#YearinReview What did you ship/complete in 2010?

Seth brought up a good exercise on writing out the items you shipped in 2010.  This recognizes in one spot the different items that I am proud to be a part of.  For my adaptation, shipping will be projects (software and business development, writing, speaking or life events that stand out or related):

My 2010 List:

1. Event Switch to MAC platform (had been straddling the fence prior)
2. Launch Scan to BIM, point cloud integration with Autodesk Revit 2011 (Laser Scan to BIM)
3. Launch 100 Percent, 4-in-1 Percentages Calculator for iPhone and iPod devices.
4. Launch Fun for Kids: Activities for Your Family, Activities, crafts, games and entertainment ideas for kids of all ages for iPhone and iPod devices.
5. Launch Avatech Utilities for Revit 2011, includes 11 utilities in the full package for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP with 3 entirely new tools and user interface adjustments to each to streamline usage.
6. Event Revit in the cloud, private Revit clouds and working with hosted solutions. The Autodesk University presentation brought lots of great questions and showed a rapidly growing interest.  From the mainstage to sidebar conversations the discussion of "cloud" technology was everywhere. More on this in the future...
7. Co-Author Introducing Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 with Pat Davis, Charlie Busa, Steve Stafford and Beau Turner.

I did not do all of this myself... far from it. Thanks to everyone involved in these projects and for readers, users, volunteers, beta testers, colleagues, marketing, paying customers and more that made these projects happen. There were additional private development items that cannot be mentioned :\ and another twelve to fifteen projects that were started and underway but were not launched in 2010 and as Seth said "If it doesn't ship, it does not count".

The other reason I bring this up is that when I am involved in launching or development of projects this blog goes quiet. This space has not gone dormant, it means that I do not want to spill the beans/excitement pre-maturely and I am working out how to get past this flaw. ;)

Onwards and upwards for 2011...

Revit Development - Autodesk BIMreview

The last few years have been a great learning experience as I have had the desire and opportunity to get more involved in software add-ons. This has been primarily through the Revit platform and taking advantage of the ever expanding API. The first being the launch of the Avatech Revit Utilities, part of an ongoing collection of tools, numerous private Revit applications for firms and the creation and launch of a larger application called BIMreview.

I tend to think of working with Revit add-ins in two ways:

• Utility - Small tools that either automates a process (done in less time) or addresses a short coming within the core program. These tend to get added to the core application in given time and have a relatively short shelf life (in most but not all cases).
• Application - A larger, typically more complex tool that does a specific action outside of what the core application does by itself. This could be a bi-directional link to another application (ex. Sharepoint) or something like BIMreview above that has its own interface for checking and correction standards within your Revit model.

With the utilities, these are typically much shorter from concept to creation (hours to days and occassionally weeks). In the case of BIMreview being able to start with a previous idea from the manufacturing space helped to start this. Some key differences and timing played a large part to this as there are multiple emerging BIM standards that exist. Some of these are formal (ex. GSA Spatial Validation, others are less defined and vary based on what is important to the modelers, designers at each firm. The next few years are going to continue to be exciting from a technology perspective as these requirements and standards start to become better defined and the technology to automate checking and validating them to be more commonplace.

A couple of personal highlights in being involved BIMreview:

• Initial Revit Standards creation and discussion with many people/firms (hopefully a future AU class that I will get to be part of)
• UI Design (working to make it as intuitive as possible). Garr Reynolds has been a huge inspiration for me, and I continue to work to be better at this in presentations, design and UI's.
  

This journey has helped to expand my own thinking and interaction with Revit. At the same time getting deeply involved in development without letting the "cat out of the bag" too early on the larger projects has kept me from writing here (aka the Cathederal). As of June 09, 2009 BIMreview is now an Autodesk product, short overview of details here. I am looking forward to this moving forward and the team that is coming together around it. As soon as there are more public details that can be shared I will let you know.

In the meantime I am glad to get the blog here dusted off and back to being more active and if you are looking for more Revit Utilities and custom development, lets talk. :)

Cheers...

64-bit Revit 2009 Utilities

The Avatech Revit Utilities for 2009 have been updated and now available for download and use with Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP 64-bit here.

The installer will check if you have a 32 bit or 64 bit machine as well as whether you have 32 or 64 bit Revit and install appropriately. Feedback is always appreciated in the forums section.

Note: If you are looking to share these with your entire staff and want an easy way to install these, here you go.

We are wrapping up work on a new application (BIMreview) and will be sharing more utilities so stay tuned and thanks for your continued use, feedback and development requests.

This post refers to the following utilities:
Change Case
Content Browser
Door Mark Update
Earth Connector
Grid Select
Room Phase Copy
Room Renumber
Space Update

Revit Utilities - Silent Installation

If you are using the Avatech Revit Utilities there is an extra feature available to help you deploy this on your network for multiple users.

To do so use the following steps:
1. Download all the Avatech Revit Utilities (the .executables) into a centralized folder that all your users can access

2. Edit the “Avatech Utilities – Client Silent Install.bat” file to provide your user accessible network path (replace the section that says YourServerNameHere with your correct path) and save (available to download here rename from .txt to .bat)

3. Add the routine to your users start-up batch routine (may need IT to help you with that) or have your users manually install by distributing the .bat file.


This will install the ARU's for 2008, 2009 or any combination thereof. In the event you already have these loaded it will update/overwrite the previous one to use the new build.

The silent installation option is available starting with the following build numbers:
Change Case: Version 1.0.3032.25223
Earth Connector: Version 1.1.3054.15402
Revit Content Browser: Version 1.1.3086.36336
Room Renumber: Version 1.1.3066.26735
Door Mark Update: Version 1.0.3062.25810