Lighting Design at the University of Minnesota - Fall 2018

Yesterday, a beautiful fall day in St. Paul, Minnesota, I once again had the good fortune to present to Professor Abimbola O. Asojo's interior design students at the University of Minnesota. I covered lighting analysis using the Autodesk Revit add-in ElumTools by Lighting Analysts, Inc. I also managed to find a little time at the end to show them Enscape as well!

Additionally...

LHB Makes 'ENR Top 100 Green Buildings Design Firms' List

Pretty cool to see LHB's name, the firm I work for, in the top 100 Green Design Firms list as complied by ENR (Engineering News-Record).

Check out the ENR article here:
https://www.enr.com/toplists/2018-Top-100-Green-Buildings-Design-Firms

On a related note...

BILT Europe 2018 Reflections

Just back from BILT Europe 2018, which continued into a family vacation though Italy, I wanted to share some highlights and images from the conference and more.

Host City/Country

Each year the conference moves around Europe. This year the it was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. It is a beautiful, pedestrian-friendly, city. Here is just one of many photos I took while exploring with my family.

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New Enscape Blog post - BEST PRACTICES: FINDING THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE

This never gets old... once again I am happy to share a new article I wrote for the Enscape blog. This lasted post explores some techniques & fundamentals related to perspectives that students and even some professionals will benefit from.

Link to post: BEST PRACTICES: FINDING THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Additionally...

Going offline for about two weeks; Heading towards Ljubljana Slovenia for BILT Today!

This blog will be quite for the next two weeks...

Today I leave for Europe to attend, and present at, BILT in Ljubljana, Slovenia. But keep an eye one the Enscape blog as I have two new articles in production! Sneak peak at the topics: one on grass and another on finding the right perspective.

I am fortunate to be bringing my family and extending the trip for a family vacation. My family has gone to some interesting places, we may not have otherwise thought to go to, thanks to RTC/BILT. I wrote a post on the RTC blog about that a few years ago: RTC Family Vacation – An Attendee’s Letter. In this letter I talk about making plans to attend RTC (now called BILT) in Dublin, Ireland. This will be the third European RTC/BILT conference I have attended--I went to Denmark last year as well.

If you will be at this conference I look forward to seeing/meeting you!

Here are the sessions I will be presenting:

Presentation 1:

Date:	Thursday, 11 October 2018
Session:	1.3 & 1.4
Presentation Topic:	Revit MEP Remodels and Alternates; Hands On
Presentation Time:	1:45pm - 4:30pm
Duration:	150 minute Lab
Categories/Level:	MEP, Model Management, Autodesk | Advanced

Presentation 2:

Date:	Friday, 12 October 2018
Session:	2.4
Presentation Topic:	Dynamic Energy Optimization with Autodesk Revit and Insight
Presentation Time:	2:45pm - 4:00pm
Duration:	75 minute Presentation
Categories/Level:	Simulation and Analysis, Architecture, Autodesk | Advanced

Presentation 3:

Date:	Saturday, 13 October 2018
Session:	3.1
Presentation Topic:	A Multi-Disciplinary Design Firm’s Journey to Embrace Early Stage Energy Analysis
Presentation Time:	9:00am - 10:15am
Duration:	75 minute Presentation
Categories/Level:	Simulation and Analysis, Multi-Platform | Intermediate

I will surely have some interesting things to share with you when I get back.


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Enscape Blog Post: BEST PRACTICES: GLAZING IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

My latest Enscape blog post is out, and it is on glazing in architectural design.

Glass is such an integral part of the architectural fabric everyone enjoys, either passively in day-to-day life or professionally as a discriminating architect. Enscape can be used to develop realistic and aesthetically pleasing results and this article helps get 'from here to there'.

Click the image, or link below, to go to the article:

Enscape blog post: BEST PRACTICES: GLAZING IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Additionally...

Create Custom Fill Patterns in Revit, For Free with PyRevit Tools

Re: Custom tile pattern needed ASAP!

Architects and interior designers are going to love this!

Finding or creating fill patterns for Revit, or Hatch patterns for AutoCAD, can be a huge pain. Today I will share a nice tool, which is free, we can use to quickly create any model/drafting pattern... and it is done within Revit. Plus, it is free. I know I already said that, just saying it again for emphasis:) This is made possible by a Revit add-in called pyRevit.

pyRevit is a set of custom tools for Autodesk Revit based on a programming langue called IronPython. This suite of tools was created, and is maintained by, Ehsan Iran-Nejad who is an architect in Portland Oregon, USA. Given his stellar developer skills, I love that he pointed out in his GitHub profile that he is an "Architect, of actual buildings".

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Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 5 - Roof and Fascia

Back on to the multitude of ways to represent wall baseboard, or skirting, in Autodesk Revit. This next option has already been mentioned by some via comments and Twitter. Although it makes a lot of sense and is probably the fastest option for creating both the finish floor and baseboard I do not recommend it.

First, the proposed method: Roof element as floor and Fascia element as baseboard/skirting.

Before the "how" I will tell you "why" I don't like it.

In the world of BIM we use a lot of add-ins, analysis tools and work with other design firms. When we start to 'break the rules' it often causes problems for us and others on the project.

For example, Revit's Create Energy Model command had no controls of what...

Hyperlink from Revit Starting View to Office Standards Manual

I have been implementing a few changes in the architectural office template for 2019, such as advanced materials. In the starting view, I added a way to quickly get to the firm Revit standards manual.

BTW, I previously wrote about Revit's starting view here: Revit Starting View and Titleblock Re-purposing

To facilitate staff having quick access to the firm standards for Revit I created a Generic Annotation family with a URL parameter that points to a local (i.e. on the firm's network) file rather than a web address. This family is simply placed next to the heading, shown below, and table of Contents in the starting view.

Additionally...