CNC - First Steps

For almost 3 years I have had the "need" ... okay the want... to have a CNC machine to work with.
Well that dream was finally realized and I am extremely excited !! This is not BIM related, but it really ties in to another passion of mine. Plus who know, maybe I can start studying how BIMs can be utilized for manufacturing.

The machine I have is a  36" x36" 3 axis which is perfect for "hobby use". I build a routing surface from MDF and believe it or not, it is very portable. What is even greater is that it is controlled by my Surface Pro (yes very impressive little device)

I did have a little bit of background on the creation of tool paths and g-code. But had never really done it. There is nothing like the hands on experience. There is a learning curve and I have only scratched the surface at this point. However I am pleased with the results. I had the machine make some drawings for me as I am waiting on the router and some small accessories; I wish I would have had this machine when I was in Design school and need to produce hand drawings on mylar ;) ... Ha, maybe I can offer this to architecture students.

Anyhow here some images of what I have been working on.
Until next time !

Microsoft Surface Pro / RT Revit Model

As I mentioned earlier, I am in the process of modeling my surface pro as accurately as possible,
The idea is to build a parametric family, with different levels of details and different options for accessories as well as other standard surface articulation !!

Check back soon for updates !

Tablets mobility and Bim... The search for the perfect companion.

Little story...

I few years ago when the first iPad came out, I began to to look for ways in which it would fit my life and work. I started to analyse if I could somehow justify the investment. Being the gadget geek that I am its quite unbelievable that I resisted the urge and never really bought one as I always felt is was quite limited and more of a novelty or entertainment device.

Fast forward to the android revolution and I, being a new convert (yes the wife converted me from a blackberry to an android touch screen at that time) I began to entertain the idea of purchasing an android tablet. I was particularly fond of the Note series and I could see myself  taking notes and sketching with the stylus, What was appealing at this time was that I had adopted the Google services and there could be real use for such device. However for me the biggest draw back was being limited to apps and not being able to run any real programs - it was almost not better than an iPad.

Let's fast forward again... I have finally purchased a tablet !.. no a laptop, not a tablet with a keyboard...
I had purchased an ASUS TF810C. I was very please with the device, how light it was, and above all it could run windows applications being a full Windows 8 tablet and it had a dock and stylus as well. I have to say that I was aware of the surface pro coming but I just had to try out the ASUS. The device proved to be great for light tasks, but not necessarily what I was looking for - I wanted to do Bim on a tablet, but I felt it was a bit slow with the Atom processor and the 2GB of ram.

 

It was a beautiful device but I had to part with it, so I passed it to one of my colleagues and I purchased a Surface Pro 128GB !

I have to say that despite its "short" battery life and weight I love it. What its remarkable about it is that even though it only has 4GB of ram, I am able to do Bim with it.  Last week I conducted a coordination meeting over an internet meeting service right from the Surface !  I was impressed with its performance.  No lag, no stuttering. I had both Revit and Navisworks running at the same time. These were not small "demo" models either, these were pretty complex. Whats even more interesting was that I was able to save viewpoints and annotate them right on the screen with the stylus. While this device is not perfect, it really fits me. It is portable, powerful, keeps me connected and most importantly it allows me to do one of the thing I love to do - Bim !

This is how Bim is supposed to be done !  ;)

PS: To celebrate, I decided to create a Revit family of my Surface Pro. I connected the device to an external screen and keyboard and began the process. I hope you enjoy it. (It still needs a little work but its a good start)

Modeled in my Surface Pro.

It's a small world after all.

Its been a while since I posted anything interesting. It has been a very busy 3 years since my last post in 2009. I have been working on my B.arch and at the present time I am most interested in digital fabrication, and construction modeling. Not that architecture is not beautiful. 

Anyway, I am currently back at www.digitaldraftingsystems.com. I'm currently exploring 4D simulation and clash detection modeling, part of a new line or services I am developing.

BTW, if you are in NY and need some as-builds check out Brian Curran. He deals with some cutting edge technology - 3D laser scanning.  If you are Revit users, you can use some of the files created by 3d scanning devices in your model. He also is able to generate some nice looking floor plans and elevations. check out his website under my helpful links !

A time for change ;)

Well everyone, I am not longer a consultant for Digital Drafting Systems. Where have I been?
The past six months I have been fullfilling CAD / BIM manager dutties at Kobi Karp Architecture and I am now back to the revit scene on my own. Stay tuned for what I am preparing next !

if you need to reach me you can send me an e-mail
crullier(AT)bellsouth.net

Where have I been ?

It’s been over a moth since I posted something new on my blog. But the reason is the amount of Revit training and events we have been taking care of! At the beginning of the month I flew to Orlando to train a second group of professionals on Revit Architecture at one of our Multi-discipline large accounts. I have also been locally bringing up to speed and working very closely with a Construction / Architecture firm in West Palm beach, and lastly yesterday we were the host of a delicious Latin lunch during Autodesk’s Road Tour at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Our clients are so happy with our trainings sessions that keep scheduling more groups for us to train.
Let the pictures speak for themselves:

This is the Orlando group during a break. They didn’t want to leave their chair and wanted to keep on learning Revit !

These are some pictures of our Latin Lunch, we even had Salsa dancers in the room to spice things up. It was a pleasure for all of us, AEs, to answer questions and to show new features of the 2009 Autodesk products to all our customers attending the event. Keep posted for my next blog on Mental Ray rendering in Revit and 3dsmax Design.

If you were there, drop us a line and let us know if you had a nice time!
crullier@bellsouth.net or crullier@bellsouth.net

Autodesk Resource Center available to customers

Hello again, I want to make available the link bellow to an Autodesk maintained resource page. In there you will find tutorials and application white papers to compliment what you have already learned. Notice the I am linking you directly to the Revit section but please be sure to check out the other disciplines. Happy Reviting !

http://resources.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/Revit-Architecture/tutorials.htm

Taking the Lead one step at a time

I am happy to announce that our mentoring and product knowledge has allowed one of the top Architectural firms in the world to complete their design development drawings in Revit 100% last week!

Just so you know, this is a project that is employing collaboration from Structural and Mechanical engineers. The most interesting fact is that they are all in remote locations and using their respective "flavor" of Revit to contribute to this project. At the moment I can not disclose any more specifics, but I will soon post more information on how Revit has helped the Architect and Consultants get the job done effectively !

Sign up for Basic training, and get more done in less time and more effectively with Revit ! Once you have mastered the basics, let's get together for discussion on more advanced topics.

For more information shoot me an e-mail crullier@ddscad.com, mention this blog posting and receive 100 dollars off your first training ;)

I can't see my rooms...

As you know, when you delete the room tags from you floor plan doesn't necessarily mean you deleted the room objects; They are still there. However, often you will find yourself inserting a room object into a space that already has a room. So here is a little trick - enable the visibility for the room reference lines and color fill.

Happy Valentines - Revit Heart Wall

Happy Valentines Day everyone, I thought it would be a good idea to use the ocassion to remind of the Edit Sketch function within the wall object. While very basic, it's been handy many times.

To begin you need to have a wall selected in elevation. Once the wall is selected you will see in the options bar an option to Edit Sketch.

When you click on it, you will go into an overlay mode which is know as sketch more. This overlay mode allow you to change the elevation qualities of the selected wall, this is achieved by either modifying the existing four lines (top, bottom, left or right) or in this car by creating new ones using the Lines command from the Sketch mode tool bar on the left.

Once you are happy with the new elevation shape of your wall, you can click Finish Sketch, or Quit Sketch if you're not (howeve please know the if you Quick Sketch, you can not undo !)

Now you should see that the original wall has taken a new shape, derived from the lines you drew. If any point you wish to change the shape of the all, or even the remove the siluete overide, you can select the wall and look at the option bar where you will find two options. Edit Profile - lets you make changes, or Remove Sketch - revert the profile back to its original state, ortogonal.

Enjoy the day !

Tapered Slab Edges

Hello again ! What I want to share how to take a regular slab in Revit Architecture and taper any or all of its edges. In order to do this we need we will use "The Floor Slab Edge" tool found under "Host Sweep" in the Modeling tool drawer and click on the edges on the floor slab we want to alter. However before we begin we need to configure the "Edge" and this is the tricky part.

First let's build a profile which will give us the shape of the taper. Lets go to and on the dialog box, let's select the appropriate templeter which is Porfile.rtf and click open.

What we have now in front is a drawing area in which we are going to draw our 2D profile. Since this profile will be swept around the edges of the floor slab, we need to draw a section of the taper we want to occur.

Use the Line tool to draw the shape and you can use refereance planes if you wanted to make the profile parametric. By the way come to one of our cusomized training to learn how to build parametric components.

Now just save the profile and load it into your current project or into the project were the floor slab you wish you modify exist or will be created. Now we can go into and redefine the existing slab edge to use the profile we just created.

Once the element properties dialog appear, we need to either rename the current Slab Edge definiton or create a new one by using the Element properties dialog and into Type porperties.

At this point as you can see in the above screen shot, all you need to do is load the profile we made, click OK to exit all the dialogs and beging to click on the edges of your Floor object.

e-mail me or call me here at the office if you have any questions.

Bug Alert - Unspecified error when saving groups.

Happy new year everyone !
I would like to share something with you that was recently brought to my attention by Autodesk Support. There seems to be a bug within Revit which during the month of January 2008 will not allow you to save groups, instead during this process you will receive an error: “Unspecified error”.


However, once we move into February and through the rest of 2008 this issue will no longer affect us.



The way to work around it however, is to change the month (date) within Windows to a month other than January 2008. Your choice could be a month in the past or in the future; however keep in mind that if you have any outlook reminders these will be affected and they flash on your screen - so be careful!!! Once you are finished saving your groups you can reset your date settings.

A Window Wall System - Scratching the Surface

Recently I came across an implementation task to provide a process to build a Window Wall System is Revit, once again I'm sure many of your will benefit from this post so read ahead. What I have to start off is an elevation of two bays that are 20'-00" in span. So let's beginning breaking this down.



What I am showing you in this elevation is the complete system in addition to two very important datums objects; reference planes. To successfully assemble this system we will create two reference planes at predetermined heights based on our system design which we will use to anchor the bottom of our beam and windows too.

So to start I'm going to assume that we have columns evenly spaces every 20'-00" and that we have the first run of window already installed on the bottom level. So on elevation if our modules are 7'-6" high, I am going to create two reference planes. One of them will sit right on top of the already in place windows (7'-6") and will make sure that I name it so that I can use it as a drawing plane in the future. To do so, I will select the reference plane, pull up its Element Properties and insert a distinctive name (in this case MID BEAM - WWS) into the instance parameter Name.



Once the plane in named it should like this when selected. Keep in mind the name will once show when the Ref. Plane is selected. Let's repeat the process now for a second Ref. Plane, We will use this plane to draw our second row of windows resting on the beam, therefore I will create this Ref. Plane 10" from the previous one which is the height of my beam. I will call this Ref. Plane TOB - WWS.



One this is all in place we can now go to a floor plan, I chose Level 1. Since we already have the bottom window section and the default view range has a cut plane of 4'-00", we will now move the cut place so that we can see above the beam we are about place and the windows for the upper windows. To do this we will pull up the view property window and click on VIEW RANGE.

Since we want to move the cut plane up and in a way eliminate what is bellow us we will make the following changes to the Primary Range: I have changed the Cut plane from 4' to 8' (remember the the bottom of the beam is at 7'-6") - I also mentioned I was not interested in seeing the objects close the ground so I change the Bottom Offset to 6' from its default of 0'-00" This means you have a view of Level 1 between 6' and 8'.



This more or less how your view should look:



At this point we need to select the first Ref. Plane we created to that we can lay our beam on top of it. In order to to that we need to click the Plane button located on the upper tool bar, this button will then bring up a context dialog for us to choose the Ref. Plane.





Make sure you select the Name option and from the pull down you select MID BEAM - WWS which is the name of our first Ref. Plane. From this point on any object inserted into the view will be aligned on top of this Ref. Plane. From the Structural tool panel we are going to plane a Beam between the columns, what is most important about this part of the exercise is to set the beam properties for Z Direction Justification to Bottom. You can do this before or after you place the beam. Other parameters to look at include Start and End Justification, set these to zero.

Now that we have the beam in place as show above, we can select the second Ref. Place by clicking on the Plane button on the top most tool bar and going through the same procedure. However this time when you extend the drop down menu make sure you select the Ref. Plane TOB - WWS and use this plane to insert the second row of windows.

Keeping File Size to a Minimum !!

I wanted to share something I recently learned. Revit files automatically get compressed when the SAVE AS option is used to save your project rather than just the conventional SAVE. This is how is works, take for intance the following file ROOF FRAMING_MODEL.rvt its normal size is 5,080 K. However if I use the SAVE AS function and give this file a new name such as ROOF FRAMING_MODEL_SAVE AS.rvt you will notice that the file size decreased to 4,440K. This is almost 15% smaller. At this point you can then delete you original file and replace it with the new one.

Original File:



Save As File:

What is a Drafting View?

I recently received an e-mail in which a user wanted to know what was the usage for a Revit drafting View. So make things easy I have clipped my reply bellow..

A Drafting View:

"...It is a view that can be used for any purpose such as detailing. It does NOT have any relationship to a specific portion of the model, unless you link using a CALLOUT.In this view you can draw 2D objects, insert detailing components which are 2D;Basically anything that is found under the DRAFTING toolbar. You can also use a drafting view to import an existing AUTOCAD drawings such as DOOR JAMB detail for example, and make it part of your Revit document..."

By the way, the Drafting View Command is found under the VIEW tab.

Autocad Architecture Resources

Today I watched a webcast by Amy Fietkau on Autocad Architecture 2008. I must say that it was very informative. She mentioned a link which i wanted to share with you.
www.autodesk.com/experience-autocadarchitecture

This is the link to an autodesk resource page, great resource I must add for Autocad Architecture 2008 users. So if you are an Autocad Architecture user, take advantage of this resource!

How do I change the riser height and thread depth?

Hello again,


The stair object in the default revit template "default.rtf" has typical measurements for risers and threads of 7" - 11" respectively. Today I received a very common request to go over how to make changes to those default settings.


The way we are going to change the stair dimensions is by going into its type settings dialog. These are the steps to get to it. First we are going to select the stair type and bring up the object properties by clicking on the property button on the Revit options bar.



This will bring the object properties dialog; we need to get into the "Type" properties. For this we will click "edit/new". At this point we "Duplicate" the existing type or "Rename" and proceed with the changes we want to make. I have highlighted the areas of interest.

I hope this helps you !

Revit Architecture Version Update - SP2 !

Hey guys I wanted to mention that there is a new build of Revit Architecture as well as other Revit products. Be sure to update your installs.

To save time during installation make sure to uncheck "install content" once you run the downloaded executable. If you have any questions drop me a line.

Revit Architecture:
Update SP2 Build (20070810_1700)

Link to white pape:
Web Update Enhancement List

Keep your partitions organized ;)

So you know that walls have a "Location Line" parameter that we use to set its aligment in plan. you also know that for the most part while building exterior walls we should set this paramenter to "Finish Face Exterior". But, what option should you choose for interior walls? and how do you decided where the inteir or exterior side should be?


Well I am going to share my method:


First I beging by enclosing large spaces from bottom to top... taking into consideration lage walls that span from left to right. For instance in the image bellow notice how ROOM 18 is completly enclosed.




Then after i tackle large walls that run horizontally I being to subdivide the space with vertical walls. This is where things get a little tricky. What you need to do is make sure that all your walls go in the same direction. If you already know that the exterior side of a wall is always to the left side of your mouse stroke (this is something I mention in my training sessions), then you can see that my spaces should be enclosed in a clock-wise fassion to keep my walls in the same direction. So in this particular case, I being to draw my vertical walls from top to bottom. One thing you will notice is that some spaces will be "properly enclosed" in terms of interior and exterior faces, and some will have a combination of both for exmaple ROOM 22. This is not wrong per say, as long as you keep all your walls organized is terms of the direction they were drawn. Most important thing to keep in mind is that you stick to the decision you made on where and how to enlose your spaces; from left to right and then bottom to top? or visaversa.

Well I hope this helps clear a little bit of confussion - until next time !

Keep those patterns in check !

Hi again,

Well I hope you had a great weekend ! I wanted to start this week with something I though would be very useful during the creation of a template or the production of Construction documentsin regards to graphics. Before release 9.0 we were unable to control the direction or "alignment" of hatch pattens within a wall object, If the pattern looked good on a vertical wall in plan, then it did not look well in a horizontal wall; it just did not align to the boundaries of the wall.

Well to alleviate this, the great development team incorporated a new dialog box to the pattern properties that allow you to specify the method of alignment. Your choices are "Orient to view" - which is the Revit default which does not produce acceptable graphics; "Keep readable" - Which depending on the pattern you will want to use to force the pattern to stay aligned with the horizontal plane of your screen; and last "Align with element" - this option will produce the desired graphical condition for a pattern that is being used within a wall. - Oh I almost forgot, to access this dialog you must go into Settings>Fill Patterns then select the pattern you want to modify form the dialog box and click on the "settings" button on the upper right side. If you did everything correctly you will see the Modify Pattern Properties panel bellow. - Have a great week !