The Wackiest Olympics Ever

Have you guys seen this monkey business? The 2012 London Olympic Mascot's will be....these guys!

Full story is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/19/london-olympics-2012-mascot

London Olympics 2012: Meet Wenlock and Mandeville, drips off the old block

Organisers have unveiled their mascots – creatures supposedly fashioned from droplets of steel used to build the stadium

...With a metallic finish, a single large eye made out of a camera lens, a London taxi light on their heads and the Olympic rings represented as friendship bracelets on their wrists, they resemble characters dreamed up for a Pixar animation....

As if the logo design of Lisa blowing Bart wasn't bad enough...

 

VOTE FOR TROUBLE!

I AM NOT ABOVE SHAMELESS SELFPROMOTION!!!
and with that in mind...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

VOTE TO GET MY CLASSES INCLUDED AT AU NEXT YEAR!

Go here:

http://www.autodeskevents.com/au2010/index.cfm?event=voting.searchForm

Search for speaker Lazarus, Philip (because that's what it sez on the troublemaker's driver's license)

Pick my classes and  

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

VOTE EARLY! VOTE OFTEN!

 

VOTE FOR ME IF YOU LOVE BACON!  AND WHO DOESN'T LOOOOOVE BACON?!?!

I am flying all the way to Vegas from the war-torn streets of Bangkok, but i need YOUR help to make the trip really worth while!

I am not above bribery either so, 

If elected, i promise to bring great, exotic prizes to give away!

So please,  

A VOTE FOR ME IS A VOTE FOR TROUBLE...

...AND THE WORLD NEEDS MORE TROUBLE!!!

PLEASE HELP!

Can I go blind from using WORKSETS by myself?

I work solo alot and i don't mind a bit. I get to do alot of interesting work that i am quite passionate about it. I get to explore many different avenues and abilities of REVIT that would be difficult if i was tied to the monogamy of a single project. I get to spend big chunks of time, looking at BIM-Porn on the internet and getting paid for it (BUILDZ is always soooooo sexy...I love Zach's deep voice in his videos..)

One of the consequences of pounding it out alone though is that i have never really had reason to play with 'worksets'...until I got this wacky model come across my desk the other day:

My job was to extract the grids from all the orange panels in the interest of structural analysis and downstream manufacturing. The model had come from the architcet with a whole bunch of worksets and all the facade panels were grouped together....easy enough to isolate, but still too damn many to work on all at once. So here is what i did.

First i picked the Panels i wanted to keep together and i put them in distinct worksets.

After the the worksets were created and the panels isolated, I turned the panels into a group and then exported them by right-clicking over the name in the GROUPS area of the project browser (process shown shown in the next 3 images).

and then BANG! I have an exported model of just the pieces I want.  INDO-BOY The API-Genius wrote me an add-in to pull the model lines out of the curtain grid.  Add some dimensions to check the modulation against the Archi-documents, export to DXF so my engineers can do the analysis in their software, and i am on the plane to Phuket by 6pm...

I am not afraid to admit that i use worksets all alone...by myself....and still haven't found any hair on my palms!

Out of curiosity, do i have ANY female readers (other than Lira)?  Somehow i doubt it.....I have been wondering if we could put together a Ladies of AU Calender this year....but somehow i think that would be a long shot...

Twisty Curvy Curtain Panel Fun

I am sure that many of us are familiar with the Phil Read Twisting Tower (PRTT) idea.  Simple mass family, top surface rotates according to an angle determined by the level/elevation of the piece...looks a bit like this:

 

I remember the first time i saw it, my opinion of Revit changed dramatically for the better.  When i learned how to build it myself, my opinion became even more positive! (Links to tutorials here) 

Good feelings aside, the dynamic form is so very sexy but i always felt limited by its inherently vertical nature.  I understand the relationship to constructability and all that, but i really wanted to push the form to the next level.  Curtain Panel Patterns give me the power.

First, i built a simple mass unit using the same principles as the PRTT, but i used the Curtain Panel By Pattern: RECTANGULAR SURFACE template, building the top and bottom rectangles on the edges of the panel.

Now i can apply these masses as a pattern on a surface.  I created a 4 point curve, attaching parameters to control the curvature, and then extruded a simple surface, dividing it appropriately:

   Then i applied the Rectangular Surface Pattern i had made:

After going through and numbering each individual panel to activate the 'twistyness', I was VERY pleased with the results.  Some of the engineers around me in the office looked at this and shuddered...but i don't care, I am in it for the monkey business!  Maybe i should change my name to CURTAIN PANEL BY PATTERN-TROUBLEMAKER!

With much respect, admiration and thanks to those who have come before me in this work, here is a link to Phil Read's presentation from AU2006 for the basic PRTT technique:
Advanced Autodesk Revit Building Techniques - Phil Read - BD41-3_AU2006.zip

And this link goes to the model of my Curtain Panel by Pattern monkey business:
twisty 3.rfa

Burmese Pagodas, Curtain Panels and Reporting Parameters

One of the perks of being based in Asia is that the travel opportunities are phenomenal.  A Burmese friend invited me to join him for a trip to visit his family in Myanmar.  Of course, I accepted and we spent a few days in Yangon and Mandalay.  At the end of the trip, he took me to a place called Bagan where there is a countless number of 1,000 year old brick pagodas like these:

As i spent the day in a horse drawn buggy, trotting across the desert looking at these forms, I started to wonder how to generate them in Revit.  I took particular interest in the textures and rings of the spires:

After trying a couple of different methods, it ended up being a really neat experiment in the use of curtain panels and the reporting parameters feature in 2011.

So here we go....

First thing i did was set up a pair of 3-point curves which i would use to set-up my elevation profiles.  By attaching parameters to the driving reference points, i could refine the shape later:

Each horizontal line represents a horzontal division of the model.  I will use this to get the stepped effect later on but first i had to place reference points at every intersection.  I simply placed the points on my curve and then pressed the HOST POINT BY INTERSECTION button.  I selected the line i wanted to link for the intersection and it worked like a charm.

Now that point will ALWAYS be where the line and curve intersect....And I can now put a reporting parameter to it that will come in handy later:

Next i had to make my curtain panels using the Panel Pattern Templates.  First i made a slab and a disc mass family:

Then nested these in to an OMNI GRID 2x2 Panel Pattern:

 

 

The 'Panel_HT' Paramenter is actually a reporting parameter that will be used to control the height of each Pattern Panel in the final model.  This is the Patterns after the nested parameters have been linked:

With this accomplished, I go back to my profile model and set up a pair of surfaces to divide and apply my pattern:

Now i go through and pick each panel individually and link its width to the reporting parameters i set up along the curve earlier in the exercise.  The end result looks like this:

Several of my Hindu and Buddhist colleagues got a real kick out of seeing this model on my computer screen as the work progressed.  They all had a deep religious connection to forms like this.

At the end of the exercise i noticed something very interesting as well, By burrowing down into my selection, I could actually divide the surfaces that made up the individual slabs....This would allow me to apply further textures and ornament to each individual panel element....This is a rabbit hole that goes down pretty far!

Model for Download:

CPP_Pagoda Profile.rfa

More pictures from Burma:

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/bimtroublemaker/OneWeekInMyanmar#

Nested Structural Elements: It's Just a Bad Idea or God Hates Me

I like consistency in my software, and Revit gives it to me in abundance....I am consistently beating my head against a wall because Revit doesn't do what I want it to, especially when it comes to nesting structural columns and beams in families.

This mess came from an attempt to sort out a post and beam family where a parameter controlled the distance between the columns while an angle parameter controlled the beam slope and column heights.

First I tried it as a line based family.  The columns were aligned and then locked to the reference planes.  A parameter was set to control the height of the columns and beam start/end points.

This worked great until i added the angle parameter....

Just like they said in CLASH OF THE TITANS, The God's move in unpredictable ways...

So I tried again....this time using a generic template, to see if i could get different results....

This is what it looked like in plan with my columns locked to reference planes:

Then checked out the flexing...

Looks good so far....or is it?  I brought it into a REVIT STRUCTURE project:

Looked dynamite....except for one small hitch, I can't snap to the structural elements!

Why?

Because the elements aren't shared.

Why?

Because structural element families don't have the SHARED box ticked.

Why?

I don't know, but if I tick the box myself, nest a column or beam in a family, and then import that family, i get a very ugly error message:

Looking at this mess side-by-side with my non-existent love life, I become convinced that god indeed hates me.

Models are here:

structural meshugas_Line based.rfa
structural meshugas_generic.rfa