Inside the System

IES Releases VE-Ware

I wanted to let everybody know that Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES), our Business Partner in delivering Heating and Cooling Load Analysis inside of Revit MEP, has released VE-Ware, a FREE analysis tool to all users of Revit 2008 and 2009 products.

What is VE-Ware you say?  Well their website has a much better explanation than I can provide, but I'll give it a try.

Most of you already know about IES' flagship application for Building Performance Analysis, the Virtual Environment (<VE>).  For those of you who don't, it is a model-based analysis platform that leverages one model to carry our different types of Building Performance Analysis.

The <VE> is a fully featured, very capable analysis environment.  With that capability comes a significant amount of information that must be authored in a model to carry out analysis, and users must learn how to enter that information.  The folks at IES recognized that there was an opportunity to streamline the <VE> analysis workflow for early-stage design, and they delivered what they called Toolkits.  Toolkits are tools that leverage a Revit BIM to carry out different types of Building Performance Analysis.  They released last year a plug-in for Revit that facilitates the model transfer and analysis.

Well, VE-Ware is a FREE (you read that right) tool that allows users to become familiar with the Toolkit workflow, while delivering valuable analsys related to the Energy Usage and Carbon Emissions related to the operation of a building designed in the Revit environment.  Cool stuff, I know.

I highly recommend that those of you interested in Sustainable Design and its integration with BIM tools, go the to IES website and download VE-Ware.  While you're at it, check out the White Paper on model preparation in Revit.  That should help to provide you all with a good baseline on the concepts involved.  I know it's from last year, we're updating it for this year at the moment.

MEP Analysis Extension Released on Autodesk Labs

I am excited to announce that we have today released the MEP Analysis Extension on Autodesk Labs.  Scott Shepard has a post on this on his It is Alive in the Lab blog.

Go check it out and kick the tires.

Live from Boston

Today I'm back in the office for the first time since I left for Turkey on June 28th, it seems like forever.  Aside from the mountain of e-mails that have massed for attack on my inbox in my absence, I was able to shut off the otherwise non-stop Autodesk machine and vacation for a while, which really was a great thing for me.

Enough about me though...I know some of you enjoyed my quick updates, but others are mainly interested in information on Revit, Sustainability, and the other technical subjects I usually cover on Inside the System.

Which brings me to the radio silence on the blog over the past few weeks before I went on vacation.  I had alluded to discussing that, and today that's my main objective.

I am guilty of setting the bar too high, simple as that.  With the large effort I have put into posts lately on new features, I found myself with less and less time to spend on such efforts.  I was, however, still spending a great deal of time on the forums helping you all out, but Inside the System was not getting the love it deserved.  Rather than just post smaller items or link to good discussion forums, I was holding out for that mystical period where I had 1.5 hours to put together a video and post on subjects.  That's not a good way to manage readership and information dissemination.

So, here's how I'm going to do things moving forward.

• In some cases I will post about content created by others, both in forums and on other blogs.  These smaller posts will still point you all to great technical information you've come to expect from the blog.
• When I have the time I'm going to post original content on technical subjects in Revit, like always, this just might not come every week, as my schedule has been getting pretty hectic these days.
• Still take suggestions from all of you regarding future posts and technical content.

As always, your thoughts are always appreciated.

Live from Prague

You know you've been on vacation for a while when you forget what day it is. Well happy Independence Day to all of the US readers of Inside the System. If that's you, then I hope you don't read this until Monday after the holiday, having better things to do today. My vacation with my wife has taken me to Prague for the next few days, for sightseeing and the annual Autodesk football tournament (soccer for the stateside readers). One of the great things about working at Autodesk is the international culture and diverse opportunities, and this is no exception. Okay, back to sightseeing for me. I'll drop another update before I return and then it's back to MEP blogging for me.

Live from Istanbul

Today I'm trying my first blog post from my beloved Crackberry, we'll see how this turns out. On a completely unrelated note to my last post on Sustainable Design tools, I"m writing today in the middle of my vacation in Istanbul, Turkey. Why Istanbul? Well my wife and I wanted to make a trip to Europe, she has a friend from grad school (she's a BC Double Eagle), and Istanbul is a great city with tons of history. So we've been having a great time thus far checking out the sightsn including; the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, and a huge underground cistern (picture included). The most unique experience by far has been the Turkish Bath. since it was "one of those things you just had to do." The turkish bath is a tradition extends back to the Ottoman Period, and thew one we went to was over 300 years old. A hulking Turkish man delivered a brutal massage that went to my core. As he manhandled be on a heated marble slab that Sultans had used, I really questioned why this was a "must do." Nonetheless an interesting experience. That's it for now, I'll check in later.

One Little Item for Today

I know I've been quiet lately.  I'll get to that in a bit down the road.  Today is a day of big news for Autodesk.  I will let our press release do the talking on that front.

We are all very excited here on the Autodesk team to have such world-class talent in the sustainability realm injected into our organization, and we are looking forward to further developing these tools to meet the needs of you all in the market.

Of course I cannot go into much detail on our plans, so I'll just summarize the tools as they exist today.

Revit
Best-in-class BIM authoring tool, with a growing ecosystem of analysis and construction partners.

Green Building Studio
SaaS-based (Software as a Service) analysis tool that runs on the gbXML fuel that Revit produces.  Caters to early stage design and helps to guide benchmarking against potential energy savings with your design.

Ecotect
Model-based analysis tool that facilitates many different kinds of analysis and and simulation within a very approachable and usable interface.  Allows for great visualization of analysis results as well as goal-driven studies.  With its most recent inception it also runs on the gbXML that Revit produces.

Loadsoft
ASHRAE-based heating and cooling load calculations based upon information provided by, you guessed it, a gbXML file.

As we look to streamline the workflows between this ecosystem of tools, I think there are big things we can accomplish.  And as a good Product Manager, I would be remiss to mention that you all in the market are the strongest voice to help influence the path we take.  With that in mind, drop me a comment or an e-mail with your thoughts.

Revit MEP 2009 Web Update #1 Released

I wanted to let you all know that we just released the Revit MEP 2009 Web Update #1.  You can download it here.


This Web Update includes numerous fixes to reported issues and performance optimizations, which are documented in the Web Update Enhancement List found on the Download Page.


Go get it!

Total Building Load

Quick post today.  We had a question on the Autodesk Revit MEP forum this morning, that I thought I'd share with all of you.  The user wanted to sum the individual Heating and Cooling Load values for the Volumes in his model, in order to get the Total Building Load.  That's not the best way to calculate that value, so I went ahead and provided an explanation of how we do it in Revit MEP 2009.

Check it out.

Looking for New Members of the Autodesk MEP Team

So I'm going to change gears today to something not product-related....well not directly.  We currently have two important roles in the MEP Marketing team that are open for hiring, so I wanted to let everybody know about them.  I am linking to the actual job postings, so I'm just going to summarize them quickly here.

MEP Industry Marketing Manager
This highly visible, strategic role is responsible for defining the marketing messaging for our MEP products.  The successful candidate will apply market experience, market research, and new media to determine effective messaging for the different MEP market segments.  This is done in collaboration with the MEP Product Management team, and has a high level of interaction with the rest of the Autodesk marketing teams.  Strong interpersonal skills a must.

MEP Technical Marketing Manager
This highly visible, tactical role is responsible for consuming the marketing messaging for our MEP products, and producing and presenting the marketing deliverables that are distributed to our sales channel and customer base.  The successful candidate will apply product knowledge, domain expertise, and new media to create effective marketing collateral for our MEP products.  Delivery of technical training and sales readiness activities require strong presentation skills.

As you all know from my bio, I love my job at Autodesk, and we have a great MEP team.

A Step in the Right Direction

In the horse race that is our effort to build a Distribution component of a Content Ecosystem for Autodesk Content, we are out of the gates cleanly and pulling into the front of the pack.  Two major indicators of progress have happened recently, and I wanted to share them with you all.

McGraw-Hill Sweets Catalog Integration
Yes, you read that correctly...Seriously.  The McGraw-Hill Sweets catalog has been added to the Autodesk Seek ecosystem, check out the press release.  This immediately adds a huge amount of Manufacturer's content to the Seek search engine.  As more companies work with McGraw-Hill to make their product information available on their Sweets catalog, this content will be automatically available in Seek.

Adding to the value to you all in the market is the additional data that's posted with the content like Product Datasheets and Guide Specifications.  Feel free to place any specific feedback on content you would find useful on Seek to this address.

Direct Manufacturer's Content
Recognizing the value that BIM Content provides to their customers, both Lightolier and Visa Lighting have begun publishing their content on Seek.  I applaud both of these firms in their approach to meeting customer demand, as well as their efforts in working with the Seek team.  Hopefully their efforts will make it easier for you as specifying and purchasing customers to use their products.  I implore those of you in the market who want to drive participation of additional manufacturers to recognize those who have already made this commitment.

With more such content in "production", I am just pumped about the progress we are making.  As we begin to round the bend, I think the tipping point may be just be coming into sight.