). This document can help manufacturers and in-office content creators find common ground on items such as templates and parameter files. It's my first big tip of the game - read the docs first, and then work on creating your content. If the manufacturers are following this standard, then it makes it easier wen we develop our own content.

By getting to a common baseline, and making adjustments to how we read and produce data (such as what's added to schedules) we can make the incorporation of this data much easier to do.

Next up...new Revit Family tips and a sneak preview of AU...

later - David B.

Changes Happen...My Last Day at ASI!

After 13 years of selling, teaching, consulting, cajoling, convincing, listening and helping, I'm hanging up my shingle and leaving the reseller channel...but I'm not going away. I've taken a position as a BIM analyst with a large engineering firm based on the east coast, and will be helping them expand their presence in the southeast.

I'll still be teaching at AU, but more importantly, I'll finally have to chance to post observations and what I've learned from the other side of the fence. My intention is to become more active in regards to the training and consulting environment from the client's perspective, and hopefully continue to help Autodesk make their products the best on the market.

Thanks to Donnie and Paul for giving me my start, the folks at ASI for helping me to expand my world, and the best damn tech and sales team on the planet!

So stay tuned...there's a lot coming down the pipe real soon - see you at AU!