BIM: Value and Challenge

Good god.  two months since my last post....a shame.  I have been busy as can be...making trouble and such.

From the BIMPhilosopher desk:
I got approached by FuturArc, an architecture magazine published in South East Asia, to write an article about BIM.  I wrote about how negligible labor costs in Asia don't provide the strong impetus for change by either builders or clients.  Maybe its interesting to somebody...BIM: Value and Challenge

From the Office of National BIMplementation:
I am have been solicited to act as a mouth piece for Singapore's Building Construction Authority and introduce the Singapore National BIM Guide.  A document put forth by the government to assist firms in meeting the mandate for BIM use in Singapore by 2015.  Very interesting document, that i am pleased to have been a part of developing, though I can't yet post it here.  But if you happen to be in the area, there will be many great speakers at this year's BuildSmart Conference @ Singapore Marina Bay Sands, and Thursday the 17th is all about BIM.

From the Anti-Podean BIM Hit Squad
I am going to RTC Australia later this month to speak about some of the work we did at ARUP surrounding the Singapore National Stadium.  It was a big Revit party...The title of the talk is something about "Nine Pregnant Women Can't Make a Baby in One Month"  I better get started on the slides....RTC Australasia....Wollongong here i come....

And Finally
From Center For The Promotion of 3D Monkey Business
I am putting together a lengthy post about how I made these forms in the Revit Conceptual Massing Environment....Now THAT's a story!

Aligning Reference Lines

Its taken me a few years, but i am finally gonna put up something useful.

Sometimes i have to deal with reference lines flying through space and i am damn sick of the fact that they rotate willy nilly about thier axis without regard for my feelings.

take this shape for example:

looks nice enough.  A couple of reference lines defining a plane in space.  but if we look carefully, you can see things ain't too kosher.

Them thar reference lines aren't square up to the plane they define!  Bastards!  And what happens if you want to extrude a form along its edges?

WTF????  I don't want my mullions at 72.72dgerees to the face.  Call me a primadonna, and many have, but I want my damn rectangles perpendicular to that face.  not 89.9, not 90.1...but a dead on 90 Degrees!


Have you struggled with this?  If you are reading my blog, drink the same koolade as me, and play in the same sandbox as me, chances are you have had this problem at some point....Well this week i found a solution.  Hallelujah!

Now this ia solution that may create duplicate reference lines in the same place, so you gotta be careful when you are making your family, but this does work!  Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

I'll start with my 3d triangle and draw a rectangle on its face.  Lookie Dis!  They are aligned in the direction i want!

I deleted 2 lines i didn't need, slapped reference points hosting my extrusion profile on the 2 remaining, and then pulled them to the edges of my triangle...

And BAM!  My edge profiles are aligned!

Cool!  BUT, a word of caution, when you flex the family, these relationships can fall apart, and you will have unhappiness and sorrow....none the less, this is a really good trick to know about!  It has saved my a55 this week.

Now, here is food for thought.  When i go back to my original triangle and pick one of the unaligned, original reference lines,

 I noticed on the properties panel a little greyed out box called "Follow Surface" but for the life of me i can't figure out how to 'un-grey' it.

My hope is that the Wizard of BUILDZ might be able to shed some light on this one when he is done futzing with the balloon animals.

Small Stellated Dodecahedron - Shout At The Devil!

I woke up to an email from Yoda at Autodesk challenging me and another blogger to make one of these in Revit:

as featured in some MAKEZINE Blog....

Being a dutiful Padawan, I jumped right in....First stop, Wikipedia, to find out what exactly a Small Stellated Dodecahedron is.  They said its one of these:

Aha!  Its a bunch of stars all wrapped around each other....that should be easy.  First thing to do is make a Pentagram...a tilted Pentagram....so come now children of the beast and take a walk with me....

Point 1 is the origin of the whole affair.

Point 2 is a Z offset from Point 1

Point 3 is a Y offset from Point 1

Using Trigonometry, these points establish both the tilt and height of the star.

Points 4 & 5 are offset from Point 3 and will establish the width at the base of the star.

Point 6 is a backward offset from the angled reference line in order to create the circle.

Now you can see the circle...and the devil is coming home to roost!

Setting out the circle is important because it was the only way I could figure out how to locate Points 7 & 8 accurately.

Point 9 is the host for the circle and it located at the midpoint of a reference line between Points 2 & 6.

I created an adaptive component with 10 points which would establish the surfaces on the finished form.

I nested my tilted pentagram rig into a new conceptual mass family and started stitching in the adaptive component.  This is only one half of the final form.  To complete the deal, I nested this one inside yet another family and then flipped it upside down like this:

add in some bubbles and bones...

and Booyah, I believe I'm the Devil's Child....

Download it here:

Small Stellated Dodecahedron

An "Architecture Degree" is the new "English Major"

Following on from this post about Phil Read's class on How to Get Ahead in Architecture, I found these two columns via Architectural Record that make good reading.

The architecture meltdown

One of the coolest creative-class careers has cratered with the economy. Where does architecture go from here?

Featuring great quotes like:

• These days, “We are making less than a cleaning lady,” 
• as an educator, I feel like an ayatollah sending kids running into the minefield
• Architects are supposed to be serving society, but I think we’re struggling to maintain our position in society. 

and this article

Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture

Featuring this chart which shows that architecture graduates have a higher unemployment rate than artists!

Though i am not sure if they are counting the "sandwich-artists" at SUBWAY.

And things are still shitty in Asia too so don't get any ideas.

RTC Here I come!

I feel loved....

Dear BIMTroublemaker,

Thank you for submitting an abstract for consideration at RTC 2012 Australasia, to be held at Novotel Wollongong Northbeach, NSW, Australia on 24 - 26 May 2012.

I am pleased to inform you that the RTC Organising Committee has accepted your abstract, "Can nine people make a baby in one month? Revit Server may have the answer!" as a 75 Minute Presentation in the BIM Management & Collaboration stream, Advanced level.

Blah blah blah...

sign here XXXX 

Now where the hell is Wollongong????

Why Hello Kitty?

While at AU2011, Dave from DOUREVIT asked me, "Whats the deal with the Hello Kitty Avatar?"

Unfortunately, the uploaded image got cropped.  This is the full version:

I have always loved Shepard Fairey and his artwork.  Don't know what i am talking about?  Look here

The photo below was taken in a far off rural town in Thailand called Lamphun.  The message resonates and travels far and wide....

Membrane Emulation and Suvarnabhumi Airport

I have been fascinated by Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport for years.  I have spent hours in the immigration lines wondering how to create parametric models of the different forms throughout the building.  The scalloped concourses represent a special challenge because of the extensive use of membranes.

Right before christmas, i was up in the city doing my christmas shopping and it finally hit me!  I could use adaptive components to emulate the membranes!  Awesome.  Here we go.  The basic geometry is repetitive and symmetrical, so in this exercise, I will build a single bay and then repeat it later.

First up I placed a single Reference Point (RP) at the origin in a Conceptual Mass Family.  Then I placed 2 additional RPs in the same place, creating new parameters to control their OFFSET value.  Then I hosted an parameter-driven ellipse on the vertical plane of each RP.

With this basic work done, I adjust the RPs into position shown below.  I hosted a third RP at the intersection of the ellipses for use later on.

Next up, I created an extruded form using the upper-most ellipse.  Controlling positive and negative offsets using parameters as well.

The form of the concourses are extruded tubes with wedges cut out.  Now that i had the tube, I need to cut the wedge.

I went back to that first RP at the origin and mounted three more points.  The offsets of these also controlled by deliberate parameters.  The topmost RP was linked to the overall height of the form, with 1000mm added to avoid errors.  The bottom RP is intended to be manually matched to the RP which lives at the intersection of the ellipses.  The RP in the middle is controlled by a ratio of the overall height.

Then, on the vertical planes of these 3 new RPs, i mounted another pair of RPs, controlling their offsets parametrically as well.  Connecting the points using lines, I end up with trapezoid like you see below (this is a lot easier to understand if you play with the family posted below!)

With that trapezoid created, I can extrude and subtract it from my initially extruded ellipse.

At this point, I create an adaptive component which is made of 3 points and a model line curve connecting them.

Inserting the adaptive component into my original family i host its points on the edges of my wedge-cut AND the other, lower, ellipse from step one of this exercise.  I make sure that the points at the edges are hosted at the intersection of the edge and the plane of the middle point.

With the first one set, i can drag several copies along the line, adjusting their hosted position so they are all equidistant.

Select all the adaptive components, hit the Create Form button and BANG!

Now i have a parameter driven surface that looks and behaves a lot like a membrane!

And then when i start to multiply it out it gets right to the basic geometry i am looking for.

Conquering Bangkok one useless model at a time!

You can download the model here