Well I have arrived….at AU2009

Well I have arrived in Vegas for AU2009. Flight was good, all be it rather long. This years event is at the Mandalay Bay, which I think is a first, in previous years its always been held at the Venetian. Hotel is a monster, its huge! I have been coming to AU for a number of years now and the view from my room this year has to be the best ever! Directly over the airport, with the strip to your left….. although sleeping at height it a bit weird.

 

Today's a chillout day, but I will be preparing datasets and text for the two classes I am doing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Happy holidays and see you at AU2009

Just want to wish my North American readers a happy holidays!

I’m heading out to AU2009 on Saturday from a damp/wet UK. I am assisting in two classes this year, this is a first for me and although I have done many presentations over the last 5 years, I must admit I’m a little nervous!

I will be assisting Paul Woddy of Revit Guru in his Autodesk Revit: Setting Standards class (CM114-1) on Tuesday. On Wednesday I join Lee Miller, HOK Firm Wide BIM Manager and Han Hsi Ho in a class  on using Autodesk Revit for Urban Design (AB208-3). We will show case how we are using Revit for large scale master planning as well as tricks and tip on how to deal with large sites for this type of work.

I will be attending the Design Symposium on Monday and the AEC Mixer in the evening. Be sure to say “hi”, if you see me; in the words of Steve Stafford, I’m the short guy how looks like Nick Kershaw! :-)  See ya……

Pumpkin heads to Las Vegas

Remember the pumpkin modelling competition run by Zack Kron back in October?

From this…….

To this…….

Well as a winner of the Goodest category, he has kindly produced a printed 3d version of my winning designing. Unfortunately Zack can’t be at AU in person, which is disappointing, but he is having the pumpkin model sent to AU where I will pick it up. A big thanks to Zack for this and my kids are gonna love it!

Revit tries to poison workers!!!

How often do you look at your journal file? Well a friend of my pointed this out a few weeks ago and I noticed it in one our journals today……

“Could not posionWorkers” ? Is there something I’m missing here? Is it Revit’s secret way of trying to kill off those that don’t show commitment to the theory of Revit and BIM. So do Revit, else it may try and poison you! :-)

More BIM day festivities

BIM day was a success! We had a global BIM managers call yesterday, where each manager presented what their respective offices had none to promote the day.  In London we had BIM cookies and we used our screens in the reception space to promote the day……………

In New York office they celebrated the day by fining people who used the “C” work………

They also cooked a BIM cake and those that eat the cake agreed that by eating the cake they would commit to BIM! NO MORE CAD!

This article was posted on our HOK BIM blog and is worth a read………

http://hoklife.com/2009/11/05/bim-day/

And as our Chicago office highlighted in their presentation, every DAY is BIM day now!

5th November 2009 is HOK BIM day!

Well we have only gone and done it!!!! In recognition that the HOK business is committed to BIM, the 5th November 2009 is our official HOK BIM day, where we wave good bye to the term CAD.

Over the years, the term CAD, has meant many things to many people…for instance CAD can mean………

• Computer Aided Drafting
• Computer Aided Design
• Computer Assisted Design
• Computer Assisted Drafting

The list, I am sure, can be added too. The word CAD, for many, references the idea of 2D rather than 3D. As many of you may be aware, HOK is fully committed to BIM and BuildingSMART as part of its strategy, so it made good business sense to align things, which has meant dropping the term CAD in favour of BIM. This has been a huge task on the part of our  Firmwide IT and BIM managers.

So with this name change, job titles will change; CAD managers will become BIM managers, technicians will become BIMbos???? probably not. So why you ask, the 5th November? Well the 5th is Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night an annual celebration on the evening of 5 November. It marks the downfall of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, in which a number of conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, in London, United Kingdom.

Therefore, it made natural sense to blow up the term CAD and replace it with BIM!!! :-)

My Pumpkin wins a prize!

My thanks goes to Zach Kron at Buildz blog for running the inaugural pumpkin modelling competition! My modelling effort managed me a first in the “good” category and my collegue William  managed a first in the “mostest parametric” category, with his stunning Grasshopper Rhino pumpkin, a big UP for the HOK boys!

It was certainly a good laugh, but for me its actually a great learning exercise, because you can push the tools of your trade in a direction which you wouldn’t normally get a chance to do. This will reap benefits when you come to have to create something on a real project, not that you will see many pumpkins in my projects! :-)

I had to jump through a few hoops to get to the end solution, but I applied a bit of Revit purist approach to solving the problem, which you can view in this video. Enjoy and I hope it inspires.