Midwest University 2018

The world of Revit and CAD conferences is pretty small, so it is nice we have a formidable one right in our backyard here in Minnesota; Midwest University hosted by CTC. This conference always has high quality speakers and the great Lynn Allen, formerly with Autodesk, who will be back again this year.

In addition to Lynn, the world's #1 AI robot, Sofia, will be there. That should be interesting.

Keynotes from Jim Lynch, Autodesk VP Construction Products | David Ivey, HOK Regional Design Technology Manager | Lynn Allen, Autodesk Technical Evangelist | Sophia, Hanson Robotics, Artificial Intelligence Robot  | Shane Scranton, Iris VR CEO & Co-Founder | Vickie Patel  HKS, Practice Technology Manager & Reeti Gupta, HKS- Director of Practice Technology

Additionally...

Enscape Blog Post: REAL-TIME RENDERING AND VIRTUAL REALITY WITH RHINO

The real-time world is expanding! Those using Rhinoceros, by Robert McNeel and Associates (RMA), as their 3D authoring tool of choice will be excited to know that Enscape has expanded their popular real-time rendering and VR experience to work with it.

All of the great Enscape features are now at the fingertips of Rhino users! Navigate the model in real-time or jump right into VR.

I wrote a post about this over on the Enscape blog.

Below are a couple images from the article...

Revit.ini File and Location

The Revit.ini file is a text file Autodesk Revit uses to store settings such as template file location and recent files. Many of the settings can be set within Revit and are just saved here when a change is made.

Here are a few examples of what I beileve can only be set from the ini file:

Working With Revit's Journal File

My friend Nauman Mysorewala published an article on understanding Revit journal files. This is based on a class he presented at Autodesk university 2017 a few months previous.

To read Nauman's article, go here: Howto read the Revit Journal file - Understanding Journal Files

In addition to being a BIM Manager/Architect/Associate at GBBN Architects in Cincinnati, he is also an Autodesk Expert Elite and an educator who uses my books. Nauman is super helpful in providing feedback on the books. I once added about 30 pages on live detailing and drafting views based on his comments! Plus, he is currently reviewing an updated manuscript for one of my books based on some new software coming out soon that I cannot mention;)

Nauman has worked with Autodesk to create a series of webinars called Build Your Revit IQ; click the link to check him out on YouTube.

Brian Mackey, aka The Revit Geek, had a great session on journal files at BILT last year... http://www.rtcevents.com/bilt/na18/.

I previously mentioned Brian's session in this post: BILT-NA 2017 Toronto Canada; Day One

In a previous post I mention Revit backup files that appear in the Journal file folder. You can check that out here: Autodesk Revit's "Secret" Backup Location

Enscape Blog Post: BEST PRACTICES – USING VIRTUAL REALITY FOR PROJECT PRESENTATIONS WITH ENSCAPE

Once again, I had the opportunity to pen another blog post for Enscape. This post is about all-things-Virtual-Reality (VR) using Enscape.

The image below is a screenshot of a video I created where I am superimposed in the...

Friday Fun Post: Old Revit Content Website Still Live

Here is a blast from the past for us "old" Revit users... the defunct Revit online content webpage is still live via this Autodesk link: http://revit.autodesk.com/library/html/.

This first image shows a collection of old French content. On a side note, by son is learning French in school and I was and just this morning I was trying to get him to translate (just to see if he could) a few Tweets from https://twitter.com/FrenchBIM.

Be sure to scroll all the way down and check out the UK samples files...

Pre/post-occupancy Evaluations and Generative Design

All the talk about deep learning, AI and generative design is very exciting; both Autodesk and NVIDIA are doing some amazing things in this space. But, just like energy modeling and lighting analysis, which I am familiar with, if the inputs are not accurate the old says holds true; garbage in, garbage out.

In energy modeling, if the thermal properties or orientation of a wall is not correct the resultant EUI will not be valid. In lighting analysis, if the photometry is wrong or a surface reflectance is not set properly the illuminance calculation will be false.