Sam Keville of Architects Orange was our
master of ceremonies. A. Jay Holland had other matters to attend to.
Thank you to our sponsors... Kelar
Pacific, Microdesk, & U.S. CAD. They
provided pizza from Sgt Pepperonis Pizza,
Cookies and drinks.
Thank
you to Little
Diversified Architectural Consulting for
providing the venue, hot drinks, wine and chilled water.
After
introductions of new people, Ed
Tallmage showed off the latest in tech from Leica Geosystems. His was one of 40 delivered
thus far. This model connects wirelessly to the Apple Ipad Pro. It is
lightweight and fast. Each scan taking two to three minutes based on whether
you want hi res or low res.
Sam
jumped into the meat of his presentation. It was a throwback to the early days
of #SCRUG when we had everyone exploring new features and sharing how to get
things done.
With so
many new comers he had to review some of the basics.
BIMX - Building Information Modeling Execution Plan. We covered
this a bit in the 2/2017 SCRUG meeting.
LOD - Sam shared his version of the Level of Detail breakdown
of modeling.
- 100 Walls & openings = 10%
Construction Documents (CDs)
- 200 Content that approximates geometry =
25% CDs
- 300 Accurate geometry, cartoon set = 50%
CDs
- 350 Plan Check Set, fully describe
everything = 100% CDs
- 400 Issue to client for maintaining and
managing the building = record set
ORG Chart - Who are the members of the team, what
do they do, what are their capabilities, how are they related.
These
three pieces work together. Susan
chimed in that these parts need to be codified in the contractual relationships.
Sam emphasized that the documents are not enough, the responsibilities should
be presented and divided up in a meeting. Who does what by when is the key
to Making $$$. Agreements need to be in place. The contract should support the
process.
Sam
described the benefits of upgrading projects as new features are released since
Revit is on an annual upgrade schedule with two interim upgrades. He reads the
release notes. There is no better way to see, "what is in it for me".
One of the biggest improvements in Revit 2017 has been Global Parameters. He
uses it to make the parameters render well on AO's title blocks. It was a major
frustration that text/parameters wouldn't line up properly in Revit 2016.Sam
explained the Revit Project division of labor looks like at AO.
· Revit Lead - Project Architect
· 3D Drafter - Advanced User builds families,
does modeling, uses plugins, know how to fix the model
· 2D Drafter - Junior User uses mainly the site
and annotation menus. Could use the Area plan tools to have live updated area
schedules during schematic design.
With a
proper division of responsibilities, a set can get to the 10% CDs in about a
week. BIM Managers have a specialized set of skills that do not
necessarily coincide with typical architect or CADD training. Skills
like software license management, network analysis, plugin evaluation, and
hardware troubleshooting are vital to keeping the Revit Team efficient.
Meetings,
they are often not a good use of time. Sam shared some tips to help Production
Meetings improve: Have an agenda with things on it like: lessons learned, new
Revit Features, project successes, skill refreshing, training,...
Sam's
motto: Get better every day. Make mistakes only once.
Tidbits:
Using
the roof by footprint, draw the rectangle, add points for spot elevations, then
use cutouts to trim the edges rather than adjusting the boundaries. The 3D
rendering patterns will look better - I am going to try this tip out.
Keynote
Manager + is a software to manage the text files with keynote information. One
need not use Revit to have access to it. A perfect tool for a project manager.
Link keynotes to materials and schedules. If you make your tags right the
keynote tag and the material tag can snap together. Workflow wise, one can use
the text version of keynotes during schematic design and presentations and flip
them to numbers once you have your schedules on the sheets!
Dynamo:
Sam shared a Dynamo graph that grabs all the data form revision clouds and
spits out an Excel file. If you follow protocol it generates a useful narrative
for your revisions! Thanks Andrew King at WATG. The key points are to have 1)
Where the revision came from and 2) What the revision changed. The excel
file will have:
- Sheet number
- Sheet Name
- Revision Number
- Revision Date
- Revit Element ID number
- Revit View
- and both 1) & 2)
This
.dyn was worth the wait. It essentially writes the revision narrative
automatically.