Program Development within Revit - Last Week at NDSU

Last week, in my graduate architecture seminar on Building Information Modeling at NDSU we talked about managing space requirements, aka the program statement or brief, before anything is modeling in Revit. We must understand what the "puzzle pieces" are before we can start the design process. This effort is often done within Excel, but can accomplished in Revit and provided additional value.

Rooms can be add to a schedule before actually being placed within the model using the Insert Data Row command. We can add custom parameters to track program area, equipment needs and even a percentage difference between program and actual area - the cell can also get filled with a color when the difference is too great, using Conditional Formatting, as shown here.

Creating another schedule of the same data, we can sort the rooms by department and get area sub-totals.

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Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 3

The next option to discuss is the "favorite" In-Place family.

But first, here are the previous posts on this topic:

• Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 1
• Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 2

It is fairly easy to create, checks a lot of the boxes but has some significant downsides which cause a lot of BIM managers and influencers to want to avoid them altogether.

In fact, the Dynamo-guru John Pierson, posted this on Twitter and got a huge response... when a Revit user tries to start an In-Place family they get a funny warning (click image to go to the tweet on Twitter):

Using this method we can create baseboard which continues along a sloped surface, like the ramp shown in the image below. This In-Place family uses the same built-up profile in a Sweep. When the sweep is selected, you see the material, profile and sub-category options in the properties. BTW, this was created in the Wall category so it can use the same sub-category as the Wall Sweep discussed previously in Option 2.

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Minnesota State Senator Experiences Virtual Reality at LHB

Yesterday I had the opportunity to facilitate a Virtual Reality (VR) experience of an LHB project for few people visiting LHB, including Minnesota State Senator Erik Simonson.

CEEM (Clean Energy Economy Minnesota), a non-profit whose mission is to educate and stimulate economic growth in clean energy industries, brought together the Senator, LHB, Minnesota Power, Ecolibrium3, and CEE (Center for Energy and Environment) to learn about the CIP program. The CIP (Conservation Improvement Program) is intended to help organizations and households achieve energy efficiency. Minnesota Power provided rebates through their CIP program to support the LHB-designed DTA Duluth Transportation Center, which the group toured after the meeting.

I had a few minutes to demonstrate what LHB is doing with VR. In the next two photos I am showing the Senator the Essentia Health Wellness Center in VR, which is currently under construction in Hermantown.

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Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 2

Following up on yesterday's post I will share another way in which we can represent baseboard on walls in Revit. Rather than include the baseboard definition in the wall type, this option uses the Wall Sweep tool. This also has some pros and cons.

Yesterday's post: Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 1

Looking at the same project, lets say we want to add baseboard to the other two walls in this home office - I hid the desk so we can focus on the bottom of the wall.

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Creating Wall Baseboard in Revit - Option 1

There are a few ways to represent wall baseboard in Revit. Each have there pros and cons. I will cover one in this post and follow up with a couple more options in future posts.

The first option is to add it to the wall type. This makes it automatic and appear everywhere. First, I will show how to set it up and then point out a few potential problems with this option. Of course we will check out the results in Enscape:)

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BILT-Eur 2018 - Handouts Done and Free Revit Books

Us speakers were required to have our handouts done early last week for next month's BILT conference in Europe; this year the AEC technology-focused event will be in Ljubljana, Slovenia. My three handouts are turned in and I am now wrapping up the presentation material.

If you are going to the event, read on to learn about how you could win a Revit book in one of my sessions. If you are not going, it is not too late to change your mind, and even save ten percent.

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Autodesk Revit Code Animated and In Person

Recently, Harlan Brumm, Revit Product Manager at Autodesk, posted something very interesting on Twitter... as seen in the image below (click image to go to Twitter).

Here is a link to the YouTube video showing the Revit code evolve over the last twenty years!

• Link: 20 years of Revit code in less than one minute

In the video you can see the date at the top of the screen. The earliest date is 1998-05-28. The first