Im back! A quick update..

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It's been ages since my last blog post, this is for many reasons. Trying to find time to sit down and blog my thoughts and ideas has kind of taken a back seat, but I'm back and intend to post a blog at least once a month. So what have I been doing? Well late last year, I become a proud dad to Brodie Ward, my rather awesome daughter. She is definitely one of the most parametric families I have ever made and has been keeping ;me more than busy.

Below are some of the more interesting things ive been working on in the last 6 months, I thought id give you a quick update before blogging resumes as normal:

_spacehus

I've also been working on a few interesting projects lately also, some of which I can talk about and some which I can't (yet!). One of these projects is the spacehus.  The spacehus, is a product we (spacegroup) have been researching and developing for the last 10 years, but recently with the current economic climate and sustainability at the top of the agenda, it has propelled it from a concept into reality.

The house itself is a modular sweedish timber framed kit, pre-plumbed, pre-wired and pre-finished off site using just 19 standardised modules that is more like assembling an airfix kit than a house but make possible a 20 day construction period. The house is also a code 4/5 (upgradable to code 6) sustainable, meaning it's power usage is less that £10 a month and with the 3 bed version at just £80,000, it's affordable.

You are probably thinking that this blog is starting to sound like a big sales pitch for the www.spacehus.co.uk, and you would be right, but I'm leading onto something that makes it all relevant to this blog.

We are well down the road with BIM at spacegroup, and our CEO Rob, set me the challenge of using the technology and knowledge we have in designing big multi-million pound projects into designing a small sub £80,000 house. His brief was:
      -Code 4 sustainable, minimum.
      -Design to Handover in less than 4 weeks.
      -Full component based fabrication drawings from the model Inc cutting schedules.
      -Paperless delivery I.e no assembly drawings on site - iPads?
      -Flexible design variations from the single model.

Before I go on on how we went about achieving this, it's worth noting that there is a lot more to the spacehus process than just a super parametric BIM model, for example we knew that we couldn't use the normal uk construction methods to construct the house (up to 8 different trades, all on site bashing things together from raw materials) so each house is built by a 5 man _space build team who are trained to do everything, electrics, plumbing, joiner, even operating the crane that lifts each module into position. Anyway back to BIM.

The Aerospace process

The _spacehus process

The first challenge was easy, we used tools such as ecotec, green building studio and a bunch of other cool bits of software to prove it's performance, all based of a Revit BIM model. This process continues and we check every space houses design is optimised for it's and location using autodesks 'green building studio' which pulls local data from the nearest weather station then performs analysis to see what can be improved. We can also run various options from the same model to optimise the design, we call this optioneiring.

The second challenge was quite a bit harder and involved building a Revit model so complex and intelligent that it could produce not only component and assembly drawings but also fabrication drawings and cutting schedules, down to every nut, bolt and screw. Not only did it have to be detailed, the model also needed to be super parametric, to allow changes and multiple variation easily. I.e. - if we stretch the rear wall back by 1m all the associated components will adjust accordingly based of a set of pre-defined rules and formulae. All joists will increase to suit there span, and additional studs are added automatically. All while ensuring the model can't be changed to something that won't work or be impractical (panel that won't fit on the back of a truck etc). Normally over modelling is bad in any BIM model, but because of the repetitive use and nature of this model, we could spend more time on the initial model, meaning any variations pulled from this model are created almost instantly including all fabrication info and because of the small size, we are confident of no performance and file size issues.

Over the next few blog posts I am going to focus on how we built this model and some of the parametric formulae that drive it. Hopefully you will find some of this useful in your own projects.

Planning is the most important part of Building any BIM model, you need to know what you want the model to do, not only now but well into the future.  Before we started modelling the first thing I did was use mind mapping software to break each component down, to it's basic parts (the 'stuff' we needed to record and schedule). Because of the fabrication process this was critical, as we needed to extract as much data as possible, such as every timber stud length, size and end cut angles etc. The tree above shows the first initial attempt at this for one of the 19 standard spacehus panels. Every branch is a parameter that we need to schedule. By using mind mapping software, it let's us visualise easily everything and see there relationships swell as the important assemblies, sub assemblies and component
parts.

We have shown the _spacehus BIM model and the BIGBIM concept at various user groups and events, keep an eye on this blog for future events. I will go into some of the advanced parametric's, rules and formulae in a future blog post, starting with the Intelligent self sizing and self checking joist component.

bimstore

Another project I have been heavily involved with since my last post is bimstore.co.uk. We have created a whole website and distribution portal for manufactures to host there BIM components, giving them a shop window for there products. We like to think of it as iTunes for BIM components and are hoping it becomes the UKs no 1 place for quality BIM objects.

One of bimstores strongest features, is that all content is made to the same high consistent standards, regardless of manufacturer, this is backed up by our family creation standards document, which we are calling the 'Bimstore Bible' which can be downloaded from the site. We are really proud of bimstore, so check out the site push any manufactures our way, and we will set the 'BIM Geek' onto them!

BIM Technologies

We are gearing up to launch 'BIM Technologies' side of the business and are already working on various projects. BIM technologies consists of some of _space groups top BIM minds, joining forces to solve challenging problems. BIM Technologies, can do everything from build  a fully coordanated BIM model using our BIGBIM approach, to full digital design and fabrication processes.

For example, we had a project, where both the architect and cladding manufacturer could not produce fabrication or setting out drawings for a rather 'funky' freeform cladding system, and even if they could the form was too complex and every panel would be unique and costly and it would take weeks using traditional processes.  What we did was take the architects concept and ideas, and in less than a week produce a fully co-ordinated model and optimising the number of panels, cutting the total unique amount of panels in half. We then provided the manufacturer with a set of fabrication drawings for each panel as well as providing inventor part files that could be used by the CNC cutting machines, a process that saved further work.

I will post more on BIM Technologies when the website goes live, in the next few weeks, but if there is anything you would like us to look at drop me an email.

The above is a quick overview of what I have been up to in the last 6 months or so before I went AWOL on my blog. I will fill you in on the rest in future blog posts.

Parametric Arrays & Reporting Parameters explained

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I posted this video in the 'Tutorial' section of the site a few month ago, but thought I would share it with my blog followers.  Remember to sign into revitspace for more tutorials like this one.

How to create parametric arrays is one of the questions I am always getting asked in our office, and they are quite simple whey you understand the little tricks that make them work. The video below shows a parametric array in a curtain wall panel, and also does a good job of describing how the 'reporting parameter' works.

From my tutorial:

"Revit 2011 has a new 'Reporting Parameter' feature that allows families to use (report) Parameters from its host family.  This can be used for simple things like allowing scheduling of wall host widths in a door schedule to much more advanced Formula driven components and conceptual components.

Another use for this feature is in curtain walling.  We can now create a parametric louvre panel that is adjustable to its host.  This means if the curatin wall is changed in the project, then the louvre panel will update, adding or removing additional louvres as required etc.  This was not previously possible in versions prior to Revit 2011."

To demonstrate the process used including creating a parametric array, see the video tutorial below. You can download the finished family HERE.

5 Tips & Tricks in the Family Editor

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Below are 5 basic tips and tricks that everyone using Revit should be aware of when creating Revit content.  I am not going to go into advanced formula or anything to crazy, just 5 basic tips that are useful.

Have you noticed that even the simplest of Revit families can be quite a large file size?  Well there is a reason for this and this can be reduced dramatically without and compromising the family.

The problem lies with Revit itself and the family editor. It is a problem that has existed since Revit 2008.  Here is the scenario - you make a family with a filesize of around 200k, then you open the family and make some adjustments and re-save the family, you notice that the file size has more than doubled and is now over 900k!

I won’t get to geeky on why this happens, but it’s to do with Revits database architecture.  There is however an easy workaround that gets those file sizes back to a more reasonable size.  When opening and editing a family, instead of doing a “save” do a “save as” and save it as a different name.  This reduces the file size back down to a more reasonable size.

TIP 2 - Trajectory Segmentation

When working with Circles, Arcs or curves in the family editor there is a feature called Trajectory Segmentation that is normally overlooked but is a useful feature to be aware of.

Trajectory Segmentation enables you to specify an angle, and the curve can be Segmentated by the specified angle as below.

So when would you ever use this?  Well I recently created a circular roof light and one of the challenges was how to make the glass panels adjust when the rooflight “radius” parameter was adjusted. The Trajectory Segmentation feature was exactly what was needed to do this.

You can download the family HERE if you want to dissect in greater detail of how it was done.

TIP 3 - Centre Point of Arcs and Circles

Have you ever wanted to give a setting out dimension or coordinate of centre point of a circle or arc? Well there is an option to turn this on any curved object such as lines, walls and sweeps etc.  It also works in sketch mode which can be useful.  This is one of those basic features that many new users are not aware of until shown.

To turn on the centre mark of a curve, click on the object then in the “instance” properties you should see the option to show the entre mark.

This not only works in the family editor with sketch lines and detail lines, but also in the project environment with walls etc as shown above.

TIP 4 - Add clash zones into your families

Performing clash detection is common place in a BIM/Revit environment, however these are mostly physical clashes, i.e. one piece of solid geometry hits another piece of solid geometry. There is however other types of clash that must be considered.

Imagine a door in Revit, as standard the doors in revit are modelled closed which is fine however, what if something is sitting within the doors swing? It wouldnt be a phsical geomentry clash so would not be picked up as a clash. This is common place and such things could be pendant light fittings, furniture, columns etc.

We can get around this by adding solid geometry to represent the door swing zone as below.

Obviously we don’t want to see this geometry when the family is loaded into our project, so to get around this we set its visibility properties to not display.  Even when we set it to not display, Revit still detect the geomentry in the family and detects a clash.

Other things we have used this method for are disabled toilet zones, wheelchair refuge zones, hand clearance zones around pipes, opening swings on windows etc..

TIP 5 - Share your families!

This is Probably my most important tip of this blog post!  Once you create your superb masterpiece of parametric genius then share it with the rest of the Revit world and upload it to Revitspace!