Restructuring for BIM Success

A recent article published in Design Intelligence, Restructuring for BIM Success, written by my colleague Jay Zallan couldn't have been written more succinctly. I can't stress how true the following statement he made is:

"CAD processes don’t require that architectural practices be good, but BIM processes do because without teamwork, communication, and defined processes, firms cannot realize the full benefits of BIM."

I've seen this personally many times. If you haven't already read the article, I would encourage you to give it a read. More importantly, at the end of the article is a series of links to BIM resources for everything you would need to put BIM into practice at your firm, if it isn't already. If BIM is in place, these documents can serve as a way to compare what your firm is doing with what others are putting in place for a successful BIM experience. Lastly, if you haven't read it before, Jay's blog: "Fear and Loathing In a CAD vs. BIM World" has some great content regarding Revit and BIM - check it out!

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?

Autodesk Licensing Online Only...

For those that deal with getting license files for Autodesk products, things have recently changed. I received a notice back on December 20th via email and had largely forgotten about it until I noticed a recent post by the Up and Ready blog. If in the past, you used to request licenses via email or fax (who uses faxes anymore!?!?) they were retired at the end of 2011. For me, this produced a large <gasp> followed by some vocabulary exercises...

The following comes via a post from the Up & Ready blog and their latest post on the relatively new procedures for requesting license assistance.

One-Step Licensing Assistance Web Form - Use this page to get a report of all licenses registered to your company name or activate a product once (with a wait time)
http://www.autodesk.com/licensesupport
Register Once - Log in with your account info for instant, automatic online license generation (how instant remains to be seen)
http://www.autodesk.com/register
Online Licensing Support for Customers - great for general queries about licensing
http://www.autodesk.com/licensing
Common Registration and Activation Questions - if you are new to licensing Autodesk products, this will be of great help
http://www.autodesk.com/install

Lastly, it was mentioned in the notice sent to me back in December that you can still request licensing assistance via subscription center by opening a case. So now, instead of simply sending an email, I have to log into a system and log a ticket. I don't know about any of you out there, but I will miss the email alias for license requests...

Vasari - Parametric Sliders

So, it looks like there is an update posted for the Parametric Slider tool on the Autodesk Labs Vasari page. The current update addressed some stability and usability issues as documented on the Wiki site for the add-in tool. Looks like the updates will address a number of issues that will make it more valuable!

Point Cloud Feature Extraction for Revit 2012

Who deosn't love free stuff? The Autodesk Labs team has posted another tech preview for your enjoyment! The Point Cloud Feature Extraction for Revit 2012 looks to be what I was initially hoping would happen when Revit first started to support point clouds. While other solutions have existed for a while to convert point clouds into native Revit objects, this is the first official release of a tool from Autodesk to do just that. This initial release seems to target the key model components such as Floors and Walls along with a couple other tools. Check out the landing page (link above) for it on Labs to download, get an overview & some how to videos! The getting started page has some sample point cloud files for testing if you need some for testing.

AUGI World - January 2012 - INI vs Outie...

The latest issue is out - AUGI World - January 2012 - why not check it out on your Friday? There's something for everyone. AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor, IT Systems, Navisworks, Revit and more are discussed! So much good stuff, plus a little article I wrote on taking the Revit.ini file and making it yours. Go get your copy now!

AUGI is also wanting to know, how did you come to know about AUGI? Quick survey on their home page: Survey link

As a side note, the Revit Factory is looking for your input - do you run with Press & Drag on or off? Seems like a fitting survey after the AUGI article I wrote. Leave a note! I did!

Word, Excel & PPT on the iPad...

In a previous post I mentioned an app called CloudOn that provides access to Word, Excel & PPT on your iPad. My reservation was that it wouldn't insert images. I've also found that the arrangement of the interface was different than what I was used to on my desktop. It is nice though to have it integrated with Dropbox for document editing, storage and printing if needed.

However, I now have found an even better app, thanks to Gizmodo & some friends at work. OnLive Desktop has an iPad app which gives full access to all current features of Word, Excel & PPT, with a full Windows 7 desktop. It even accepts hand writing input and translates it to text. Documents are stored on their server with access via web browser. So, if you want to print from your iPad, you can view the files you have and either print from Safari or open in Dropbox and print from there - straight from the iPad. If you have an AirPrint enabled printer, great, otherwise, tie this together with an app called Print n Share (try the free version to see if your printer works) and you've got yourself a great workflow on your iPad!