Tuesday, August 22, 2017

NDSU Architecture School - BIM Seminar; Day One

Yesterday we kicked off our first BIM Seminar class for the 2017 Fall Semester in the NDSU Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture! This is my fourth year teaching graduate architecture and landscape architecture students (and we have LA students enrolled again!). Previously I had also taught a Revit interiors class for two years in the NDSU Apparel, Design and Hospitality Management Department.

In this class we cover all things Revit and BIM, including energy modeling, lighting analysis, conceptual massing, adaptive components, VR, rendering and much more!

The setting for this class is a beautifully re-purposed building in downtown Fargo, North Dakota. This is a special off-campus building, within the local NDSU ecosystem.


The studios are amazing, with lots of daylight and rustic flair. The claim before the storm... classes had not yet started when this photo was taken (obviously).

This is the room my class meets in...

Another great group of students with lots of questions and enthusiasm! The right combination of ingredients to motivate any teacher!

While students were arriving, I had the Microsoft HoloLens setup and connected to the projection screen. This was a great way to fill the gap until class started.

To encourage and build on the energy in the room... I sprinkled in a little Enscape! After positioning the real-time rendered view as shown below, the next question was "so, this is free for students you said?". Followed by "but I like the repeating carpet pattern in my renderings".


Another Enscape example below. BTW, we also use Revizto in this class to turn in some work via its cloud-based model sharing and mark-up feature set.

Quick demo of the Richo Theata S photosphere camera. Below is the direct, or raw, result from the camera. Here is a "packaged" version which can be viewed on Apple or Android phones and with Google Cardboard Viewers (btw, I gave each student an LHB branded viewer!).
Click here is see the dynamic version of this image. You can see more examples at the LHB virtual reality page: www.LHBcorp.com/vrwww.LHBcorp.com/vr.

The photo-sphere camera can also take video... check out this example I just posted on YouTube. Drag your mouse around while the video is playing for the full experience!


In addition to all of the fun stuff listed above, I did a presentation on the basics of family creation. This may sounds totally backwards, but I think the exercise of creating a parametric box with a few types and a material sets the stage, and outlines some fundamental Revit-centric concepts, that help with the basics (plus, many don't need the basics)!

Fun stuff!