Inside the System

Vegas Baby

It's that time of year again.  Where many of us in the Building Design Industry, among many others, converge on Las Vegas for a week of learning, networking, and fun.  That's right it's Autodesk University time.  After an awesome 6 hour flight in the middle seat from Boston this morning, I'm jet lagged and ready to roll.

They say that "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas", well let's hope that Autodesk University is the exception.  This is really the top event of the year to turn your mind on to "sponge" mode and learn about our software from the people best qualified to teach it.  I hope those of you lucky enough to attend this year have put on 'yer learnin' caps.

For me, this is an event to interact with you, our customers and resellers about our software.  I have a pretty full schedule of meetings and customers sessions this week, but I also plan to be making as many trips to the AEC Lounge as possible.  That should allow me some good time to interact with many of you who might want to do so.

If you guys out there want to spend 15 minutes to chat about Revit, Sustainability, or even your new Blackberry (I'm addicted to mine), shoot me an e-mail and we can try and find a time.  My Bio has my e-mail link.  I look forward to meeting many of you.

GreenBuild - Project Chicago

As I mentioned in GreenBuild - Day 2, there was an enormous amount of interest in Project Chicago, a collaborative effort between the USGBC and our Product Teams to explore the future of software as it applies to Sustainable Design.  It was a great effort by both teams, and set the bar high for us in the future.

We've recently posted that video on our website, find it here.

Enjoy.  As always, throw comments my way.

Why We're Here

I recently came across a thread on our discussion forums that was asking about customizing the Rise/Drop symbols that are shown when a Pipe or Duct has a vertical segment relative to the plane of the view in Revit, see below.

We currently provide the user the ability to choose from a number of different symbols that display these situations.  These symbols came from some generally accepted methods for displaying these situations.

We do this for a reason, and it had to do with Revit MEP being a design tool and not a drafting tool.  So, I set off to write a post explaining this point.  When I was done, I realized that I had gone into a lot more depth on the purpose of the product (big surprise knowing me), and that it might be useful for you in my blog audience.

So I've decided to add some snippets from the thread below.

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Post from User:
    Hi there Kyle.
I would like to get some control over symbols - some of them are OK, but others need some customization to meet my company's standards. Piping symbols are mostly OK.
On the other hand, I would like to assign different symbols to ducts. Round ducts, no matter what system type, would always get the filled yin yang (seems I can't do this at this moment), and rectangular ducts would get a "section" symbol (see the attached picture).
***********************************************************************
Response from me:
There's currently no way to customize the display of Rise/Drop symbols. This touches on Revit MEP's intention as a design tool and not a drafting tool. As we design features for Revit MEP, we try and ensure that it is capable of conveying designed intent through generally accepted methods.

The design and development task is significantly larger when it includes providing the ability to fully customize the way that we convey design intent, which is really a drafting requirement.

Ultimately our goal is to get to a point where we support the BIM process for all disciplines and stages of an MEP project. This requires that we can do the following:

• Model the required systems for the MEP portion of the project.
• Facilitate the calculations required for the design of those systems; either through native calculations or interface with other applications.
• Coordinate the MEP systems with other disciplines on the project.
• Allow for other applications to leverage the data in the BIM for Upstream and Downstream purposes.
• Construction Documents that convey the designed intent of the MEP systems.

Adding in the requirement for those construction documents to have fully customizable graphical representations of the BIM elements is not a requirement of the above goals, and ultimately slows our progress towards our goal with the product.

That's not to say that we won't provide some of this functionality in the future once we reach our goal.

This is why I asked my original question. We are glad to investigate and try and implement functionality to allow you to convey designed intent, if we currently do not have that ability in the application.
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I'd be interested to hear the comments from all of you on this subject, as it's an important point to understand Revit MEP's trajectory as a product.

Revit MEP Web Update #3 Released

Quick post today, as I'm a bit crusty after a red eye last night from San Francisco.

We released Web Update #3 for Revit MEP, Revit Architecture, and Revit Structure.  These contain fixes to issues that have been discovered since our last Web Update.  You can find more information on the respective download pages.

Go get it!

Revit MEP Content Extension Released

I wanted to throw up a quick post to let everybody know that we have just released our Revit MEP Content Extension on our website.  I know this has been eagerly awaited by those of you in our user-base, and we are excited to add on to our existing catalog.

As I've touched on in The Quest for Content, we need more content for users to be successful.  In an effort to support that end, we've produced this content to fill some existing gaps in available content.  There's more content that needs to be built, but this is a step in the right direction from my perspective.

Go get it!

UPDATE: Thanks to Scott Brisk for posting a list of the new content that's released with the Content Extension.  Thanks to Scot for his great work on his Revit MEP blog.

Insight into Systems

When I started my Blog a few weeks ago I planned to link to good discussions from our Community Forums, I've already done that once, and now I'd like to do it again.

I posted recently on Putting the Pieces Together, an explanation of the Revit MEP system concept.  There's an active thread going on right now at our Autodesk forum, and we've been discussing creation of Systems, as well as the View Filter functionality I already discussed in Shiny Objects.  I always find these sorts of discussions very informative, as they shed light on the strategies being employed by users, and allow us in the Product Team to shed some light on designed workflows.

In this post, Jason Martin, our lead Product Designer and resident Revit MEP Obi-Wan Kenobi, sheds some light on the designed workflows with Systems, and like always a nice dose of logic.  I though you all might find this useful.

GreenBuild - The Quest for Content

As I spoke about in an earlier post The Quest for Content, content for our applications is in high demand, and even though there's no way we at Autodesk can create all necessary content for Revit MEP, as the Product Manager I feel it's my responsibility to try and facilitate the creation of the content by all interested parties.

Because of this, I set out to engage every manufacturer who would listen and discuss this topic.  I had some very in-depth conversations with a number of very large manufacturers who understood the looming value to integrating their product lines with BIM workflows.  At the end of the conference I had a stack of business cards from household names in the industry, all of whom were interested in pursuing further this subject.  You can bet I'll be following up with them.

And to those of you reading this, be sure to re-affirm your need for manufacturer's content every time you see your local rep.  Your voice is the strongest voice in the industry to influence the strategies of these companies.

GreenBuild - Day 2

It's symbolic of the hectic schedule I've been keeping that my "day 2" post on GreenBuild is actually days later.  So much for blogging in real-time.  Nonetheless, I wanted to put up a couple more perspectives that I gathered from GreenBuild.

• It's tough to compete with the high intensity of the Opening Plenary, but many of the classes were able to maintain the momentum and messaging set forth in the Plenary.  Great job to those that put on the classes that I attended, I could tell you had put a great deal of time into preparing the sessions.
  
  As I pointed out in my last post, for those of you not able to attend GreenBuild, check out some of the content available at GreenBuild365, the new website set up by the USGBC in conjunction with United Technologies.
  
• There was an intense amount of interest in Project Chicago, a video produced by Autodesk in conjunction with the USGBC that explored the future of Sustainable Design integration with BIM Software.  One of Autodesk's Thought Leaders and one of the VPs of our AEC Division, Phil Bernstein introduced this video as part of the Opening Plenary.
  
  Very rarely do our Product Design and Development organizations get the chance to let their mind run wild about such concepts without having the constraints of available software creep in.  I knew about this effort before GreenBuild, and to no surprise to me the Project Chicago team delivered an incredibly compelling vision of the future of our software to support Sustainable Design.
  
  For those of you who have seen or will see this video, it's important to know that this is just a vision rather than a shipping product, so there's nothing people can buy today.  That makes my life more interesting as we move towards those kind of solutions, kind of lights the fire and defines the end game.  I suspect that's part of the idea why we did it...
  
• Enthusiasm for BIM was immense throughout the conference.  I really enjoyed interacting with users and potential users at our Autodesk booth as well as at other booths on the convention floor and in individual classes.  People are really beginning to understand how the BIM approach to construction projects can benefit the MEP industry as a whole.

GreenBuild - Day 1

I'm pumped.  Of course it's difficult not to be pumped after the opening Plenary Session at the GreenBuild expo in Chicago.  It also isn't difficult for me to be pumped in general, I'm an excitable guy.

We got to listen to some excellent speeches from Rich Feduzzi, the President and founder of the USGBC, Autodesk's own Phil Bernstein, and former President Bill Clinton.  There was also some very moving spoken word poetry by an incredible youth named George.  It was a very inspiring morning, and really motivated me even more to do what I can to impact the implementation of Sustainable Development practices.

For those of you that could not attend GreenBuild, I recommend that you check out the newly released website GreenBuild365, which will contain videos of the speeches as well as other content.  Looks pretty slick to me.

Autodesk has already made a commitment to Sustainability, and we are actively working with a number of groups to better understand the requirements of the market, and deliver the best possible solutions to support it.  This is something that really excites me, and makes me proud to be part of an organization actively influencing this important movement.  It helps to make the crazy hours worthwhile as we build towards a meaningful end goal.

I'm finding it incredibly interesting to participate in discussions about Sustainability at the Autodesk Booth, as well as just get some Revit MEP feedback.  I'm also really looking forward to attending some breakout sessions on specific Sustainability topics.  I'll check in on those later.

Go With the Flow - Part 1

As a support technician in the Subscription Support team, I found myself answering a lot of questions about how things work in our MEP applications.  I found that I enjoyed this process, as providing this information usually resulted in customers being thankful for my efforts....I'm a sucker for instant gratification.

I also learned through that experience the value of having a strong understanding of how things work.  This allows you not only to be successful in that specific situation, but also in related situations.  You know the saying, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for life."  With that in mind, I am setting out to cover another fundamental of Revit MEP that users often struggle with.

Revit MEP Connectors
Connectors allow data to flow between elements in the Revit BIM.  Pretty straightforward right?  Well, yes in concept.  But, when you introduce the data that needs to flow between Connectors, the need to establish rules for flow, and the association between the Connector and the Family itself; things get interesting.

Note: The embedded videos below are actually 1024x768 resolution, so be sure to Right-Click->Zoom->Full Screen to see it in full clarity.  The links are also included if you want to download the video file for later use.

Connectors and Mapping

I hope that first video helped with Connectors in general and how their Geometry can be defined by the Family itself.  I apologize for the poor sound at first, my mic was turned up too high.

Now let's talk about the data that flows between families.

Connectors and Data

Whew...information overload right?  Even if your brain is about to explode, I bet you can still see the power that the Connector holds in Revit MEP, and how you can use it for all kinds of useful things.  Next post I'll cover some additional parameters on Connectors, and how they impact flow propagation in the model.

For those of you who want to tinker around with the model I used in the video, you can download it in the link below.

Connector Dataset