Rooms to 3D Mass – case-inc apps

A few weeks back, case-inc released their monthly app. The February 2012 instalment was a tool which allows you to convert a Room to a 3D Mass.

More details can be found on the case-inc website ….http://apps.case-inc.com/ The tool is really valuable, however, the initial release had some limitations. When you converted the Room, it was actually converting it to a Generic model. Not a big deal, but you needed to be aware of this. So after some positive critical feedback, our friends at case-inc made some tweaks! So now when you choose Rooms to 3D Mass, the output is indeed a 3D mass family! Now all they need to do is find a smart way for us to automatically name the generated families rather than a have a long winded database name; did I say I was demanding? ;-)

Well done guys & a big thanks you from the Revit community. :-)

boonedam – bim objects

 

Steve Stafford wrote a great article a few months back about quality of content & the fact its like the wild west out there! So this was pinged to me by one of our BIM coordinators this week. boonedam have started to produce Revit content.

These are actually very cool families; they are fully parametric & are of a quality is high, but here are my concerns……

• Theses families are huge!

• Level of detail is LOD 400, which is manufacturing detail, I suspect you would need a workset for these alone!
• There is no control for level of detail, so no difference between course, medium or fine.
• These are doors, so they schedule as doors, in many cases revolving doors live in curtain walls, so you will have a headache getting these into a cw system.
• They looked liked hacked families; they may have started as generic models & then been converted to doors, as they is no host wall, so when you place them they are stand alone.

• Maybe I’m being daft, but do I need all this detail? The label on the glass? Really?

• You don’t need all the profile information!

• On a positive note, they render beautifully & contain plenty of data as well as including multiply types.

Hopefully, I haven’t put you off, because as long as you are aware of these limitation, then you will be fine.If you want to try it yourself, make a request on the website. http://www.boonedam.co.uk/bim/

Design Review Mobile for Android

Autodesk have released Design Review for Android. Features include:-

Expedite the design review process by viewing and redlining design files while in the field or out of the office. Autodesk® Design Review mobile app enables you to review Autodesk 2D and 3D design files directly on your Android Phone or Tablet. View and mark up drawings on the spot, reduce the need to carry around over-sized paper drawings, and enjoy an all-digital design review workflow on your mobile device.

View

• Open and view 2D and 3D DWF files from your Autodesk Cloud  documents account
• Use multi-touch gestures to zoom, pan, and rotate drawings
• View meta data and other details about elements within your technical drawings

Markup

• Use simple redlining and intuitive mark up tools to communicate changes
• Add text or comments using familiar callouts

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.autodesk.ADRViewer

To BIM or Not to BIM?

This is an extract from Architects Journal from the 15/12/11, this article looked at trends in design & construction for the UK going into 2012…hopefully AJ won’t mind me highlighting the comment about Revit. :-)

Dude! Where’s my Nodes?

Spotted this one yesterday. In Vasari, if you divide a surface & select the divided surface with a view to changing the Surface Representation, there is no arrow to the Surface Representation options dialogue.This is Vasari…. see..no arrow? No dialogue…no Nodes… :-(

This is the same thing in Revit 2012….arrow to access the Surface Representation options.

I thought I was going mad! Fortunately Zach K. put my mind at rest & confirmed it as an interface bug. The arrow is there, see the image below, but its hidden at the end!

Rebuilding forms in Vasari or Revit 2012

This issue came up yesterday, a reasonable straight request…”I have built this surface in “PRODUCT”…….. (insert Rhino or AutoCAD). Can I rebuild it in Vasari or Revit as a water tight closed object, so I can do that I do that create floors by mass thingy?”

So here goes; this is what I was able to achieve. It should be noted that this may not work for all surfaces, but it certainly worked for this form. I started by creating a new mass family in Vasari / Revit. Next I imported the Rhino surface.

I then choose divide surface & picked the imported Rhino surface, you may need to tab select until you get to the surface, but you will be able to subdivide the surface.

I then altered the UV grid parameters to something sensible, in this case 4 x 10.

The UV grid would act as a template to trace. Then, under Surface Representation I enabled Nodes.

Using model lines > spline through points, I was able snap to the nodes to generate a profile following the surface.

I repeated this a couple of times to build a series of closed profiles.

Next I deleted the imported surface. I half expected everything to disappear, but fortunately I the model lines remained! I then converted these lines to reference lines & closed the gap at the base with another reference line.

Then selected all the model lines & chose create form to build the form.

As I suggested, it should work for simple forms & is a relatively quick way to rebuild in Revit or Vasari….but don’t assume it will work for all.