Revit Hauer flexible cw panels

I thought I'd share my latest "out there" Revit experiment with you :-). This comes after Dave Baldacchino sent me a link to a site which looked at some of the other sculptural forms that Erin Hauer has created. Thanks Dave, because this inspired me to look at something a little different.

Whether this is architecture, art or just plain silliness I'm not sure, but I love the pattern creating ability in Revit. To be able to create a form which is parametric and push the changes through to multiply copies to achieve a different design, I personally find very interesting.

Generic family nested into cw panel family

Again, this follows my normal process of a generic family nested into a cw panel family and then loaded into cw system. This allows the curtain wall system to control the number of panels as well as the overall size of each panel.

What is interesting about particularly form is that it contains various solids and voids to build up the family, but I've included parametric constraints to control the initial cube form in the centre. This in turn controls various other extrusions and sweeps which make up the family, you will even notice that the cube is hollow in the centre.

Controlling parameters

It certainly took a far amount of time to build this particular family up, because you would try something, break it, then take a different route to solve the problem. What I did do was include a check parameter to stop the family from breaking. This is reasonably straight forward to achieve.

I had a parameter called "length_outer", this controlled the overall size of the cube within the family.

I then created another parameter as a check. This was called "length_outer_ check". I used an "if" statement to control the family.

if(length_outer > 5000 mm, 5000 mm, length_outer)

So if the length_outer was greater than 5000mm, (greater than this figure and the family would break!) then it was 5000mm, else it would remain at any length than you created which was obviously less than 5000mm. This is probably reasonably straight forward for advanced Revit users but its useful for those that are new to family creation and is a good use of the "if" statement.

Parametric design

This is what the family looked like with an outer length of 5000mm (the max it could be before breaking)....

This is what the curtain system looks like when the panel set to its max size of 5000mm.

This is what the same family looked like with the outer length set to 1050mm.....

This is the resulting curtain system using the size defined above.

Good Luck Tim!

Now I know I have a number of UK readers, but a fellow colleague of mine, Tim Bates announced that he was leaving Excitech around about a month ago.  He is set to join Newforma as Director of EMEA Operations from the beginning of next week. Tim joined Excitech 9 years ago after running his own reseller business before that.

If anybody has been lucky enough to meet, work with him or listen to him present, you will understand that he has a passion for BIM and collaborative working. Tim was instrumental in the use of ADT in the UK and pushed ADT to the limits in the early days when the industry wasn't ready for Revit and Autodesk's BIM app of choice was ADT. He regularly feedback UK requirements for the product to the Autodesk Development teams, was involved in Heathrow T5 as well as scores of other collaborative projects where ADT was the platform of choice.

I've had the pleasure of working with Tim for the last 5 years and I'd like to wish him all the very best in his new venture!

64bit Revit 2009

Finally, Autodesk have made a 64bit versions of Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP 2009 available for download. Details were announced today in a formal Autodesk press release.

http://pressreleases.autodesk.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=472%3C%2Ftd%3E

This will alleviate the RAM limitations that Revit has suffered from in recent years, especially with large projects. This is a significant move forward and will accelerate Revit as the BIM platform of choice.

The Building Coder blog

This looks very interesting if you are into the Revit API and code development.

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/

This blog is devoted to developers working with Revit and is written by Jeremy Tammik from the Autodesk DevTech Team. To be honest this is all beyond me! But if you are into pushing the Revit API an SDK its well worth a visit.

New Builds of Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP 2009 available

As high lighted on a number of blogs as well as AUGI; new builds of Revit Architecture 2009 and Structure 2009 are available for download from the following locations. Note that this service pack is different as it now works like the Autocad service pack functionality.

Revit Architecture 2009

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11017599

Revit Structure 2009

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9281007

Revit MEP 2009

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=11273489

Edit. Just updated my version of Revit Architecture 2009 using the new service pack tool. As highlighted in the readme.pdf, it is crucial that you have access to the Revit Architecture.msi, else things will go wrong!

If you have updated Revit Architecture using the previous download from the web and you left it in its original download folder located C:\Program Files\Revit Architecture 2009\Download,  you should be fine. Although you may still have to browse to the msi manually, I certainly had to; the msi can be found in the following folder.

C:\Program Files\Revit Architecture 2009\Download\RevitSetup\RevitBuilding

Overall, this is a very positive move forward, especially for those that have multi-deployments of Revit.

Concrete cladding panels as curtain walls

I showed the image below on a blog post from last year and back then somebody did question how I put it together. I've updated the model for RAC 2009 as I was keen to see how it would render, so this post is really a follow on from the initial question.

Background

The example is actually a proof of concept. I was at an Autodesk Tech Camp event in Europe last year, when somebody from one of Autodesk distribution companies showed me an example of a project in Denmark called the Light*house. They asked me whether I thought it was possible in Revit? Always up for a challenge and more than happy to share my ideas, I opened up my laptop and within an hour I'd come up with this. The panels are not parametric, although if I'd spent more time, I'm sure I could have made them as such.

How they where created

I started with a generic family, which included an extrusion and a void extrusion to get the initial shape of the curtain wall panel. I made sure that the family was built around a series of reference planes based on the end size of the resulting panel.

The resulting generic family was then loaded into a curtain wall panel family. I then locked and aligned the generic family to the curtain wall panel families reference planes.

I also added a double horizontal control which allows me to flip the panels where required within the curtain system.

Next I started a new project and created a curtain wall system. I then modified the system to the exact sizes of the previously created panel.

I then loaded in my custom curtain wall panel and swapped out the default glass panel for my panel. By default all the panel will be in the same direction on plan. So to get the flowing stepping "in and out" that the facade required, I just flipped every other panel, as per the image below.

As the curtain wall system only spanned between two levels, I copied the system already created up to the second level. I then adjusted the panels to meet the requirements of the pattern at the second level. Once completed the two systems where copied up to complete the image below, it was as simple as that!