Revit - Roombook

A new subscription extension for Revit Architecture, Roombook calculates surfaces of walls, floors and ceilings as well as room circumference. If you have a need to do quantity takeoffs or need SQFT information on room surfaces, this tool is great! You have to be a Subscription memeber to get this add on. On the downlaod site, there is a helpful PDF explaining this feature in more detail.

3ds Max Design - Race Car Rendering

I havent updated this blog in a few days, but its because I have spent the last few days refining my modeling, lighting and material skills in 3ds Max. I focused on a race car for Modified racing. I learned a lot about creating materials, pelting, UVW unwrapping. And adjusting, creating lighting, self illumination materials and shadow settings. Below are the images of the end results.

New Year!

Its a new year and I am looking froward to sharing new blog information. Last year after starting blogging in July, I managed to post 95 blogs. That averages a post almost every working day of the week. Im planning to do the same this year. New and great things planned for this year! Stay tuned!

Note: I found this cool "2011 flaming" image at miglo.net

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Revit - Surface pattern

A question came up recently about how to remove the surface pattern from a slab when viewing it from a plan view.

First off, find out what the material is on the slab that is being displayed. Select the slab, go to "Edit Type" in the Properties. Under Structure row, pick the Edit button. Find the top material. Lets say concrete for our example. Pick on it and select the "..." button. This will open up the Materials. The select material should be pre-highlighted. Select it and go to the Surface Pattern area on the right. Change the material to . Select OK three times and you will be back to your view, which is now updated to not show the surface material.

Note: This will remove the surface pattern for all of the slabs with that same material. There are some other options to duplicate the slab type and material, if you want slab "A" to show surface material, and slab "B" not to show the surface material.

3ds Max Design

3ds Max Design can be like a "black box". But with a little understanding of the software, it can produce some very realistic images of your model. A question that may come up is whether to use Scanline or Mental Ray rendering. It may seem an odd question at the beginning of a project, but we need to start with the end in mind. Several of the materials, lighting and environment can be effected by which rendering engine is chosen.

Scanline has been around for several years and was the default rendering engine in 3ds Max. But Mental Ray, which is a contracted third party application for rendering that comes with the software, can tie together the materials, lighting and environment to adjust colors, and brightness for rendering. Many existing users of Max still use the Scanline because they are not that familiar with Mental Ray, but give it a try, see what results you can get. You may be pleasantly surprised!

Revit Server

Revit Server is available thru Autodesk Subscription. It allows multiple users in seperate offices to access the same file. This is different than traditional Worksets. There are some specific requirements to have inplace forthis to work. IIS7, Windows Server 2008 (not r2), and this only works presently within your WAN.

This is a good link to Autodesk's website regarding Revit Server, and it has a few videos as well: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?linkID=9243099&id=15731389&siteID=123112