I'm in love with my new 3D Connexion CAD Mouse!!!!

My new 3D Connexion CAD Mouse arrived today!!!! In a nutshell, after using it for just a couple hours, I'm never going to use another mouse again! The single biggest win for this device? A dedicated middle mouse button for panning in viewports.

After I unboxed it (nice packaging too), I downloaded the driver, installed, plugged the mouse in and found a reboot is required. One of the first things I noticed after unboxing it is the USB cord. It is advertised as a braided cord, however in person, looks more like a rope to me and seems out of place on a typical office desk. I like it though! Its cord length should be long enough to head under the desk for those that like their computers out of sight. Its lightweight too, it feels lighter than it should for having that metallic type finish around the base of it.

Once my reboot completed, I immediately sensed a noticeable change in on screen movement of the mouse cursor. It's hard to describe really, more my perception than anything, however it does seem easier to point to a specific object. The buttons seem easier to click and my initial reaction on the middle/right buttons is that it is going to take some getting used to - especially with finger placement (more on this in a moment). The size of the mouse is on par with the Logitech M/N M-U0007, only wider in the mid-body and toward the front. The Logitech mouse allows most of my hand to rest on it with my pinky finger and half of my ring finger hanging off. The old Dell mouse I had been using (M/N M-BAC-DEL5) is even narrower than both the Logitech and CAD Mouse, resulting in half my hand resting on the mouse and 2 fingers hanging off. The wider CAD Mouse design resulted in the whole width of my hand resting on the CAD Mouse and only my pinky finger hangs off the side of it which is just enough to grip it adequately.

The Gesture button does take some effort to click due to its placement on the mouse, yet offers immediate shortcuts in general Windows interface and typical MS Office apps. Things like opening your default browser, copy/paste, top/bottom of page, etc. are all found on the Gesture menu. The cool thing is that it only takes one click to use - click the Gesture button, then slide your mouse in the direction of the command you want which will then activate it without clicking. When the Windows Desktop has focus, Gesture button can access the CAD Mouse properties.

Always one to explore configurations, I found I needed to make an immediate change to default settings. I'm not sure why the CAD Mouse precision defaulted to a Sensor Polling Rate of 250Hz when product is advertised as capable of 1000Hz sampling. After adjusting this to 1000Hz, I felt I needed to increase my default speed settings slightly to match the enhanced sampling rate.

Now that I felt I had a handle on the settings of the CAD Mouse, I decided to give it a shot in Revit.  I noticed the Gesture button has different application specific gestures - I need to look into these more after getting more accustomed to the mouse. Zooming with the scroll wheel is grippy from any non-ergonomic angle and immediately noticeable on how easy it is to scroll. One thing with recent mouse design that drives me bonkers is their tendency to have the ability to roll the wheel left/right in addition to forward/backward. This has been disastrous in my opinion to having a scroll wheel work well as a Pan tool. After 5 minutes using it in Revit, OH MY GOODNESS I DON’T HAVE TO PAN WITH A WHEEL ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Getting used to middle mouse button for Pan should take about 5 minutes or less… I can't describe how great it is to be freed from using a wheel to Pan and just use a regular button. It takes me back in time more years than I care to admit, when mouse design was simpler and not driven to appeal to the masses of internet users.

The icing on the cake, so to speak is that I also got the CAD Mouse Pad from 3D Connexion along with the mouse. This is a great, high quality mouse pad. Its also BIG - almost 3 times as big as my old mouse pad (approximate dimensions: old 7.5"x7.75"@58sqin & new 9.75"x13.75"@134sqin). I'm sure they intended it to be placed long side facing me (think widescreen), but then it gets in the way of where I have my laptop docked so I've got it oriented vertically (think vertical video syndrome). Either way, its still way bigger than my last mouse pad - RIP CAD Monkey. The surface provides a seemingly friction-less surface and has a nice rigidness to it which could allow me to mouse on the sofa if I wanted to.

In summary, the two things I love the most on this CAD Mouse are the extra grippy scroll wheel & the dedicated middle mouse button. I do wish it had a wireless option and that the Gesture button wasn't so far back on the device. Otherwise, everything else is just an added bonus that adds up to something more that the sum of its parts. I look forward to using it in more applications too such as AutoCAD & 3ds Max. I have to admit that I was skeptical about it based on its price at first. Now after having spent some time with it, I have to say I would easily justify its cost. I've attached some of my pictures I took to this post, for more info such as detailed specs, pricing and more, head on over to: http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/cadmouse 

CAD Mouse

CAD Mouse Pad

Autodesk University 2014 : It's a Wrap!

74,000 plus steps - more than 21 miles walked this year at AU. Multiple classes, business meetings, great keynote sessions, a real life hoverboard and more made up for a great AU.

For me, the class highlight was seeing an entire train maintenance yard modeled in Revit. Rails, ties, utilities, structures, signage and more was all done in Revit. Great tips for challenges encountered along the way. Check out the class if you can! CV5504-P Case Study for a Civil-Based BIM Project Using Revit

The keynote highlight had to be the hoverboard. As a kid, Back to the Future II hit a sweet spot for me and I grew up wishing I had one. Now they are real! Well, difficult to obtain and challenging to find a surface to ride them on but definitely real! Check out HendoHover for more info.

Now I need to bring together the ideas found into the everyday workflow our projects see, should be a fun 2015 lurking right around the corner!

Specifying a Computer to run Modern Design Applications

Much discussion surrounds system specs for running modern design applications. I've made previous posts about system specs (wow that's old!), Jay Zallan has done so recently, but I have a slightly different take on it now after my recent benchmark tests. To make it simple there are 5 main things to consider when spec'ing out a system, something I've touched on previously. I've listed them here in order of importance.

1. OS
2. CPU
3. RAM
4. Video/Graphics Card (GPU)
5. Hard Drive

The tough part comes when trying to spec a system for a user. Do you spec one configuration only that covers the majority of needs or have multiple ones depending on a users focus? A designer might be more concerned with running Adobe products, Rhino, Sketchup and Revit early in the project. A sustainability expert would be running still different software while someone wrapping up construction documents would be spending a majority of their time in Revit. Until recently, we have been specifying one spec for all positions, one that can handle large Revit projects with ease.

The thing I noticed with my recent benchmarks testing Revit is that it did not benefit as much from an expensive GPU as I previously thought. Also, I found that steps taken that should benefit from a SSD did not produce as much benefit as I'd hoped. When it comes to OS, you better be on a 64bit platform or most of the rest won't help you.

If you are on a tight budget like I am and trying to get the most benefit for your money, I would go with the fastest CPU you can get as that seems to drive the most benefit for productivity. Next, add as much RAM as you can get, starting with 16GB minimum as Autodesk recommends.

As for a GPU, Revit did great on my benchmark tests with a mid-range card, the Quadro 600. The jury is still out on what happens with it in other applications like 3ds Max, Rhino or Sketchup. Initial experiences from our in house 3ds Max expert Chris Grant said he felt that viewport performance was very snappy, more so than his desktop running a Quadro 4000 with dual Xeon CPU's. We need more testing in other applications, but I predict the Quadro 600 will suffice for them as well. My thought is that because on our BOXX 4050 & the CPU was running overclocked, the CPU was able to hand the data off to the GPU faster for it to process things.

When it comes to hard drives, there are a few things to consider. If you are running a regular physical hard drive (HDD), RPM of the disk speed as well as transfer rates from disk to CPU/RAM affect how fast data can be read/written. You can get some pretty high RPM drives these days for HDD. I noticed on the spec sheets from BOXX that their system with a HDD running @ 7200RPM had the same transfer rate as their SSD. Getting to the data is one thing, sending it around the computer is the other part. I need to run more testing on a similarly configured BOXX with a Solid State Drive (SSD) to confirm my suspicion, but I would have to guess that running with a HDD vs SSD does not offer the performance boost when using Revit that one would hope for.

When does Revit access the hard drive? Per the Revit Model Performance Technical Note, it is only during model load, model save and any hard disk swapping managed by the Windows OS.  What is hard disk swapping? According to this page on Wikipedia, it is part of virtual memory (VM) implementation in the operating system that allows disk storage for data that does not fit into physical RAM. So to me, I interpret that to mean Revit only uses VM if it runs out of RAM. If you have enough RAM, you shouldn't need VM with Revit. This in turn means Revit only really accesses the hard drive when you first open a model and when you save / sync with central. Overall, this is a far less occurring activity during the day and for only short bursts compared with model creation/editing and viewport regeneration. Also, with many large models, they are central files and a good amount of that save time is sending data to/from the server over your network. So I guess that's a long winded way of saying I don't see the benefit from the added cost of a primary SSD. I'm not saying it won't speed things up here and there, I'm just looking at the overall picture of trying to get the most value for my money.

In summary, I can't stress enough that you need to spend as much of your budget as you can on the fastest CPU you can get your hands on. It will just make life so much more productive and pay for itself much faster than other bits you might splurge on. If I had a rich uncle give me a bag full money to go buy whatever desktop I wanted, it would have the fastest CPU (multi-socket/multi-core), best dual GPU setup with a couple SSD's and as much RAM as I could stuff into it. Until then, I'll squeak by with a fast CPU and get by with lesser components elsewhere.

Autodesk FormIt - Intro and Resources

Last week Autodesk announced FormIt - a new conceptual design application built from the ground up for the iPad. I had a chance to talk briefly with Tom Vallaro ( @tomvallaro ) after he presented FormIt to a group in an open theater at AU2012 and was really excited to hear some of the things they are working towards with FormIt (some of which I can't share here).

Have an iPad?
Do you like free apps?

Then check out FormIt! If you like Sketchup/Vasari, you will love how FormIt works.

Resources:
iTunes store link
Autodesk FormIt website
Autodesk Blog Revit Clinic
What Revit Wants

The Revit Kid

Set your Phase(r) to Stun

I'm presenting a lunch workshop internally on Monday dealing with Phasing in Revit. I've settled on a title of "Stun your Coworkers with Phasing in Revit". Other titles that I kicked around or were suggested to me included:

• Don’t Klingon to old habits, get stunned by phasing in Revit
• Temporal Mechanics is not just for Trekkies – Phasing in Revit is for Everyone
• Don’t be stunned by phasing in Revit
• A new phase of your life in Revit
• The time is now for a new Phase in Revit
• Don’t let Revit phase you – Phasing made easy in Revit
• Demolish any Misconceptions of Phasing in Revit

If you've ever wondered about my sanity, wonder no more...

New Splash Screen for Vasari Beta1

 

A much more appropriate splash screen for Vasari!

Vasari Beta1 - New Features

You've been waiting for Vasari compatibility with Revit 2013, haven't you? New features list from the Vasari Wiki (I like how the URL lists it as version 0):

The following features are new or enhanced for Vasari Beta 1.

• Family editing. Now you can double-click an instance of a family in a project to open the family for editing. See Modifying Families in a Project (or Nested Family).
• Surface Transparency Sliders. The Ghost Surfaces and Transparent Override options were replaced with a Surface Transparency slider. Now you can set a Surface Transparency override between 0-100 by Element, Category, Filter and View. Access the Surface Transparency slider from the Graphic Display Options dialog, or select an element, right-click, and select Override Graphics in View By Element, By Category, or By Filter.
• Visualization Graphics. Anti-Aliasing now provides smoother lines for geometry in all views. See Hardware Acceleration.
• Conceptual Design Environment. You can divide paths, curves, and form edges with nodes that can host components and component arrays. See Associative Division and Component Repetition.
• Cloud Rendering. With a subscription to select Autodesk products, you can use the Autodesk 360 Rendering service to create photorealistic images and panoramas from any computer. See Cloud Rendering.
• Revit 2013 file-format compatibility. Compatible with Revit 2013 and includes all the features from previous versions of Project Vasari.

I don't know about you, but I'm really glad to see they added support for online Cloud Rendering. My favorite though would have to be double click editing of families! Makes things so much easier to deal with!

For community support, check out the discussion forum they have going!

Also, don't forget the add-ins for Vasari - they've been moved to here: Add-ins Download page
This page includes:

• Dynamo
• SDK
• Relationship Viewer
• Parametric Sliders
• Parameters from Image

Well, it finally happened...

Project Vasari has graduated from a Technology Preview on Autodesk Labs to a full fledged beta.

We all knew this would happen eventually. We all know that after beta versions, they become customer ship versions. Those usually have a price tag associated with them.

For now, Vasari Beta1 can be downloaded for free still.

Complacent or Compliant? You Decide!

You better know. No, you MUST know what is running on your network lest Autodesk License Compliance come knocking and find something you weren't expecting. If you haven't already, I would highly recommend you run a tool they have that will scan your entire network and report back to you only what is there.

Behold the Autodesk Inventory Advisor

When you download the zip file, it has 2 files inside it - the installer and a quick start guide which also contains the unlock code to use the software.

Using the tool will require network administrator privileges so you will likely need to shack up with IT to run this, unless you are the IT dept. too.

You have a couple options to scan the network - importing your Active Directory or scanning by IP range were the 2 we looked at. We went with the IP range option as it would be more complete.

Once finished scanning you will get a full report of every Autodesk software across your entire organization with options to export to different types of formats. Here is an example of what you might find.

Don't wait - go make sure your Autodesk license usage is compliant!

Plugin Apps for Project Vasari!

I noticed today that an updated version of Dynamo for Vasari/Revit had been released.

Key new features from the wiki:
- User Interface - side panel to allow you to search and then drag and drop new nodes in to place
- User-created nodes – you can make 'sub-nodes' and then reference them elsewhere, these act like writing a reusable function in a programming language
- Python Scripting node – we have integrated a python scripting node
- Math, logic and other nodes – many new nodes added to support evaluation,  iteration and looping

When I was getting the above updates, I noticed one I hadn't seen!
Relationship Viewer!?!?!?
From the Wiki: "This add-in takes the user’s current selection and displays a diagram showing its relationship to the other elements in the document. You can use this add-in to visualize and better understand the relationships between objects in Project Vasari."

Sweet expansion of apps we are seeing here. Between Python and Dynamo, some sweet stuff is now possible.

Download page for Vasari and all supported apps:
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/vasari/overview/

Insight and Inspiration...

Some very interesting work being done by Nathan Miller, specifically working with the Revit/Vasari API and automation of workflows that impact our daily lives. His blog, "The Proving Ground" highlights some of his recent R&D while his full wiki website has specific examples to get you going and pique your interest.

Great stuff - go check it out!


NOW.

Image via Nathan Miller blog "The Proving Ground" as an example of what he is doing!

Information Overload!

So much stuff going on - reflecting back on what I've done since my last post:

• Prepared & presented 2 lunch workshops centered around Vasari & Revit for HMC - AU style complete with handouts, datasets & PPT.
• Work is progressing on building/deploying 2013 Autodesk products.
• Re-evaluating the use of Revit Server.
• Continued mentoring sessions for Revit at various offices.
• And a few others things escaping my mind at the moment.

Once I've had a chance to re-evaluate Revit Server, I'll make a new post about my findings, so stay tuned. I've also had some success reverse engineering Zach & Lilli's post about using Python scripting with Vasari/Revit - some really promising stuff! A busy time of year as always!

The Real Deal - Viewing a Revit Model on an iPad

So, we've all seen the plugins, exporters, extractors, converters, etc. that promise to let you "view" a Revit model on an iPad. Once you start looking into, you realize quickly that you have to convert your native Revit file format into something else. Well, that has never been good enough for me which is why I'm so excited that I can finally do this! It's so easy, it's not even funny! Here's how it works...

Starting with your Autodesk Buzzsaw account (yes you can run a free 30 day trial to test this out), upload any native Revit project. Click on it to view it. Select one of the Views or Sheets from your model to view. Click the interactive button to actively pan & zoom around the model. If you are in a View, select an object to get metadata about it. Here are some screen grabs from my iPad with a test model I uploaded a few minutes ago!

After Initial model is uploaded and selected, you are presented with native Revit Views / Sheets to open

Viewing interactively in a 3D Revit View with a Wall selected and displaying metadata

 

Viewing one of the Sheets in the Revit model

Inspecting a View in the Revit model

P.S. I have to give props to HMC Architects Autodesk reseller, Kelar Pacific, for bringing this to my attention - this would have otherwise likely slipped under the rug with the new Autodesk product releases happening!

Vasari 2.5 Additional Info

What's new
Known issues
FAQ
Preview Video

Download still pending...

Vasari 2.5 Pending Release Preview

Well, Mr. Light is far more organized than I and has already made his blog post on the best new features due on Vasari 2.5 (available shortly)!!!

Go check em out!

Revit link

I will simply report this main new feature that will make many of our designers very happy - PERSPECTIVE!

Yes, that is correct, in Vasari 2.5 you will be able to work in a Perspective 3D view.

2013 Autodesk products are coming!

Yesterday Lynn Allen posted "what's new" for AutoCAD 2013, due to be available soon. While I'm really excited for the pending next release of Revit, we still have a need for AutoCAD and you may too. So go check out what's next for AutoCAD!

Revit Server plus Imaginit Clarity

Are you using Revit Server and looking to have multiple companies utilize collaborating on a single server? Then look no further because Imaginit Clarity for Revit Server will do just that. Not only will it help manage permissions to keep them from seeing Revit models they shouldn't, it can automate tasks such as printing PDF sets, modifying schedules and more. This is a game changer.

Now, if only I could have multiple Central Revit Servers, then I would be set. That to me has been the only draw back to date...

Factory Feedback - Revit Server

The Revit Factory team is looking for your feedback regarding Revit Server. Did you consider using it? Use it on a project? Implement it as a BIM/CAD Manager? Then they would love to hear what you have to say.

RS Survey link

Factory Feedback - Links and Underlays

The Revit Factory is again asking for your feedback on Revit behavior. Please go help them out - your feedback may very well affect how you select items in Revit!

Links and Underlay Selection

BIM Spectrum - Virtual Event

A virtual event is coming up quickly - BIM Spectrum set for February 16th, hosted by Imaginit. There's a great line up of speakers for this event, including Phil Bernstein from Autodesk. It should prove to have some great insights as to where things are headed not only in the industry but also at Autodesk. Are you attending?