IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

AU Day 2

by Joe Eichenseer

Crazy fun times continue through day 1 and 2 after Cyrus and I made the video for yesterday's post. The only session that I was able to make it to (that I was not co-presenting) was the innovation session talking about the future of cloud services within the building design and construction industry. One of the interesting things that I took away from it were the results of the polls that the audience responded to about the role and purpose of the cloud in our industry. In general (as might be expected) the idea and promise of cloud computing was very well received among this very tech-savvy community. I imagine that if you polled business owners, you'd get a very different set of results. :)

We followed that up with round 2 of our 'Supersize Me' series of classes, this time talking about mega sized projects from the perspective of owners as opposed to designers and engineers. It seemed to be well received and we had a lot of very good questions from the group. One key thing to take away from this: make sure you have the right hardware in place - especially managed switches. It makes it a lot easer to determine if it is a network cable that is causing a Revit sync to central time to balloon from 5 minutes to 30. Just sayin'....

The rest of yesterday and today has been a blur of meetings and hallway conversations along with time at our wicked awesome and sizeable IMAGINiT booth in the exhibit hall. I met up with a lot of friends and former colleagues - it was nice to get a feel of the current state of technology and business from a wide array of people. One of the great benefits and purposes of attending AU. Classes are great, but all of of the side conversations add invaluable knowledge and insight too.

Oh hey, I did make it to a portion of a class this morning, dealing with new ideas in rendering with 3D Studio MAX. I missed a good portion of the class, but from the portion I attended, all I have to say is iRay and Pandora. Check it out and be wowed. :)

We have the AUGI beer bash tonight, so it will be another long night of conversations, helping clients out at our technical expert pods, showing people around our new Productivity NOW portal, and giving away custom printed t-shirts. I'll also get to hopefully get a few different people in touch with each other, helping other friends and clients to build their professional networks.

I don't mean this post to be all me, me, me, me, but when I'm writing it from my perspective it's hard not to. To help this sound a little less self serving, take everything above and freely apply a that type of experience to the few dozen people here from IMAGINiT. Ken, Kevin, Jeff, Scott, Bryan, Arona, Chuck, Mick.... The list goes on and on. Long days and sore feet, but well worth it!

Video Blog: Autodesk University Day 1

By Joe Eichenseer

Welcome to the first full day of Autodesk University and my first video post for this blog! As I mentioned in yesterday's post, it is looking to be a busy week of activities, meetings, and social get-togethers, packed full of opportunities to gain knowledge and make professional connections.

In this three minute video, I'm sitting in a big metal "U" outside one of the AU meeting rooms, with people passing by giving us curious looks and an AU staffer making sure that everyone knows that the "innovation forums are on level 5". We shot this video on the fly so you may actually feel like you're at AU if you watch it :)

I'm already looking to track down information for one IMAGINiT client who is not here this year - let us know in the comments section below if there is anything you want us to scope out for you!

Hello from Autodesk University!

By Joe Eichenseer

This morning I got up way too early to board an airplane to head out to Las Vegas and Autodesk University... intentionally leaving my laptop behind, so this post is coming to you by way of a tablet computer (iPad - it has more Autodesk apps). Hopefully autocorrect does not get the better of me while I am posting this week!

All is going well so far. :) I co-presented a class already today even though AU doesn't really start until tomorrow. This one was one on how to work with mega sized projects in Revit - talking about workflow, software integration, hardware/infrastructure, and all associated costs from a design perspective. Overall, I think it went fairly well, but we only had an hour and didn't really have any time to dig into any of our topics very much at all. Later on we'll be doing the class again, but this time with the building owner as the focal point and we will have 90 minutes for the presentation instead of just 60.

Today is mostly a day oriented around getting registered, meeting old friends, making some new ones, and getting ready for the next few days of classes. To that end, it's a total success so far! I haven't heard of any estimated number of attendees yet, but it looks like a good crowd. Next up is meeting with some colleagues of mine for dinner and discussion, and also strategizing for the next few days.

If you are here, stop by our booth and say, 'hi'. If not, leave a comment below for anything you want scouted out at AU and I'll do my best to get you the information you are looking for.

Blogging from Autodesk University

By Joe Eichenseer

There is going to be a big team of IMAGINiT folks out at AU this year – if you are going to be there too, come by our booth and say “hi”!

If not, you can also attend AU Virtual for free– sign up here:
http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=auv2011_event

As a final item, we are going to be blogging from AU, so if there are any topics that you’re interested in hearing about, leave a comment below and we’ll see what we can do to provide some information and insight here!

And for those in the United States, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Newly added Plant 3D Content

On November 3^rd the AWWA pipe catalogs and specification on Plant Exchange were updated. You can find the download here http://autocad.autodesk.com/?nd=plant_content_packs

What was added.

• AWWA C907 - Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Pressure Fittings for Water-4IN. through 8 In. (100 mm through 200 mm)
• AWWA C900 - AWWA Standard for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Pressure Pipe and Fabricated Fittings, 4 In. Through 12 In. (100 mm Through 300 mm), for Water Transmission and Distribution
• AWWA C906 - AWWA Standard for Polyethylene (PE) Pressure Pipe and Fittings, 4 In. (100 mm) Through 63 In. (1,600 mm), for Water Distribution and Transmission
• AWWA C905 - AWWA Standard for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Pressure Pipe and Fabricated Fittings, 14 In. Through 48 In. (350 mm Through 1,200 mm), for Water Transmission and Distribution
• AWWA C903 - Polyethylene & Cross-linked Polyethylene Composite Pressure Pipes, 1/2 in (12 mm) through 2 in (50 mm), for Water Service
• AWWA C904 - AWWA Standard for Cross-Linked Polyethylene (PEX) Pressure Pipes, ½ In. (12 mm) Through 3 In. (76 mm) for Water Service
• AWWA C901 - AWWA Standard for Polyethylene (PE) Pressure Pipe and Tubing, ½ In. (13 mm) through 3 In. (76 mm), for Water Service
• AWWA C909 - AWWA Standard for Molecularly Oriented Polyvinyl Chloride (PVCO) Pressure Pipe, 4 In. Through 24 In. (100 mm Through 600 mm), for Water, Wastewater, and Reclaimed Water Service
• AWWA C115 - AWWA Standard for Flanged Ductile-Iron Pipe With Ductile-Iron or Gray-Iron Threaded Flanges

Leica Announces CloudWorx plugin for Revit!

With this new plugin it is possible to directly connect to a Leica database to bring points into a Revit model and includes a number of Cloudworx-type features. This complimentary functionality for point cloud data extends the native Revit support.

See their news release - http://www.leica-geosystems.com/en/Product-News_934.htm?id=3469

Keyboard Shortcuts and Revit

By Joe Eichenseer

We had a question come through Twitter recently, asking for information on keyboard shortcuts. I’m taking the answer that Rob Goetze in our Edmonton office provided and am adding some excel spreadsheets that list the default keyboard shortcuts for Revit Structure, Revit Architecture, and Revit MEP. These were generated by going into the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box in Revit and clicking on the “Export” button. The resulting XML file can be opened in Microsoft Excel to get similar results to what you’ll see in the files below.

(Note: many times, .xlsx files will not download correctly and Microsoft Windows sees the file as a .zip file. If the download does not seem to work correctly, rename the file to have an extension of .xlsx and it should open correctly in Excel)

Revit Architecture Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Revit Structure Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Revit MEP Default Keyboard Shortcuts

Here are the other details that Rob put together - we had to reduce it to get into a tweet :)

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Keyboard shortcuts in Revit are accessed from the Ribbon:

View > Windows > User Interface drop-down > Keyboard Shortcuts

The Keyboard Shortcuts dialogue box lists all commands, showing any shortcuts which currently exist, and allow the user to modify or add additional keyboard shortcuts. You can also export the existing settings to an XML file for import into Revit on another computer.

 

Enjoy!

Hotfix for Revit Server

The following hotfix for Revit Server just came out and I thought I'd give it a little extra publicity. :) From the hotfix page itself:

"This hotfix addresses a crash that may occur when Revit is uploading data to Revit Server during a Synchronize with Central operation. It must be applied to both Revit Server and Revit product to be effective.

Make sure that Update Release 2 has been applied prior to adding the hotfix to the Revit product. Verify that the build number of Revit 2012 is 20110916_2132."

If you've been running into any issues with Revit Server stability - give it a go!

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=18095970&linkID=9273944

joe

Echo:

I noticed this update from an Autodesk blog (originally posted on 10/31/11), and thought I'd echo it here - it's a pretty decent list of sustainability tools and general productivity tools available for Revit... and it doesn't hurt that our IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit are in the list. :)

http://bimapps.typepad.com/bim-apps/2011/10/revit-sustainability-design-and-general-productivity-tools.html

Enjoy!