#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...

Autodesk Revit Model Review - Check file?

In this post we are going to talk about what exactly is a check file

When you first install Model Review there are some example check files that ship with the product to help you get started.  For Revit 2009 users there are 4:

• Revit Modeling and Energy Standards (checks built around the premise in this whitepaper)
  
• GSA Template Standards (based around using the Autodesk provided GSA Revit template)
  
• Firm/Project Standards-Minimal (some of the common items people asked about checking for)
  
• Firm/Project Standards-Extended (some items people had asked about checking for)
  

For Revit 2010 there is an additional one called:

• Content Standards (based around some of the things that people are concerned with in their .rfa family files)

Understanding the Terminology

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Autodesk Revit Model Review - Whats New

Today marks the release of Autodesk Revit Model Review, formerly Avatech BIMreview and it is packed with extra goodies making this into an even stronger product.  This post is focused on what is new inside of this release or changes from the prior BIMreview product.  For starters Model Review is not sold separately, it is only available as part of the Subscription Advantage pack, to get this login to the subscription center and download.  There are two versions available for use with all flavors of Revit (Architecture, Structure & MEP); one for 2009 and the other for 2010 (both support 32 & 64 bit).

What are some of the new features that this release offers?

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Sketchbook Mobile - v1.1

Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile has a new version released today (version 1.1).  Some nice improvements to make this even better.  The list of new features includes the following:

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5 Starting Tips for iPhone Development and We Are Official

What's new here you ask?  Well development efforts have been pretty exciting and the winds of change are beginning to blow.  Back in January we switched our mobile devices of choice to iPhones. Since then we have become fascinated with what can actually be done on the device and as of October 01, 2009 we launched our first developed application called: 100percent, works with the iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

So how did this get started? Great question, it really began with some personal inspiration and the dive into private and commercial development over the past 2 years. The itch to do more in this direction became a motivator that finally could not be ignored. Besides the legal aspects (will talk more on that at another time) the desire to merge the design side which life has been preparing for us (Architecture, Engineering, Modeling, Rendering, Project Management, Design Applications and Utilities and more) and  see where it may land.  So with that rough framework in place we wanted to apply this to development for the iPhone, which brings me to the first principal we went through looking for what to develop: 

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Revit 2009 New Feature - VSTA

In this release of 2009 for the Revit line of products (Architecture, Structure and MEP) we have a new "light" programming envrionment called VSTA.




VSTA is the acronym for Visual Studio Tools for Applications and is the replacement technology from Microsoft for VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). VSTA is a .NET development environment built into Revit (and other Autodesk applications) and can be used to create both VB.NET and C# based macros. While I called this a "light" programming environment that is not to say this is for beginners as you will need to have some programming skills to take advantage of this feature, maybe Matt can provide an example file that can be useful.






To get started you will need to add this to your installation by using the following steps:


1. Depending on how you installed Revit to begin with (direct download or from the disk) go back to the Installation Screen and choose Install Tools and Utilities (shown below):






2. Make sure to check the Revit VSTA for Architecture 2009 (or Structure/MEP depending on your particular program).






3. Installation will take a few minutes and give you a screen below as it installs the right components:






4. Once it is installed, the first time you start Revit up after that you will get the following notification for a short period of time indicating it is configuring your environment for first time use:








5. Now we are ready to start using, with a project open go to Tools>>Macros








6. Now you will need to make a choice; either run/edit a macro (Macros) or create a new one from scratch (Launch VSTA IDE). When you use the Macros option this is basically a manager for your macros providing two sub-options: Application Level or Document Level.

• Application level macros can be run on all opened Revit projects within the active Revit session (instance).

• Document level macros are stored within your .rvt file and can be loaded within the current active project.

It will be interesting to see how this gets used, if you have a great example let us know.



Happy Revit VSTA'ing...

Looking for a 3rd party plug-in?

During Autodesk Dev Camp, Amanda shared with me a catalog that contained various 3rd party partners for Autodesk called Autodesk Catalog. The paper catalog is free (have to request from the site) but you may find it easier to use the web version to find something in particular, including some good niche products.

Return from Autodesk Dev Camp

We are back from the AEC-DevCamp in the Boston area (Wakefield, near Waltham). After two weeks in a row of conferences I am a bit behind and need to run through my inbox to get it "clean again". This conference was a good mix of development (for both AutoCAD and Revit platforms) and a section for business development. www.autodesk.com/AEC-DevCamp

I was fortunate to attend with 7 others from our Software Development Solutions Team and enjoyed the face time with each of them (we are all is separate cities across the US). This week also allowed a few spare minutes to tweak some soon-to-be released Revit API utilities and a new one created on the spot based on another attendees request.

We are compiling a list of the applications we will be releasing soon (in addition to the Avatech Google Earth Connector for Revit/AutoCAD platforms). If there is something you have been wanting to see developed on the Revit platform please drop me an e-mail so we can add to the list for possible future development.

Happy API hacking...