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...

Autodesk Green Building Studio Aquisition

It looks like the Sustainable design tools from Green Building Studio will soon become part of the autodesk product line of products.

http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=385%3C%2Ftd%3E

Browse 3d Images with Firefox

Firefox users now have a new add-in, PicLens, that turns your browser into a 3d Screen for viewing web images. Billed as an interactive 3D Wall, this definately gives you another way to work with the multitude of image platforms out there via a search request (Google, Yahoo, SmugMug, Flickr, Photobucket, DeviantArt, Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, and more...).

This works for the Mac and Windows platform and has been an interesting way to work with images over the past 2 days. Thanks to Shannon for pointing this one out to me. :)

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...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
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).

CES TV mischief - Video

Have you ever wanted to turn off multiple TV's at once, maybe for a bit of mischief/pranking or even a "real" life need (and I keep drawing a blank on what that could be). Well the Gizmodo crew did just that at CES:


In browsing the web this morning I ran across video from CES showing just such a scenario courtesty of Gizmodo here. For those who may want to tinker with this device, for under $20 it can be yours here.

prank on...

Developers Conference - 3ds Max, Maya

Autodesk is holding a combined 3ds Max and Maya developer conference in Scottsdale, Arizona on May 5-8, 2008. Early bird registration is now until 2/29/2008.

More details: http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/masterclass/event

Revit Architecture Sustainable Design Systems

One of the sessions I had hoped to attend at AU but missed was on Sustainable Design Systems. Luckily this session (and many more) are available from the Autodesk University website (a more direct link below):

AB210-2P Sustainable Design Systems Based on Revit® Architecture
Presenter(s): Kenneth Hall
Air Date: 11/28/2007
Air Time: 1:00 PM PST
Length: 1 Hour 29 Minutes 5 Seconds

In addition to this I would also encourage you to read the "Building Performance Analysis Using Revit" (for working with IES) but also applicable to other analysis tools which is available here.

Revit Clean Tips Contest... chance to win $$

If you are a Revit user who "cleans" geometry and/or non-graphical data within Revit (Arch, Struc and/or MEP) on a regular basis, at certain key points within a project, deliverable or for analytical needs then this is for you. We are looking for your tips and offering $$ :) If your interested read on below:

With so many great users, project types and expanded uses for Revit in the industry, we are compiling a list of items for a future post (credit given to submitters) of the items that need to be fixed, checked or adjusted at various stages.

Please send your entry/list to us via e-mail with the subject line: Revit Clean. In exchange we have two $100 gift certificates for two (2) randomly selected winners from the entries received. All submittals must be done by 6:00 EST on January 24, 2008. Winners will be notified on January 25, 2008.

Thats it, if we left something out or you need any clarification let us know. :)

New Build of Revit for the leap year bug

In this post we mentioned an issue with the month of January 2008 and that Autodesk is aware and working on a fix. As it turns out it seems to be a leap year issue and fixes are available for Revit Architecture, Revit Structure & Revit MEP in the form of new builds (technically this is SP4 but the website lists them as SP3 for all products). You can install these if you are affected or wait until February where this will no longer be a problem... :)

The updates seem to be similar for each product line with a few minor additions for each product line. The snapshot below is taken from the web enhancement update list of fixes for Revit Architecture: Web Update SP3 build (20080101_2345):

• Improves stability when editing groups, saving views/groups to the library or creating a new project withtemplate set to “None”.
• Improves stability when upgrading or linking a project from Autodesk Revit Building 8.1/Revit Structure 2or older.
• Allows the ability to array face-based families placed on a vertical face.
• Allows the ability to maintain face-based instances on curved surfaces of a Revit link when the link isunloaded.
• Improves stability when selecting sections.
• Allows the ability to insert an electrical receptacle into a legend view.• Improves stability when accessing the Help menu in Revit Architecture on a computer with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.
• Improves stability when applying a view template to a sheet.
• Improve the performance of a view when it contains many objects with overridden graphics by element.

Thanks Chuck for the notification and eyes on the build updates. :)

Revit Unspecified Error

Over the last few days there has been a number of errors within Revit (Architecture, Structure and MEP) when doing common tasks, showing up in the form of an "Unspecified Error" to be exact.

Some of these problems include:

• From Revit 9.1 - When trying to save Groups to .rvg file types
• 2008 - Editing of Groups
• 2008 - Opening legacy files in Revit Architecture 2008
• 2008 - Saving a view out of the project browser to an external file (also found schedules to be an issue)
• 2008 - Creating a project without a template.
  

How to fix:
Its a hack but its what we have right now; set your system date to be either before January 01, 2008 or after January 31, 2008.

Update:
Autodesk staff are aware of these issues and are working on a permanent fix for this.

Searching for trends

For those interested in the latest search trends and news that is occuring you can keep up with it all @ Google thanks to Google Trends.

This is updated Daily and you can see what the latest news is on a particular date (starting from May 15 2007). So if you are looking to see what is being searched for the most this new years day check out : http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X&date=2008-1-1

This was one of my first adds to the Chumby and now I know which celebrities are pregnant, divorcing, latest world headlines and more obscure breaking net related news. :)

trending on...

Have a Safe, Happy and Green new year...

We wanted to take a moment to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog and sends e-mails. You are the reason this adventure continues, we wish you the best in 2008.

Have a safe, happy and green new year...

Have a safe, happy and green new year...

I wanted to take a moment to say thanks for everyone who reads this blog, sends e-mails and also those who come out to meet and talk with us in different cities. You are the reason this adventure continues, we wish you the best in 2008 and hope to see you soon.

Have a safe, happy and green new year...

Fused - Digital & Home Life Coming Together

With the discussion of personal technology integration over the past few years we have seen ideas like internet enabled refrigerators, smart table top and surface computing, smart home systems and more. While some of these ideas seem a bit far fetched, others are much more of a helpful addition to our current lifestyles.

With Christmas now behind us and everyone I know, including myself, with new electronic goodies I have been giving this a bit more personal reflection. One of these gifts (and my personal favorite) was a Chumby (to be released to the general public in the next few months and more information here about their business strategy here).



More pictures here

Over the last few days of use I have realized how much the idea of integrated devices into our homes are going to fill the unrealized voids within our increasing digital lives pretty quickly.

With links to family and friends around the world via social networks and more digital connections to keep up with news and happenings are becoming more mainstream. Rather than keeping my notebook on while at home and having to open/close, move it upstairs/downstairs, login/out when needed and more "modern inconveniences", I can have a single household device that can move around, if needed, to let me passively retrieve information in the background that I will want to view on my own schedule without the hassles mentioned above. From streaming audio, pictures, social networks and access to most any type of digital information and/or updates I may want.

For anyone who might be interested in tinkering around with this type of device, whether you are a programmer/coder, artist or craftsmen its another platform for you to work within and make your own.... From the developer portion of the website it sums this up pretty well:

Hardware: Ahhh, remember back when the Apple II shipped with complete source code for its BIOS and schematics? We are happy to bring this tradition back to the public.

Software: The chumby client is a Linux-based, open-source platform. As our client evolves, so does our flavor of linux and the specific details associated with its drivers and helper applications.

Flash: Are you a Flash animator? We like to think of a chumby as a Flash showcase and encourage Flash artists to spread their talents through our network.

Crafts: The chumby is designed in a way such that the core electronics can be easily separated from its outerwear, enabling you to create that exact look you want.


So far this has been a great lifestyle unification tool, merging my digital life with my home life in a good balance. So which electronic toys did you get or have you had that you cannot live without, please reply via e-mail or in the comments section below.

------------------
Bonus: If anyone has the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader let me know (e-mail me) as I am especially interested in this as my next electronic addition and would love to hear your feedback on real usage. :)
------------------

Clarification: the chumby was a gift from my family, not from the manufacturer.

happy fusing...

IES linking with Revit Architecture

With the last release of Revit MEP we were given the opportunity to link directly to IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions, Inc) which was a great step forward for being able to check a few of the many things needed related to feedback on a buildings performance early in the design process via our Revit model. This limited many Architects from being able to take advantage of tools such as: heating and cooling load calculations, annual dynamic thermal simulation for energy consumption, sun view animation for winter, summer and midseason, and daylighting assessment by not having this included in Revit Architecture.

For those who need this feature, without purchasing a new license of Revit MEP, to use with Revit Architecture this can now be done after installing this. More information can be found in the press release.

Troubleshooting 3ds Max - Profile Reset

The last few days have offered a nice vacation from daily work and given me time to get back to some house projects and in-between back to some rendering related fun.

With that in mind here is a great tip for Max users to help troubleshoot corrupt files and other "anomalies". Similar to the profile in AutoCAD, Max has a .ini file that holds things like plug-in paths and more. This file is found in the root Max folder and is called 3dsmax.ini. with your max session closed browse to this location in windows explorer and rename the file (ex. 3dsmax.ini.bak). From here you can start your max session and it will create a new "clean" 3dsmax.ini file for you automatically.

When debugging trouble scenes/files this is a good way to test if it may be one of your own "custom" settings. Note: when doing this locations of toolbars and more will be reset.

happy rendering...

Create a 3D Snowflake even if its warm out...

The weather here at Will render for food headquarters is jumping from 70 to 30 every few days so this is a way to bridge those gaps this season. With a focus on modeling, rendering and animation sometimes one of the best things you can do is to take a step back and try a different approach. From the title you probably thought this was going to show how to create a digital snowflake, instead how about something you can touch and share with others this winter season.
Over at wikiHow we ran across a tip that involves making a six-armed three dimensional snowflake. To do this you will need: 6 pieces of paper, scissors, tape and a stapler.

Below is the version Dylan and I did this morning hanging from a light. Only modification was thick card stock, a hole punch and thread/fishing line. While the card stock was tough to cut it is holding up well and the holes were punched right at the tips.

Seasons greetings...

Maya native file export formats

To follow up on the last post and look at best possible workflows here are the native export file formats for Maya:

Supported Geometry/Scene Formats*
mayaAscii, mayaBinary, MEL, Autodesk® FBX®, aliasWire (Autodesk® AliasStudio™), IGES, DXF, OBJ, VRML2, MOV (ascii motion), GE2, RTG, OpenFlight, VRML2, mental ray, RIB, Open Inventor2.

Supported Image Formats*
Maya IFF, Maya IFF 16, AVI, Apple® QuickTime®, GIF, Softimage® PIC, Wavefront RLA, BMP, TIFF, TIFF16, SGI®, SGI16, Alias PIX, JPEG, EPS, Cineon™, Quantel®, Targa®, DDS, PSD, PNG, QuickDraw™, MacPaint®, HDR, OpenEXR, MAP, Sony® PlayStation® TIM, Dassault® Picture, PPM, mental ray® formats (CT, ST, NT, MT, ZT, TT, BIT, CTH)

Supported Vector Formats*
PostScript, EPS, Macromedia® SWF, Swfit3D, Adobe® Illustrator®, SVG.

* Not all formats supported on all platforms. Not all formats supported for both import and export. Some formats applicable to certain renderers only.

Thanks to George Matos and Autodesk for the file format notes above.

Maya export to .dwg

In a technology preview from Autodesk released yesterday we now have access to exporting to the .dwg file format from Maya courtesy of Autodesk Labs.

From the site:
The DWG Plug-in for Maya 2008 enables users to export complex conceptual building designs from Maya for further design development and documentation in Autodesk Revit Architecture 2008. For additional information including a how-to overview of the technology, please see BIM: Maya 2008 for Complex Conceptual Design.pdf which accompanies the install file in the ZIP download

The workflow mentioned to go from Maya to Revit Architecture is the following:
• Create initial design expression in Maya
• Export file from Maya to the DWG file format
• Convert DWG™ files to SAT file format (ACIS® Solid) in AutoCAD® 2008 software via export.
• Import SAT file to Revit Architecture 2008 for documentation via massing.


The Negative:
First, the pitch about bringing this into Revit Architecture is a bit misleading as I modified the steps above slightly to show what is really occuring. The way it is written up makes it sound like a seamless 4 step transition to getting your model from Maya to Revit. This is not seamless, first AutoCAD is used as a "translator" to take the geometry and make it readable by other packages via the .sat file format. To get this into Revit it then takes additional work to clean this up and you have to work from massings, not exactly a smart family to begin with so if you have any experience with family editing you may be better off doing it that way. Ex. a known issue mentioned in the .pdf is that the model may need to be rotated in the massing to get the model in the right orientation.

Second, we can export to .stl directly in Max. Why can we not get that in Maya and skip the whole AutoCAD step?

The Positive:
Great job on the tool as we are now able to share this with other Autodesk users not on Maya.

happy exporting...
beau turner

Production Rendering Offsite

In one of my previous roles we worked hard to expand our rendering capabilities/capacity to get renderings and animations out faster. We did this with a combination of afterhours distributed network rendering and dedicated servers/machines just to handle the load of work we were completing.

One thing that always caught my eye was offsite rendering (think a dedicated server farm focused just for rendering stills and animations). At the time there was three choices for this and I was fortunate to be able to test one company with two live projects on a very tight timeframe and they saved the day!

At the time we were using Brazil as our rendering engine RenderCore made sure every driver, software and project specific plug-in we needed to match our setup was done to complete the work. Well it has been a few years since then and I noticed today on tenlinks that RenderCore was mentioned and they now offer another solution that makes this even more attractive pricing wise. It involves what they call Daily Pass, or $50 per rendernode for a full 24 hours of rendering.

If you are using offsite rendering, drop me a e-mail and let me know how things went as I am curious on changes in the last couple of years with this section of the industry.

Happy Rendering...