Season's Greetings 2022

It's that time of the year! I wish everyone to have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in 2023! I have set my goals to add more content in 2023. Hope I can keep this promise to myself. (Giggles) I am trying something this year to kick this out as a GIF.

Here's the still image rendered in Enscape!

Cheers and all the best!

BIM Smith Winter Wonderland Holiday Revit Family Competition

There is no doubt 2020 has been a challenging year for all of us. Over the year-end holiday season, BIMSmith, a free Revit content online platform, hosted a Revit family creation holiday competition. It's a winter holiday-themed for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Year. 

The rule is pretty simple. You create a Revit family that displays a seasonal or holiday theme. Then post the images of the family on one of the social media channels that are allowed and tag them. You can submit more than one entry. If the entry is chosen as a finalist, the actual family will be submitted for review. Of course, the work must be your original work. 

While many are still working from home or spend more time at home during this pandemic, as a long-term Revit user with a passion for content creation, I thought I'd give it a shot. 

My original plan was to submit an entry to beat the deadline on December 22, 2020. I later found out they had extended it to January 15, 2021. 

My first entry (Giant Ornaments)

That's the time (December 21) I started my winter break from my work. I normally would spend my Christmas break out of town with family, I now had all the extra time on my hands, so I started to think about creating more families for the competition. 

I started to build my second one, then a third one, and more ...

By the time I was done, I had a total of 5 entries! I can assure you that wasn't part of the plan, it literally just happened. 

Out of the 5 entries, one was selected for the semi-final. It was a neon sign with the New Year 2020/2021 in it. The numbers (lights) lit up and down to represent the transition from the year 2020 to 2021. I actually enjoyed making that family a lot. I plan on writing a post to document the process for the family to share here on my blog.

BIMsmith recently made an announcement for the winners. My neon sign was selected as SECOND PLACE!!! That was pretty awesome. You can go check out the winners and other entries from this link. 

Neon sign created as Revit family rendered as GIF

You can find my other entries below in this post. 

This wired mesh Christmas tree is done as an adaptive component. The spacing of the grid, height, radius are all parametric. 

Wired mesh Christmas tree with lights

Rendered in Enscape

Round ornaments with number 2 0 2 0 and hung with cords. The last ornament "0" breaks open to show "1" for New Year 2021.

Rendered in Enscape and images run as GIF

Santa Claus and Elf sleighs. The sleigh is parametric. The width is adjustable to accommodate more passengers. I also made an option for Elfs. 

Sleigh modeled as family. Rendered in Enscape

Details

I am thankful for BIMsmith to host such an event to encourage Revit users to showcase their creativity in family creation. I am very much looking forward to this competition in 2021.

First Time with Revit Kid

I know what you might be thinking. Don't let the title deceive you. 😝 Last Thursday, I had the honor to be a guest to present at the famous Revit Kid's BIM After Dark live show on YouTube channel. This is indeed my first time speaking/presenting on YouTube even though I have spoken at numerous national conferences in the past. 

2020 is going to be THE year to remember. A lot of what we do now have been shifted and they are being done virtually. Working, shopping, ordering your meal, attending conferences and even Happy Hours. 

Jeff Pinheiro (aka Revit Kid) has been writing on his blog for over 10 years. Over the years he also started his YouTube channel. Since the pandemic and the stay-at-home ordeal, he started doing the Happy Hours show every Thursday night. It was a coincidence that Jeff and I were catching up a few weeks ago. One thing led to another, I accepted this gig to speak on his show. 

It was one of my favorite topics: Revit Family Tips and Tricks. From the show, I talked about a few that I have posted here on my blog as well as a new one that dealt with manufacturer content. 

If you are new to my blog or simply want to read my old posts again, check out the links below. 

    Profiling - Part 1

    Profiling - Part 3

    Something Borrowed

Of course you definitely need to check out the recorded session from Jeff's channel there!

Practical Family Tips and Tricks

10 Years in the Making

As year 2019 comes to the end, I look back to my journey of making the digital greeting card using just Revit. It has been 10 years since I made my first one back in 2010.

I was trying to send out a paperless card to people and be able to reach to many families, friends and colleagues at the same time. Instead of using some stock or generic images for my card, I was like "why don't I build something on my own?" Using Revit to make this had become a clear choice for me. At that time, my Revit experience was less than 2 years, I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to learn, to explore.

How to push the software to do something that is "not a building, nor Architecture"?

As you can see, my first one was merely a group of (parametric) snowman; and the snow in the scene. I was able to set up parameters to where almost everything in the snowman family can change. From the size and radius of the body, the hat height and location, to the length of the nose and the size of the eyes.

It was all about having fun. I was trying to create something to see how much I could do with the software at the time. Since I was trying to keep everything to be done in Revit, I also thought of ways to incorporate the texts into the scene in Revit. That would eliminate the need of using Photoshop for post production.

The snow was actually an after-thought when I completed the snowman. It felt blank. I asked myself how to build snow in Revit!? I later turned to my favorite curtain wall tool. I made a custom curtain panel in the curtain wall and had an instance parameter to control the size. I laid out a few walls in the scene and kind of manually changed the size of the snow where it looked good. It was quite tedious but I managed to get it to look decent.

Then I modeled the words as model text. That was it. Now that I look back, this whole thing looks very primitive.

When 2011 came, I decided to make another one again. I had an idea. Each year I wanted to have the snowman to be part of the card. In addition, I wanted to try something else I haven't done in the past. 

For the 2011 card, it was to use reporting parameters to control the size and location of the snow. I also modeled the snow flake, too!

2012 was skipped. Came 2013, adaptive components was a hit subject at the time. So I made the Christmas light using AC. Plus, I used Kelvin Tam's planting trick to scale my snowman in the scene. 

Adaptive component was my continuous effort and I was trying to explore more of the use with AC in 2014. The "parametric" Christmas tree and the star were the end result. 

I really had fun in 2015 by hacking the support family from the railing to create curvy texts with the ribbon. 

In 2016, it was once again using adaptive component to create a helix ribbon as "Christmas tree".

I was introduced to Enscape by Phil Read for a while. Enscape was definitely a game changer for me as it is a real time rendering plugin for Revit. I fell in love with it simply because it was so easy and intuitive to use. I also spent way more time than I anticipated to generate the scene. See more from this link. I learned a few new tricks for both Revit and Enscape; but more importantly, I enjoyed a lot throughout this project in 2017.

I got too busy in 2018 and I didn't have time to make one. 

Here we are in 2019. Enscape once again doesn't disappoint me at all. The "new" things I incorporate this time are the giant ornament and the train track using Revit railing. For the first time, the train is a "downloaded" content from BIM store (www.bimstore.co) in UK. Kudos to them to offer well built content. 

This is a long post for sure. I hope you have the patience to complete the reading. I guess the takeaway is to always challenge yourself, no matter what the circumstance is. That's because you will always learn something and be able to apply that knowledge for future. Every little things I learned from this Christmas project did help me pave the path for the things I do later.

Cheers!

Season's Greetings 2019

It's a bit late as I already posted this on other social media outlets already. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2020!

Cheers!

Making of Holiday Card - Part 1 (Christmas Light)

Happy New Year 2018! I have waited long enough to start this post to share the making of my holiday greeting card in Revit. I will choose a few components from the scene and I am going to break it down to a few posts. The first one is about the Christmas string light. When I first posted this close-up image, I have a few people asked how I managed to place so many lights. Did I place them one by one? How do I get them on the roof?

Of course I didn't place them one at a time. In fact, I talked about this trick when I presented at RTC North America 2016 (now re-brand to BILT). My class title named Railing, Railing, Railing was about the railing improvement in Revit 2017. (i.e. One could host railing to the top of the wall, floor and roof, etc.)

In the class, I showed some possible use of railing (other than the actual function of railing) in a Revit project.  I talked about how to "hack" the railing support family

The idea is pretty simple. You start a new support family, insert the light fixture as nested family.
Make sure the nested light is set to "Shared".

From the nested light, I have different types family set as different colors. This is to allow me to change the colors of lights in the scene. I wrote this post in 2014 explaining how to use this conditional statement to drive different material which allows me to change to variety of colors. 

Next, I create a new railing type that has no railing profile, baluster; only a Handrail Type. This handrail type has a profile family (Profile Round String: Radius:1/8") that mimic the light's cable; A support family assigned with fixed distance 4" spacing. 

Once this is done, I can place it like any railing. It looks something like this:

Using Pick New Host, I can easily place the light (railing) on the roof. 

Select the light, use array to copy a dozen of times. 

Here's the problem. All the light bulbs are the same color. Since I made the nested light family "shared", I can select each light one at a time to change the color. But who has time for that?

It's time I turn to Dynamo for help. I pulled up an old script I used to randomize material in this post and modified it a bit. Good thing is the Family Types node includes railing support.

Ran the script and I am good to go.

This is what it looks like with night setting in Enscape.

Stay tuned for the next post! Thanks. 

Season's Greetings 2017!

Another year has gone by fast! I wish all of you have a Happy Holiday and Happy New Year in 2018!

To follow my tradition, I have been working on this holiday project on the side. It has been a good learning experience this time using both Revit and Enscape. It is definitely changing the way I use Revit as design and rendering tool.

Detail close-up

Night scene with signage lights on

I want to specially thank my colleague Carina, Aaron, Keith and Joe, who inspire me and help me on this project.

There is more...
If you want to see more of what is done in this scene, check out the links below!

Enscape .exe file

Download the exe file. Simply double-click the file to open it. There is no need to launch Revit.

Stereo Panorama

Stereo Panorama can be viewed via web browser (Chrome recommended) or your phone. It will work if you have a Google Cardboard too.

I am planning on doing a write-up on the "Making of this Revit project". Stay tuned!

100,000 Hits!

Thanks for all the readers who visit this site for the past 29 months. It has passed 100,000 hits just the turn of 2016. I look forward to sharing more my experience and tips and tricks with you.

Cheers,

Philip

Season's Greetings from Phil-osophy in BIM!

What a busy year it has been! 2015 has almost come to an end.

Best wishes for joy and happiness this Holiday Season and a magnificent New Year!

Seasons Greeting from Phil-osophy in BIM!

I wish all of you to have a Happy Holiday and Happy New Year in 2015!

Making of Greeting Card

First post in 2014 I wanted to share with you on the "season greeting" image that I did back in the Christmas holiday. This was the third year that I made my own greeting card using Revit. In the other two years of the greeting images, I always had the same character "Parametric Snowman" as the main scheme but I would try to play with different background each year.

Snow and snow flake made from curtain wall system

So, this year following the "same" tradition, I chose snowman as a main character again but coming up with something new as a new "backdrop".

 

Staging of the Revit "model"

Snowman in the foreground used scalable trick by Kelvin Tam by nesting two levels of the "planting" family. 3D model text was created as face based generic model family. See more from this post.

When it comes to the Christmas light in the background, I got this initial idea from this precedent image.

I thought adaptive component is the way to do it. Immediately I start thinking of how I would go about making this Christmas light family.

I started by importing an image of the light bulb and used it as reference to make it as a nested light fixture family. I even assigned light source so it could glow.

 

Next, I nested this into an adaptive component. I stumbled on this for a number of times before I got it the way that would have the bulbs spread on both sides of the cable. After some trials and errors, I ended up creating 3 adaptive points and host the nested family on the opposite sides of point 1 and 2. The third adaptive point was needed since I need the first one to repeat itself once I nested this into another adaptive family.

Another challenge I had to overcome in this study was getting the orientation of the nested light bulb to point to my desired orientation. Andy from Shades of Grey made a series of diagram in this post that was helpful to get better sense of how adaptive point behaves. Still, I had to struggle many times to get it right. 

Once this was done, loaded it to another family, I created a 3 point spline and made all 3 points as adaptive points, divided the spline. Place the family on the first 3 points of the spline.

 

After the family is in place, select it and click "repeat"!

Finish up the cable as a sweep and assign material to it then it was good to go! I learned that if I set the nested light bulb as "Shared" before loading into the adaptive component, I can actually render them glowing with the photometric light source in the project.