Catching up...

I have been behind on posting lately...WAY behind (Happy 2011, Everyone)!

I'll place part of the blame on our company blog, Building Solutions; I post over there a bit more often.  But the reality is that life and work just speed up sometimes!

While I'm thinking about it, you might want to venture over to our company blog to read about our newest Revit Add-in, ModelMedic(TM).  Of course, you can also find info on the ModelMedic website.

Finally, I just discovered a blog that I've been missing out on:  Revit Forum.  I see some good discussion over there, with commentary by moderate to advanced Revit users, and it's worth a look.

Autodesk Project Dasher

Via Ryan Duell of The Revit Clinic, I just caught wind of Project Dasher over at Autodesk Research.  We've been waiting for some time to see an application that begins to build a direct link between design, construction, and building lifecycle data...beyond the "silos" in which current design tools and FM solutions operate.  This is exciting to see, and I am hopeful that this finds its way to users' hands!

D|C|CADD Building Solutions

I created Beyond the Silos as my own personal platform for commenting on BIM.  But I spend the majority of my free time reading and contributing to sites such as LinkedIn and our company's own blog, Building Solutions.  Feel free to drop by!

Project Vasari

Check this out:

Echo: Architects' Websites

On ArchDaily today, David Basulto provides some great tips for architectural websites. As the internet becomes a primary marketing mechanism, the need to differentiate ourselves via clean, functional, and current websites has never been more pressing.

Revit 2011 Web Update 2

The latest updates for Revit Architecture, Structure, and MEP are now available at the links below:

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011
Autodesk Revit Structure 2011
Autodesk Revit MEP 2011

Echo...Revit 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack Info

Posted over on our company Building Solutions blog...

We've just heard from David Light with a follow-up from Steve Stafford regarding the upcoming Revit 2011 Subscription Advantage Packs. The biggest news: Revit Server and Conceptual Energy Analysis (CEA). I've provided a quick summary below, but the links above go into much more detail...check 'em out!

Revit Server
Until now, Revit users collaborating from multiple locations have used a variety of methods to share their work, ranging from FTP/VPN connections to faster, more elaborate, and much more expensive WAN acceleration solutions. With the introduction of Revit Server, Autodesk extends the worksharing functionality of Revit beyond the current LAN-based workflow, providing the option for a WAN-based solution. WAN acceleration tools may still be useful in improving performance, but this is a major improvement to Revit itself.

Conceptual Energy Analysis (CEA)
We were very pleased to learn that Autodesk extended Green Building Studio access to Revit 2011 users as a benefit of their subscription, but the new CEA functionality takes another significant step forward. Rather than export to gbXML and move to a tool such as GBS or Ecotect before obtaining results, a set of tools are provided within the Revit environment itself. Users create conceptual masses, assign properties related to the building's usage, submit a run (or multiple runs at once) to Autodesk's servers, and then receive an HTML report of results. See more on YouTube (link provided by David Light).

It looks like additional tools will be forthcoming that are specific to the flavors of Revit, so stay tuned!