Kiss Revit's ASHRAE: Autodesk Labs Does it Again!!!

I don't think I need to say much more than that!!!

AEC & MEP folks take note... Hit the image for the Autodesk Labs' Plugin of the Month for April.

Thank you Mr. Labs.
Sincerely,
Mr. Buttle

EXTREME(ly) BIM & Other Useful USC Offerings

It's that time of year again and Karen Kensek & the entire USC BIM team are at it once (or should I say 3 times) more... See the following & as always hit the images for links to the site(s)... And I will see you at the BIMposium!!!

This summer, the USC School of Architecture is offering THREE EVENTS that you might be interested in: the (almost free) annual BIM symposium EXTREME BIM 2011, the Façade Tectonics conference, and a series of Executive Education seminars including one on BIM.

Please take the time to email if you are seriously interested in the current and future state of the profession.
Thank you for your time!  

1)  5th Annual BIM Symposium:  Extreme BIM (almost free) - the most exciting event of the year!

Friday, July 8th.   Register on the website. Please reserve your spot soon; BIM Analytics filled up last year.

http://arch-pubs.usc.edu/extreme-bim/ 

EXTREME BIM: Friday, July 8th, 8:15 am - 4:15 pm (very, very small fee of $25

Keep checking back on the website as additional information will be updated there including the final schedule including the times of the individual talks.  YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THE SYMPOSIUM ON THE WEBSITE.

http://arch-pubs.usc.edu/extreme-bim/

The speakers for EXTREME BIM 2011 were instructed to give presentations that advance the idea of building information modeling, show things that most of the audience may not be aware of, and demonstrate that BIM is cool and cutting edge!  We have put together a slate of speakers that includes representatives from architecture, engineering, construction, education, and owners.  Explore a side of BIM that you have not seen before! 

Moderator:  Karen Kensek, USC, School of Architecture

List of Speakers:

Mario Guttman, AIA, LEED AP | Design Applications Research Leader, Perkins + Will Application Programming for Computational Design "A Case Study on Driving Revit from Ecotect"

Ian Keough, Associate, Buro Happold Consulting Engineers PC "Out of the Box : BIM Tools for Visualization and Documentation"

Nathan Miller, NBBJ, Associate

"Dataspaces and Uncertainty"

Joseph Burns, SE, PE, FAIA, Managing Principal, Thornton Tomasetti "Stretching BIM: Design to Construction"

Chandler Ahrens, Morphosis

"Progressive Feedback"

Michael Kilkelly AIA, Associate - Gehry Partners "Translations from Model to Building"

Bradley Hardin, RA, LEED AP, Vice President of Strategic Pursuits, Balfour Beatty Construction "BIM and Extreme Execution:  Why Digital Field Work is Everything"

TEAM Gensler

Adam Gumowski, Designer

Brian Fraumeni, Designer

Kristen George, Designer

Lorenzo Marasso, Designer

Yasushi Ishida, Designer

"Mind the Gap"

Brian K. Stewart, Partner and Nicole Davis Tinkham, Associate, Collins Collins Muir + Stewart LLP "A Legal Perspective on BIM"

Robert Cull, Executive Project Director, Cedars-Sinai Health System, Facilities Planning, Design and Construction "Document Management/Control in the BIM Process"

TEAM CCC (some might be virtual)

Lee Belarmino, Vice President of Information Technology and Bond Executive, San Joaquin Delta College Kimon Onuma, FAIA , President ONUMA Inc. / Founder of BIMStorms John Roach, Director, Systems Analysis & Research, Foundation for California Community Colleges "BIG BIM BANG: How the California Community College System Connected 71 Million Square feet of BIM, GIS, and Facility Management Data in the Cloud"

** If you are an AIA member and wish to sign up for CEUs, please remember to bring your AIA number with you.  It will be somewhere around 5 CEUs.

2)  Façade Tectonics Two Day Conference (for those interested specifically in the building envelope) - Contact Doug Noble, dnoble@usc.edu

FACADE TECTONICS: All day Friday and Saturday, July 29-30, 2011. 

$95 Registration, $45 for students. Ten (10) AIA CEU units (HSW).

The Graduate Building Science program at USC holds facade conferences two times each year.  The summer 2011 program builds on the highly successful and widely acclaimed Fall 2010 conference.  29 speakers. Examples topics at this conference include: Double Skin Facades, Parametrics and Facades, Facades and Seismic Motion, Structural Glass facades, Building Façade Retrofit, Dynamic Skins, Computational Methods for Façade Design, Daylighting and Glare, Analytical Computing Tools, and lots more.

3)  Executive Education (more BIM and façade seminars) -  http://execed.uscarchitecture.com/

2011 USC Architecture Summer Executive Education Program (not free) http://execed.uscarchitecture.com/program/bim-101/

http://execed.uscarchitecture.com/

Extreme BIM (Friday, July 8th) includes many shorter presentations in a lecture hall format.  If you prefer small, seminar classes that focus more deeply on just a few topics, consider taking one of the School of Architecture, Executive Education Seminars.  The courses are designed to be intimate in size with only 15-20 students in each class. This is the opportunity to interactively discuss the role of BIM in the profession with other architects.

This year, we will be hosting a one day BIM seminar on Thursday, July 7th from 9 am to 5 pm.  The two day seminar has been cancelled, but the topics have been folded into the one day seminar for a rich BIM experience.  For those of you also attending Extreme BIM, Gensler has provided a different set of speakers and lecture material.

Featured firms are HNTB and Gensler with Gautum Shenoy and Chris Bushong leading the panel of speakers.  There will also be discussions about emerging technologies and the AIA TAP BIM award winners by Marty Doscher (SYNTHESIS Technology Integration) and Jim Balding (The Ant Group).

Extreme BIM is free if you enroll in the Exec Ed seminar.

Make your BIM experience a double header with both Exec Ed and Extreme BIM!

Karen Kensek

USC, School of Architecture

Wanna Say You Made Your First Revit Plugin? The Factory Can Help

If you have ever wanted to say "I made my first Revit Plugin"; primarily to enable yourself the ability to make more... then you'll want to hit the image @ left!!!

Thanks to the (Revit) Factory & ADN Revit Team!!!

Revit Can't Do That... Wait; it Can!!!

If anyone says Revit Can't do something let them be on notice that they are almost assuredly wrong!!!

The image links to more... and YES that's a native Revit Cow Family!!!

See this link for more: The Revit Complex

Revit Addins Offered up to LARUG (and you). Thanks C RUG!!!

Hit the Image for the whole scoop!!!

May 2011 Los Angeles Revit Users Group Meeting & a potential for a Revit Cow

LARUG Meeting Wednesday May 18th 6pm @ JAMA Los Angeles. Revit Cow???

Yes!!! you are invited!!!
Hit the images if you'd like more info... The always great Marcello Sgambelluri will be one of the presenters!!!

AU Gonna Teach Again (at AU) This Year??? Hope So!!!

Hopefully I have a few classes chosen again and am included in having the privilege to be teaching at AU again this year. Years past have seen a lot of great stuff, even from me!!! This year is expected to be better... as long as I have a few classes of mine included that is... :-)

Anyhow if you have been procrastinating then you have only 1 day left to submit class proposals, so hit the AU Image above and get on with it... You only have until Friday, May 6 2011 to get them submitted.

Good luck to all who are submitting!!!

Oh; One more thing; The Seminar (right) that I am proposing is planned to be co-presented by the talented Troy Gates (and perhaps others), so if you have influence with ADSK then vote for this class, it will be an extreme look deep into coordination techniques...

Cheers All,

Architecture & New Technology: The Ant Group to the rescue

Local to Southern California; In town or want to fly out here on Mondays? If so and you are new to, or haven't gotten on the Revit & BIM train(ing) Train yet but want to: then the Ant Group may be a great place to start.

Beginning tonight Jim Balding is "Beta'ing" MONDAY NIGHT REVIT [MNR] (yeah, notice for tonight is short but these will keep happening, so never fear, go get on their email list!!! -by clicking the image above, left...).

Go get some New Revit Kicks!!! Though the cool shoe image below links to Rev'It Motorcycles page (perhaps the coolest name for Motorcycle stuff ...to Revit aficionados at least); the Ant Group's meetings are not about Motorcycles, they ARE about the BIM kind of Revit!!! And learning the fundamentals is always...well...fundamental.

Here's a synopsis

"We are calling it beta as we are not sure where it will go. The theory is that there is a need for affordable informal Revit training/guidance on an on-going basis. Keeping it informal allows us to go where we want, explore what we want to explore and get detailed where we want to get detailed. Keeping it affordable allows for more participation. This will not take the place of formal intensive training, perhaps supplement it.

WHO – We are inviting anyone that has an interest in learning more about Revit. We will start out very basic, but will allow the group to guide the direction. We will, however, keep it to the basics as this keeps the content more relative for the majority of users and there is more than enough there to keep us very busy. If there is a need for advanced topics, we can evaluate that as well.

WHAT – Revit Basics

WHERE – The ANT Group, 18025 Sky Park Circle, Ste K, Irvine CA

WHEN – Monday nights 6:30 – 8:00, starting 25 April 2011

Starting with: “What’s New in Revit 2012 – UI Changes, Visualization Enhancements, 3D Tagging” with the following week being “What’s New in Revit 2012 – Revit Server, Linking Improvements and Massing Enhancements”. After that we will get to the real basics like “Everything you Want to Know about Walls”, “Family Creation”, “Stairs and Railings”, “Floors and Roofs”, “Schedules”, “Working with Consultants”, “Massing”, “Materials and Rendering”, “Best Practices”, “Working with Worksets”, “Creating and Maintaining Templates”, “Keynotes, Notes and Text”, “Company Standards”, on and on and on and on…

WHY – There seems to be a need for affordable fundamental training/guidance for Revit.

HOW – Not sure how this will all shake out, but I plan on picking a topic and lecturing for an 60-75 minutes and have a question and answer session after. We will publish topics a week ahead of time and keep it flexible and go where the group wants to go. This will be a lecture only to begin with, if there is a need to go to a BYOL (bring your own laptop) lab we will consider that later.
 

HOW MUCH – Our intention is to keep the price on this as low as possible. The target price is $20 per session payable by cash or check (payable to The ANT Group, Inc.). If there is a big demand, we can look into accepting PayPal and credit cards, but may have to charge more for that.
 

As mentioned above, this is “beta” and will evolve as needed.
 

Thoughts or questions are encouraged."