We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will become a reality and give Speedway Blvd. a new look while bringing back the past.
What a nice way to cap off this year!
Autodesk University 2015 Speaker Award winners:
Best Roundtable
Steven Shell
Switching from AutoCAD to Revit — A Discussion about Various Approaches & Work Flows
Best Hands-on Lab
Rick Ellis
A Practical Guide to GIS in AutoCAD Civil 3D
Best Lecturer
Orrin Bourne
Let the Good Times Flow: Advanced Workflow Behaviors
Best Instructional Demo
Marcello Sgambelluri
More Practical Dynamo: Practical Uses for Dynamo Within Revit
Rookie of the Year (Best Newbie!)
Lars Eid Nielsen
Case Study: The Use of InfraWorks and the IDS for a Hydropower Project in Norway
Give it up for this group!
(For Speakers & Presenters, AU is the “World Series” of Conferences & Events with over 650 classes offered and over 13,000 class reviews!)
I just received the Top Rated Speaker award for the Mountain States BIM Workshop which was recently held in Phoenix, AZ and sponsored by US Cad.
I was told that both of my classes received perfect scores for both content and presentation. Thank you to everyone who took my classes and thank you US Cad!
See you all next year!
I just returned from the 4th (and last) BIM Workshop sponsored by US Cad this year which was held in Paradise (Hawaii)!
This last event, like the 3 which proceeded it, were really fun and wonderful opportunities to learn, meet new friends and reconnect with old friends.
BIM Workshops have been going on now for 4 years and will be happening again in 2016 where US Cad will be adding some additional workshops.
I just wanted to thank all of the sponsors, hosts and attendees for making this year’s series of workshops a huge success!
Thank you and see you all in 2016!
Today is the kick off of the first of 4 Revit & BIM (Building Information Model) conference to be held this year to be held in Omaha, Anaheim, Phoenix and Hawaii.
This first conference, referred to as the “Central States” conference is in Omaha, Nebraska once again, which is where it was born thanks to Carla Edwards (now with US Cad). I am here presenting along with an amazing group of fellow presenters (and legends…..). We are looking forward to hearing presentations from each other, as well as learning from regional and local professionals who are also here to present over these next couple of days.
If you are here attending the conference, please make a point to walk up and introduce yourself! Let’s make it ‘personal’…..
This will be fun
Wesley Benn (far left), Irwin (left), Leonid (right) & Jim Balding (far right)
This year’s Revit Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. was about as good as it gets!!!!
Although the host city, people, presenters and classes were amazing, meeting the two “Founding Fathers” of Revit was over the top!
Revit was originally the Revit Technology Corporation, which was originally called Charles River Software. Irwin Jungreis and Leonid Raiz started the company to solve what they thought was an absence of a parametric modelling platform for architecture.
Not only did we get to meet Leonid and Irwin, but we also were able to meet most of the original employees and Architects who started it all. In the beginning, many of us used to call Revit, at any hour, so that we could speak to our Revit Architect and figure out some problem we were having. Finally being able to put a face and a smile with the voice on the phone was so cool! Thank you Steve & Dave, who were my support Architects. In addition, most of the original developers & Architects were there included Marty, David C., Matt J., Harry, Phil, along with Scott D., and Scott B. and a few others I wasn’t able to meet. How cool is that! Thank you Jim Balding and Wesley Benn, along with entire RTC Events Staff and Committee Members for putting on one of the very best RTC events ever!
The original “Revit Rock Starts”…..
I recently had two amazing things happen to me as we started out this new year.
RTC – EUROPE 2015 “TOP SPEAKER” AWARD.
“Top Speaker Award for RTC-Europe” First, while I was at a ‘pre-AU’ party with some really great friends in the Lounge of the Mandalay Bay listening to some really good Rock & Blues……the Founder, along with the American Committee Chairman of the Revit Technology Conferences held up his iPhone to show me that I had received the “Top Rated Speaker” award for the RTC-Europe which was just held in Dublin, Ireland. He then showed me that my second class I presented was the next highest rated class! Considering all of the amazing speakers who presented in Europe, that was quite an honor! Thank you!
“RPC Star of the AEC” Secondly, while attending AU this year, I was invited to a party hosted by Randall Stevens, founder and president of ArchVision, who created and sells RPC images & materials for our renderings. Jim Balding introduced me to Randall a few years ago while presenting at the RTC-Vancouver asking me to show him what I had done to his people and tree RPC’s. He wanted to know more about how I did it, and more importantly, why. If you have attended one of my Graphics Classes, you will know how I modified his RPC’s for all of my non-rendered views rather than using them only for finished renderings, which is what Randall originally intended his content to be used for. (ArchVision’s ‘place holders’ in non-rendered views are merely that….little paper cut out type markers to show you where the entourage is and was never intended as a finished product.) I pulled out a thumb drive and handed it to him and told him that he could have all of my families in order to fully understand how I did what I did. He gave me a very weird look, like “are you kidding!?” and then shook my hand and thanked me. Well, a couple of years later….. At this year’s AU, he showed me his new “Entourage Workshop” which is a beta version of my some of my ideas and techniques. As a thank you, Randall turned me into an RPC! You can now download me and use me in your own renderings! (A bit ‘project specific though….LOL) Very humbling, yet, very cool! Thank you Randall! 
Lately, I have been asked “What do you teach?”……To which I usually reply “It’s complicated”.
So, I want to share some of my thoughts about why I care and and why I want to teach others about Graphics and Presentation Techniques, which seems to be one of my more popular lectures and hand’s on presentations. I decided to try to help others because I was always finding myself ‘defending’ Revit whenever I would hear people say, “Revit can not produce nice presentations with out using Photoshop”, or, “Revit can’t do real renderings” and my favorite comment, “Revit is wonderful, but the drawings just don’t look good….I don’t know why”.
There are some very good resources for Revit training; however, most of what I have seen is for the technical side of learning the software, taught by software experts who are very knowledgeable and are very good at teaching Revit; however, for the most part, they are not Architects. (If they are by Architects, they are mostly younger ones who were brought up in the computer era.) Many trainers can show you what buttons to push, but not “why” or “when” to push them. In fact, most software developers I have met are surprised to find out how we actually use their products and sometimes learn a great deal when they see what we are doing with it and simply can’t believe that we would want to do such things……ie: work arounds and ‘out of the box’ approaches.
Although I am just a practicing Architect, I have been doing more and more teaching, mentoring, lecturing and presenting at conferences, both nationally and internationally. Over these past several years which I have been helping people, I have discovered that ever since CAD became the main tool of choice back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, people have not been using, nor have they been taught the basics of ‘old school’ graphic communication and artistic presentation principles and techniques.
As an Architect who learned how to draw by hand, long before overlay drafting and CAD, we were taught basic techniques to make our drawings ‘read’ and communicate by using very simple and time proven methods. These basic drawing techniques are not really taught anymore and are still very much needed! This is evident when I heard my friend, Paul Aubin, once say, “Since when did line weight become an I.T. issue?”
I know that the 3-D parametric models we are now capable of producing are, quite simply put, ‘amazing’; however, our final product which everybody gets to see and work off of are still just 2D flat views on a computer screen, iPad or a sheet of paper. (Maybe even a 3D pdf or dwf) In either case, we are still presenting a flat, two dimensional presentation to clients, contractors and building officials, all who have to completely understand what we are trying to communicate and explain which is very complex and beautiful!
What could be better than attending a really cool, informative and fun BIM Workshop?……..Finding out that you received the Top Speaker Award!
Congratulations to the Top 5 Speakers which include Paul Aubin, Brian Mackey, Joel Londenberg and Marcello Scambelluri!
Thank you Carla, US CAD, Lynn Allen and all of the other amazing speakers, sponsors and attendees!!!!
I just attended the second BIM Workshop, held in Anaheim, CA. (BIM Workshop – Pacific Coast)
As usual….it was amazing! The sponsors, speakers (national, regional and local), attendees and hosts were wonderful. And, for the second time now, Lynn Allen, from Autodesk, was the Emcee and really did a bang up job and made it fun! (Who IS she?) Also, Lonnie & Christina at US Cad deserve a huge round of applause for all of there efforts and hard work!
Carla Edward’s Omaha based brainchild event is growing up into a very special nationally recognized must attend conference! Congratulations Carla!
This conference, like the one in Omaha last month, offered several really informative and innovative classes. At the top of the list, of those classes which I could attend (unfortunately, I presented several classes and had to miss a few.), the ones which really taught me a thing or two, or twenty, are:
Marcello’s class on Dynamo. This new Dynamo has really impressed me. At the last conference, I learned how it can drive the Revit geometry from within Dynamo, very ‘graphically’ and in a very intuitive manner; however, that being said, one needed to understand and learn how to use Dynamo. Marcello showed us another side of Dynamo. He explained how it can also be used do “every day” simple tasks in Revit such as moving an entire set of foundations and column bases up with out having to move each one individually. The other part of his class which I found very refreshing was that one doesn’t have to learn a lot about using Dynamo to do these kind of simple Revit tasks since you are performing them in Revit for the most part, and using Dynamo as an outside add-in just to drive it. Well done Marcelllo!
And, the other take away was Scott Davis’ presentation on the new release of Formit! Way cool updates!!!! Most all of the new features are modeling tools and other useful design features. This class updated Scott’s class I attended on Formit in Omaha last month. Amazing what month’s time can produce! Thank you Scott! He also confirmed that Autodesk really did acquire Eagle Point’s amazing Site Works!!!! This will be huge and finally addresses all of our thoughts regarding Revit’s site tools and abilities!
Well, back to work! Next month…..RTC Europe!!!! Dublin, here we come!
BIM: Integrating Art & Technology 