Virtual Project Tours of Real Projects

I have been wanting to use our 360 Photosphere camera to create a virtual tour of a project. We finally did just that last week for a project in construction; Hermantown Essentia YMCA Wellness Center. The  local Chamber of Commerce held an open house last night and attendees got to get in the project and safely view it without actually going to the site. We already did Virtual Reality, and now that the project is under construction, we wanted to present something new.

Another interesting thing about this project is how we used ElumTools to do specialized daylighting calculations to comply with Minnesota's B3 program (similar to LEED). The image below shows the favorable results; solatubes fully lighting the interior space with just daylight!

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Revit Elevation not Perpendicular to Wall and More

Elevations must be perfectly perpendicular to a wall (as shown in the first image below) otherwise there are issues with being able to dimension, and/or their values. Also, in this case, the 3D object appears rather than the (sometimes) simplified symbolic lines developed in the family.

Keeping reading to learn more...

Extracting Revit's Material Textures

When sharing a Revit model with another firm, contractor or client, it is difficult to know which custom textures (jpg, png) files are used so they can be shared as well. This post will share a tip I received this week from Harlan Brumm at Autodesk!

First, there are two other options that might come to mind if you wanted to do this....

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Revit Advanced Materials - Base Material Templates

The new Revit advanced materials are based on PBR shaders, which is what modern rendering engines utilize. Understanding all the related options in Revit can be a bit challenging, as there is no easy way to switch between appearance assets in Revit (watch the comments below for a link to a Revit Idea on this from my good friend Pieter:)).

In this post I will share a fundamental tip in understanding this newer option in Revit. It has to do with the provided "base material" templates...

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Off Topic: The Creation of a Tooth

I have been pretty busy lately and not able to write many posts here on BIM Chapters.

Today, I have some photos and video to share from almost a year ago... the creation of a tooth:) I had a cracked tooth and needed a crown. My local dentist has the technology and equipment to make a tooth, and all during a single visit!

My dentist, at Kenwood Dental, is great and let me take pictures/videos.

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Autodesk University 2019 Las Vegas - Class Selected

I received word yesterday that I will again have the opportunity to present at Autodesk University in Las Vegas.

Course Title:The New Game in Town; Link a Civil 3D Surface in Revit thru BIM 360!

Course Description:Learn about the amazing new feature set and workflow Autodesk unveiled in the 2019.1 update for both AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit. See how a user, who first saw this feature/workflow at an Inside the Factory - Live in Shanghai, China in 2016, and then implemented this on many large complex projects, including a nearly massive hospital project located on a complex site. This session will cover the feature, the workflow and the challenges encountered. This presentation will also cover working with in-house survey for existing conditions, as well as in-house civil engineers on proposed conditions.

What's going to be fun, is one of the Autodesk product designers will be joining me from Autodesk's Shanghai office.

Of course, this story starts in Civil 3D... using the new workflow to "Publish" a surface to BIM 360.

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Autodesk Desktop Connector Update Supports Custom Local File Locations!

Update: False alarm... as the dialog clearly states, this only allows you to change the installation path (which is still about 1 GB). But does not change the location of the local cache files. Sorry:(

Breaking news... we can now specify a custom location for BIM 360 Design local files!!! Thanks Autodesk.

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