(Long post, no pictures) While
attending RTC North America, i had the privilege of teaching a couple of
classes. Its always an honor to have anyone want to listen to whatever i have
to say. Unfortunately, for the particular topic i had chosen, i knew coming out
of the gate it was too long for the time slot i had, and in a moment of
#Malleristiclogic (def: thoughts in a Maller that appear justifiable and sound
from a logistical point of view, but are widely received as insane and/or ridiculously stupid
to others (read: Normal People)), i decided to shotgun it and try getting through all of the
material.
Side effect: I was talking in a
pretty rapid fashion, instead of watching and remembering the script for my
slides, and some #Mallerisms snuck out. After this started some conversations,
i had to explain about the different #Mallerisms that i occasionally let fly,
and so i promised a short list, along with the defining (and differentiating)
characteristics. (References to Revit are similar to "lets use this in a
sentence." Let it be known that i adore revit, so this is not to mock the
product.
Lets do this:
1. #BagOfFail: A minor series of
circumstance, in which failure is obvious because of poor planning but good
intentions. Bag Of Fail is kind of what happens when Copy Monitor tries to
rename grids, and you start at a grid who’s new name is already in use. It’s a
Bag of Fail.
2. #BagOfDisaster: Bag of Fail, at a
nuclear level. Honestly, you should have seen this shit coming. Your plan
sucked. Really. Bag of Disaster is like: Using Split Face and Paint. (Scott
Brown says "Friends dont let friends use SFAP...")
3. #BagofSmashedAss: This is the
MOAB of Bag of Fail. When a BagofSmashedAss presents itself, i cant help but
wonder if someone woke up and said "Hey, lets see how bad we can **** this
situation up, hey! Here is an idea!"
4. #Failboat: The Failboat is the
entire situation which results IN the Bag of_____ above. When someone asks you
the one word question of "Failboat?" you politely ask: "Have you
ever seen an entire boat of Fail, that didnt sink?" They cant say no,
which means it is legitimate. That, folks, is Malleristic.
5. #DinosaurArms: When imitating
people whos decisions are often present in a Failboat and are creating a
Bagof_____, evidently my arms become locked: Elbows to waist, and they just
wave around. I was told they look like little T-rex arms, so now when we are
imitating people while telling Lessons learned, we have #DinosaurArms. Rawr.
All up in this.
6. #Buttdyno: Its like when youre
driving a Ford Fiesta but you think youre fast. You arent. So when youre
working in a Model Group, and you think its small enough to be legit? Use the
Butt Dyno. Yes, youve been working for an hour. No, you havent saved. The
Buttdyno says youre in trouble.
7. #AssAche: Its really just less
syllables for Pain in the Ass, right? Sometimes when i work with Stairs and
Railings, i yell out what an assache it is. I cant afford the extra syllables,
since im trying to efficiently model stairs and railings. (But if you took the
class by 2*Manna's+D-Light, you can probably say PITA, since they made you
better at Stairs than i am, thus you have more time. (I heard the class was
sweet...)
8. And of course... #Screwtastrophe. Its
the PG version of a similar word that is one letter shorter. A #screwtastrophe
is the PLAN for the Failboat, resulting in the Bag of ______. Copy Monitor is
definetely a screwtastrophe, but then again... So is playing VBall with
sunglasses on your head, and so is swimming underwater in a 2 foot deep pool.... As i
validated the night prior. So is.... Falling off the back side
of the stage. It takes talent, to be that kind of a #Screwtastrophe. You get a PRIZE for that. =)
There you have it. If you hear a
#Mallerism in the wild, be sure to post up. It catches, like a cold. Ive heard
people in the office referencing Bag of Fail. Its the #VocabthatBIMBuilt.
Most of us have made it back home by now, after attending the Revit Technology Conference North America, in Stone Mountain Georgia. Compared to other conferences i attend, what i enjoy the most about RTC is that since its a smaller occasion filled with the people pushing on Revit as hard as can be done, its a great venue to really have some serious conversations with those same folks. That also means an elevated technical level, in many of the classes. While i went in with that as my expectation, it was even more present than expected, in execution: Some of the classes were simply badass, in what they showed off.
I have to say that my *only* regret, was that i didnt get in to ANY of Marcello Sgambelluri's classes this year: Two were during my classes, and the third was during a class i have a pretty vested interest in (The Material Editor in 2013... and Props to Harlan Brumm for teaching it, that couldnt be a fun class to teach this year). (Also props to Marcello for teaching three!) I heard nothing but amazing things, and if i could have cloned myself, id have been in all three. Of course, if there were two of me at this conference, im pretty sure no one else would have stuck around. Evidently one of me was enough.
I wont go classs by class, because pretty much everything i sat in was a great experience. Scott Browns class on Interiors in Revit, however, was absolutely insane.
The conference itself... I tip my hat to the committee for what they set up for us. Perhaps a bit ironic that Bentley was the main sponser, but what the heck do i know about anything? The fireside chat, with Dick Morley, was intense. Not intense like "woah, really?" but intense like: "Yes, we have someone here who can talk about innovation in ANY dimension," and that really struck home with this being a "Revit" conference, and all the directions Revit can now push us in. Awesome, for that.
The second night Bar B Que dinner was awesome, boat ride included. No one can control the summers 105 degree heat, but it wasnt stopping this group (although we did assault the pool later, and the pool fought back). When we ran out of tables, we converted the foyer fixture pieces in to one, and then it was on for some no holds barred (and no rules) beach volleyball. John Tocci and i are now a part of the club called "hit in the face with a VBall by a fellow BIM-er." In his defense, i was the one that hit him. Oops. In defense of whoever hit me, well... I have a huge head and it was obviously in the way. #Failboat.
The third day did not fail to raise the bar. Again, amazing classes. (Even if i failed to make one while i tracked down my belongings...) I said it on Saturday and ill say it again: THIS is the conference and the group of speakers i want training every user i work with.
Glorious Gadgets really DID show some interesting devices, and Desiree Mackey and I joined another club called "You get a nice tablet stylus as a present for being someone who FELL OFF STAGE while presenting." That, encompassed with having to #dinosaurarms in front of everyone, and it was time for dinner (and a drink)!
The Gala dinner was great, (amazing conversations... You folks always inspire me), the Packway Handle Band had some entertaining Bluegrass for us (which i enjoyed. The music was great, and if you dont think so, i support your right to be wrong!), and it was a perfect way to close the conference. I also have to give a shoutout to @jakeberrettdj, Jake Stafford. A few of us were lucky enough to have him fire up some tunes for us while kicking back after the Gala. Two years in a row, #MusicByJake at RTC. I hope thats a tradition we get to keep having.
RTC is an event i happily attend running through a Saturday, and if it was a day longer running through Sunday... Id have been there too. The only bad part about the event is it has to end. Until the next one!
Looking forward to the 2013 series, and im planning an honest attempt to make all three.
There was some serious camera equipment there, not counting mine. Sadly, mine had the settings all jacked up from being in extreme daylight in Washington DC, on my way to RTC. Still, i will post a link to a public folder, with the few pics that turned out alright, shortly. See you all in Vancouver! (And Delft?)
How has it been so long since i wrote here last? Certainly, things are way too busy right now. In any event, it so happened that an Autodesk Reseller Training event was happening up the street from my home / office, and the folks running the event were kind enough to let me come do a repeat of one of the classes i taught at AU2011.
So first, a public "thanks!" to Amy Fietkau, for letting me come be obnoxious- i mean, teach some stuff- to a great (and entertaining) audience.
Secondly, Armadillo racing isnt what i thought it would be. Those little suckers are fast! It was a humbling experience, to be sure, but i am proud to say i motived my armadillo to kick some ass and win the race. FIRST OR LAST baby. (If i was chasing me down the street, id probably run like hell too!)
Thirdly, i owe you people some downloads, which- if you got the ones from AU, save the bandwidth, they are pretty close to the same thing.
Imagine my surprise to get a goody bag on my way out the door! Youll never be able to say i wasnt animated, but i just get super excited when i get presents!
So aside from that, many many things have been progressing, some definetely blog worthy, and some not. I dont mind, though. I would rather write less, but when i have something worth discussing, than post more frequently.
The project mentioned in the last few posts, with the CME driven facade, is wrapping up Design Development, and- while im not technically part of the project team- i have had an immense amount of fun helping them along with it. Some of us have twittered about possible sharing the Mass family, and ill ask about it when in the next meeting. I like it, as a real example of a seat-of-the-pants-Mass-on-the-fly. No doubt, it doesnt compare to Kelly Cone's sa Rang church Mass, in terms of overall parametrics and flexibility, but alas... It was built by the seat of my pants. :) Here is what it looks like today. Obviously some structural coordination is still going on.
There is more, too. The project i talked about at the Ontario Revit Users Group last year, is HEAVILY under construction (major concrete pour today, in fact), so more on that later. Both of these projects and more have gotten me in to the API a very tiny amount. The API programmers among you will laugh at my novice capabilities, and i big public thanks to Phillip at KiwiCodes and Don Rudder at Case-inc, both who have helped me learn to develop, and to develop thigns for us. Two class acts, cant wait to talk more about it. Ill save that for the next post!
If youre on my Facebook page or Google+ or Twitter, youve seen these images already. However, this week and last i got to engage one of our Project Teams, and help them kick off their Revit Model. During that time, through Twitter and Social Media, i read two things, and reacted:
1. All architects should be Programmers. (Tweeted, and i disagreed when i read it)
2. Using Revit is frustrating every day. (Facebooked, and i got annoyed)
Then, happenstance had it that i was asked to write a paragraph on how Emerging Technologies change our jobs... And i laughed. It isnt the most original comparison out there, but i liken us to the Record Industry: Are Architecture and Engineering Firms still making Casettes and wanting to sell them for 14 dollars? Certainly a CD or an online album is a better product, so... Isnt it a little justifiable that the road towards a better product is a harder road?
The interaction was interesting. The design started in other wares, due to familiarity for the team involved. At this, im not as displeased or as intolerant as my Revit Persona on forums. Why? They used it (in my subtle humble opinion) just the right amount: They didnt toil hours on mullions and entourage, didnt get overly complex. They told a story, and asked about moving to Revit. Props to them, i love this crew.
A few things about working with Revit Massing and the Form Editor: Reading this post, youll discover i had to do 3 "major" rebuilds, with destructive editing that made us lose Face Association. Two interesting things about that:
1. I cant even be upset about it. Even deleting the entire skin of the building, and reskinning the entire mass, took less than an hour each time i did it. (Were in early design, so Curtain Grids hadnt been customized)
2. Most of the *redo's* were because *I* didnt understand what was driving the Design Intent, and *I* wanted it to be constructed more parametrically to suit those needs. So on with it.
Kelly Cone and his infamous SaRang Mass, reminded me that Nested Families with Lines in them could come in handy for this sort of thing. So i made one. (Time investment: 15 minutes).
Important to note: The Curves werent there in the first version, since they werent in the project yet. But Constraining a Parametric Tangent Line was a massive help (Thanks Zack Kron for the lesson!):
If you have a flexible Reference Line (parametric length or angle, or both), constrain a Reference line Normal to its end (90 degrees). Any tangent arc will have its centerpoint on that second reference line, so the constraint is a simple "Align and Lock." So Indent Front and Angle affect the arcs beginning, Indent Rear affects the arcs end, and (invariable) the arcs radius, which has its centerpoint locked down.
This brings me to the two points above: Architects as programmers, and Revit being difficult. All the promises out there about BIM... "Integration, streamlined documents, coordinated drawings..." I mean, doesnt it make SENSE that Designers learn this? I got the masses design intent wrong the first few times, because i was deconstructing a design model and didnt ask what was "driving." But by definition: Someone knew what was driving, they drove it. And if making seamless and beautiful forms comes from parametric centerpoint constraints... Then wow. This was when i realized i was WRONG for disagreeing about Architects and Programming. I mean, this isnt writing code. But, how DOES a "Coordinated Model" get built from a "design intent" unless the "designers" are doing the "modeling?" (BTW, midway through this model the designer is now playing with Divided Surfaces and Intersects and Patterns.... I love this crew!)
So onward. These are pretty simple things, but they make alterations a snap. (These are the early versions, before the tangent arcs were there).
Well, i wont bore you with writing and writing and writing (its just making a Mass, for crying out loud), but what i love about the process is being able to watch the subtle changes, as the design team makes it real. Too often, its beautiful when designed, made real in some other program, and the two never meet, and are never the same. So, the progression.
From the first Revit iteration, to the current. It certainly doesnt LOOK like it changed much, but there were a bunch of iterations in between where it had lost its grace as parameters changed. This is why i love the process!
The angles are constantly differing, floor to floor. And they were all changing (as were the locations of the Relief) as the program was fit in to the building.
The walls of the first floor "Tunnel" were constrained as well, as they were complex curves that began based on the facade elevation, then proceeded to vertical. Again, that question of "Who should be doing the constraining?"
The more iterations we played with, the more the walls shifted. It became evident that there was going to be some pretty extreme shapes, for these panels. And that they werent all going to work out flat.
Aside from that, i had a pretty good idea that the Mullions werent all going to end up so ordinary as well, i had just UZI'd Curtain System on it as a placeholder. So we went back to CME and started playing with Divided Surface. There's a GOOD reason why: The v1 Mass i made, the "relief" on the facade was a consistant angle, all the way through. Why? I made it that way. The SU/FZ Model showed angles, but the interpolated "lines" i was seeing in plan were skewed and arc'd. So i ASSumed (big mistake) that the team meant for it to be consistant. As that wasnt the intent, you can see why i then rethought the Order of Operations i had gone through. Making the shape this way didnt make as much sense.
But then i got to thinking: Wow, its going to helix, then. Between every different angle on the Floor Plates. Then i got to thinking about the expense of such helixed objects, and whether or not you could NOTICE while looking at the building? (I was told in Studio: Do it severe enough to look like its not a mistake...)
With that, after the latest version was massaged to the correct shape, i went back to the Mass to Divide the Surfaces and Apply Patterns to them. For now, i kept it rectangular and normal. The designers are taking their pass at it after Tuesday. Still, a nice Curtain Panel made by Zach Kron that uses Reporting parameters to evaluate the sizes, angles, and deflections of the panels was put on. There are a few versions of this family floating around, but this one uses parameter values instead of different nested families for visibility. But wow, it tells the story quickly. Load it in to a Project and include a few different views using Filters to color the panels based on a variety of the reporting parameters, and you can color by length, clolor by area, color by deflection, etc.
And this is where the analogy of the Casettes and the CD's comes in for me. And honestly, this is what this post is about: Its not about Form Editing, or Revit, or Massing, or Modeling.
Someone came up to me when they saw this on the screen, and wondered why i was looking at the deflection at all? Why bother? To be fair, i was doing it of my own volition... Not at the behest of the project team.
But i was asked "Why would you care? Why not let the Fabricators deal with it?" i actually have to admit- i got a little snippy (shocker!). I mean, this IS our "better process." Right? How many times in our careers do we watch something get Value Engineered because its expensive? I can tell you how to make this entire project cheaper, right this second: Straighten everything out. Then again, i hear we can save some money, you know, if we just leave all the glass off, too.
But to be able to say: We kept the design, but we looked at it for extreme cases that could drive the cost up, tried to minimize them, worked at keeping the design intent while TRYING to keep in mind that someone downstream would have to "make a baby" out of this thing... Isnt this why we are here? Is this the "New Role" of our jobs? Not just to make something pretty, but to make something pretty HAPPEN without getting marginalized out of the concept by pragmaticism that we cannot respond to?
Yeah, Revit frustrates me at least once a day too. But this is (imVho) our jobs now. I dont want to deliver the same thing i did yesterday. And i want to know we did the most we could to create the best Built Environment, as efficiently as we could. Its harder, and it should be.
Ive been remiss, as i have a few posts "sitting in the queue" waiting to write, but ive been crazy busy this month, with little downtime to write.
Im having to write a brief piece for work, and it brought this question to the forefront of my mind. I know- asking it here- that it will feel 1. Like a trick question, 2. Like im pushing people towards a predetermined answer, and 3. Like its focused on our technology and methodologies.... But thats not what i want. Leave the software at the door, leave the computers behind (you know, except to type your answer).
So let me ask you:
1. Are you an Architect, an Engineer, or a Contractor/Subcontractor?
You know, for the first time in a long time (lie)- I have more topics to cover than i do time to cover them. I consider myself very fortunate to work at Beck, where ive had the opportunity recently to do some incredible things, Technology and Construction wise. Some of them are based in Revit, and some of them are not, but hint at a workflow that could be.
But alas, it is post Thanksgiving week, and for many of us that means its Autodesk University time. (Let me say it also means i cooked an AMAZING meal for great friends. You didnt think Revit was ALL i did, did you???) This year, i was fortunate enough to have a couple of classes selected for presentation. Both are on Thursday.
The first class is:
AB4532- Autodesk Revit Links, Groups, and Documentation: How to make it Really Work!
Ive been late getting the materials put together, due to things being crazy hectic (thats my fault), but the AB4532 materials are up. You can get them from the AU.autodesk.com website, or you can get them here:
We can also laugh watching my computer hang on for dear life, with a 1.2GB Revit Model opened. (Ill admit, the margin is slim, but it holds steady!)
Here are a couple of quick excerpts from the AB4532 class. A quick video on Model Groups, with multiple embedded Detail Groups, and why "annotating the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity."
Another one, on Links, Design Options, View Templates, and how its a lot of fun to use all three together on Tall Buildings.
For the CR class.... We will ahve plenty of goodies. Maybe even some more Point Data, Inventor, and Mail Merge. (Oh yes i did). Anyone looking to get ahold of me throughout AU:
Twitter @twiceroadsfool
aaron at aaronmaller.com
Or text if you have the number. ;)
Post AU? Syracuse, Waltham, and Boston, before getting back to Dallas Town. Lets make this happen!
Well... Ive tried to get it embedded in the blog 4 times now: Screen cast, Youtube, embedded on Blogspot, and now with Silverlight through my personal domain... Which *says* its working fine, but it doesnt play. It might just be that it takes forever to start, since its so large. Well, here is a link to download, if anyone really wants to watch. Its 105 MB. Shouldnt take that long to acquire.
