Tampa - ADT & Revit AUGI Class

AUGI has done it again... bringing you another great opportunity for learning and networking called the cad matinee. For those in the Tampa area you will find the following building design and construction classes offered on November 01, 2005:

Autodesk Revit 8
Creating Custom Wall Components
Walls are more than parallel lines. When you work in Revit, you’re actually creating a 3D model of your building using Revit components. Although Revit comes with a number of pre-designed walls, what do you do when you need something new? This class will explain how to modify existing wall components and create your own custom walls, including combinations of materials such as brick, masonry, and siding. We’ll also look at compound walls, reveals, and sweeps. It’s a lot easier than you might think.


Autodesk Architectural Desktop and Autodesk Building Systems
Project and Data Management Made Easy
In today’s world of building design and construction we are continuously hearing the words data management, document management, drawing management and even building lifecycle management. The question is how this applies to the everyday use of CAD. In the past this was simply done by the use of subdirectories and file-naming conventions. Today Autodesk has embedded tools into Autodesk Architectural Desktop and Autodesk Building Systems that manage this for you. In this session we will cover Building Level Management, Constructs, Elements, Views and Sheet Sets in the Project Navigator. Now you can manage your data with a new level of control.

There are also two great AutoCAD and Civil 3D classes that will be offered for those interested!

Hope to see you there,
b

Recharging

The past few weeks have been full of many fun travels with the chance to meet and work with many great BIM and visualization users from Pennsylvania, Vegas, St. Louis and more...

With all that and more the past week was a chance to take a short vacation and recharge. We headed to upstate New York (near the canadian border) and spent some time with friends and family. Great trip but way too short, the topper was the final night it snowed 12".

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog postings... oh and 3 new pet projects are inline to start debuting within the next month. If you missed the most recent pet project debut (project wiki) it has been taking off with the help of many users like you, one edit at the time!

your refreshed neighborhood blogman,
b

Revit Building - Wiki Phase II now live

The Triple D Design Wiki is continuing to grow and develop thanks to the participation of users like you, one edit at the time. With that growth it is my pleasure to announce that the phase II project, or Revit Building, is now live and active. The Revit Building section can be found here or follow the link from the main page of the wiki.

Many thanks to my buddy Steve Stafford for helping get the timeline for this phase moved up, and to the many others who have offered their support, edits and knowledge. With this section of the site now live and active we are looking forward to the continued growth and evolution of the site and pages.

For those out there who have not yet participated in the site it is a unique experience in that you can edit the content when a change needs to occur (new release, feature set changes/additions, better explanation, etc...). For more information on how to get started you may find this getting started post helpful.

Stay tuned for more and happy editing...

ADT - Applying Materials

When migrating older legacy styles and drawings forward, one of the more time consuming tasks is dealing with any program changes and/or new features. A good example of this would be migrating an existing wall style library from ADT 3.3 and lower to ADT 2006.

One of the best improvements for walls was the addition of materials to ADT 2004, giving us more "global" display control over the linework, plan, surface and section hatch as well as the sectioned body and boundary control. Unfortunately you may find that updating your existing library by going through each wall style and adding/editing the material definition to be time consuming. The good news is you can use the "Apply Material" tool to apply a particular material at the style level or object level quickly and easily.

You will find this tool on the Design tab of the tool palettes in ADT 2006, called "Material". To get a better idea of how this works, you may wish to review the Applying Materials video example.

happy BIM'ing...

Triple D Design Wiki - Getting Started

This past week has brought about some good comments and feedback from numerous users who are embracing the idea of the Triple D Design Wiki. Here is a short video clip explaining how to get started.

The premise is quite simple, if you find a section you either wish to add/edit for further clarification all you need to do is select the edit button right next to the page sub-section. After adding/editing your text, add a small summary and choose the save option. Instantly your changes will be shown on the page.

If you have been troubled by the help files in the past or just wanted to participate in a unique community resource this is your chance. Why do I like this? Good question I will give you a three simple answers (ok #3 has multiple sub-items but I could not stop there):

1. No knowledge of HTML needed for anyone to work with the site.
2. Simplicity of the interface, if you need to edit a section choose the edit link.
3. It is different than other resources out there, in that you get a true "living document" as a community resource.

• E-mail is a form of communication from person to person. While good it does not reach everyone and can be hard to search and way too easy to delete.
• A mailing list is a form of communication from one person to a group, but like the e-mail issues there a few unfortunate drawbacks.
• Discussion forums are a form of communication from one person giving another person a chance to respond. While this is great in that the search feature can help find information, there is a lot of extra "junk" that one must wade through.

Over the past two years I have used the wiki engine in a number of ways; from personal and project related notes to cad manuals and more. This truly is a living document, spend a few moments running through the site to expand your knowledge and if you find a section that peaks your interest or particular skill set, take a moment to give back and help to make this community resource even better.

Phase II - Revit Building will be released within the next week, thanks to all those who have sent e-mails offering support and especially to Steve Stafford for helping to get the shell outlined and setup (not to mention moving the launch date up). :)

happy editing...

Autodesk Maya???

The rumors are true, Autodesk to aquire Alias for $182 million in cash.

Press Release: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Autodesk_Alias_Press_Release.pdf

Fact Sheet: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Autodesk_Alias_Fact_Sheet.pdf

General FAQ: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/Autodesk_Alias_External_FAQ.pdf

Courtesy of Shaan

happy rendering...

Comment Punks

Well unfortunately over the past few days I have been getting a number of bogus comments (new form of spam) and have now had to turn on a new blogger feature that will enable a user to enter the alphanumeric character shown on the screen before comments can be posted.

Wiki - New ADT Resource

Well the time has come to get this pet project off the ground and out to the public for use, may I introduce to you a new community resource: Triple D Design Wiki.

The first question you may be asking is what is a wiki? In short this is a website that allows users to add content. What makes this different and unique is that anyone can also edit the content when a change needs to occur (new release, features set changes/additions, better explanation, etc...).

The second question you may be asking is if anyone can edit this what about malicous users? The wiki is based on a SQL database and gives us the ability to track who made what changes and should an incident occur we can "rollback" the malicous changes in a matter of seconds.

The software we have chosen to run our wiki platform is MediaWiki which is the same platform as the popular wikipedia. We have instituted a phased implementation to cover muliple software platforms. Phase I includes Architectural Desktop while Phase II includes plans for Revit Building. Phase I currently has a rough shell of topics and some areas are filled in as a starting point while a few others a more finished out. If you see an area that interests you or notice an item that has not been added yet, take a moment to edit/add this section.

We are looking forward to the growth of this wiki, one edit at the time. If you are interested in getting started please see the User's Guide for usage and configuration help. I will be posting a video showing how to use this later in the week for anyone having trouble.

All the Triple D Design Wiki content will be distributed under the Creative Commons License.

happy Wiki'ing...