The wonderful Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture series is one of the standard books on Revit. Highly recommended. Put together by this crew of knowledgeable folks, it's currently available from Amazon and soon as a downloadable version.
In additional to all the BIM basics, there are extra chapters on all sorts of great work being done via Revit. The one on Revit in the movie industry for set design is stunning! We got to help out on this one too, in that we wrote the extra chapter on BIM-to-CNC fabrication.
As part of the news on the wonderful Maker Faire that happened this weekend, several of the core Make: people were invited onto KQED's Forum. It was a great interview, talking about Make: Magazine, the Maker Faire, the lack of hands-on learning within (and outside of) schools, and a lot more. It's a great listen, and you should check it out here.
However the conversation turned towards products and business that have spun out of the Maker movement, and we got a shout-out! Very exciting to get on a radio program we listen to all the time!
Catch us on the Innovation Stage at noon on Saturday, May 22nd. We're giving a talk on 'Turning Pro: Becoming a Professional Maker' and we're super excited to be there!
We'll also be spending our first Maker Faire actually hanging out, visiting with people, and generally walking around instead of running artgolf or a booth or a CNC machine or other craziness like all the years past...
Last weekend we were in North Carolina visiting the birth place of Frank, also known as the Shopbot Headquarters.
We went to give a talk at their yearly Jamboree, which is basically a small Shopbot conference.
And it was really great! They do satellite Jamborees across the country, so look out for the next one. There were lots of great talks, great tips and interesting people. And lots of Shopbot demonstrations.
Our talk was on marketing and how to reach out to potential customers. There is a quick post of the talk here
And, the photo below is the new Tyro cutting away. This is their new table top CNC that is not for sale yet, but coming very soon.
We were also treated to an afternoon in the Shopbot manufacturing warehouse, where we got to ogle all the blue powder coated parts.
Not to mention this new machine set up where they have turned the gantry 90 degrees, now spanning over 8ft and allowing your machine bed to be open on the longer axis. Pretty cool.
Note worthy: While we were in the North Carolina Raleigh / Durham area, we went to the new Art Museum, which has just had a major addition and renovation done. It is very cool and worth seeing.
And we got some BBQ. Also, very worth doing in NC.
Congratulations to our dear friends (and clients!) Eunice and Daniel for their amazing wedding that we were honored to be a part of. A wedding that made the front cover of the Spring 2010 Martha Stewart Weddings issue!
We've been wanting to post pictures forever, but couldn't until the issue shipped. Expect to see a whole lot more soon here on the blog and under Events. We had a blast working with the very talented Eunice on the design of a flat-pack stage and various signs and props for the event, which we in turn fabricated with our trusty robot Frank.
BIMForum was amazing. We were honored to be included! The presentations were all great. It's certainly wonderful to see the newest developments out there within our industry.
As always, the steel fabrication guys are way ahead of the curve. We got to see a presentation from Chris Fischer of Schuff Steel where they talked about going from BIM models (Tekla, in this instance) to their fully automated steel shop, where huge CNC plasma machines and automated conveyer systems process massive steel beams all day long. It's just like we do, except a whole lot bigger and heavier!
We also got to hear from my old boss Ken Sanders and a fellow Gensler friend Shawn Geile with a stunning presentation on the epic towers Gensler is working on. One of which was just finished at the LA Live! Center. It was great to see that building complete, as I helped out in the early stages of it years ago when I was still at Gensler. A very complex project that could only be done via BIM, yet a complex project to do with BIM!
When it came our turn to talk we focused on our in-house process we use for fully leveraging CNC and BIM together for creative interiors. Happy to say that it went over very well and that we hope to get a video of it up soon.
Best thing about the conference was all the new friends we made. There are some amazing people out there doing simply incredible things. Specialty contractors making mountains for Disney, civil engineerings using automated robotic grading machines, huge contractors coordinating whole skyscrapers, to programmers developing totally new ways of collaborating together: across the board, everyone we met was up to something mind-blowing and awesome.
We're sad that our schedule won't allow us to make the next one in June. But we certainly hope to go again soon!
To continue our little run of press we've had lately, we were lucky enough to be included in an article on the MAKE: Blog about couples what work together.
And it was really great! They do satellite Jamborees across the country, so look out for the next one. There were lots of great talks, great tips and interesting people. And lots of Shopbot demonstrations.
Our talk was on marketing and how to reach out to potential customers. There is a quick post of the talk 
We were also treated to an afternoon in the Shopbot manufacturing warehouse, where we got to ogle all the blue powder coated parts.
Not to mention this new machine set up where they have turned the gantry 90 degrees, now spanning over 8ft and allowing your machine bed to be open on the longer axis. Pretty cool.
Note worthy: While we were in the North Carolina Raleigh / Durham area, we went to the new 
And we got some BBQ. Also, very worth doing in NC.
We also got to hear from my old boss 
We're sad that our schedule won't allow us to make the next one in June. But we certainly hope to go again soon! 
Make: Online series: Maker Business
So now you are reading about how you can read on 
