Revit 9.1 Scheduled to Ship August 29

I posted the main Revit 9.1 story and details on my company blog:

Breaking News: New Revit 9.1 Products Are Scheduled to Ship August 29th

Green Homes Put Green in Everyone's Pocket

Designing homes? Building homes? Have you been competing on price or on the value of your home designs? Has it become a buyer's market in your locale? Has the cost of construction materials delayed or cancelled any projects.

Here's a great article that provides you and your client with the opportunity to put some green into the home design; but also put green into both of your pockets. For those builders that are interested in earning several thousand dollars of tax credits, check out item #2 on Jerry's list.

Ten Reasons Why the Green Home Market is Ready to Surge
By: Jerry Yudelson, Senior Editor - Monday, July 17, 2006 Source: iGreenBuild.com

Green or Sustainable Design usually means longterm payback as you invest money upfront. The website described below (DSIRE) is updated weekly and monthly. It provides upfront rebates and cash-back incentives for buying products that match the specifications database; furnaces, air conditioning, lighting, appliances, insulation and more. Financing for these rebates is provided through local, state & federal government agencies, utilities and/or product manufacturers.

The Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE). It's a comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility, and selected federal incentives that promote renewable energy. DSIRE now includes incentives for energy efficiency. Choose one or both databases for searching.

As part of the learning process, visit the U.S. Greenbuilding Council (USGBC) site for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes (LEED-H). You can download a checklist sustainable features that will determine the LEED rating of your designs. It features contact information for more than 40 state agencies. The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has reprinted a four-page article title "Green Building for Homes" from Home Energy magazine.

We are in the beginning stages of LEED-H. You have time to begin incorporating the easiest sustainability features into your designs. Automating the LEED material and performance documentation for your home designs is important to qualify for funding. Next time, we'll look at a couple Autodesk Revit features to assist with automating the documentation and performance simulation of your home designs for LEED-H.

Conceptual Design: Bumwad and Bubble Diagrams

Here's a concept that I've used to bring the "willing" conceptual designer and/or principal into the project team that's using Revit. Typically they've used pencils and markers to draw on bumwad, flimsy, onion paper or sketchpads. I'm not discounting hand sketches. However; our studies clearly show there is a time in the latter half of the coneptual phase where this technique is more productive than using paper. The project team can access the designer's work digitally for presentations, analysis, and printing. Thereby retaining the designer's decisions-design intent as the project flows into schematic stage.

This concept uses Revit's Room Separation tool. It creates spaces using linework and not walls. It's a simple, intuitive yet intelligent 2D sketching tool. The Room Separation toolset includes lines, circles, elipses, rectangles, splines, arcs and more; all from one small menu. Grip editing provides the designer with simple pick'n pull moving, copying and resizing of linework.

The enclosed areas can be tagged to display "total area" of the space both on the tag and in the space schedules. The designer gets immediate feedback from editing spaces in the design process. As the project progresses, the production team can trace over the linework with walls. Revit linework file can also be linked into another Revit project.

Here's a DWF project file that features the bubble diagram, concept and analysis drawings. I also incorporated a space planning schedule and KEY SPACE schedule on the conceptual page.

Schools Leverage Alumni for Free Autodesk Software

This Autodesk promotion is limited to secondary schools; colleges, universities and technical colleges. Read the full story on my company blog and download the whitepaper for detailed information regarding the program. Schools Get Free Autodesk Software When You Purchase.

It's one of those Autodesk programs that was tough to find any detailed specifics on their website. A few calls and this is what I found. As an alumni, the best part is your purchase could place you as the hero to the school of your choice without any additional cost! Pretty easy.

Revit Placeholders: Key to Smooth Project Development

A placeholder is an object that you place into the building model; realizing that you will eventually revise, replace or remove it. I kick off many of my projects with a set of standard, conceptually-detailed placeholders. This will include doors, walls, window, tags, dimensions, equipment and data schedules. Placeholders may be 2D or 3D; they usually have simple graphics with some simple data attached to them. We usually name them as a Type 1, Type 2, Type 3, etc doors, windows or walls.

As the project progresses, we revise or replace the "Type" placeholders with descriptive family named components; "Single Flush" door, "Double Hung with Trim" window, "Exterior - Brick and CMU on MTL. Stud" wall.

From concept placeholders to final component families, BIM Standards should be reviewed and maintained throughout the project. In the elevations image below, I encountered problems as I replaced window types. Notice how the window head heights in Step B and D do not match the windows families in Steps A and C. I should have reviewed them against my BIM standards before I released them into the project.

To globally revise, edit or replace a placeholder; we must find and select every occurence of the object family in the project file. First, select an object, right click and pick "Select All Instances" from the shortcut menu. This selects all occurences of that object family on all levels.

Now you may have two or three choices for editing. All choices exist in the Options Bar above. Working from left to right, you can either pick the the Family Properties pull-down menu and change the family type. Or select the Properties button and revise the object's Family types in the Element Properties dialog box. Or you can choose the "Edit Family" button.

BIM placeholders that are properly created and managed willl cut the labor costs and project time. Thereby allowing the designer to do more with less effort.

Free Milwaukee Revit-ADT Learning Event: Thursday, August 17th

Registeration extended to August 11th!
Based on your enthusiastic response to this event, we have made arrangements with the hotel to provide additional seating. See you there!

I will be conducting free Revit training with several other of our Application Engineers in Milwaukee on Thursday, August 17th. This full day event will feature a 2-hour Executive Briefing in the morning featuring Alex Severino from Autodesk-Chicago and Bryan Cowles from our St. Lake City office. This session is for principals, owners and managers. Contact Lisa Casey to obtain your Executive invitation-pass. Her email address and phone number is on the Event-Registration-Description page.

We're providing lunch and after lunch we'll start the classes. There are four training tracks that include Revit, Revit Structure, Revit Systems / ABS, ADT / VIZ Render. We will have two 60-minute classes in each track for a total of eight free classes. We'll close the session with a 2-hour session that shows how to create collaboration strategies between the products utilizing the talents of Lisa Brady from Autodesk-Nashville.

Revit Building Track (view/register)
Instructor(s): Daniel Hughes

Analyze This!

A toolset for a designer's expanded role. Budget. Space. Energy. Certification. Phasing. Today's designers are managing more project data using Building Information Modeling's (BIM) live data scheduling. This class will show you how to begin creating Autodesk Revit schedules for quantity take off, space efficiency analysis, LEED certification, construction phasing, presenting design options and more. This will include setup of Revit's unique "shared parameters".

All in the Family

A basic to midrange class for creating families (symbols, walls, doors, AutoCAD blocks) in Revit Building. Not everything needs to be created in 3D. As we create families we'll review best practices, Revit's unique In-place families, adding materials, while using 3D modeling: extrusions, revolutions, sweeps, blends, voids, and assigning parameters (attributes) to the family.

Structural Engineering-Track (view/register)
Instructor(s): Betsy Werra / Bryan Cowles

All in the Structure Family
A basic introduction on creating families in Revit Structure
Topics include: 3D Modeling using extrusions, revolutions, sweeps, blends and voids Using parameters to drive the family design (tags & schedules) Creating detail components such as connection plates and bolting Adding materials

Worksets: The missing pieces to the Puzzle
Managing the project data between the structural engineers and drafters/designers using worksets. Topics Include: Starting a multi-user project by creating the central and local files for the project Creating the worksets for the project and explaining how the worksets are organized Saving, sharing, and synchronizing the work between the engineers & drafter/designers Adding and borrowing elements from worksets Best Practices with worksets

MEP Engineering-Track (view/register)
Instructor(s): Jill Bernhardt / Bryan Cowles

Calculated Designs with Revit Systems Plus
With the re-introduction of state energy codes, the amount of electricity consumed by different systems within the building is becoming increasingly important to the design. Learn to use Revit Systems Plus to automatically estimate the average illumination values for spaces, calculate wire sizing, and voltage drops. Create consumption usage reports for power and lighting. Automatically wire lighting fixtures and receptacles and add panel homeruns. Balance loads and generate panel schedules.

Get into the Zone with Revit Systems Plus
Quickly visualize your mechanical design criteria with color-filled dynamically updateable spaces and zones rather than pouring over spreadsheets. Create zones to export design data to energy analysis programs and import the results back into your project. Auto-route ductwork to explore design options. Use the Mechanical System Inspector to design for maximum economy and efficiency. Interactively change fittings, shape, or configuration and instantly see the updated static pressure loss and changes to flow properties.

Architectual Desktop Track (view/register)
Instructor(s): Jill Bernhardt / Lisa Brady

Illustrate your Point
Start taking advantage of the new quick and easy 3D graphics tools available right inside AutoCAD/ADT/ABS 2007 to create unique conceptual and realistic presentations. Learn how to walk and fly your clients through your 3D model. No exporting to VIZ Render or Autodesk VIZ required to create distinctive design impressions with these techniques.
Topics will include: Checking out the Dashboard, working with Visual Styles, applying materials to objects, adding lights and shadows to views, and navigating through your 3D model.

AutoCAD for Architects
Immediate Productivity in Architectural Desktop Get past using ADT like AutoCAD and see how you can be immediately productive with 2D architectural capability within Architectural Desktop. Topics include: Spaces, Details, Sheet Set Manager, Project Browser, Scheduling, and more!

Registeration extended to August 11th!

We'll see you there.