Merry Christmas... and the future of BIM

Hi all, thank you for following my Blog, I hope you find the content valuable. 

This Blog has evolved over the past number of years, mostly due to my own development. It initially started out as a means to share Revit training tips and has since evolved to focus on BIM overall, the process and impact BIM has on the AECO industry. 

It's evolving further to include tips and information on leadership and management techniques and how to effectively lead a team, tips I think everyone can use regardless of their position. 

BIM is all about collaboration and sharing information, whether that's data, conceptual design ideas, or ways to improving a process, we all want to improve how we work together.

Working together can be challenging, both working as part of an internal team, working with outside consultants and even working with the client themselves, all have their own set of unique challenges.

Our industry as a whole has unique challenges, traditional process are colliding with the demand to improve on how we design and construct buildings. Technology plays a huge part in improving that process, we have to look at ways on which how we can improve the process one step at a time to achieve greatness.

I hope 2017 brings you adventures and success in your challenges.

Merry Christmas.

Woof...

CanBIM Vancouver: Facilitating Change In The Construction Industry

Hi all, I’d like to personally invite you to attend the CanBIM Regional Session in Vancouver on Feb 1-2, 2017. It promises to be a very interesting event filled with great presenters and important content. 

CanBIM Vancouver: Facilitating Change In The Construction Industry is intended to encourage and support the mindset surrounding change management, collaboration and the alignment around the adoption of building technologies and sustainable practices among all disciplines, stakeholders and decision-makers.  

As you may be aware I am a member of the Board of Directors for CanBIM and have been involved in putting together the Vancouver events held this time each year, this year’s event we have brought together a wide variety of AECO industry leaders including:

• Sandy Tragus; CFO Mountain Equipment Co-Op
• Dermot Sweeny;  Sweeny & Co. Architects
• Helen Goodland; Principal, Brantwood Consulting & BC Construction Assoc.
• Clint Undseth; VP Innovation, Stuart Olson
• David Redfern; Lafarge EVP
• Brian Tucker; VP Development Construction Westbank Properties
• Michael Chubb; Innovation, Vancouver International Airport

To name but a few…

Of special note is our Keynote Presenter, the Honourable Amrik Virk, the Minister of Technology, Innovation & Citizens’ Services who will be sure to engage and inspire. 

Keynote Speaker Announced! 

Honourable Amrik S. Virk, 

Minister of Technology, Innovation & Citizens' Services, 

MLA for Surrey-Tynehead, Province of British Columbia

​

Please check out the CanBIM Website for Agenda details.

  

REGISTER TODAY!

Early Bird Deadline ends December 20th. 

EARLYBIRD  PRICING
Deadline  December  20th  -  11:59PM
CanBIM  Member  -  $250.00
Non-Member  -  $300.00
CanBIM  Exhibitor  -  $900.00
Non-Member  Exhibitor  -  $1200.00
Student  Non-Member  $45.00
Student  CanBIM  Member  $25.00

REGULAR  PRICING 
Begins  December  21st  -  12:00AM 
CanBIM  Member  -  $300.00
Non-Member  -  $350.00
CanBIM  Exhibitor  -  $1200.00
Non-Member  Exhibitor  -  $1500.00
Student  $65.00 

CanBIM  Student  Member  $45.00 

Facilitating Change in the Construction Industry

Join us February 1st and 2nd 2017 in Vancouver for our CanBIM Regional Session titled; Facilitating Change in the Construction Industry.

http://www.canbim.com/canbim-future-events

In order for BIM to deliver significant value, key design and construction disciplines need to be aligned. The challenge is to bridge the historic disconnect between finance, design, construction and operations. The need for productivity improvement within the construction industry is expediting the convergence of technologies, materials and processes to improve productivity and higher performing buildings; the implementation of innovative technologies like BIM are at center of this shift.

Register now: https://www.regonline.ca/builder/site/?eventid=1899566

Using the Room Calculation Point to enable schedules and dRofus

Enabling the Calculation Point function in a Specialty Equipment family allow you to specify what room the equipment is to be associated with. I recently found this to be helpful with working with dRofus wanting to populate equipment that may not site directly within a certain Room.

Here’s a brief overview of how to use this tool.

The Room Calculation Point allows you to make the element, in this case a piece of equipment, “room aware” by enabling the Room Calculation Point tool in the properties of the family and dragging the “leader” into the space you want to associate the equipment with.

We recently used this function to enable us to associate a roller shade with a room.

When the Room Calculation Point has not been enabled the roller shade (highlighted) will not be associated with the room, either in a Revit Schedule or within dRofus as the equipment geometry does not sit within the space.

When the equipment is scheduled it will not recognize the adjacent room.

By editing the family and enabling the Room Calculation Point under Properties you will be able to then pick the Room Calculation Point itself and move the point so it sits with the desired space.

Tip: Use the “Tab” key to select the point.

Drag the point into to the “room” side. Save family and reload into Project.

Now the Room Calculation Point sits within the Room Space and is recognized by the Room Space and will show up in the Revit Schedule and dRofus.

For further reference on the Room Calculation Point here is the link to the Autodesk knowledge site:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Revit-Model/files/GUID-7CA9496D-205E-4838-A669-37C1DA7DEB67-htm.html

For additional postings and BIM information check out the BIM User Group Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OkanaganBIMUsers

United States Thankisgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Neighbourino.

For those of you not familiar with the North American tradition of giving thanks but eating local fowl, here's some history...

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.

For more history check out this link.
http://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/history-of-thanksgiving

5 Tips in 5 Days - #5 eTransmit

      Using eTransmit to share the model

The Transmit tool enables you to copy the Revit model and its dependent files to a folder for sharing with the consultants. This can be done without opening the project. There are a number of useful options as part of the Transmit functionality.

The Transmit options include.

• Selecting files from Revit Server

• Linked files will be included but not actively Linked, these will need to be re-linked upon receiving the project

• Cleanup of the project including options to Upgrade, Purge as well as options on inclusion or exclusion of sheets and views.

You can save these settings for use next time you use the Transmit function.  

  

If you do not have the Transmit tool on your Add-Ins pallet you can download the app from the Autodesk App Store.

For additional postings and BIM information check out the BIM User Group Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OkanaganBIMUsers

5 Tips in 5 Days - #4 Text Improvement

 Revit Text Improvements – Bullets and Numbering
You can now add bullets and numbering to Annotation in Revit. 
However this function is still limited.

Unfortunately you cannot tab and continue using another format. :-(

Sc