BIM

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.

So go and grab your copy today!

There is only one more day left of the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. If you get the chance to go, check out the booth we made for Unity Technologies. It's hard to miss them on the trade show floor, as they are front and center! And their booth looks a little differently from everyone else's. Instead of the hard plastic and pop-up look of the booths around it, we made them a booth with inviting wooden furniture and a dramatic feel. It's all sustainable materials too! The main elements included: A big big wall with Unity Logos and Flat screens A podium A Standing Reception Desk A Triangular counter table for 3 iMacs A station for 4 iphones Two Long Counter tables for demo stations Six cabinets with signage for their affiliates (shown here standing back to back) Thirteen little stools And a lounge area!

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!

So with all the talk recently both in favor of and the rather cynical counter-take on the whole 'new industrial revolution' I figure that it might be good for someone who's personally involved within that movement to state their thoughts on the topic. Take it for what you will, for this is just my view of the situation, but so far most of what I've seen written about it hasn't come from anyone directly involved with it.

Who am I to talk about it? Well, a few years ago my wife and I bought a CNC routing table without much idea beyond making cool stuff with it. As a matter of fact, it's the very first blog post on this blog. We'd never even used a CNC machine before, actually never even seen one before in person, but figured that we could figure it out, and with help from others online and the company we bought it from we got it running. We started making stuff for friends. That blossomed into a business. Pretty soon we quit our day jobs, and now we're even hiring people. We were the first ones to bring a CNC router to Maker Faire. Hell, my wife and business co-founder's picture was on the poster for the first two years of Maker faire. So we're smack in the middle of this 'movement' I think.

Everyone seems to be having a hard time figuring out exactly what to call what we're doing. We've had this problem too. In fact, I have yet to hear anything that really nails it. But this guy comes the closest with the thought of calling it 'punk manufacturing'.

Let's take a brief look at punk rock then. OK, so before punk, it was thought that in order to be in a great band you'd need to be a virtuoso. Get signed by a big label and all that. Rock music was all about big production, big ideas, big marketing, and 15 minute guitar solos. Then along comes punk. Suddenly, anyone with a good idea and passion can have a great band. Get rich? Probably not. But at least have a chance to be something more than whatever they were before. Have some great stories. Maybe even make enough money to just play music and not have to work some crap job.

And for most that was enough. I mean, heck, leisure for half the people on this planet is a full stomach, so getting to play music for a living, even if it's a lower middle class living, sounds like a hell of a deal to me. Sure, by the second or third wave you had punk bands like Green Day making a killing, and all that big media stuff getting back into it, but even those Green Day guys were starving teenage punks at one point, just playing music because they loved it, and riding that for as long as they could.

So now we've got the 'Makers Movement'. The new industrial revolution. But honestly, it's just a bunch of folks that via new possibilities can do what they have always wanted to do: make stuff. I think that both extremes of the Wired article and Gizmodo's response totally miss the fundamental point: it's really about freedom. Freedom for those of us who have only wanted to make things, to be able to do so, and make enough of a living that we can spend all our time doing what we love.

The sad reality that I have seen today is that anyone interested in making things goes to school for many years with the hope of being able to make fantastic things. Then they graduate, only to work on soul depraving things for years on end. Either pushing lines around in a CAD program drawing bathrooms, or designing headlights to purposely break in around five years. These are the tasks kids out of collage are given, and it drains them. Only after working for a very long time, or playing well at inter-office political games, or becoming an academic to support themselves, or being really, really lucky, only then do they even have the very remote chance of being in any sort of leadership role; deciding what's getting made. I know so many disheartened engineers, architects and industrial designers. Once in the real world, they've found that no matter how good their ideas are, or how much passion they have, or how hard they work, it simply dosen't matter. Until they fight their way to the top they are going to be nothing but a cog in some vast design machine.

We all went into this wanting to make stuff, and came out not making much of anything.

So along comes cheap hardware, cheap CNC machines, and the Internet. Suddenly, we can all make stuff. All the stuff we've always wanted. And, hopefully, we can find lots of people to sell it to. People who love it. Heck, maybe we can even keep our day jobs, and make stuff on the side. Or we can start our own business 100% and see if our ideas will really fly. We can make the stuff that our friends will love. We can make the stuff that we love. It opens up vast new areas. Just like with punk, all it takes is an instrument and an idea and you're on your way. Are you going to be a rock star? Get rich? Probably not, but who cares about all that corny self-centered stuff when you're having this much fun simply doing it?

So will it change the world? You know what, us Makers really don't care. We're having too much fun doing what we love. We're free to simply follow whatever idea we've got as far as we can. If you think for a second I'm not going to ride that for all I can, when all I've ever wanted to do in my life is make great things, then you've got a strange idea of how people work.

There seems to be a crazy idea today that if you're not trying to be the next Google, that whatever you're doing is stupid. Or if what you're doing isn't going to make you famous, then it's not worth doing. The truth is, most people would be more than happy to be free to do what they love and make enough money at it to have a decent life.

Honestly, I can't help but wonder if both the Wired wild-eyed fanboy response, and the very cynical counter-response, is partially from envy, and partially from being bitter at being stuck at a desk job. What's wrong with a bunch of new small business sprouting up all over America? Small business built this country, small business are the backbone of this country, and frankly, big business has zero interest in a lot of local issues where small businesses are all about local issues. If this movement launches a slew of new small businesses, I think it will indeed have an impact on our world, every bit as much as the Internet has.

The Gizmodo article does raise one very valid point: not everyone is going to be part of this thing. Which is fine, really. Everyone having access to guitars didn't make us all punk rockers. Everyone having access to a computer didn't turn us all into programmers. Everyone having access to a worldwide publishing system didn't make us all interesting bloggers. So everyone having access to manufacturing capability isn't going to make everyone suddenly a professional Maker. And that's OK.

Let's look at it this way: I'm now a small business owner, making a middle-class life for myself, and starting to employ others. While over the last two years the world famous Architecture firm I used to work for has laid off almost half it's staff. Working for a big company is no more stable than what we're doing, and heck, what we're doing seems to be working pretty well so far. I'm adding a lot more value to the overall GDP and my local community now then I was when I was working for that big firm. I'm creating real value, here, in my backyard. And while I loved working at that big firm, and running our own thing is terribly stressful and hard at times, man, I wouldn't go back unless I had absolutely no other choice.

In other words life isn't just about profit, nor is that the only meter one should measure a business with. I feel both Wired and Gizmodo totally missed the point here: it's about freedom and happiness, plain and simple.

We're honored to be included in this year's BIMForum conference in Phoenix, AZ! We'll be giving a talk about BIM-to-CNC fabrication on Thursday afternoon, January 14th, at 3:15 pm. We'll be focusing a lot on our in-house process we use to go from BIM to Digital Fabrication. We'll also be talking about the big changes that have been recently happening in that space. With a few fun things to show off, we've got high hopes that it will be a great talk!

In the past, CNC machines were used to solve one of two problems: either you needed to make a whole lot of something quickly, or you needed to make something that wasn't easy to make by hand. CNC machines were all about high production rates. And they had to be, for they were ungodly expensive, and the software and know-how even moreso. But now with CNC machines getting cheap enough, and the knowledge widespread enough, so that anyone can use them for almost anything they can think of, well, it really changes the whole game. And that's exactly what were going to be talking all about!

The BIMForum conference is held twice a year by the Associated General Contractors of America, an industry group akin to the AIA or AIGA but for builders. With a focus on emerging technology and it's use in the building industry, BIMForum looks to be wonderful conference of AGC people. People who are really making changes and making things work. So many of these technology-focused building industry talks can wander into the tall reeds of theory. So we're rather interested in talking to a bunch of people who are more about the day-to-day realities of getting things built! We're really looking forward to meeting everyone.

Hope to see you there!

We're proud to share that we recently won the Design Slam Competition at Autodesk University earlier this month!

The Design Slam is a intense challenge of design, skill, and presentation, all compressed into 20 minutes. Run by Cut&Paste these mini design competitions are for all sorts of different toolsets, from Photoshop to 3D software.

Three competitors are given a design problem (or "brief" as it's sometimes known) a few weeks prior, and are only allowed to bring a handful of pre-made pieces with them. No notes, sketches, or anything else, and all the pre-made stuff you bring gets reviewed by a panel for fairness. Then it's off to the races, you've got to do the entire project in 20 minutes, live, in front of everyone at the same time, and then present your idea. Best person wins. So it's a balance of technical ability, design chops, and presentation skills that wins!

This being at Autodesk University, Autodesk's great get-together, the competitions were all focused on one of their tools. We were invited to participate in the Revit competition, up against heavy-hitters from HOK and Burt Hill, William Lopez Campo & Arman Chowdhury, two amazing people from amazing firms. One of which had already won one of these things in Germany. Stiff competition!

The design problem was to make a temporary pavilion at a French historic site: The Royal Salt Works of Claude Nicolas. Called 'Dangerous Liaisons' it was to help visitors encounter the site in new ways, inform and entertain them, while expressing the site's rich history, both Architecturally and culturally.

Here was the pitch for the judges: Salt crystals grow mathematically from a single introduced flaw, chaos controlled via structure. Supplanted by Culture & Tourism, Salt is no longer the power to France it once was. So we proposed that we turn the Salt Works into a Cultural Works for a summer by reviving the old factory buildings with the temporary installation a CNC router, and in turn fabricating onsite a whole series of elements to celebrate the site and the culture of France.

Not only a series of towers, a view platform, a bandshell, and cafe pavilions would be generated onsite, but also sellable designer products made from the scrap of the sustainable plywood left over.

No two of any of these items would be alike; for the use of parametricly-driven elements, consumer-driven customization, visiting designers-in-residence, and a simple randomizer script would make creating unique items easy and affordable.

The towers would collect power via draped solar panels, which in turn would drive a site-specific wifi network running an augmented reality application for common smart phones for the visitors to interact with.

This application would not only label everything onsite when viewed thru the smartphone, and show visual ghosts of what was to be historically, it would lead the assembly of the various elements via 2D barcode tags attached directly to the onsite fabricated parts. Thus turning the act of building into a celebratory group effort, a structure that wants to be built, and a new utopian model for our current times reflecting the original utopian ideals woven into the site and it’s history.

Finally, everything shown here is ready for CNC fabrication, right now, from this model, ready to go, and we made and brought along a prototype model to prove it! We really wanted to focus on something that was more build-able, less conceptual.

So the images you see here are nicer renderings and a slightly more detailed version of what we did on stage in 20 minutes. A very intense 20 minutes indeed!

Here's the image that Jeffrey created in the Design Slam itself, where he only had time to do one rendering.

We also have a video of it, and we'll post here on our blog again once the 'official' video goes live on the Cut&Paste site!

Also for those Revit heavies out there, we'll be following up with a more Revit-specific post about how we made the towers, complete with some Families for y'all to download and play with!

Hey, just a quick note: we won the Design Slam at AU 2009! W00t! We'll follow up with a more detailed blog post soon, showing what we did, but wow, we're both excited and humbled by the whole experience. Both HOK and Burt Hill threw down great solutions, and frankly at the end I thought HOK had it in the bag. Maybe my flashy Fluevog Boots I had on that impressed the judges. Honestly though, there is no way I could have possibly won without the support of my whole crew. BWC FTW! Now onto our classes!

So we're honored to be in this year's Design Slam at Autodesk University. We've already won just by being included. But it would be nice to beat HOK and Burt Hill! ;-) Anyways, I can't share anything about our entry prior, and sure will be posting about it after, but in the mean time wish us luck and enjoy the final playlist. We can plug into music to help us focus and work better. I really use music a lot when I work, so this was a natural for me! I did consider just putting on some Gamelan music, which I just adore, but figured I needed something more rocking to overcome the techno they pump on stage. So here's the (approximate) 20 minute playlist: 1. "Sound System" by Operation Ivy. Two things. We're Oaklanders. East Bay. Wanted to Represent. Second, this song is terribly uplifting, and I'll need that to calm my nerves and have fun. 2. "It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" by Faust. We were supposed to have French themes in the competition. We wound up with German ProgRock. Sigh. We're doomed. But it's a driving song. I love drone-y music to work to. Probably should have picked something by Stereolab instead. 3. "This Magnificent Bird Will Rise" by Deerhoof. Another local. The combination of noise, exuberance, art, and well, plain rocking in this track always gives me chills. 4. "Hey! Mashed Potato, Hey!" by the 5,6,7,8's. OK, guilty pleasure. I've been working out to this song a lot lately, and figured it would keep me going through the 'hump' of the middle. 5. "Kingdom Farts" by MC Chris. Yeah. Nerdcore. A rap song about how awesome he is at and how much he loves Video Games. I figured this would be a good finale, very fitting for the activity at hand, and well, I just love this song! Even though I love MC Frontalot more overall...

Wow! Where has the time gone. Less than two weeks left until Autodesk University 2009, where we'll be networking, teaching, pontificating, and competing! Getting to be part of the DesignSlam has been a great experience so far, and we're not even on stage yet. Just getting the chance to dig into some tools we haven't used fully within Revit has been a wonderful (but challenging) experience. See you there!

So Autodesk has put a lot of work into making it easier to move from tool to tool. New UI elements, certain features, and things like the ViewCube all come into play. But let's take things a little deeper, and talk about what Revit could learn from the other big tools of Autodesk's, and vise versa:

What Revit could learn from Max:

1. Robust selection tools. The ability to pre-filter your selections in Max, so that you'll only be able to click on Cameras, or Lights, is very helpful. As is the various ways one can select multiple items and save selection sets. Also the ability to 'loosely" select things, draw selection boundaries, and with organic 'falloff'. Sure, in Revit one can make Schedules to pick multiple specific things, and one can cut-and-paste Element ID's, but both aren't nearly as nice as some of the tools in Max. I still find myself hitting Tab endlessly, or cursing that the Filter tool isn't specific enough, or having to expand out the Family tree in the Project Browser and dig down four levels of branches to get the item I need.

2. Full control over rendering materials. While I understand that it's 'Mental Ray Light' in Revit, and it's been really useful to us here to have a better rendering engine directly in Revit, it certainly would be a lot nicer if we could make more complex materials. The ProMaterials Revit uses are nice and all, but trying to do something a little more complex, like make a 'mist' material or getting a fabric to UV wrap onto a chair properly are both a major pain in Revit. Even just having the ability to make procedural materials, or materials with more than one layer to them, would save us tons of time that we spend now making 'uber' bitmaps in Photoshop. While I don't think it needs to be nearly as complex as Max, the ability to have better material controls in Revit would be a huge help.

3. Modifiers. Man, is it nice to be able to simply throw a Modifier on some geometry, and have it do something fast and easy. Also being able to randomize elements, or non-distructively play with geometry, to auto-optomise a mesh are all huge. In Revit, we can make things Parametric, sure. But then it's still up to use to make it random. Placing random plants is a huge timesuck. I can make different Types to play with the design, but it's more cumbersome and I can only control the things I've planned ahead to control. And optimization? By hand!

What Max could learn from Revit:

1. More and better types of Views. Max can be a mess of multicolored geometry, difficult to navigate, and difficult to understand. Just having something as simple as Revit's Orient to View and Section Boxes would be huge. Or the ability to have a proper, easy to define section. Instead of having to endlessly manage visibility of elements via layers or elements, better views would make it much easier to get at what I need and change it quickly. Also I would never show a client a live Max model, whereas we model live in Revit with clients all the time. This really cuts into our ability to use Max as a design tool of any kind.

2. A consistent UI and workflow. Oh man, I always have to sit in amazement when people talk about how hard Blender is to use, or how the 2010 UI in Revit is 'a mess'. You want to see a mess? Try Max. It's like seven different UI's over the top of each other, there are five ways to do anything, and settings for any given thing are in three different disparate places that are all in floating overlapping Windows. If I worked with Max here, I'd get a multiple monitor rig just to support it. They have made this a lot better with 2010's Ribbon and better Render Window mind you, but it still pales in comparison to Revit's rather straightforward and structured UI and workflow. I spend half my time with Max simply remembering where to go, or searching help files, when having to adjust even simple things like Exposure and the Sky in a rendering.

3. Worksharing. The ability for more than one person to work on the same thing at the same time. It's amazing to me that Max, which costs as much as Revit, doesn't have the innate ability to have more than one person work on the same model at the same time, like you can in Revit. This means that even on project where Max would make more sense for us to use, we're more than willing to put up with Revit's faults just because we can then all work together on the project.

One final 'Shame': That you can't work in perspective views in Revit. This something so basic and that I was doing over 15 years ago in Caligari on an Amiga! Max has always had this too. What's up with that, Revit?