An amazing opportunity has presented itself and I will be pulling up my stakes and moving my family across the country in the near future. In today's post I will reflect on the my time at LHB and then later this week I will reveal where I am going and talk about the future!
Sneak peak: tune in to this week's The Revit Kid's live YouTube Happy Hour, to hear us talk Enscape, and be the first to hear where I am headed! Learn more about this happy hour tomorrow... including info about free stuff we will be giving away!
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| Custom Coke bottles from Mike Murphy at Autodesk |
From the Top
I started at LHB nearly 17 years ago, in 2003. During my first two years with the firm I worked in the Government Group and then transitioned to CAD Administrator when the position opened up. The role evolved over the years from BIM Administrator to Design Technology Manager. In this role, over the years and even now, I was the sole provider of 'design technology' support for the 260-person firm that includes the following disciplines:
- Architecture
- Interior design
- MEP
- Structural: Buildings
- Structural: Bridges
- Civil
- Survey
- Landscape architecture
- Industrial
- Pipeline
One aspect of this position that was a little crazy, looking back, was the fact that I drove between offices every two weeks for fourteen years. That is about a 300 mile drive round trip... which I did in a single day. I would leave at 5 am and return home at 6 pm. If my math is correct, I sent an entire year in an office I don't technically work in!
Autodesk Revit Implementation
When I started at LHB, I had already written my first Revit book and two AutoCAD books. However, LHB had not used Revit on any projects yet. We quickly went from 0 to 100, while achieving the following accomplishments:
- All (vertical) projects and disciplines in Revit for nearly 10+ years now
- Disciplines include: Architecture, Interior Design, MEP, Structural, and some LA.
- Projects featured by Autodesk when Revit installed (see images below and this)
- Created an Electrical Productivity Pack (sold by CTC/ATG)
- Created as-built Revit model (including MEP) and standards manual for Minneapolis VA Medical Center
- All projects in BIM 360 for over a year now
Autodesk AutoCAD Civil 3D Implementation
Also, when I started at LHB the software used by the other half of the firm did not even exist yet... that being AutoCAD Civil 3D. While I am still no Civil 3D expert, back in 2007-ish I orchestrated the staff training and template development; we still use that template today. Since then we have also developed another template for our Survey group.
Last year we also implemented the *Civil 3D to BIM 360 to Revit via linked toposurface* workflow. We are even using this on a massive hospital project lead by EwingCole. I presented on this workflow, along with one of the developers from Autodesk China, Zhengrong Fu, at Autodesk University this past November (2019) in Las Vegas.
Finally, we are one of only a few firms in the world actually using AutoCAD Civil 3D within BIM 360 Design. We are currently looking at rolling this out for entire groups, similar to the Revit implementation last year.
An Array of Accomplishments
Here is a list of some of the accomplishments we realized at LHB over the years:
- Implemented Revit across entire firm
- Implemented AutoCAD Civil 3D across entire firm
- Virtual Reality: Excelled at VR for architecture, civil, bridge, LA and industrial applications
- Augmented Reality: Broke new ground using the Microsoft HoloLens and, more recently, the Trimble XR10 with Microsoft HoloLens 2 on real-word projects.
- Implemented early energy modeling, being the first firm in MN to subscribe/use Sefaira and then switching to a Revit + Autodesk Insight workflow. On this topic, I was selected as the #2 speaker at a European conference in 2018.
- Implemented Revit-based lighting analysis: Going from beta testing ElumTools (by the makers of AGI32) to co-presenting with one of their developers, Matt Kincaid, in three countries, on two continents, including the world renowned LightFair convention.
- Dell made this marketing video featuring my work: LHB visualizes architectural designs through virtual reality powered by Dell Precision
- NVIDIA created this customer success story and blog post: How VR Is Helping Revitalize Downtown Duluth
- ARCHITECTURE Magazine: I was interviewed for this article 5 Steps to Make VR a Reality in Your Practice
- Civil Engineering magazine: I was interviewed with previous CEO on our use of VR on Civil projects.
- I presented four years in a row, five sessions total, at the Minnesota AIA Convention; on energy modeling, Lighting analysis, VR, new tech, and AR (with the latter including a tour to a completed project).
- Regional media engagements:
- Minneapolis Star Tribune: Virtual reality brings architect's blueprints to life
- Minneapolis KARE11 News (NBC Affiliate)
- Duluth KBJR (NBC Affiliate)
- Duluth WDIO (ABC Affiliate)
- Duluth News Tribune
There are other personal accomplishments not listed here, that are not really related to LHB. For example, teaching at LSC & NDSU, speaking internationally, publishing books, etc.
The People
There are a lot of great people at LHB, and I will miss them all. With a firm this size there are just too many names to mention. The only name I will mention is the one that brought me to LHB... an architect I worked with at a previous firm; Ron Martilla. Sadly, shortly after starting at LHB he passed away from ALS. The running joke, when Ron and I worked together previously, was that he literally started working at that firm before I was born:)
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| LHB MSP - My Wife Works for Walgreens;) |
A Heartfelt Goodbye
Thanks for all the memories, LHB! We had a lot of fun together...
Stay Tuned to Learn About the Future
Watch for tomorrow's post to learn more about my guest appearance on Jeffrey A. Pinheiro's The Revit Kid live YouTube 'happy hour'. We will be talking Enscape, but I will also drop where I am going here first! We will also be giving away some free stuff.
For BIM Chapters updates, follow @DanStine_MN on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn
Check out my video-based courses on ArchSmarter.
I also write blog posts for Enscape - a new paradigm in rendering, animation and VR for