History Of Revit - Wiki

Are you are curious about the history of Revit? Wondering about the release timeline, why the name Revit, what other names were candidates and more?

If so then you may find the recent contributions of users to the Triple D Design Wiki a good place to grab a coffee and do some reading. Of course if you would like to edit and add some additional material feel free.

happy editing...

Take a break, are you an Einstein?

Sometime you need to take a break from work and with a little extra time on my hands during this vacation week I ran across the following 19th century riddle from Albert Einstein:

Are you in the top 2% of intelligent people in the world? Solve the riddle below to find out.

There are no tricks, just pure logic, so good luck and don't give up.

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

The question for you to resolve: Who owns the fish?

Hints
1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

Albert Einstein said that 98% of the world population would not be able to solve it. Answer here.

Wiki Upgrade

The Triple D Design Wiki has gone through an upgrade (to version 1.5.4). All data has been successfully migrated and the site is fully operational.

With this upgrade has come two changes:

1. Site change notification - The wiki is located in a folder on the Triple D Design server, but we have always used a sub-domain pointer to make the site easier to find. With this upgrade we will be pointing to the real folder on the network and no longer to the sub-domain. This will allow for future upgrades to be much easier. Please update your bookmarks to http://www.tripleddesign.com/wiki.

2. Spam fighting - Over the past 2 months the amount of spam we have been getting (non-related spam links posted on the site) has increased to a point where it was taking away from content development and forcing us to rollback these changes. For now we are requiring a user to login to be able to have full access to the site, a login is FREE. Once logged in you have full access to the wiki. Long term we are looking to relax these permissions to allow everyone, including anonymous users, access to the site.

With these changes we can now focus on expanding the content and growing the site. We are also looking to expand beyond Architectural Desktop and Revit Building to add other software products to the list. If you are a Revit Structure user please drop us an e-mail to let us know if you are interested in participating in Phase III of the wiki.

Please take a moment to spread the word about the wiki changes, update your bookmarks and share some of your own knowledge, to make this community resource even better, one edit at the time. :)

happy collaboration...

Systems Blog

My friend Shack has now joined the blogging world with not one, but two new blogs:

http://cadshack.blogspot.com/ - Focused on Autodesk Building Systems, AutoCAD, and Revit Systems when available.

http://lazydrafter.blogspot.com/ - How to grow technically and professional for the lazy drafter .

Welcome to the blogging world Shack!

DWG and Google Earth

By now I am sure most of you have seen/tried Google Earth. If not, the idea behind Google Earth is simple: it’s a globe that sits inside your computer. You point and zoom to any place on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop.

If you are using Autodesk AutoCAD based software (AutoCAD, ADT, ABS) to create 3D designs digitally you can now take this to the next level and place these within Google Earth using ExtractKML from the Avatech Solutions DEV team.

How does it work? Here is a step-by-step rundown:

1. Simplify your model down to 3D faces by exploding and binding/inserting references.
2. Run the add-in.
3. Determine the location on the Earth to place your model (based on latitude/longitude – imported, if you wish, from a Google Earth placemark).
4. Determine the orientation direction for your model (by a second placemark or compass heading).
5. The add-in generates a KML file, which can be viewed inside of Google Earth.
   

I have been using this for a while and taking my own ADT and exported Revit models and placing/sharing them with other Google Earth users. If you create something unique drop me an e-mail with the KML file to import and view. :)

Autodesk University - Wrap Up

As most of you know Autodesk University was last week and all I can say in retrospect is simply; WOW!

Each year offers more and more, despite a few snafus and issues with event staff and transportation, this AU was a great event. From early mornings to late nights it was great to spend time with so many great and knowledgable users. Next year will continue to offer even more so start making plans for AU 2006 at the Venetian Resort Hotel in Las Vegas for November 28 - December 1, 2006.