Jeffrey McGrew's blog

Renew! With new digs, comes new changes, and one is that Frank has been rebuilt into a heavy metal monster. Here's a rather drama-filled photo of me pondering what I've gotten myself into.

When we first got Frank, we made a wood table. This was a Bad Idea, but we didn't know any better. It worked, but there were many issues with having a table that's just not stiff enough. So with the move came a new metal table, one of our own design.

The last thing Frank did before getting taken apart for moving was cutting out the aluminum plates for his new table. Kind of poetic we felt. We wanted to give the new Frank table a 'modern googie' kind of feel, for it's a freakin' robot, it should look like the future. We've always been bummed that our CNC table didn't look that cool before, for when folks saw it for the first time it was always somewhat antilimatic.

So the table is based upon C6x8.2 steel channel, custom cut 6160 aluminum plate, and a Bosch aluminum 40x160 extrusion. It's bolted down to the floor, very level, very square, and very stiff. Like everything else we do, we designed it out with Revit first, which was handy for it's already got all the steel shapes in it's library, so we only had to make families for the custom plates and the Bosch aluminum bit.

Next we're replacing the Sager laptop that we run Frank off of now with a custom-built Shuttle pc in an enclosure under the table, getting a spindle, and setting up a vacuum hold-down. But already just swapping to the metal table has made our cutting quality and speed go way up. Can't beat that!

While our cute little barn we begin our business in is dear to our hearts, it's been too small for us for a while now. We've seriously outgrown it, and are looking to move! We're looking for:

• More than 750 sq. ft. at a minimum, with 1000+ being preferable.
• Would love a work-work commercial space, but a live/work could do if it's big enough and setup right.
• Decent power. Nothing huge, mind you, but Frank and the dust collector aren't lightweights either.
• Ground floor is preferable, but big freight elevators could work.
• Something that can actually have a shop. We make stuff. Including noise and dust. While we keep it under tight wraps, we're not office building material.
• Close to BART.
• Some sort of parking.
• Not too scary. And, for reference, we're currently in the lower bottoms of west Oakland, so scary is relative.

What we can offer as savvy talented design-builders:

• Any build-out we'll need to do will be fully to code, with permits, drawings, etc. It's what we do, after all.
• And heck, if you want to add or change more of the building we can help out with that too.
• A multi-year lease, in the range of two-to-three years, for around $1 a square foot if possible, but we could go higher for the right spot.

So while we're asking friends, looking for rental signs, and hitting refresh on Craig's list every five minutes, we'd love to hear from y'all if you know of space out there that would be a good home for us. Thanks a ton!

Been a while since I've blogged anything about Revit, so I thought I'd share this little gem. It's something we've made heavy use of here at BWC, and it's something that while simple isn't widely known about Revit.

You can make your own Family Templates. While Revit comes with tons of them ready to go, there are things about them that don't always match up to your needs, and you always seem to repeat the same beginning steps with some of them every time you go to make a Family. Well no more! By making your own Revit Family Templates, you can add those redundant steps into your Templates, and even go farther when doing repetitive work.

Let's give it a go! Go to where your Templates are, most likely /Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Autodesk/RAC 2008/Imperial Templates/. Let's pick the Generic Model template, the most basic of them all, and copy it in the same folder. Let's rename our copy 'My Family Template' for now like so:

Cool. OK, here's the only trick. In order to edit the template, simply change it's file extension from .RFT to .RFA. Click OK when Windows warns you that this will change how the file will open. If it's telling you that the file is read-only, click ok, and then change the file attributes to be editable before you go any farther. Now we can open it up in Revit and edit it. Now we can add some Reference Planes, and basic width and depth dims and parameters like so:

And then we save our Family, and then close it out. Go back to the Template folder, and let's change our file's extension back to .RFT. Now when we go back into Revit, and pick File -> New -> Family to make a new Family, you'll see our self-made template file is a valid choice to start from:

And, if we do so, you'll see that those basic things we added to the Family are now just defaults, ready to go every time we need them. Also, you'll notice that we can't delete these things we added. When something is made into a Family Template, it 'locks' the added elements in, so that they are now undelete-able defaults. It can be handy, but also not. Plan ahead, and make a few different templates, and all will be fine.

So here at BWC we've made Family Templates for commonly-sized elements and furniture we deal with. It's made making Families a lot faster, for now I'm not re-doing the same beginning steps over and over, such as setting up basic reference planes, changing the units to decimal inches, setting up views for CNC export, changing all the view's scales to better match the size of the thing I'm modeling, etc. This trick alone probably saves me at least fifteen minutes a day, for as you can imagine we spend a lot of time on custom families. ;-)

You can take this idea a lot farther too, where you make a 'proto-door' that has most everything your common door has, and that meets your standards, and is a lot closer to your needs than the default door template that comes with Revit. This way, you only have to model that last little 20% or so, and you're done. Great when you have to do a whole line or series of products! You can also make some templates for common setups that you like to nest into other families too. For example, we've set one up of a door panel that has a parametric swing. So now, when we need to make a new door, first we make a new door panel, that already has a parametric swing and dimensions, and all we need to do is edit or add to the model to get it to match the conditions we're going for, i.e. a vision panel or a panic bar. Then we make another new Family, based off of a custom door template, that's ready to nest that first panel Family into it, and with a few aligns and locks we've got ourselves fully parametric door, with adjustable swing, yet customized, and done in probably just a few minutes!

We saw them on desks. We saw them on lawns. We even saw them on a car. But by far the best was still the one where it was taped to a rock in the wilds of remote Australia:

A big thanks goes out to Clinton & Meech, who will be receiving a real Squirrel Table of their very own shortly (well, shortly being how long it takes to get to the outback)!
Thanks everyone for the pictures!

We'd like to give a big hearty thanks to Clinton & Meech for this photo of a downloadable Squirrel Table in the wilds of Meekatharra, Western Australia!

It's the furthest (and best) photo yet! Keep them coming!

Remember, download the table, cut it out, take a pic, and send it to us. Best photo by the end of October wins a real Squirrel Table in the size and finish of the winner's choice!

So our good friends Windell and Lenore over at Evil Mad Scientist Labs (the folks we teamed up with to make our LED coffee tables) posted a nice video of the tables in action. Check it out:

EMS Labs is also now offering just the LED part of the table as a do-it-yourself-kit that you can get here. Note it's not for the freight of heart, but if you're handy with a soldering iron you can make your own table on the cheap!

The Green Livin' blog TreeHugger is promoting a really cool campaign of 'downloadable design', and we're honored to be included! TreeHugger approached several small-time designers working in flat-pack and sustainable furniture design. They asked us all to scale down one of our designs to little cute 1/6 scale versions that could be downloaded as a PDF, printed out, and then cut out of paper. Here's our Squirrel Table:

Cute huh? The big idea here is that in the future, you'll be able to just buy a design like you do a music track on the iTunes music store, and then either fabricate it at home or visit your friendly local CNC production shop and have it made. No shipping, close to home, local economies, local materials, custom-made stuff that fits needs better (and is less likely to be landfill-bound). A very Green way to deliver on custom design and to empower folks to have more interesting and engaging surroundings. Two things we're 100% behind!

There is a new company, Ponoko, that is already working to set up a network of CNC shops, Designers, Material Suppliers, and Customers to deliver on this idea. Exciting times, and right in line with some of what we're working hard on here at Because We Can!

We're so into this idea that we're partnering up with TreeHugger and running a contest where anyone can submit their design, which will be reviewed by a panel of judges, and the winning one we'll turn into a ready-to-cut file and fabricate for the lucky winner! Submit your designs here, we can't wait to see what folks come up with!

Not much of a designer? Then we've got another mini-contest for you! Download our mini table, cut it out, and then photograph it on your desk, or home, on your cat's head, or whatever other cool place you can think of. If you e-mail or send us the best photo by the end of October, we'll ship you a real life full-size Squirrel Table of your choosing! Get snipping!

Every mini-golf course needs a dinosaur. And who are we to do otherwise?
However, this being a mini-golf course for the Austin, Texas Maker Faire, well, a little dino just won't do. Wouldn't be proper, even at three feet tall.

Just some quick news about our site: we've made some upgrades and updates to our online store!

We're fully setup to take credit cards directly now, but y'all can still pay via Paypal if you want. The store is much faster now too, as well as being fully encrypted, signed, and verified. Running on the latest Drupal Ecommerce, we hope you find it a much better shopping experience than before.

We've also got some additional shipping options up there on our larger items (so you can see what our standard freight costs are prior to ordering) and we've been able to drop the price a little on our nice interactive LED coffee tables.

Check it out!

We'll be posting more items up on it soon, with some big surprises and new products hitting next month!

One thing we like to talk about here at Because We Can is the fact that we're 'Agile'. It doesn't mean we are just handy with the robot, or that we can catching things when you throw them at us (and jump away when those things are sharp), but it actually goes a lot deeper than that. We use something called 'Scrum' to manage our projects and business.