Thursday, June 30, 2011

RTC - Day Three

Saturday was shorter, but held the nugget of the entire conference.

First though, I was at a session presented by a couple of architects from Japan highlighting the progression and use of BIM since their disaster they experienced in March of 2011. While what they are having to deal with is tragic beyond belief, they have a good outlook. Believe it or not, BIM use is progressing steadily there as it is here.

The second session is the golden nugget - possibly paid for the cost of the conference in itself. Jason Grant presented: Revit for Presentations: Graphics that "POP". At the end of it, I realized that he just single-handedly gave me exactly what I've been looking to do for our designers. You see, there is this love for Sketchup in the offices I work with due to its "graphical" capabilities. Now I can share with our designers a way to accomplish what they want inside Revit! Jason also blogs over at his site called Adaptive Practice - check it out!

All in all, if you were on the fence this year about attending, don't give next year's event a second thought. You must attend!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

RTC Day Two

Steve Shell (The Rock and Roll Architect) presented tips for better making Revit graphical output look and stand out much better than the out of the box product. He showed areas we can focus on involving Materials, Line styles, Project Location / Sun Settings and Phases. One tip he gave was the use of multiple views on one sheet, overlapped to add depth to the layout of the view. Also, the need to place elements in odd/unusual places for a better 3D presentation view can help dramatically instead of leaving blank areas of the view such as sky or ground.

The next big session for me was by by Doug Williams of Perkins + Will on How to Establish a BIM Execution Plan. This fits right into one of the areas I've been dealing with lately so it held my interest greatly. He provided some great resources as well as direction to take and who to involve in the process. This was definitely my highlight and favorite class of the day.

Michelle Leonard presented her tips and tricks she's picked up along the way doing interior designs in Revit. She has found that libraries for content are key. Design Options have also been helpful for her teams.

Marcello Sgambelluri ran a Lab called a Special Application of the Adaptive Component, which centered around a third use of points using the Shape Handle option to graphically control parameter input. The applications are virtually limitless as it can control dimensional input, material changes and more all by sliding a grip on the screen!

Day two was wrapped up by a lovely dinner event outside over looking the beach. They had these awesome meringue dessert thingies that called for seconds...

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Revit 2012 eTransmit

Somehow the word "Finally!!!!" doesn't do this justice! I've longed for an easy way to transmit a Revit project and now Autodesk has finally given that to us.

eTransmit for Revit 2012!!!

Hopefully your project is in 2012 and you can put this to use now!

Extreme BIM 2011

Fresh off the heels of RTC, the Extreme BIM 2011 held at USC should prove to be most insightful as to what some of the most well known names in Architecture are up to. Just browsing through the speaker list is practically a who's who! I'm really looking forward to this event. If you want to go, registration is open until July 6th.

Mario Guttman, AIA, LEED AP | Design Applications Research Leader, Perkins + Will
Application Programming for Computational Design; A Case Study on Driving Revit from Ecotect

Ian Keough, Associate, Buro Happold Consulting Engineers PC
Out of the Box : BIM Tools for Visualization and Documentation

Nathan Miller, NBBJ, Associate
Dataspaces and Uncertainty

Joseph Burns, SE, PE, FAIA, Managing Principal, Thornton Tomasetti
Stretching BIM: Design to Construction

Chandler Ahrens, Morphosis
Progressive Feedback

Michael Kilkelly AIA, Associate - Gehry Partners
Translations from Model to Building

Bradley Hardin, RA, LEED ap, Vice President of Strategic Pursuits, Balfour Beatty Construction
BIM and Extreme Execution – Why Digital Field Work is Everything

TEAM Gensler
Adam Gumowski, Designer
Brian Fraumeni, Designer
Kristen George, Designer
Lorenzo Marasso, Designer
Yasushi Ishida, Designer
Mind the Gap

Brian K. Stewart, Partner and Nicole Davis Tinkham, Associate, Collins Collins Muir + Stewart LLP
A Legal Perspective on BIM

Robert Cull, Executive Project Director, Cedars-Sinai Health System, Facilities Planning, Design and Construction
Document Management/Control in the BIM Process

TEAM CCC (some might be virtual)
Lee Belarmino, Vice President of Information Technology and Bond Executive, San Joaquin Delta College
Kimon Onuma, FAIA , President ONUMA Inc. / Founder of BIMStorms
John Roach, Director, Systems Analysis & Research, Foundation for California Community Colleges
BIG BIM BANG: How the California Community College System Connected 71 Million Square feet of BIM, GIS and Facility Management Data in the Cloud

RTC - Day One

Thursday. The day started off with the Keynote address and how RTC has grown. Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, made a presentation and he was smart enough to not talk about Revit in front of several hundred Revit experts. Instead he talked about how he see's computing changing so many things, specifically infinite computing and how it's changing the way we design and build. Hyper-connectivity has affected the resources we can access at any time (accept while at RTC - boo-hiss). Lastly, he tied in Ubiquitous Access as demonstrated by more people having more tools at their disposal. Placing these three things together is how our future will be affected in how we design and build.

David Conant provided a history on the birth and growth of Revit. Showed some great early design concepts and trade show videos they made.

Dan Stine gave a great session on providing Revit support in a larger office. He made a few points that stood out and resonated nicely with me. Specifically, going to a quite conference room and locking yourself in there until you finish what you need to get done along with walking users through answers to avoid getting repeat questions.

I went to session on Bentley's Generative Components tool and found that, as I thought, Revit can do everything it does. Revit just does it with a much better designed interface.

The highlight for me on Thursday was a support session presented by Harlan Brumm from Autodesk support. As he deals with Revit, he gave some great insights to problems. He even addressed a couple issues I was dealing with and gave some things to go check on that I hadn't thought of. Being an Autodesk employee, he gets to take a 6 week sabbatical every now and then. The crazy thing was, he came here to present, despite being on his 6 week sabbatical. That's how much he loves this stuff. He even stayed for the rest of the days as I saw him popping in and out of classes. Harlan also contributes to the Revit Clinic blog, check it out!

Next, Lonnie Cumpton and Beau Turner presented the Revit Model Review add in available to subscription users. Looks like this tool will get some use to ensure standards are followed in the future. A great first day, capped by some nice refreshment afterwards.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Reflections of RTC - USA

Well, live blogging from the event really didn't go as I had hoped/planned. My blasted AT&T reception was non-existent. Wi-Fi? Nope - not really. So, I pretty much ended up disconnecting for 3 days and just enjoying the conference. Overall, I have to say that this conference ROCKED!

If asked, I wouldn't try to compare this with Autodesk University (AU) as I really feel their focus and goal are totally different. I find myself pulled in 20 different directions at AU but at RTC I was able to focus on just Revit related topics (for once). Also, the venue was a nice change from Vegas. If I had to chose between the 2, I would quite possibly pick RTC over AU. Of course I would still prefer to go to both.

For me, the highlights were a couple sessions in particular. I'll be making a few follow up posts in the following days covering what those were! Right now, I've got about a million emails to catch up on...

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Revit Technology Conference (RTC), Stateside

Today marks the start of the Revit Technology Conference (RTC) here in Surf City, USA (aka Huntington Beach, CA). I hope to make a few live blog posts from the event featuring a few of the highlights for me while I'm there. I'm really looking forward to my first RTC as previous ones had only been hosted in Gold Coast Australia.