#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...

IFC 2x4 - Early Details

The next version of IFC (IFC 2x4) is currently available as an alpha spec review.

Quick details (courtesy of IAI Tech International):

• 
  The IFC 2x edition 4 release is available now. The buildingSMART community is strongly encouraged to review the current alpha release and to provide feedback using the MSG issue resolution database. The deadline for comments is 20.08.2008.
  The IFC 2x edition 4 release (IFC2x4), combines a number of feature increases with some major rework and improvements of the existing IFC specification. It has been developed as the next basis for IFC enabled interoperability of Building Information Models. It is also intended that the IFC2x4 release will be submitted to the International Standardization Organization (ISO) for approval as a full International Standard ISO16739.
  
  

The spec is available for download here: http://ifc.buildingsmart.com

Note: You will need to register for free to be able to download the file and provide feedback. It looks like new registrations are currently down and should be back up soon.

Work with SketchUp and IFC together

If your a SketchUp user listen up; you can now take an IFC file and import into your SketchUp model.

Joe passed this along earlier to me and it shows a proof of concept (free beta available) that allows you to take an IFC file and import the geometry and data (ex. Revit parameter information) into SketchUp. This plug-in (available here) was created by Secom and distributed by Cadalog, Inc.

Sounds interesting for the small niche of folks who need to go this direction (BIM to SKP) and I am in the process of downloading now to test with. More later...

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Update 1
There are two sample files you can download to work with from the site above:

• SmallerBuildingIFC2x3.ifc - 558kb file created with ArchiCAD 10.00 release 1 using IFC2x3 schema
• TOFU2.0_2x3_simplefied.ifc - 1.22mb created with ArchiCAD 11.00 release 1 using IFC2x3 schema

On my testing machine I only had the free download of Google SketchUp available and was pleasantly surprised that you can import the IFC file via plug-in with this version as well.

There seems to be overlapping geometry (not reversed faces) in many spots but the entire model comes in as groups (for the objects).

AutoCAD Architecture 2008 - Service Pack 1

The Service Pack for AutoCAD Architecture 2008 (Formerly ADT) was released on 9/18 and is available here.

The readme lists the fixes, etc...

I am installing now, the first thing that caught me was that it was trying to install using the default installation to the M://. Since this is not a drive I have ever had on this machine I had to repoint this. Anyone else get something similar?

* Update - this seems to be the path it is downloading from visible from Vista.

** Update - If you do not have access to the original installation .msi location your installation update will need to be aborted.

Happy cadding...

GTD Outlook Plug-In

Matt pointed out that he has been using the GTD outlook plug-in and it is working pretty well. I have been pondering this for some time to help with my own implementation. For now with the upgrade to Vista I will be waiting until Mid-June for this to be available.

Once available I think I will go ahead and make the plunge. There is a trial version of this (though not for Vista, except possibly beta) available for you to test as well. I did test the demo version for a short period of time before my last machine quit, unfortunately not long enough to really get a feel for things. :(

If you have been using this or have something to offer on the subject, leave a comment.

Happy GTD'ing...

AutoCAD Blocks

Do you use acad blocks? Do you use the same blocks in multiple drawings? Ever need to update the blocks?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions then this posting is for you. I recently gave a refresher/updated materials course for a few AutoCAD users and part of this involved different methods of using blocks and redefining existing definitions in different drawings. If you need to accomplish this here are a few examples of ways to accomplish this:

1. The ability to have a block in a drawing and manipulate the block(s) by redefining/changing all instances can be done with the refedit command, or by recreating the block and using the same block name. This will update all the blocks in the current drawing of the same name.

2. If you are defining your linework for an object to become a block in an external file you can use the "insert" command with the browse option to choose the external file to override blocks in your drawing of the same name. If this is not working the most likely issue is that the file was wblocked out as a block to a file of the same name. If so explode the block in the external file to simple linework and purge the block from this drawing and save the file. The insert command>>browse option will now insert the file as desired.

3. If you are wblocking information out to an external file or block library as blocks and not linework you can use DesignCenter (Ctrl + 2) to redefine blocks in your drawing. To accomplish this open DesignCenter and browse using the folder tab to the file and expand the sub-files and select the blocks option. Nowright click the block you wish to redefine in your current file and choose "Redefine only" to update the block definition. You can use the "Ctrl + Tab" and/or "Ctrl + Shift + Tab" key combinations to cycle through open drawings and repeat as needed.

4. Of course for those of you who would rather type, script or use lisp you can still use the alternative -insert with the = option (-insert , ExistingBlockname=path of drawing and FileName, choose "yes" to redefine the existing blocks in the drawing).
Example -insert, MyBlock=C:\WorkingFiles\MyBlock.dwg which will replace all instances of the block "MyBlock" with the information from the drawing "MyBlock.dwg". This is very similar to Step 2 above and has the same limitations of requiring linework only in this file.

*5. Of course you could always use a small bit of lisp code to swap one block out for another, courtesy of David.

(defun c:SWAPBLK (/ SELECTIONSET COUNT NBLK BLOCK ELIST)
(princ "\n SWAPBLK")
(setvar "cmdecho" 0)
(setvar "osmode" 0)
(prompt "\nSelect blocks to be swapped to another:")
(setq SELECTIONSET (ssget) COUNT 0)
(setq NBLK (getstring "\nName of swapping block:"))
(repeat (sslength SELECTIONSET)
(setq BLOCK (ssname SELECTIONSET COUNT))
(setq ELIST (entget BLOCK))
(setq ELIST (subst (cons 2 NBLK)(assoc 2 ELIST) ELIST))
(entmod ELIST)
(entupd BLOCK)
(setq COUNT (+ COUNT 1))
)
(princ)
)
(princ "\nSWAPBLK loaded.")
(princ)

This should help you to understand a few of the many ways to use blocks more effectively in AutoCAD.

Happy cadding...