Inside the System

Extensions Released for Revit MEP

I wanted to let all of you in the Revit MEP community know that we have just released a new Subscription benefit for Revit MEP, Revit Extensions.  These are a series of Plugin applications that work with Revit MEP to provide enhanced functionality.

Those of you familiar with Revit Structure know about the Revit Extensions developed by Robobat.  As some of those Extensions have functionality that applies to all Revit users, we wanted to make those available to all of you.  Check out the links below to know more about the Extensions.

• Text Generator
• Elements Positioning
• Freeze Drawings
• Compare Models

All Subscription customers of Revit Products can download these Extensions for use with the Revit 2009 Family of products.  As is customary for Inside the System, I have made a video on getting to the downloads in the Subscription Center.

Downloading Revit Extensions

There you go, I encourage everybody to take a look at these handy plug-ins.

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.

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.

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.

Autodesk Seek Steps Out From Behind the Curtain

I've spoken about the need for BIM content before, and I'll be speaking about it for the foreseeable future, it's just that big of a need for the marketplace.  In order to design a building using the BIM process, one must have intelligent content.

We at Autodesk have developed a strategy to create a Content Ecosystem for our products, so that the content needed for success is at the fingertips of the people that need it.  There are a number of angles to this strategy, but today I'm going to focus on the Distribution component of the strategy.

Autodesk Seek
When we last discussed this subject, Autodesk Seek was still an alpha and temporarily named Content Search.  The technology has continued to develop, and with the integration into our 2009 family of AEC Design products, Autodesk has formally released itself to the world, in the form of a press release.  I highly recommend that you give it a read and tell your friends.

Now this formality is not the only thing up our sleeve, we are actively working to populate Seek with high quality content to meet the needs of the marketplace.  Without naming names, I can say that we've had some great success working with Manufacturers and 3rd Party Aggregators to develop content for our design applications, and using Seek as the distribution mechanism.  You will hear some more specifics on this subject in the coming weeks.

Still though, there is still need for more participation, and that's where YOU come in.  Yes, you, the dedicated reader of Inside the System.  Last time I checked, Autodesk was not a major specifier and buyer of Building Products.  You all in the design and construction markets are exactly those people, and thus have the largest influence on manufacturers.

So, when the Sales Rep swings by next time to make their office visit, be sure to let them know that you would specify and buy more of their products if they provided you with BIM content.

Here's to being part of the solution.

Great Tool for Local File Management - Part 2

A few posts back I pointed you all to a tool posted on Dave Baldacchino's great blog, Do U Revit.  Since I subscribe to his RSS Feed, I get an e-mail in my inbox whenever he has a new post.

Well, this morning he posted an update to his local file management tool, so I wanted to point you all to it.  This tool seems to really reduce some of the pain to local file management, so I wanted to give you all a heads up.  Because, you know, I care about all of you diehard Inside the System readers.

Enjoy!

A Huge Weight is Lifted

As I've spoke about before, I spend a lot of my time interacting with customers online and in-person.  While some of that time is spent discussing product strategy and other industry issues, a great deal of that time is spent addressing use of Revit MEP.

Usually those conversations deal with best practices, answers to technical questions, and functionality questions.  Since Revit MEP is a relatively young product, and you as customers expect the best from Autodesk's BIM platform, there undoubtedly ends up being requests for new features.  Or, there may be certain features that need a bit of tweaking to improve usability or performance.  Whatever the case, these discussions often funnel directly into our development pipeline as future projects.  In other cases, we may already be working on solutions to those problems.

Being a publicly traded company, I can never make forward-facing statements about future functionality, which means I often am forced to keep mum about cures to what's currently ailing customers.  That's never a fun thing to do, but a necessary requirement for me as a Product Manager.

This all leads up to pent up excitement on our end to provide our users with the next release, and a justifiable appetite on the customer-end to see what's in store.  Worlds must collide at some point...

Yesterday was Autodesk's World Press Day, which officially announces our upcoming releases to the press, and begins the process of communicating to you the fruits of our hard work.  What does that mean to you all?  Well it means that Inside the System is going to be "en fuego" over the coming weeks with all kinds of new information and videos regarding the upcoming Revit MEP 2009.

I had hoped to have an initial video ready for today, but I'm just not satisfied with what I've got so far.  Expect to see your first glimpse tomorrow.

Oh, and there's this little thing....but I can't talk all too much about that now...that's not stopping you all though.

Liftoff!

Do You RSS?

I know things have been a bit quiet lately on Inside the System, but I hope this post helps to keep you in the loop with the blog in a more useful way.  With the delay in posts, I hope many of you finding ways to deal with the life-altering trauma of not finding an update when you visit my site.  For those of you that do check in daily to look for an update, there is a better solution, RSS.

For those of you familiar with Podcasts, you probably already know about RSS feeds.  For those of you who don't, here's how they work.  An RSS feed is equivalent to an "update beacon" on the internet.  You can subscribe to the feed with an RSS Reader, which will then alert you when there is new post and then let you read it.  There are many applications that give you this ability; Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, as well as numerous websites.  Simply googling "RSS Reader" will give you a plethora of options.

This is really the best way to keep up with your favorite Blogs and websites.  I definitely recommend that you look into it.

For those of you that are interested, I put together a video on how to subscribe to my feed using Outlook.

Adding an RSS Feed to Outlook

I hope this provides you all with a reliable way to get your Inside the System fix.

New Toys to Play With

I wanted to let everyone know that we've just recently released two new utilities on the Subscription Center, for use with the Revit 2008 family of products.

Worksharing Monitor
This nifty tool works outside of the Revit Environment and allows users to monitor the status of a Revit Central File.  Very useful information like:

• Who's currently saving to Central.
• Who's currently working in the model.
• How much longer until my Save to Central operation finishes?
• Is my Local File up to date?

I think it's a must-have for any firm that is using Revit in a worksharing environment.

Batch Print Utility
This Revit API-based tool allows you to automate many plotting processes, just like the name sounds.  Additionally, it has the ability to re-start Revit in the even that an "out of memory" crash occurs during plotting.  Definitely a time saver as well.

For information on how to get these tools, I'll refer you to BIM & Beam, the Revit Structure blog done by my counterparts on the Revit Structure Product Management Team.  They posted great instructions the other day.

Enjoy!