A Walk Down the Memory Lane - Curtain Wall

Christmas is near and it's that time of the year! 

Just thought about my annual Revit greeting card and how I modeled the Revit scene. The use of snow (and snowflake) has been in the background for years. 

Snow and snowflake in the scene

People who see this for the first time often asked how the snow and snowflake are modeled in Revit. This is done by using the Curtain wall tool (seriously!). No Dynamo or any scripting is needed to achieve that. 

This brings up a class I presented at 2012 Autodesk University. I can't believe it has been 10 years now. 

The topic was Unfold the Curtain! Think Outside the Curtain Wall Tool in Autodesk Revit. 

This was my first in-person live presentation at the Autodesk conference. I happened to search for something through the site today, and I am surprised to see the resource files from 10 years ago are still available online. That includes the recorded session!

If you are interested in seeing some creative use of the Curtain Wall tool, head over to the link below and check it out! Many of the techniques I covered are still applicable in Revit. 

No need to sign in to the site. 

Unfold the Curtain! Think Outside the Curtain Wall Tool in Autodesk Revit

If you have issues viewing the content, I have the pdfs saved here via Google doc.

Cheers!

RTC NA 2016 this week!

Revit Technology Conference will be held this week at Scottsdale, Arizona. I will be presenting a class called "Railing, Railing, Railing".

Railing tool has gained some improvements in Revit 2017. I will showcase what they are and share my study on how they behave in project.

One other thing I will also show is to trick out railing tool to do something interesting yet useful in Revit.

This is a sneak peek using the railing tool.

If you are attending the event, I look forward to seeing you there and be sure to say hi!

AU 2015 Next Week!

Time surely flies! Autodesk University is just around the corner. I am very excited to be able to attend this conference again. This will be the first time since I joined HKS in January this year. We will have a big group from different locations representing the office to attend the event.

My colleague Tim Logan will present his class "Cross-Platform Plug-ins For Revit, Dynamo, and Beyond" that discusses his process of creating our in-house custom tool for Revit, Dynamo and Rhino.

Besides, I know there are a number of new techs such as Insight and Stingray from Autodesk that I am hoping to see first hand and meet up with the developers there.

I look forward to seeing some old friends and hope to make some new ones as well. Please be sure to say hello if you are going to be at AU.

A Walk Down Memorial Lane

During the time at RTC North America a few weeks ago, the organization have set up an area called "Playground" in the exhibition hall with many of the previous Revit versions. They managed to get many of the older versions including version 1.0 installed on several computers.

This is the first time I got to play with Revit 1.0. Of course it displayed with the classic UI (pre 2010 interface). I used to work with the classic UI for a few versions before I had to re-learn the current interface. As a matter of fact, I don't quite miss the classic UI ever since I re-gain my efficiency after Autodesk improved it in v2011. However, when I saw 1.0 for the first time so up close and personal, it appeared to me like a foreign program.  

Revit 1.0 already came with many of the basic tools like wall, floor, door, window, column, roof and ceiling, etc; It wasn't as user friendly as it is now (although some tools are still clumsy). The railing tool in particular was very different than the later version (see properties dialog box at the above image). I was able to model something very quick but the tool was still very limited. Family editor was somewhat similar; I opened the "Out of the box" window family and the basic structure was already existed. Seeing how Revit 1.0 transitions to the current Revit version has definitely made me appreciate what we have as a design and documentation tool.

Last week I was cleaning up my bookshelf with some old Architecture magazines; some of them were dated back to 2001. I found one "Architectural Record" magazine with an ad that had the original Revit Technology company logo. I didn't know anything about Revit back in 2001 and the ad itself said very little about what it was; but it sure was very interesting to see Revit came a long way to become a mainstream in our industry.

Seriously, an image of a heater!? They could definitely use some help on marketing...

RTC NA is Near!

Revit Technology Conference (RTC) North American is next week. This is the fourth year in North America and it will take place in Chicago (Schaumburg) this year. I will be presenting a lab class called "Profiling - Power Up Your Revit Family with Nested Profile". If you have followed my blog before, you might have some ideas about the class already.

Every year there is always something exciting to learn; and this year is no exception. I am looking forward to check out some classes with Dynamo and adaptive component. If you are going to be at RTC this year, please come and say hi. I would definitely like to meet you and chat with you in person.

See you!

Minnesota University Conference Next Week

Next week on March 20-21, I will be presenting 2 classes at MU (Minnesota University). MU is "a Midwest Professional Development conference for Autodesk Users seeking opportunities to learn, connect and explore the industry they influence. Explore the latest Autodesk software, network
with peers, and learn from industry experts."

This is the first time for me to attend this event. Based on some of the comments I read from last year, this seems like a good, mini-version of AU (Autodesk University). I hope the weather will be nice to me during the conference. If you happen to attend MU this year, please come to say hi.