Jeffrey McGrew, our principal and co-founder, gave a keynote speech at Autodesk University this year! The whole keynote is embedded above, and Jeffrey's on around 24 minutes in.

Core 77 also transcribed his speech, and posted it on there blog, with a nice little forward.

We simply love Maker Faire. Having been involved from the start, we've demoed CNC machines, made delightful portable mini-golf courses, collaborated on LED interactive tables, and always really enjoyed connecting with people over the passion of making awesome stuff. This year we were too busy to do anything big and complex, so we instead gave a talk on a subject near and dear to our hearts: how to make secret doors!

For those who missed us yesterday at the Faire, here's a summary of our Maker Faire talk: The Secrets of Secret Doors. Enjoy!

Hi! We’re Jillian and Jeffrey, and we run a design-build studio called Because We Can in Oakland, California. We use big ideas and big technology to make awesome buildings, interiors, and furniture. With our CNC router from Shopbot and modeling tools from Autodesk (both here at the Maker Faire!) we can quickly make anything your heart desires.

One thing we’ve had the chance to integrate into our projects is... secret doors! Secret doors are so great we try to sneak them into whatever project we can. They are a wonderful challenge for a Maker. A challenging combination of design, ingenuity, and craft.

Today, we’re going to show examples of one’s we’ve made. We’re going to give you all nefarious ideas to make your own secret doors, from basic and cheap to hella expensive. And that’s the thing: simple secret doors can be made for not very much money at all!

Let’s start with a classic: the Bookcase secret door. They are pretty easy to make: you create a swiveling bookcase that simply covers an existing door. This is great because you get more storage and a secret door. It’s win win!

Here is one that was a simple construction that we did for an office in San Francisco. It's a large bookcase that swings out to reveal a secret room behind it! That swinging bookcase is attached to the non-moving one next to it with nifty secret hinges from a company called Soss. Soss hinges are awesome. They look like this!

That’s ‘S O S S’, the invisible hinge company, best friend to secret door makers for over 100 years. You can get them in all different sizes and strengths, from tiny box hinges to huge ones like we used on this bookcase door. They are perfect for secret compartments and doors, for unlike a normal hinge, you can't see them when the door is closed. They are available from many different suppliers and even at your local hardware store.

Now, the swinging bookcase is attached to the ‘anchor’ bookcase next to it. And that ‘anchor’ bookcase is secured to the wall so it can hold crazy amounts of weight. A big swinging bookcase door is rather heavy, and in earthquake country we wanted a solution that was secure and would last and last. We like to either screw into the wall studs or use these zip tie anchors for situations like this.

They aren’t actually called zip-tie anchors, they have different names depending on the brand (one brand is 'Toggler'), but everyone who uses them seems to call them zip-tie anchors. Here is a little demonstration of how they work. You drill a large 1/2" hole in the wall, and insert the metal part of the anchor into it. Then using the plastic tabs, you 'toggle' the metal part to become flat, and pull it back towards you so that it becomes a flush metal plate inside the wall. Then you 'zip-tie' the front part of the anchor to the front surface of the wall, then break off the plastic tabs. This gives you a strong threaded hole in your wall that you can bolt things securely into and are rated for lots of weight.

Using the Soss hinges hid the pivot, but we wanted to go a little farther with the illusion. So we made more bookcases along the same wall that don’t open. OR DO THEY?!? No really, by placing the bookcase in context it makes for a much bigger surprise. A lone bookcase in an office or home without any other bookcases is very suspect! Context plays a huge role here, it's a lot like a magician getting you to look the other way so you don't see the trick.

This is a pretty big door and it’s pretty heavy! If it simply hung from the hinges it might sag over time and rub on the floor. Which would be sad for the secret door wouldn't work very well anymore. So to keep the door easy to move and working well, it actually has hidden casters under it. We used non-marking rubber wheels so that over time they wouldn't mark up the floor. You can order these special caster wheels from any caster supplier or Mcmaster.com.

Now, with our secret door we actually took a decorative item and bolted it to the shelf to act as the handle. You can also do the classic ‘pull the book’ and have it pull a catch to open the door. However be careful with whatever you do that it doesn’t break and stick the door closed!

Now, what happens if you’ve got carpeting? If your carpeting shows marks of a door opening on it.... well that’s a dead give away. And thus no good for a secret door! Or what if you don’t have the room to have the secret door swing out? While it’s possible to make bookcase doors that swing in rather than out, it’s a lot more tricky and expensive. So in this project, we went sidewise!

This secret door is actually hung from a track that’s mounted into the studs above it. It’s actually ‘floating’ over the floor, just barely touching the carpet. It moves easily and silently side-to-side, revealing the door behind. Again, a big steel rail & the rollers and mounts can be ordered from McMaster.com. We painted the rail the same color as the wall to hide it. The dark colored walls allowed us to do this and still be fairly inconspicuous. You could hide the rail even more by adding a picture attached to the bookcase that covers the rail when the door is closed, but what's funny is no one ever seems to notice it right away at all until the door moves!

One thing to point out here is that the back of the bookshelves match the walls. You notice they did in the first example as well. This adds to the illusion, tricking your eye to think it is looking at the wall, not the bookshelf back.

It’s amazing what you can hide in plain sight too. While we didn’t intend for these doors from our old shop to be ‘secret’ they really turned out that way! The middle part there are a pair of smaller doors, then the whole thing opens up huge when you want it to. False bottoms, false backs, and removable panels all fall into this category. Hiding something in plain sight really works a lot of the time, so you don't need to get too fancy about things!

  

Can’t make a bookcase to save your life? Well another classic is the secret painting door. Mounting a picture on hinges so it swings out is really easy to do. They can cover anything from a small opening to a whole door. Now, this looks expensive, but those ‘paintings’ are actually large format inkjet prints on canvas.

These images were from the client, but any decent resolution picture would work just fine. We stretched and stapled them to a plywood backer. Then we framed them with pre-cut framing we ordered online. We then simply hung the ‘painting’ from hinges screwed into the wood of the door trim.

Magnetic catches are also a huge help here. These doors snap closed, and are easy to pull open by pulling the edge of the frame. That way when they are closed they look very convincing. If you wanted to get fancy about it, you could even make a cutout for the eyes (so you can spy on people) or make a more complex latch, where you have to pull or swivel something else to open the painting.

Online, examples abound for secret doors, both historic and recent. Doing a little research will give you all sorts of great ideas. There are companies that do nothing but make secret doors or furniture with secret compartments. They are pretty easy to find online and will give you great ideas for your own projects. And of course we’d totally love to help you out with you secret door project! We've made several and have a few more in the works. If you're remodeling your home or office, why not include a little delightful surprise?

Historic research can be a great inspiration. Egyptian tombs have all kinds of secret doors and chambers, some of which we’ve only recently found due to fancy technology! Both old European and Asian castles are rife with secret passages and stories of their use. It wasn’t unusual in houses a century or more ago to provide secret passages to the Maid’s quarters so they didn’t disturb the owners of the house. Entrances in cabinets and closets to secret hallways built into the walls are common in some areas!

Many a speakeasy had a secret door to keep itself safe. In New York City there was a speakeasy called the "21 Club." A secret door hid the liquor supply in the cellar. The door was designed to appear as a solid concrete wall. The door, which weighed two and a half tons, was supported by massive hinges and could be opened only by inserting an 18" length of wire through one of several cracks in the concrete. It's still there today!

Some really inspiring recent examples can be found on the MAKE: blog as well with the interactivity people are adding to things using electronics. Using affordable Arduino controllers, Makers are creating wonderful things where a secret knock gives you a gumball or opens a door, or boxes that only open when taken to a certain place.

So that’s some of the secrets of secret doors! Just to recap:

Don’t ruin the surprise! Hide those hinges and catches.

Don’t make it obvious! Put the door in context. Or make it look like something else.

Don’t make it too complex! Hardware exists that will make your life easier.

And that's some of the secrets of secret doors!

Meet us tomorrow, May 21st, at Maker Faire for our talk: "The Secrets of Secret Doors"!

Having made several secret doors, it's a subject we simply love. Really looking forward to sharing the practical and pragmatic tips on the unpractical practice of building secret doors.

We're on at the Maker Live Stage at 4:30 PM, and wandering around the Faire the rest of the day.

Look forward to seeing you there!

We're giving a repeat of our Maker Faire small business talk "Turning Pro: Becoming a Professional Maker" at The Remake Lounge tonight as part of the monthly SF:Make meetup.

The talk was a hit at Maker Faire, for it's all about basic business lessons we've learned from the perspective of a professional Maker.

Come check it out, and hope to see you tonight!

We're giving a repeat of our Maker Faire small business talk "Turning Pro: Becoming a Professional Maker" at Tech Liminal (an Oakland technology salon) tonight as part of the SF:Make meetup.

The talk was a hit at Maker Faire, for it's all about basic business lessons we've learned from the perspective of a professional Maker.

We'll be giving it again later this month in San Francisco as well.

Come check it out, and hope to see you tonight!

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...

Hope to see you there!

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.

Come see us at Maker Faire 2010!

We're happy to annouce that we'll be giving a talk at this year's Maker Faire!

It's going to be on going Pro as a Maker, somewhat along the lines of our recent Make: Blog post.

We're very excited and looking forward to a great Faire!

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!

We're excited to be invited speakers at 2010's Shopbot Jamboree, their annual convention!

It's going to be tons of fun to go and visit where Frank, our CNC routing table, came from as well as get to meet a whole new circle of great Makers. We're really looking forward to it!

We're going to be talking about some business and online marketing stuffs. So catch us in North Carolina in April!

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!

Tomorrow I'll be part of the AIA TAP conference in Chicago, via teleconference and video!

We were honored to be included in the annual AIA convention this year. Back in April, the San Francisco Digital Design Breakfast Club, an informal local group of designers who get together monthly to talk technology, organized a short Pecha-Cucha style series of short talks for the AIA.

We were invited to give a short presentation on our in-house process, and had a great time boiling that process down into a quick five minute talk. You can see the videos here.

There is a sub-group within the AIA called TAP, or Technology in Architectural Practice, that focuses on uses for new technology and process within our industry and holds a conference from time to time. These talks were part of a mini-TAP conference, as a leadup to their main conferece this month in Chicago.

Much to our delight, some of those videos (including ours) are going to be reshown at that big main TAP conference, and we'll then be on-hand via teleconferencing to answer questions.

That's right Chicago, I'll be a giant head on a video screen tomorrow morning! Mwuhahaha!

Honestly we're really excited to be part of the TAP conference, and are looking forward to it!

Back in April, we were invited to give a brief talk at the AIA conference in San Francisco. You can download the video here, and the slides are available as a PDF here. No embed, sorry, don't know why the AIA site decided to go with a download for the video.

The talk is a five-minute overview of the five-step process we use here at Because We Can to make stuff, and we're pretty happy with how it came out.

While the AIA puts on a different conference just for technology-focused topics called TAP, for Technology in Architectural Practice, they also had a 'mini-TAP' if you will during the main larger AIA conference.

The San Francisco Digital Design group, an informal breakfast club we're part of, did a group presentation as part of that 'mini-TAP'. It was a http://www.pecha-kucha.org format, i.e. 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, with ten different people presenting. We were excited and honored to be one of the presenters, as our other nine co-presenters were all terribly smart and experienced experts. I highly recommend watching all the presentations!

Just a quick note, we'll be presenting at this year's Autodesk University in Vegas in December. We're leading two hands-on labs & one open panel:

Model to Marvelous Goes Mental: Realistic Approaches to Photo-Realistic Design Visualization With Autodesk® Revit® 2010

From Fabulous to Fabrication: Real-world Digital Fabrication and BIM

Lean, Last Planner, Agile and Scrum, Oh My! Modern Processes for Production

We're really excited about it! One of the labs is on BIM-to-CNC fabrication, and it is really hands on. Rather than just talking about digital fabrication & BIM, we're actually all going to make stuff. Everyone in the lab is going to get to fabricate their lab model right there at the end of the lab & take it home with them!

AU has been a great learning and networking experience for us. Early registration has just started. Hope to see you there!

We're back! AU2008 was a blast, if not a lot of work. But it's always great meeting lots of new people, sharing how we do what we do with others, and all in all learning and networking like crazy.