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." 

Where'd the BIM Go???

Back to BIM being either Building Information Management or Building Information Model... 

:-( Too much spam generated. 

I like the two "L's" in Modeling... I think that was an original mistake from the initiators of the image (I believe Autodesk but I cannot be positive who created the original)... I know the image left is not completely in English but...

BIM for Spell Check perhaps?

Keys to Key on, When Keynoting in Revit (Okey?)

WOW, that is a silly title... Oh well...

So there have been several postings I wrote, regarding Keynotes in Revit and you can find them HERE with a .PDF HERE, just in case.

In conversations with Steve Faust from Revolution Design He mentioned to me the following:

[We] "added a new system to it to which manufacturers will subscribe in order to bring links to their website, BIM models, etc. to the designers and hopefully help the designers get content and product info (it's still free to designers). You can find out more about it by going to keynotemanager.revolutiondesign.biz and browsing through the pages. It's not officially released yet, but it's there." (BTW: if you are reading this now (and you always are, no matter when 'now' is, right?) well in any case it's officially out...NOW!!!)

Steve went on to say: "There are 2 big new features in this release along with a handful of little things. The two big ones are the manufacturer [ones] and comment/markup capability - that one's been asked for by several people. If you look on the features page there is an overview of the functionality." YAAY!!!

 

I did know of and have used the Keynote Manager (KM), now from Revolution Design. FYI: In my previous posts I focused on editing these keynote .txt files directly, mainly to show people unfamiliar with these files how they work... Well now I'm over it and have new guidance (unless you already use the KM; in which case I have new... news!!!).

News for Existing users of the KM

Hit the image at left to get the new version; it's a great tool and "enhanced for your protection"... well, actually for your use, not protection...

Intro for Future/New users of the KM

File Tools 

With this KM tool; some of what you can do is create new & or start from or even append existing Keynote KN files. 

 Did I mention easily?

Keynote Tools

Obviously you can create Top Level, Sequential & Sub-Note level KN's, to your heart's content.

My only suggestion to the Revolution Design team is (perhaps for next releases) to either rename or simply reorder these choices into their more logical order of use: and add "T" for the shortcut to Top level... such as:

Top Level (T)

Sequential (S)

Sub-Note (U)

Did you catch the "Convert All:" and "Convert Single:" choices in the image left?

Awesome!!!

Comment Tools

These are not for the Keynote Text values; these are a resource to markup and red-line the KN customization files: actually they highlight the KN with a comment attached as Orange (until marked complete) but I digress... Comments are all managed via an .xml file and if you're a sufficient geek (or simply like to become good at their job) I suggest you read the entire "Help" system they provide. It's not too long and has great insight into their tool and if you don't want to be one you will read it ...all!!!

 Settings

The first time you hit "Settings" you may be prompted with choosing the appropriate Revit Dictionary file... I suggest using one for a language you speak :-)

Beyond that; set these up as you wish (obviously)... There are more settings but the image isn't necessary herein... Suffice to say there is an AutoSave!!!

Help

 Get Help, Get Improvements, Get Contact(ed)... As usual F1 is Help... we already went over the fact that you will read all of the Help(ful) information, but the other choices here are useful too...

About

Giving Credit Where Credit's Due... Also read the Terms and Conditions.

One final thought on perhaps why I like the KN tool: The first band I was in called ourselves Revolution, so it seems I am still a REV Head (Hahaha Revit makes me one also...) funny how we think coincidence exists, when it's all just naturally occurring synergy.



Update April 7th 2011
Steve let me know of potential connectivity issues related to some people having blocked ports (eeew I hope that doesn't hurt) so if you see the image at left then look to the probable solution below...(FYI: these issues are extremely rare, but a bit of preventative paranoia always helps keep issues at bay...), now onto the fix:

Since the release of Keynote Manager 10.0 I have had a couple people contact me saying the Manufacturer Link function was not connecting to the database correctly (if this happens, Keynote Manager will display the dialog below). In case this has happened to anyone else I wanted to send out a quick update explaining what it is and what to do about it.

If you see this dialog, it simply means that Keynote Manager could not connect to the database online that stores the names and data for subscribed manufacturers. The first and simplest thing to check is to make sure you are connected to the internet; if you are not it will not be able to connect.

If you are connected to the internet and still getting the error your firewall or other security may be blocking Keynote Manager from connecting. The database that Keynote Manager needs to connect to is a MySql database which uses port 3306 and connects to the server biz88.inmotionhosting.com, please consult your IT department or firewall documentation to make sure this connection is not blocked.

The Future Is Finally the Present!!! Make Families (NOT the Revit ones either) Faster & More Efficiently!!! Genetically Engineer Your Next Child!!!

Need Genetic Engineering to keep from having that in-bread look to your family??? Check out this new application coming out (...) from ADSK!!! Click the image for their download link and get procreating!!!

I cannot vouch for any tool being in this final production suite, but since I was on the beta team I know that there was even a Lesbian & Gay plugin, allowing those communities to implement a streamlined workflow and process management systems for child procurement as well as Gay/Straight child rearing, etc...

You have to see the Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie plugin coming soon too!!!

My kids say "This is the best application since Angry Birds and we hate that our parents didn't use it on us!!!"

New Autodesk Suites Deliver Digital Prototyping for Unbeatable Design Innovation and Quality

Autodesk Procreation Design Suite is a new, comprehensive, and cost-effective design solution for creating compelling children. Containing Autodesk’s leading design, visualization, and simulation software for consumers, the new suite provides flexibility to innovate and more easily respond to changing family requirements from early concepts to detailed engineering and simulation. Autodesk Procreation Design Suite also provides significant cost savings and is easier to deploy, maintain, and manage than stand-alone products.*
Autodesk offers three editions of the Procreation Design Suite:

• Procreation Design Suite Standard -- Foundational design tools for conceptual design, intuitive 3D body and skeletal modeling, drafting, and presentations, featuring Autodesk Love Maker with Inventor Fusion, Autodesk Showcase, Autodesk SketchBook Designer, Autodesk Vault, and Autodesk Mudbox software.
  
• Procreation Design Suite Premium -- Optimized Digital Prototyping and visualization tools for maximum performance that features Standard edition tools along with Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk 3ds Max Design software.
  
• Procreation Design Suite Ultimate -- Advanced surfacing, simulation, and tooling for unbeatable design quality, featuring the same tools as the Premium edition along with Autodesk Inventor Professional, Autodesk Alias Design software, and more (see below).
  

"Combining our Autodesk Inventor Professional products with the software powering Hollywood-quality imagery, movies and interactive presentations enables us to create visually impressive and dynamic engineering solutions for prospective parents," said Irene Cassini, manager of Gattaca Aerospace Corporation. "With the new Autodesk Procreation Design Suite, we can create, validate, and communicate our digital designs with even greater confidence and shortened gestation time."
Procreation Design Suite Ultimate includes applications and an offering not available in the other packages.

• Autodesk Love Maker 2012 Plus - The world class Love Maker application paired with a "Gene Quality Selection Interface." Using this patented interface, users can select the desired characters and load them into the HPC-C (High Performance Conception Controller). The HPC-C prevents Conception when the genetic characters are missing and ensures conception when the genetic characters are present.
  
• Autodesk Parent Maker 2012 - World class tool aiding highly compatible couples brought together using Love Maker Plus to make the changes required for becoming parents. Parent Maker removes all desires for sleep and adult conversation, and installs unbelievable amounts of affection for a small 6-10 lbs. person that can't even see straight. Parent Maker also enhances "Mothers Intuition" and "Fathers Responsibility" by 10x, altering once selfish single people into adoring parents.
  
• Autodesk Gray Hair Restoration 2012 - When parents feel the gray hair setting in, the Gray Hair Restoration tool provides instant babysitter service and brightly colored movements to supervise and entertain "the little ones." This is often a good time to start up Love Maker again.
  
• Act Now and receive a copy of Becoming your Father/Mother Warning System 2012. This is a small implant into the ear that sounds an alarm when phrase like "I will give you something to cry about." or "Do what I say not what I do" are said.
  

Happy 4/1/2011!!!

What's the best computer to buy for Revit 2012?

Another year, another release, another same question... Same as it ever was... WTF computer to buy for Revit? Especially since most all of us will have 3DMax & even Inventor added to the mix... As always the images and links are...well, links!!!

Got 2x24" (1920x1200) monitors yet?


You should!!! Not having these gives you about a 5-30%+ waste of budget, time & money. These monitors pay for themselves in about 3 months no matter what you do on a computer!!! Yes, even Admin folks can do more work with 2x24's!!!

Nothing has changed as far as my conceptual recommendation for a Revit Workstation... but ADSK now ups the ante (as usual!!!) 

More features=More System required. It just makes sense.

My Recommendation:

Simply look at this page, for the "Performance Recommendations" from Autodesk and use that as a bare minimum, then go beyond those specs up to your budget ceiling... Be careful to find the "Performance Recommendations" drop-down, as the 32bit & 64 bit drop-downs are going to give very unsatisfactory computer experiences if you ask me... and you are, after all!!! Please do look hard at your budgets, since the following may not seem evident...

Studies (& benchmarks that I have done, as well as many others) show that for each & every 1% a machine can enhance productivity (assuming just a $100 per hour billable rate); that 1% = $2,000 per year!!! No shit!!!

If the machine you get is 10% faster than another, that will (read as WILL) translate into a super-conservative earnings bump of $6,000... this assumes that the person is only at the computer 50% of the time and even then not always working on task.

They really do pay for themselves; these $3,000 to $6,000+ Workstations!!! Yes, there will be a delta where the price and productivity flip flop but that's usually somewhere North of $4,000 to $10,000, depending on the work you do.

I like to stay around the $3,500 range personally -not including monitors- yet professionally I look at the budgets and all that fun stuff but do still recommend Workstations that range about the same with power user Workstations above those.

It just 'seems' to hurt when cutting the checks, but when taking a longer view of business good Workstations do pay for themselves quite quickly!!!

Don't forget to make sure to get a "Recommended" Video Card & driver setup (link below too)... I suggest a test machine first, since I have been told about anecdotal evidence (by another BIM Manager) that they have found some cards, even though ADSK says are recommended still throw them the "Direct 3D" warning with some of the new visual styles; I have not personally run into that (yet???) but it's always safer to be safe!!!

(ADSK) Performance Recommendations

• Microsoft® Windows® 7 64-bit Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium
• Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor (2.50 GHz, 2X6M L2, 1333) or equivalent AMD processor (Can you say Multiple Quads? or Better yet: 6 Cores... No joking.)
• 8 GB RAM (or more) (12 Minimum!!!)
• 1,280 x 1,024 monitor with true color (This must be a Joke by ADSK: those were horrible for AEC 10 years ago!!!)
• 1 GB (or more) DirectX® 9-capable graphics card with Shader Model 3. Find out more about recommended graphics hardware. (1GB will work for now but I bet not so well next year!!!)

Happy Revitouring!!!

Revit 2012 What's New and More: + Some Art in LA

March LARUG (Los Angeles Revit Users Group: a brief...brief: Hit the image Left for a pretty thorough recap as well as Revit What's New assets & Links.

More From LA

Go see Art!!!

I took my kids to see two Ace Galleries in LA this weekend and we saw some evocative Art with a broad range of context & emotion: in the Beverly Hills' Ace we saw a Robert Irwin column, along with some other painters and sculptors' works...very cool... Too bad there wasn't a major RI installation or some paintings there too, but it's nice to see these columns wherever they appear.

 Then we went down Wilshire to the LA Ace to catch The Date Farmers exhibit... quite exhaustive and rich.

My kids went more for these and cited the works' emotion and power.

I have to agree with them, but I do like the challenge of both styles; the Super Cool and the Sub Pop (as I see them).

There's something great going on when everyone is affected by a work and these hit on so many levels that we all were blown away at every turn!

Shit; I'm gonna get painting more!!!

...FYI: if you use Internet Explorer this blog may look odd, so use another browser... IE still sucks!!!

The new Autodesk & Revit BIM Building Design Suites are (almost) Here!!!

The new Autodesk 2012 Building Design Suites have been announced: I'm sure your twitter is blowing up @BIM & @Revit, so cutting to the chase; here's the direct link to find out from the source (hit the image).

YAAY, ADSK is finally beginning to 'get it' ...now I just hope the installs aren't a one-by-one nightmare!!!

Can you say "cross-grade"???

Wanna see what's new? (in addition to the 3Dconnexion Space pilot functionality in Revit 2012, which I will document in the next week)? Check out DLight's blog HERE!!!

More Dimensions to Revit

A question posed to the LARUG's LinkedIn group: Does revit have symbols for center line or angle like the other software has?

Answer:
F' Yeah!!!
OK: select a dimension > hit Edit Type and look at the properties!!!

You should be able to figure it out from there... If not; look at the image below for the 3 "Centerline" fields and go at it (in Revit)!!!

More on Dimensional goodness, from an old post on Dimensions: Here!!! also...

A final tip: Unless you have memorized all parameters for all possible objects, ALWAYS CHECK THE PARAMETERS!!!

If you have a question and then look at all the parameters, both the Instance and Type, you just may find what you are looking for... or better yet, find something you weren't looking for yet that will help you immeasurably later on!!!

You Need Tools for Your Revit Tool, Don't You?

Your Tool is important to you.

Therefore we need a place to find them and this post will effort toward listing them (at least as many available at the moment it's published). In no apparent order, here is a list of the many Revit Tools one can find... As always click the images for links to the sites.

Please understand that you must evaluate these tools on your own since this posting is in no way a recommendation to use or purchase anything. I have no vested interest in any of these tools. Some are better than others and there's a shitload of info on these in & on the web... Now about those Tools...

If I find more I'll append or re-post...

Obviously you need Revit!!!






Autodesk Subscription is where you'll find some of the best addons, additions, service packs, patches, new builds, etc. If you are on subscription you'll probably know this... if not HAHAHAHA... Among the fantastic benefits are: RoomBook extension, bridge/road/terrain tools, framing tools, grids generator, compare models, convert parameters to shared, element positioning, freeze drawings, text generator, etc...!!!

Autodesk Labs is the place for all (ADSK) things potential!!! Google Earth connectors, DB connectors, BIM Family toolkit (interface w/ Inventor), Chinese daylight analysis, Bluestreak, Newport, Project Vasari!!! (Revit conceptual modeling without Revit...and free)!!!, STL exporter, and...Who knows what the future holds???

Mertens3D has a great tool for creating hatch patterns on-the-fly, directly enough within Revit... YAAY, it makes the .pat files for us!!!


Eaglepoint has SiteTools & LandCadd addon applications for Revit, as well as other apps for other platforms...


These folks have some great addons such as an MWF... Metal/Wood Framer, a Manufacturing CMS: or Component Management Software. (Hey, didn't ADSK have a free wood framer???) Perhaps you need more control???


EMC2 has a great tool to edit/manage Keynote files, without the explicit use of Notepad!!!

This makes Keynotes: How to Use & Abuse the System: A How To for Good, Not Evil much easier!!!



The image left gets you directly to the whitepaper referenced in the "Keynotes" posting/link above, just in case...


Toolbox4Revit has a few tools for 2008-2010 versions so perhaps they aren't so useful for many Reviteurs any longer... Never know what the future will hold though...



Revit Express Tools are some pay to play tools including: Excel Link (hey there is a theme here), BID&M and many more (some are very expensive IMO, but I know these guys and they're great in any case)...



Revit Family Tools is free and these include: Delete Backup Files, Type Catalog Tools, Compare Shared Parameters, Merge Shared Parameters, Family File Version Detector. -Pretty cool!!!











Imaginit's tools are pretty well proven and some are NEW for 2011... Element Renumber, MEP Parameter Tool, Parameter Copy, Room Renumber, Grid Select, Change Case, Door Mark Update, Revit Content Browser, Space Update, Earth Connector for Revit, Room Phase Copy.
There are Free Imaginit tools available & they are: Room Renumber, Change Case, Space Update and Grid Select... Free is good!!!

RevitTools Ribbon (pay to play) includes streamlining & productivity tools such as: Import/Export to Excel, Count Elements, Create Shared Parameters, Renumber Elements and many more. There is also a RevitTools Toolbar for 2009 in case you're in the stone(d) age... Also included: "Schedule & Tag real door swing properties, Schedule & Tag real 'From' & 'To' Room info from doors" (Hey, isn't that already in Revit? YES!!! maybe theirs is somehow better???)

Free means free!!! This includes Zach Kron, Buildz's Extensions tools. As they say: "The amazing Revit extension "calculates the distance between curtain panel by pattern instances and some other placed family, then writes this number to an instance parameter in each panel. But once we hook this parameter up to some geometry and formulas... oh the fun we can have!"" API Yi Yi.

These are pay to play and some of the tools, or similar ones are already inside of Revit, or available for free so look around before purchasing all of them... Tools for BIM Management, Architecture, Structure, MEP & Sustainability, including tools for: Detailing, Dynamic Legends, Sheet Manager, Smart Floors, U-Value, Smart Browser, Rafter+, Truss+, Opening Cut, Sort & Mark, Estimating, R-Heating, Building Energy Performance.

FM/GIS/BIM data workflow Mgmt. from CDV Systems.






At left is a link to a previous (2009) post with more (mainly older) tools to look at... Never know what you may find... Cheers!!!