Inside the Factory

Inside Live

At The Factory, we strive to involve customers in shaping our products in many different ways, from interviews, usability testing, Preview Release testing, the recently added Revit Ideas site and something we call Inside the Factory.

Inside the Factory Live is when, the Revit team invites customers to come to one of our locations and help us test software still in development.  These events give customers a chance to provide feedback directly to the teams working on new and exciting capabilities.  It’s extremely valuable for the teams to hear directly from customers face to face.

These events help us test workflows and find possible issues before they are shipped to everyone.  They also let us see face to face how the tools are being used and get key feedback to help drive the direction of the product.    These Inside the Factory events are just one part of how we gather feedback throughout the year, but it is probably the one our teams look forward to the most. 

Over the course of this year, we held a series of events in three of our locations: Boston, Bucharest, and in Shanghai.  Each location has a little bit different focus because of the teams that are located there.  We were lucky to have over 40 customers from 16 different countries representing a wide variety of AEC companies join us at these events this year.   We love the feedback we get at these events. 

“You identified the right things to go to, the things I always wanted in Revit.”

“I loved the personal interaction with the developers and how much they cared about our input and made this event very personable”

We are always looking for customers to come visit with us and participate in these events.  These events are selective, so if you’re interested, you can get started by participating in our Revit Preview.  Send us an email at [email protected] to join.  We always need good testers who can find issues and give us feedback. 

Announcing Revit 2017.1

It’s been a while since our last post from Inside the Factory, but believe us we’ve been busy.  Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of Revit 2017.1.

You may wonder whether “.1” is the same as the “R2” releases you’ve seen in previous years, and the answer is yes. With no file format change, Revit 2017.1 includes new features and functionality and is available for access by Revit subscribers and current maintenance subscription customers from Autodesk Accounts or via the Autodesk App Manager.

Revit 2017.1 is dedicated to enhancing user efficiency by making it easier to capture and document design intent and better supports high detail, complex modeling. We want to free you to focus on creating better designs and working more productively, relying on Revit to automate tedious workflows. The newest update to Revit also features multiple user-requested enhancements that reflect a continued focus on making better software.  

But because what you really want to know is exactly “what’s new in Revit 2017.1”, here’s the list of everything new that you’ll find in the latest version of Revit.  We think you’ll like it.

 

Multi-Discipline Enhancements

Dynamo Player:  Use the new Player to run Dynamo scripts in Revit with just one click—no programming ability required.  Now even users unfamiliar with Dynamo can use scripts to automate tasks or standardize processes.

 

Updated Dynamo: The Dynamo software that installs with Revit has been updated and now accesses even more Revit functionality with new nodes and improved list management tools.

Import 3D shapes (Rhino/SAT files): Import RHINO and SAT files as high-quality 3D models, assign them to a Revit category, which lets them appear in schedules and be filtered in views. Use dimensions on elements in the import, and even use imported elements to create room boundaries.

Corruption Data Loss Prevention: Use the Repair Central Model tool to fix the corruption in a central model and create a new central model.

High-Resolution monitor support:  Revit fully supports 4K monitors with properly rendered icons, buttons, dialog boxes, and interface elements

Collaboration for Revit Sync Progress Notification: new dialog provides feedback on the progress of synchronization in C4R

Insight 360 Integration: Get easy and intuitive access to powerful Insight 360 tools installed natively directly on the Revit Analysis tab.

 

Architecture

Model in perspective views: Add, move, copy, rotate, or align elements in a live 3D perspective view, and see the impact of your modeling decisions in real time. Reduce the need to switch views for everyday modeling tasks, and work in the view that best supports your workflow.

LED Light Fixtures Content:  LED lighting fixtures content included and ready to use in models and renderings.  Renderings will take advantage of accurate LED IES files to give high quality realistic results from the LED lights in the scene

Sketch on Level: The sketch’s work plane will stay with the work plane of the element giving a more predictable and consistent editing experience – even when you move or copy elements.

Railing Type UI Usability:  Access Top Rail and Handrail properties from directly within the Railing Type Properties dialog.

Stairs Parameters Tooltips:  New detailed tooltips include illustrations and helpful hints for stair elements settings and controls.

 

Structural Engineering

Split Columns & Framing Elements: The Split Element tool includes new features for structural framing and column elements. The Split Element tool respects joins, justifications, and the location of hosted objects. Openings, details, attached elements, and joins maintain their geometry and locations.

AISC Connection Code Checking for Steel Connections: The code check in Steel Connections for Revit has been updated to the 14th edition of the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC)

New Steel Shapes Content: Revit comes with Chinese and Japanese steel content, making designs more easily transferrable to Advance Steel without advanced mapping required.  Content includes the 20 most common used sections according to the latest Chinese and Japanese standards.

 

MEP Fabrication Modeling Improvements

Resize Connected Parts: Resize runs of connected fabrication parts using the Properties palette or the Edit Parts dialog.

Change Service: change the service on MEP Fabrication parts in a model using the Properties pallet. 

Exclude FAB Parts from Auto Fill Tools: Model more effectively with ability to exclude fabrications parts when using auto fill tools.

Add or Modify a Damper:  On MEP fabrication ductwork parts that accommodate dampers, you can add, remove, or rotate damper blades using damper specific in-canvas controls.

Split Fabrication Elements; split fabrication straight segments with the Split Element tool and Split with Gap tool.

Hanger Support Rod enhancement:  change the size (diameter) of a hanger support rod while maintaining accurate costing data.

AWWA Valves and Pumps Content:  Revit includes an expanded library of wastewater-system content based on the American Water Works Association (AWWA) standards

Space Naming Tool Integration: space naming tool installs with Revit.

 

Stay tuned here and on Facebook and Twitter for more information about these new features and what the Revit road-map holds.

Want to get involved? We invite you to share your suggestions for Revit features and improvements with us via the Revit Ideas page in the Autodesk Community.  It’s the best way to get your ideas in front of the Revit team and influence the evolution of Revit.

C4R Survey Launched - Let Your Voice Be Heard (Updated)

The A360 Collaboration for Revit (C4R) product team has just launched a survey to better understand the product experience you have all had, with the plan to use the results to shape our future investment plans. We'd be delighted if you could take 5 minutes to provide honest feedback. If you know of others who'd be interested, but might not be reading the blog, feel free to send them the survey link.

Cheers,
Kyle

 

Update: The survey is now closed, thank you to those who responded.

Revit 2016 R2 is available!

We are pleased to announce the availability of Revit 2016 R2.  If you've been following our blog, you may remember a little thing we previewed called Revit Sunrise.  The big day is finally here and Sunrise has now graduated.   You can download Revit 2016 R2 now from Autodesk Accounts or via the Autodesk app manager.  

 

This subscription only Revit 2016 R2 delivers user-requested features that add capabilities, enhances software performance, improves user productivity, and addresses issues reported directly to Autodesk. 

Some highlights include Global Parameters, which brings the power of parametric families into the project environment to better capture design intent, and Draw Visible elements only which improves performance when working with complex models by using Occlusion Culling.  

-The Factory

Revit Sunrise: Family Element Visibility Preview

For complex families with many overlapping geometries and text labels it can be difficult to make sure that all the visibility settings for each object in the family are properly set without loading the family into the project. This wastes a lot of valuable time - time that can now be saved thanks to the ability to quickly preview the elements that will be visible given the current view settings directly in the family environment.

“Preview Visibility”, a new feature in Revit Sunrise, is a temporary view state that is accessible in the Family Editor. The feature provides the ability to quickly visualize the effects of visibility controls of family objects without leaving the Family Editor.  

 

The Preview Visibility tool applies the visibility settings of “Visibility/Graphics Overrides” and “Visible” parameters of each object in the family to the current view. These pre-existing parameters control whether the object appears in a view given the view direction, view detail level, cut state of the element, and type or instance properties of the family.

With Preview Visibility the effect of these settings can quickly be visualized right in the family environment.For example, take a window family with four distinct window types varying in material and configuration:

 

In the family editor, geometries for all the types are visible at the same time. In the image below on the left, even though Type 1 of the window family is active, the geometries for Type 1a, 2, and 2a are still visible. As you can see, it’s difficult to understand what Type 1 looks like. On the right, Preview Visibility is enabled and only geometries relevant to the active type are displayed.

Like other temporary view modes, the intention of the Preview Visibility is to allow you to continue working while the mode is enabled. This is why reference planes and dimensions are not hidden in this tool. The visibility of these elements can still be controlled using Visibility Graphics.

When enabling Preview Visibility in plan views, you are given the option to preview the family as if it is cut or in projection (not cut).

For those who would like to enable this functionality by default in family views, two Revit.ini settings are available to control default preview state when a view is opened.

[TemporaryViewModes]

PreviewFamilyVisibilityDefaultOnState = {0 | 1}

Controls whether family visibility preview is on by default when opening a family view.  

PreviewFamilyVisibilityDefaultUncutStateInPlans = {0 | 1}

Controls the default Cut/Not Cut behavior in plan views.

Here’s one customer’s reaction: “I LOVE LOVE LOVE this feature.  This is going to make my life so much easier!  Best feature in a long time!”

Revit Sunrise: Divide and Conquer – Thermal Zoning the Analytical Energy Model

We continue to improve energy analysis tools in Revit and have improved automatic thermal zoning in the Revit Sunrise hosted preview. In some cases this will improve the accuracy of the energy analytical model. Best of all you don’t have to be an energy engineer to use thermal zoning – it’s automatic!

What is thermal zoning?

You may be familiar with ‘HVAC system zoning, where systems are split up by the design engineer for efficiency, scale and control of specific spaces but thermal zoning is different. Thermal zoning accounts for the variation in heat gain/loss through the building envelope due to different orientations by dividing the envelope perimeter into smaller spaces.

Here’s a diagram of building forms divided into thermal zones.

 

Our example shows diagrams of large open spaces and the resulting energy analytical model of those un-zoned spaces would be inaccurate. Our zoned energy analytical model is comprised of discrete perimeter analytical zones and a single internal zone representing a more accurate energy model.

It’s worth mentioning that an energy model from Revit building elements that aren’t a large open plan is already thermally zoned or at least partially zoned. An energy model created from the building layout shown below would provide sufficient zoning due to separations from the numerous walls.

 

Revit Floor Plan

 

Energy Analytical Spaces – Lots of spaces from wall divisions

When to Thermal Zone?

The answer is simple – always! Even though some models can get their zoning from wall divisions, there’s no such thing as an ‘over-zoned’ analytic energy model. Additional analytical spaces in your energy model will not decrease analytic accuracy.

What has changed?

The new thermal zoning improvements are only available when using the Analysis Mode ‘Use Conceptual Masses and Building Elements’ setting from the Energy Settings dialog.

‘Use Building Elements’ and ‘Use Conceptual Masses’ analysis modes are unchanged from previous releases.

Using Thermal Zoning

Using thermal zoning is simple and is the default behavior in Revit utilizing existing Energy Settings parameters.

1. Analysis Mode: Select ‘Use Conceptual Masses and Building Elements’. Hint: This mode can be used with Revit masses, building elements or a combination.
2. Core Offset: Use the default value or set your own.
3. Divide Perimeter Zones: This parameter will divide the building perimeter as described above.

Summary

That’s it - thermal zoning in Revit is simple and automatic! Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions for improvement.

Revit Sunrise: Draw Visible Elements Only - Occlusion Culling

I hope you have been able to give our Autodesk Revit Sunrise hosted preview a spin.  We’ve been reading your feedback - keep it coming. 

We posted a What’s new in Autodesk Revit Sunrise article, but you may be hoping for a little bit more detail into some of the features.   We’ll be trying to answer some of those questions and providing a bit more insight into the functionality in some up-coming posts.  To get things started, here is some additional detail about one of the performance improvements. 

The “Draw visible elements only” option improves view performance by occlusion culling. Elements that are obscured by other elements will not be drawn in the view.  This is done using your machines GPU.  In Revit, you will see the most benefit in 3D views with many obscured elements.  On average, we’ve seen a 30-40% improvement in performance during our testing, but your mileage may vary.    

There are a few things to be aware of with this feature as well.  Occlusion Culling is not used when shadows are enabled in a view.  This is so that things that might not be visible in the view can still cast shadows that would be visible.  Also, when selecting elements in the model, this feature will work the same with this turned on or off – even if the objects were not drawn because of this feature, they still can be selected as needed.  

You can enable or disable this feature in the Options dialog on the Graphics tab.  The setting is also stored in the Revit.ini file as “UseGpuOcclusionCulling”.   Because this feature uses your GPU, hardware acceleration must be enabled for this functionality to work and a graphics card that supports Shader Model 5 or higher is required.  This is a change for our system requirements (where the minimum is listed as Shader Model 3).  If your card doesn’t support Shader Model 5, the “Draw Visible elements only” check box will be disabled.   

Another interesting fact is that we developed this feature in partnership with AMD.

-The Factory

 

What’s new in Autodesk Revit Sunrise

You might be wondering - what is new in  Autodesk Revit Sunrise?  Well, never fear, we are here to answer that pressing question. 

• Global parameters: Global parameters bring the power of parametric families into the project environment to better capture design intent. You can create global parameters that are specific to a single project file but that are not assigned to categories. Use global parameters to drive the value of a dimension or a constraint, associate to an element instance property to drive its value, or report the value of a dimension, so the value can be used in the equations of other global parameters.
• Cancel print/export: When you print or export multiple views and sheets, click Cancel to cancel the entire operation. In earlier releases, the Cancel button allowed you to cancel only one view or sheet at a time. Now the Cancel button cancels the print jobs or export operations of all selected views and sheets.
• Performance:
  • Occlusion culling: To improve performance and reduce the amount of time required to open views, the Graphics tab of the Options dialog offers a new setting: Draw visible elements only. This setting is enabled by default. Performance improvements are most noticeable for 3D views that contain many obscured elements.
  • Export to DWF/DWFx: To significantly reduce processing time when exporting views/sheets to multiple DWF or DWFx files, the software now uses several RevitWorker processes.  This capability especially benefits users who want to upload their models to Autodesk® A360 for use with Collaboration for Revit or BIM 360 Glue.
  • Color fills: To improve performance, color fills are completed as a background process so you can continue working in the model while the views update.
  • Background processes: To see a list of the Revit processes that are running in the background, use the status bar.
• Family Editor:
  • Family visibility preview: In the Family Editor, you can view improved representations of family geometry with respect to levels of detail, visibility parameter settings, and view type. Create, test and edit the geometry of a family without having to repeatedly load it into a project.
  • Filter voids and solids: You can specifically isolate void and solid geometry when using the Filter tool in the Family Editor.
• Revisions: Additional information is available for revisions to make it easier to see exactly how the revision number will be generated, and to select revisions to include in a revision schedule.
  • Sheet Issues/Revisions dialog: When Numbering is set to Per Project, a new Revision Number column displays the actual revision number that will be generated based on the Sequence, Numbering scheme, and Numbering options. This column does not display if Numbering is set to Per Sheet.
  • Revisions on Sheet dialog: A Revision column now displays the revision sequence information along with the revision description. A new Date column displays the revision date.
• Revit links: These changes improve workflow and productivity when using Revit links in the host model.
  • A new positioning option, Auto - Project Base Point to Project Base Point, is available when inserting Revit links. This option positions the linked file using the model's Project Base Point as the insertion point, and aligns it to the Project Base Point in the host model.
  • Two options are available to reposition a Revit link after it has been inserted: Reposition to Project Base Point, and Reposition to Internal Origin.
  • When you are working in a local copy of a workshared model, the Unload command offers 2 options:
    • Unload For all users: The Revit link is unloaded for all users in the model (existing behavior).
    • Unload For me: The Revit link is unloaded for the current user only. This command works like a permanent override and remains set for the current user for that RVT link until it is cleared. This option allows you to unload and keep Revit links unloaded for portions of the model you aren't working on without affecting other team members. Unloading Revit links may also increase performance and memory usage.  To clear the override, right-click the link name in the Project Browser, and click Unload Clear my override.

• Worksharing: When you are opening a workshared model and you select the Detach from Central option, the default name of the open model is now the original model name with "_detached" appended (instead of a blank file name). When saving the model, you can specify a name or use the default.
• View range: The View Range dialog has been improved to provide visual descriptions of view range terminology, making it easier for you to set the view range.
• Underlay: The Underlay properties have been improved to more clearly define what they do. A new grouping in the Properties palette, Underlay, contains the properties used to set an underlay range. The Underlay parameter is renamed to Range: Base Level. A new read-only parameter Range: Top Level displays the next level above the Range: Base Level. The options for Underlay Orientation are changed from Reflected Ceiling Plan to Look Up, and from Plan to Look Down.
• Filters dialog: The Filters dialog has been improved to make it easier to find specific filters in the list. Filters are listed alphabetically and sorted in a tree structure with headings for rule-based and selection-based filters.
• Perspective views: Additional modeling capabilities are now available in perspective views.
  • Modify panel (Copy)
  • Clipboard panelPaste drop-down (Paste from Clipboard), and any available tool from the drop-down
• Spot slope: You can now place a spot slope annotation in a linked model.
• Wall joins:
  • When placing walls, you can allow or disallow wall joins with the Join Status option.
  • You can select multiple wall joins and change the configuration of all selected joins to Butt, Miter, or Square Off.
• Display of walls: To improve performance so that views open and update faster, Revit regenerates walls only for what is visible on the screen. In addition, if a wall appears very small on the screen, it is displayed as simplified lines, regardless of the detail level assigned to the view.
• Railings: When you edit the Type properties of a railing, you can now use the Preview pane of the dialog to view your changes.
• Autodesk Raytracer rendering: Define a custom render quality to specify light and material accuracy, and render duration options.
• Energy Analysis:
  • Advanced thermal zoning: Revit now offers automatic thermal zoning that uses advanced algorithms, resulting in more accurate energy simulations without additional modeling.
  • On the ribbon, the Enable Energy Model tool has been renamed to Create Energy Model. Use this tool to create the energy analytical model and display it within the context of Revit. (When an energy model exists, the tool changes to Delete Energy Model.)
  • The accuracy and appearance of analytical surfaces has been improved. Edges are less pixilated, and surfaces are more accurate and less faceted. As a result, the energy analytical model is more accurate, looks better, and generates a smaller XML file.
• Electrical settings: You can specify a default rating to use for creating circuits in a model.
• Assigning a distribution system: If there is only one distribution system applicable to an equipment instance, the distribution system is now assigned automatically.
• Display of ducts: To improve performance so that views open and update faster, Revit regenerates ductwork only for what is visible on the screen. In addition, if duct appears very small on the screen, it is displayed as simplified lines, regardless of the detail level assigned to the view.

Enjoy trying these out in Sunrise!

The Factory

Revit Sunrise

Feel like test driving some potential new Revit stuff?  If you’ve been following this blog for a bit, you might remember that last year around this time, we asked you to test drive a hosted preview of Revit that we called Sundial.  If you missed out last time, never fear! It’s my pleasure to invite you to participate in another hosted preview of a version of Revit we’re calling Sunrise (see a pattern?).

Autodesk Revit Sunrise provides enhancements to Revit that are not currently included in the commercial release. We will be highlighting the many improvements in blog posts over the next days and weeks.

For those of you who try the release preview, please drop in here at Inside the Factory and let us know what you think. The hosting technology we’re using for the preview is itself experimental, so if you run into issues accessing the test, we’d like to know about those as well.

Because this is an early in-progress release, there are no guarantees all the features you might see or read about will appear in a future release of Revit. Please keep this in mind when making any future purchasing decisions.

Try Autodesk Revit Sunrise. 

 

-The Factory

Revit Graphics Certification

With advanced graphics available within Revit, the development team is often asked how Revit graphics hardware certification works, and how graphics card manufacturers participate.

Any candidate graphics cards have to meet the minimum requirements of supporting DirectX 11 and Shader Model 3. Any graphics card that does not meet these requirements will not properly display Revit graphics.

For example, some lines (particularly hidden lines) will be missing from models, reducing the reliability of derived drawings created on that computer. If the target computer has a graphics card that does not meet these requirements we recommend turning off hardware acceleration (HA). When HA is disabled, Revit uses Microsoft’s graphics emulation (WARP) instead of the graphics card to produce accurate graphics, at the cost of performance reduction.

Even if a graphics card supports the above requirements, sometimes graphics drivers have bugs that result in incomplete compliance, causing incorrect graphics to be displayed in Revit. If you are experiencing problems with the display of Revit models we suggest trying a more recent graphics driver as the issue may have already been fixed by the manufacturer. Over the years we have identified a number of issues that have been reported by our customers and we have included them in a test suite that can be used to verify the functionality of a graphics card driver.

To test different graphics cards and drivers, the Revit team creates an application containing the test suite and makes the application available to graphics hardware manufacturers like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. The manufacturers can then run this application on their graphics card and driver combinations to generate test results. If the results show any issues, the manufacturer can make immediate changes to the drivers and test and repeat until no issues remain.

Once the test results of a card and driver are acceptable, the results are sent back to the Revit team for validation. If we find no anomalies the results are posted to the Autodesk Certified Hardware site.

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 6

As I mentioned the other day in the conversation with Bill Debevc,one of the enhancements in Revit 2016 is improved management of System Family geometry. Multiple instances of editable families have always shared their geometric definitions, leading to much more efficient use of memory, but the same was not true of System Families, for a variety of technical reasons and history that were were able to surmount in Revit 2016.

The video below compares Revit 2015 on the left with Revit 2016 on the right, performing the same sequence of view operations on multiple instances of an piping family. Revit 2016 is done before Revit 2015 really gets going.

 

In this next video, a similar comparison of drawing pipes, Revit 2015 on the left, Revit 2016 on the right. Again, Revit 2016 finishes the task before Revit 2015 can complete its first operation.

 

Shared geometry allows us to leverage the GPU far more heavily than before, taking advantage of hardware that's become much more commonly available than when Revit was first designed and released.We're continually looking at early decisions in Revit and rethinking them in light of the demands of larger and more complex models and the improved hardware on the market.

1 Million Downloads from the Autodesk Exchange App Store!

In just three years, the Autodesk Exchange App Store has published over 1,800 apps from companies all over the world. The apps are available for download in 14 different languages in 191 countries. Today we're excited to announce the 1,000,000th download!

Here's a quick video celebrating this fantastic milestone:

  

If you haven't visited the Revit Exchange App Store yet, now's a good time to take a look. The Revit store has over 350 apps and many of them are free. Visit: www.RevitAppStore.com

A few popular Revit apps:

- COINS Auto-Section Box - quickly apply section boxes around selected objects
- BIMobject - search, browse, and download free BIM objects from real manufacturers
- CADtoEarth - bi-directional connection between Revit and Google Earth or Google Maps
- Palladio X BIM Windows Layout - quickly organize Revit windows for efficient viewing
- SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing - accelerates the creation of 2D reinforcement sheets from 3D models

Want to learn more about apps in the app store? If you're attending AU this year, join me for my "Top 10 Revit Apps Under $100" class where I showcase some of my favorite Revit apps.

Sasha Crotty

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 5

One simple way to improve interaction performance is to not engage the hardware in pointless activity.

In the video below, the difference between Revit 2015 on the left and Revit 2016 on the right is that we stopped computing any display changes for the objects outside the linked model cropbox, leading to a noticeable improvement in navigation.

Sometimes the easiest performance improvements come from doing less.

 

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 4

When we talk to project teams about Collaboration for Revit, a common thread emerges where everyone agrees -> there’s no such thing as an operation that can be too fast.  We agree, and are constantly optimizing the service to deliver a better performance experience.  With our most recent update to the service – C4R 2015.5 or C4R 2016.0 – we implemented a new technique to deliver the further optimized experience.

As many of you know, transactions between the Revit application and the place of record for the model (aka Central Model) happen in the form of deltas, rather than pushing around the entire model, which can be quite large.

Revit Worksharing

Based upon a number of factors, a single Sync With Central (SWC) operation is going to consist of a number of delta files to be processed by Revit.  There will be inbound deltas consumed by the Reload Latest portion at the start of SWC (from other team members doing a SWC).  There will be outbound deltas consumed by the central model based upon the changes of the current team member.  Up until the latest release, we transferred these deltas between the Revit application one-at-a-time, or “in serial” as our developers call it.

Transferring deltas in serial

Now, with the latest update, we have begun transferring these deltas in parallel, so the data is moving across the pipe faster, and the necessary data is available for processing on either side of the transaction quicker.

Transferring deltas in parallel

When we analyze the impact of this new process using real-world projects from customers like yourselves, we find some nice improvements to performance.

We on the product team are pretty excited about these improvements, and we hope that the teams using C4R enjoy the improved performance.  It’s all part of our continued delivery of value to subscribers.  Rest assured, we have a number of other improvements in the backlog, and we’ll be discussing them here Inside the Factory as they come.

Kyle Bernhardt

A Case for Software Updates

When faced with the "Restart your computer to finish installing important updates" Windows pop-up, I think it's universal to click on the Postpone button. "I'll get to it later," you think to yourself, but sooner or later it's been days and that pesky reminder is still haunting you. Most of us do it; I'll personally admit to having gone weeks before finally taking 5 minutes to reboot. 5 minutes that would have saved me quite a bit of frustration and let Mike, our IT guy, sleep easier at night.

In an effort to change my habits (and possibly yours too), I'm going to tell you two Revit stories that show why regular software updates are so important and the good stuff you get when you take the time to update your software.

 

Story #1 - A Case of Better Performance

The Revit team runs thousands of nightly performance checks. Every day we have an accurate measure of how Revit is performing compared to the day before and compared to previous releases. Our goal - make Revit faster every day.

So imagine our extreme disappointment when one morning Revit view update is suddenly a whole bunch slower. The usual suspect: a component integration. Or is it? We can't reproduce the degradation on some computers. I'm thinking: now it's going to be difficult... Then someone suggests something - have we tried updating the graphics card driver? Somewhat to our surprise, it works! The updated component interacted badly with the outdated driver on the machines. By updating the driver, not only did we gain back all of the performance degradation from the component integration, but we crushed the Revit 2015 numbers. Here are the improvements we saw (thanks to Scott Blouin for the numbers):

Food for thought: Revit doesn't work in isolation - other software has bugs too. 30%+ faster performance may be just a driver upgrade away.

 

Story #2 - A Case for Greater Stability

Anthony explained MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) in a previous post. I'd like to use some MTBF numbers as a data point to show why updating to the latest update release of Revit might keep you happier.

Update Releases (URs) contain critical bug fixes to the Revit software. This includes things like security patches, functionality fixes, and especially crash fixes. Each UR makes the software safer and more stable and the Revit team highly recommends installing the latest update. Each UR includes a list of fixed issues. If you're curious, here's the list for 2015 UR7. Code word for crash fix is "Improves stability."

When broken down for each update release, the Revit 2015 MBTF numbers below show a clear trend. Note: a couple of URs are not in this chart due to low adoption.

Revit 2015 UR3+ is approximately two times as stable as the originally released version of 2015. That means that users on UR3+ crash approximately half as often. That's a lot of work saved.

It's still early for UR5+, but we expect to see numbers that are consistently higher than UR3 as adoption grows.

Food for thought: Revit URs are designed to fix critical bugs and improve stability. MTBF is just one measure of how much impact they can have.

We'll keep making Revit faster and more stable, but in the meantime, happy updating!

Sasha Crotty

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 3

One of the most unproductive actions software can take is sometimes out of developer control; the software crashes, possibly taking with it some amount of accomplished work. When using computers there's nothing quite so frustrating as realizing that a considerable amount of thought and labor will have to be re-created from an unknown point of failure.

Almost all software is guilty of instability at one time or another. About three years ago, feedback from Revit customers pressed the point as a high priority  -- we needed to focus on resolving bugs and mitigating instability. A reality of the software industry -- and for that matter, the manufacturing industry -- is that products ship with flaws. Sometimes those flaws are known, and in the best judgment of the product leadership, are considered to be minimal drawbacks compared to the compensating value of the same or other new features. Sometimes flaws only become apparent when a product goes into production.

One common measure in the industry of product stability is Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). When applied to software development (rather than, say, hard drives), the measurement is the mean time between software crashes. Longer times are better, indicating that the software is becoming more stable. I'm happy to report that after several years of concentrating on quality, the Revit product line has been on a favorable trend, culminating most recently in an MTBF of ~132 hours, as illustrated in the chart below. Over about 5 years, that's a rise from about 18 hours when we first focused on crash issues.

With typical patterns of Revit use (about 50% of a working day, on average), that roughly corresponds to 32 business days between crashes. As always, your mileage will vary depending on many factors, including whether you have the latest service packs installed for both Revit and your OS.

Whenever I show this chart, I'm asked about the erratic graph for Revit LT. When we see numbers bounce around like that, it's usually a sign of low reporting -- Revit LT isn't as widely adopted as Revit, so there's less opportunity for statistical "noise" to even out over many more reports.

We're still not satisfied with these improving numbers, and will continue to focus on increasing stability and reducing the effects of new and legacy issues in the Revit platform.

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 2

Sasha Crotty, the Revit Platform Product Manager, read the "Part 1" post and made up a video to show the multiple processor utilization in view navigation.

 

 

After that, she worked with Scott Blouin in QA to come up with some simple speed comparison charts for multiple Revit versions from our internal testing. As always, your mileage may vary, but I think this is one indication of how much we've been investing in performance and scalability for the last few releases.

 

 

 

Revit 2016 | Project Performance - Part 1

Often the Revit product team is asked how the Revit product line takes advantage of multiple processors and the workstation GPU, so we thought we'd provide a list for your reference, and a video that shows a new feature of Revit 2016 that uses multiple processors to accelerate model navigation to speeds comparable to the Navisworks 2016 model.

 

Our thanks to the Beck Group for providing the Sa Rang project model above as an example of a large project to test these capabilities in development.

Revit Multi-Processing

A number of high-impact areas in Revit use multiple processors to improve performance and model scalability anywhere from 10 – 1500%, depending on the operation.

Multi-core functions in Revit:

• Progressive display – new in 2016 – used by all models all the time
• Vector + Raster Printing
• 2D Vector Export such as DWG and DWF
• Mental Ray Rendering
• Wall Join representation and update in plan and section views
• Loading elements into memory, reducing view open times when elements are displayed for the first time in a session.
• Parallel computation of silhouette edges such as outlines of a curved surfaces, used to accelerate navigation of perspective views.
• Translation of high level graphical representation of model elements and annotations into display lists optimized for graphics cards, engaged when opening views or changing view properties.
• File Open and Save
• Point Cloud Data Display

 Revit GPU Use

Revit uses GPU processing for drawing all graphics through OGS and DirectX 11, giving Revit approximately a 30% increased drawing operation speed over Microsoft’s simulated CPU graphics engine, Warp.

In 2015 and 2015 R2 Revit added a number of new enhancements to increase GPU use:

• Consolidation - draws multiple geometries of the same material to the GPU as a batch
• Instantiation - draws multiple identical objects to the GPU as a batch

Revit 2015 R2 + Site Designer Extension for Revit 2015

Hi everyone.

As the Autodesk Marketing Machine has probably already informed you, we released a couple of things this week. Here's a collection of links to catch up on what people are saying so far...

Media coverage

• Revit 2015 R2 Release, Applying Technology to Architecture
• NEWS: Autodesk releases Revit 2015 R2 featuring Site Designer Extension, AECMagazine
  • Also appearing on: Tenlinks.com
•  Revit 2015 Supplementary Update, Revit OpEd
  • Also appearing on: Today’s Building
• Revit 2015 R2 Now Available, Revit Forum

Tweets

• Clint Brown [writer for blog Cadline Community]:#Autodesk#Revit 2015 Subscribers Get Slew of New Capabilities with “R2” Update http://ow.ly/BBAly 
• Mid-West CAD Revit R2 was released today and includes over 30 user-requested features that add powerful capabilities, enhance... http://fb.me/1voIS91ct 
• Sean David Burke [writes the Paradigm Shift]: @Autodesk #Revit 2015 Subscribers Get Slew of New Capabilities with “R2” Update http://shar.es/1abwmZ  - Boom! This is huge, people. #BIM
• Ben Malone[Bimopedia blogger]: "@AutodeskRevit: Subscribers rejoice! #Revit "R2" update adds 30+ user-requested features. Learn more: http://autode.sk/1tf6pXj " Awesome!

Anthony

Autodesk Licensing and Computer Virtualization - It's Official

Hi folks. I promised you the "official link" when it was ready:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/search-result/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-Virtualization-FAQ.html

Anthony

RTC Southeast Asia Tour

Hi folks.

Some of you probably know that Autodesk is a platinum sponsor of all the Revit Technology Conferences this year worldwide. What you might not know is that RTC started in Australia as a large user group meeting, born from a series of discussions about how to increase proficiency with BIM in the profession.

Pursuant to expanding that mission, the RTC Events crew is hitting the road again, and asked if we'd pass on their invitation:

An Invitation to the RTC Asia Information Roadshow

RTC has become known as the place to go to get the best quality unvarnished advice on tools, techniques, business management, process change, collaboration and all the other issues that you need to stay on the forefront of technology and practice in the AECO and related industries. Now, for the first time. RTC is planning an event in Asia... but first.... we want to hear from the community throughout Asia. Please come to one (or more!) of the information nights we are holding over the next month across Asia and add your voice to the process. This is a unique opportunity for you to have a direct influence on the nature of an event that is all about you and your community. Tell us about the community, what works and what doesn’t, what drives the industry, and what you need to be able to respond to those drivers, where are the pain points, where you are lacking support, but most of all, just tell us what you need to get out of an RTC event. We will then take all of your comments and use them to help ensure that we create an environment that provides the very best opportunities to begin addressing many of these questions. Remember, RTC is an event run by users, for users – this means that this is where you will be able to work together to strengthen your networks, to learn from top users worldwide, to drive industry adoption and change. There are six information nights, in the following order: Kuala Lumpur – Friday, Sept. 12th Beijing – Friday, Sept. 19th Shanghai – Tuesday, Sept. 23rd Hong Kong – Friday, Sept. 26th Tokyo – Monday, Sept. 29th Singapore – Friday, Oct. 3rd More details, including event location and a registration link can be found here The information nights are free to attend, include drinks and canapés, and run from 7:30pm to 9:30pm. Please do register so that we can plan for the appropriate numbers, and bring your thoughts and ideas along with you! Please pass this on to friends and colleagues based in Asia, as this might just be the event they have been waiting for.  RSVP For more information please contact: Ms. Heidi Lam Event Manager - Asia and North America [email protected]

Autodesk Licensing and Computer Virtualization

Hi everyone.

Often questions arise on how Autodesk licensing works with computer virtualization, so together with Autodesk Legal^TM the Revit PM team wrote a FAQ to make the Licensing and Services Agreement (LSA) a little more clear. This document will be published in anoother "official" place, but because I know some of you needed a citation right away, I'm reproducing it here. Feel free to cite this blog entry as an authoritative link if you need to make a decision on some technology, and when the official^TM site is established later this week I'll post the link for that page as well.

Does the Autodesk License and Services Agreement (LSA) permit installing Autodesk products on virtual machines? 

Yes. For most Autodesk products starting with FY12 versions, the definition of “Computer” in the LSA includes the software implementation of a computer:

 7. “Computer” means (i) a single electronic device, with one or more central processing units (CPUs), that accepts information in digital or similar form and manipulates the information for a specific result based on a sequence of instructions, or (ii) a software implementation of such a device (or so-called virtual machine).

 Different Autodesk products (particularly older versions) may be subject to different license terms.  Please see your license agreement for details.

 Does the permission to install on a virtual machine apply to all license types?

 Yes, but the additional provisions of each license type must also be satisfied to maintain compliance with the LSA. For example, while Stand-alone licenses of Autodesk software may be installed on virtual machines, sessions depending on such licenses must be accessed through the hardware directly supporting the virtual machine, not through a network connection. Access to remote sessions of Autodesk software over a network is only permitted if you have a Network License.

If I call Autodesk Product Support, will they help with any Autodesk product issues occurring on a virtual machine?

Autodesk support will attempt to reproduce issues encountered by a customer in a hardware computer environment that conforms to the associated System Requirements and Recommendations document supplied with the Autodesk Product. Issues that cannot be reproduced in the hardware environment may be ascribed to the virtual machine environment’s influence, and the customer may be asked to contact the virtual machine vendor for further investigation.

 How does the Session Specific Network License type apply to virtual machine installations?

The Session Specific Network License type only applies to application virtualization technologies, not virtual machines. Permission to install Autodesk materials in an application virtualization environment is reserved to Supported Virtualization Applications as defined in the System Requirements and Recommendation documentation of each product.

May I virtualize an Autodesk product using virtualization technology that isn’t a Supported Virtualization Application?

Not without special permission from Autodesk. To request of a review and special permission for use of a proposed application virtualization implementation, please contact your Autodesk Reseller, Sales, or Account representative.

Applicable to releases 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 of most Autodesk products. Autodesk reserves the right to alter its product and services offerings, the license and services terms applicable thereto and its’ policies at any time. 

Hope that helps.

Anthony

Autodesk Exchange Apps Hackathon - Sept 20-21, 2014

 

If you haven't seen the 262 productivity-enhancing Revit apps on Autodesk Exchange, check them out and discover powerful tools developed using the Revit API. Some example workflows are quick section boxes based on selection, export of schedules to Microsoft Excel, and a text case tool. 

See demos of 20 exchange store apps by watching these AU classes from 2012 and 2013.

Interested in developing new apps? 

Join the Autodesk Exchange Apps Hackathon — a virtual web based hackathon that runs from 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (PT) on Saturday, September 20 to 4:00 p.m. September 21. It’s a community event that gives you the opportunity to work closely with other members of the software development community and Autodesk engineers — in real time, developing new apps for Autodesk Exchange. Receive up to US$100 per app published and win one of eight iPad minis!

If you’ve been thinking about publishing apps in the Exchange Apps store but haven’t found the time, this event will give you the help to get them “out the door”. Head over to exchangeapphack.com for details on the event, including an FAQ, the schedule and speaker line up, and the Rules and the Registration link.

- Sasha

New Visualization Tech

If you're interested in testing some interesting new visualization technology coming out of our Media and Entertainment group, see below...

Autodesk M&E 3ds Max Gunslinger summit is a design-focused participatory event in Montreal (Canada) between our users and members of the Autodesk 3ds Max product management, development and design teams. The event is comprised of a series of workshops, design reviews, validation discussions, design charrettes, and more.

 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design tools and technology have been used by visualization experts to tell the story of a design in dynamic presentations and won many awards in the entertainment industry.   Clients consistently respond to exploring their project or product in context, within their existing surroundings and bustling with life.  They, and other stakeholders, also find that video helps them understand complex information about the design.   This could be anything from construction logistics, complex function (such as a sliding roof), the impact of design options, or visualization of traffic, weather, stress, airflow and energy.    Cinematic storytelling techniques can convincingly evoke emotions and convey these messages with style.   Unfortunately, in the past, you’d need a large budget to deliver presentations that include these elements.   There are many ways to solve these issues but your feedback is essential.  This is why we’d like to meet with you in person. 

We are looking to locate people who would be interested or available in attending.   The Gunslinger is by invitation only as we can only accommodate so many, and other than travel, all shuttles, hotel, and meals are included by Autodesk.   The meeting would be 4 days, Sept 16-19.    It is an opportunity to meet our team and influence tools that could help you improve the way you communicate your designs.  

 If you are interested in the Gunslinger please let us know by completing a short survey.  We will then be reviewing the submissions for selecting users but if you are unable to attend this specific Gunslinger but are interested in future events please do fill out the survey.

 https://autodeskfeedback.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_cTvMgy21fXPtdk1

More later!

Anthony

Seek, and ye shall find

Hi folks.

Sorry for the week of silence, we've got a number of interesting projects going on at the factory and things have been moving quickly on items I'll detail in Future Posts^TM.

One feature you might have noticed in Sundial is the search box in the Type Selector. The fun part of creating a feature in a portable way is that you get to use it in more that one place. If you're an electrical engineer using Revit, you've probably clocked a fair amount of mousewheel time to get to the panel you want to locate in the model. Instead, start typing in the new search box, and watch as the list starts narrowing down.

Sometimes it's the little things that people love the most. One customer testing this feature and the related "recently used" feature said...

 “Wow, I can use most recently used too. That’s really nice too! That’s cool, I like them a lot! That’s a really big improvement, oh my goodness!”

Try it and let us know what you think!

Anthony

What's New in the Revit Sundial API?

Another entry in the category of "Imagine if you will..." (meaning you can't really kick the tires in a hosted preview) are the enhancements in the Revit Sundial API. By request from a developer, here's what's new...

Major API additions

ComponentRepeater

New Methods

• ComponetRepeater.CanElementBeRepeated - Determines whether an element can be repeated using the RepeatElements method. 
• ComponentRepeater.RemoveRepeaters - Removes component repeaters from the document, but leaves the individual repeated components in their respective locations and hosted on their original hosts.

Dimension API improvements

Dimension class

The following new members have been added to support adjustment of the text location and corresponding leaders of a given single dimension:

• Dimension.Origin  - returns the origin of the dimension (the middle point of the dimension line that makes up the dimension).
• Dimension.LeaderEndPosition - a read/write property representing the position of the dimension's leader end point.
• Dimension.TextPosition - a read/write property representing the position of the dimension text's drag point.
• Dimenson.IsTextPositionAdjustable() - indicates if this dimension is supported to get and set TextPosition/LeaderPosition.
• Dimension.ResetTextPosition() - resets the text position of the dimension to the initial position determined by its type and parameters.

DimensionSegment

The following new members have been added to support adjustment of the text location and corresponding leaders of a given dimension segment in a multi-segment dimension:

• DimensionSegment.LeaderEndPosition - a read/write property representing the position of the dimension segment's leader end point.
• DimensionSegment.TextPosition - a read/write property representing the position of the dimension segment's text's drag point.
• DimensionSegment.IsTextPositionAdjustable() - indicates if this dimension segment is supported to set/get TextPosition/LeaderPosition
• DimensionSegment.ResetTextPosition() - resets the text position of the segment to the initial position determined by its type and parameters.

DWFExportOptions

New  Property 

• ExportTexture - sets the option to export textures in 3D DWF files (default true)

PanelScheduleView

New Methods

• PanelScheduleView.GetCellsBySlotNumber () – Returns a range of cells for the given slot number
• PanelScheduleView.CanMoveSlotTo()   - Verifies if can circuits in the source slot to the specific slot.
• PanelScheduleView.MoveSlotTo() - Move the circuits in the source slot to the specific slot.

View3D

New methods:

• View3D.CanResetCameraTarget() - Checks whether the camera target can be reset for this view.
• View3D.ResetCameraTarget() - Resets the camera target to the center of the field of view. 
• View3D.CanToggleBetweenPerspectiveAndIsometric() - Checks whether the view can toggle between Perspective and isometric.
• View3D.ToggleToPerspective() - Toggles the view to perspective.
• View3D.ToggleToIsometric() - Toggles the view to isometric.

Minor API additions

BaseExportOptions

New Property:

• BaseExportOptions.PreserveCoincidentLines - Allows export to preserve coincident lines

ElectricalSetting

New Enum:

• ElectricalSetting.CircuitSequence - Gets and sets the circuit sequence numbering schema

Workset

The new static method:

• Workset.Create()

creates a new Workset.

WorksetTable

New static methods:

• WorksetTable.RenameWorkset() - Renames the Workset.
• WorksetTable.IsWorksetNameUnique() - Checks if the given Workset name is unique in the document.

The new method:

• WorksetTable.SetActiveWorksetId()

sets the active Workset.

Application

The new property:

• Application.BackgroundColor

allows read and write of the background color to use for model views in this session.

ScheduleDefinition 

New Properties:

• ScheduleDefinition.ShowTitle – Indicates if the title will be displayed in the schedule.
• ScheduleDefinition.ShowHeaders - Indicates if the headers will be displayed in the schedule.

Thin lines options

A utility class ThinLinesOptions is added that contains the setting related to the Thin Lines options which affects the display in the UI.

The static property:

• ThinLinesOptions.AreThinLinesEnabled 

defines if the 'Thin Lines' setting is on or off in this session.

Let us know what you think!

Anthony

So, When's Sundial Coming Out?

Veterans of Autodesk conversations know that 'deskers get all squirrely when a question starts with "When".

That happens for some good reasons around regulatory controls in the USA concerning predictive statements by publicly traded companies, restrictions that don't always obtain for companies based elsewhere in the world or in quite the same way in every situation for every American company. Find me in person sometime at an industry event and ask about this, and I guarantee I can bore you into glancing hurriedly at your watch and suddenly remembering an urgent appointment.

However, some folks are getting excited about some of the things they see in Sundial, and wondering whether they'll actually be able to use the new features in production. For example, the PDF hyperlinking in the export sure sounds like a great feature to some customers. They can't actually try it out in the hosted environment, so that enhancement for now remains in the realm of "Imagine if you will...", or in other words, maybe not the most compelling demo ever.

So, I think I'm safe in the regulatory environment in which we function to say the following:

1. Sundial features could be available sooner than you think.
2. They might become available in a way you don't expect.

To the legal scholars with whom I occasionally discuss my public comments, please note I say "could" and "might", allowing sufficient uncertainty that I actually predict nothing at all, but only, perchance, speculate.

I'll also say that the Revit team and Autodesk are committed to finding innovative ways to get as much value to our committed customers as rapidly as we can.

More later!

Anthony

 

 

Putting Editing in Perspective

In Revit Sundial's What's New, you may have noticed this entry...

• Perspective views: Certain modeling capabilities are now available in perspective views: (See Work in a Perspective View.)
  • Editing tools: Move, Align, Pin, Unpin.
  • Reset Target tool: Restores the position of the camera target to the center of the field of view.
  • Toggle between the perspective and parallel representations of the 3D view.

Editing in perspective views has long been a customer request, so when I asked about it among the old-time Reviteers, most reactions were something like...

"Well, no one ever really tested it. We could try turning it on and see what breaks."

So, it turned out a number of things broke, which is maybe why we haven't just tossed it off sooner than this. A number of issues that turned up are fixable, but not immediately.

What Sundial has is what didn't break or was easily fixable. It could be possible to do more on this in the future. Interesting? Vital? Boring because you use 3DS Max for important visualization anyway?

Try it out and let us know!

Anthony

 

 

What's New in Sundial?

Hi everyone.

Judging from the heat coming off the servers in the last 24 hours, a lot of you have given Revit Sundial a try in the hosted environment. If you'd like to read about what's different in Sundial, click here for What's New.

In What's New, you'll see mention of Dynamo as a feature -- sometimes documentation visits us from one possible future, and we can only marvel at the modern wonders of time travel.

More information later today!

Anthony

REVITalizing Inside the Factory

We’re back!

Two years ago Inside the Factory went… well, inside the factory for a while. Recently we took a walk around the old place, blew off the dust, and did some remodeling, because we wanted to offer some news about what we’ve been working on.

The Building Authoring product team at Autodesk, (which includes Autodesk^® Revit^® and its nifty trademark symbols that Autodesk Legal^TM loves so much) will be using this blog to provide updates on Autodesk’s Building Information Modeling (BIM) product lines. A number of folks on the Revit team will offer insight from the Factory floor into what we're working on and introduce you to some of the people behind the products.

To get things started, we’re providing everyone within reach of this blog the opportunity to test drive a hosted release preview of Revit called Sundial.

Autodesk Revit Sundial provides enhancements to Revit that are not currently included in the commercial release. We will be highlighting the many improvements in blog posts over the next days and weeks.

For those of you who try the release preview, please drop in here at Inside the Factory and let us know what you think. The hosting technology we’re using for the preview is itself experimental, so if you run into issues accessing the test, we’d like to know about those as well.

The quantity of available simultaneous sessions is limited, so you may run into delays if there are many people trying to access the preview at once. We'll keep the preview available for a few weeks, so please try again if you can't initially gain access.

Because this is an early in-progress release, there are no guarantees all the features you might see or read about will appear in a future release of Revit. Please keep this in mind when making any future purchasing decisions.

Try Autodesk Revit Sundial

Anthony A. Hauck

Senior Product Line Manager

Hiatus

All good things must come to an end. Or, at least go on hiatus. After exactly three years, we have decided to take a break from blogging on Inside the Factory. In a lot of ways this has been one big experiment. As much as we would like to, we simply cannot get out to visit all of you in your offices across the world - and vice versa. This blog has been the next best thing. It has been fantastic to connect with many of you through this medium. As user experience professionals, there is nothing better than having a conversation with end users. Unfortunately, Erik has left Autodesk to explore other paths and I do not have the time to fully commit to keeping the content fresh and engaging. So I have decided to put the blog on pause. The blog will stay up and you never know, I (or someone else) may pick it up again in the future. Of course this does not mean the conversation comes to an end. We are constantly experimenting with new ways to connect with our user base. You will find me these days on Twitter @TomVollaro and on ProjectVasari.com.

Get your code on this summer

This came across my inbox today from Jim Quanci,  Director of the Autodesk Developer Network. If you are a coder interested in learning about our various product APIs - or aspire to be one, these dev camps are a great way to dive in head first. I may stop by since I am clearly in the "aspirational" camp!

---

Join us at Camp this Summer!

Announcing Autodesk AEC DevCamp (June 6-7)

Register by April 30^th to get the $100 early bird discount! 

DevCamps are held every other year where software developers like you can learn to get the most from your time and effort working with Autodesk platform technologies.  The two industry specific Developer Camps include several tracks catering to the learning needs of beginner and expert software developers – as well as a business track for start-ups looking to develop and leverage their relationship with Autodesk.  Come to Camp and get two days of face to face learning and help from Autodesk software engineers – the same Autodesk software engineers developing and supporting the Autodesk technology you work with every day. 

You can also join us for a third day at  “DevLab” where you can work on your hardest coding challenges with an Autodesk software engineer looking over your shoulder giving you immediate help and advice.  Bring your laptop and work on your code as you’d normally do in your own office – the difference is that you have a team of DevTech experts (the same people who answer your questions through DevHelp Online) available to review your code if you’d like, answer your questions, and make suggestions. 

Cloud and Mobile Classes

New for this year’s DevCamps are several classes on helping you get started developing apps based on Cloud and Mobile technologies.  Learn how to build your first Cloud app integrated with your favorite Autodesk product – and how you can make it available “everywhere” through browser and mobile user interfaces.  Have you been considering building your first app for the iPhone, iPad or Android device but holding back because of fear of lost hours thrashing while learning the new technology?  DevCamp includes classes that will show you how to quickly and easily create your first “Hello World” app for iOS and Android - with a design and graphics twist.

AEC DevCamp, June 6-7 (outside of Boston)

You can attend beginner and expert classes on developing solutions with Autodesk® Revit® (all flavors including Server), AutoCAD® Civil 3D®, Autodesk® Infrastructure Map Server, Autodesk® Vault, Autodesk BIM 360, Autodesk Project Vasari, Autodesk® Green Building Studio®, Autodesk® Navisworks®, and several more Autodesk AEC technologies.  Hear from Autodesk’s AEC Leadership including Vice President Jim Lynch.  Learn firsthand about developing a new Cloud based business leveraging Autodesk technologies from the Co-Founder of Horizontal Systems (recently acquired by Autodesk) Jordan Brandt. 

Complete list of classes being offered at AEC DevCamp found here.

Register to attend the AEC DevCamp here. 

Optional AEC DevLab, June 8, requires a separate registration here

 

Happy Birthday Revit

April 1 marked the 10 year anniversary of Autodesk's acquisition of Revit. Yesterday we had a little party to celebrate. There were a lot of people in old t-shirts and a lot of great war stories. Here is to another 10 years and beyond...

All current factory staffers that have "survived" since the acquisition

Project Vasari 2.5 - Coming Soon

Our small, yet dedicated Project Vasari team has been working hard on a new Labs release, which will be dropping VERY soon. Keep an eye out on Twitter, Facebook, and/or ProjectVasari.com.  Our focus for this release has been on usabilty which includes new direct face manipulation tools and creating/editing in a perspective view. Yes. You heard that correctly.

see more details on our wiki site.

_tom

More fun with WebGL

I posted about a year ago about the rising trend in using WebGL to create hardware accelerated 3D graphics inside compliant browsers without the need for plugins. Well, this trend has really exploded. For some Friday fun I am posting some more examples of WebGL being used in innovative ways – but the keyword for 2012 is interactive. Developers are getting serious about making interactive 3D tools using this technology. Note: the latest version of Firefox 10 or Chrome is required. Sorry folks, no IE allowed here.

First up, Michael Dewberry, a Principal Software Engineer here at the Factory whipped up a WebGL exporter for Revit in just a couple of days. Unfortunately, this is not available publically (the devs here are using it to test new export APIs) but I got to play around with it, so I decided to export the geodesic dome I was working on last month.

3v version.  2v version. and the RVT file if you are interested.

Last year I played around a bit with WebGL myself and created this little “modeler.” It does not do much, but I was teaching myself Javascript and I wanted to see if I could create something semi-interactive.

 

123D Make, from our colleagues over in SF, is really fun. You can import a model and it will cut up the models into slices and lay them out on a template for cutting with a laser (through a service bureau) or by yourself (carpal tunnel alert!) Login required – but you can use your Autodesk services login. Worked better in Chrome for me.

 

TinkerCAD has come a really long way since I looked at it last year. Check out the breadth of projects people are creating with this fairly robust modeler. I also love the idea of “challenges” to help you learn. Login required.

 

I wrote about 3DTin last year. It also has come a long way from offering just blocks (ala Minecraft) to a new slate of really nice primitives.

 

Of these last three, Sunglass.IO has the slickest user experience. You can drag and drop your own models right onto the browser to load them. There is also a real-time collaboration aspect (which I have not yet tested.) However, I could not find out how to create new geometry. It seems like it is more like Design Review with real-time collaboration at this point.

 

I just ran across Shapesmith.net the other day (login required). Unlike 3DTin and TinkerCAD, it does not have direct manipulation of objects. But it DOES have some limited parametric control. Combine the two and you will really have something…

 

Bucky Bim

I sit next to Zach Kron here at the Factory. One thing Zach and I talk quite a bit about is the “hands on” approach to parametric modeling in Revit/Vasari vs. the more abstract approach of applications like Grasshopper and Generative Components. Zach calls this the “geometers” approach. That is, using good ol’ fashioned drawing techniques to define the base geometry and relationships. This keeps one very close to the actual geometry, versus the abstraction of spaghetti diagrams and the inaccessibility of code for those of us without comp-sci degrees.

For a while now I have been somewhat obsessed with the notion of building a parametric geodesic dome in Revit. I was originally inspired by David Light’s winning DesignByMany submission for Bucky’s Dymaxion House (which, by its geometry, can take advantage of standard divided surfaces. I quickly found that geodesic domes cannot be built using stock divided surfaces.) Also, I just love geodesic domes. I visited Bucky’s own Biosphere in Montreal this summer and committed myself to figuring out a way to build one in Vasari without writing any code.

The following video shows my technique, including an aspect of 3D snapping to surfaces that was pleasant surprise to me (and Zach as well!)

Coda: After building this model, I came across George Mokhtar and Iwan Peverett at BimAcadamy  who took a very similar approach. Interestingly, they generated their icosahedron as a pseudo solid using formulae. This seems a bit more efficient than my technique of stitching the intermediate components across the golden rectangles.

Another Coda: And just last week the BIM Troublemaker made some trouble with a stellated dodecahedron in Revit (sweet!) Yet another (probably more efficient) way to explore building this dome.

_tom    

 

Visualizing Revit Journals

Revit has had journal files from the very beginning.  The main use was to assist in test coverage by allowing the Quality Analyst to record common use cases for later play back against future builds protecting functionality.  Journals were a testing force multiplier.

As journals used VBscript we've successfully modified them to read from text files to automate sheet creation, model geometry, and upgrade families.

In this post I'm going to share an idea to use a journal to visualize command usage and sequence - something of great interest to a software designer as it could uncover patterns of usage and common workflows.  I'll mention that Autodesk does collect command frequency usage via our CIP program but this can only tell you how often a command is used.  More meaningful usage data remains ellusive but not in journals.

Process a Journal File

To get the data I need I just want a list of all commands in the order they occur and nothing else.  A journal file contains this but its lost in the noise. Here is a line that contains a command:

Jrn.Command "Internal" , "Create a default 3D orthographic view. , ID_VIEW_DEFAULT_3DVIEW"

What I want is the last command ID or description - in this case the creation of a default 3D view.

To condense a journal file a there is a great text processing tool in Perl.  I downloaded the free version of Activeperl and here is a good perl reference.

I created "process_journal.pl" which contains the following code:

open(OUT,">JournalProcessed.txt") or die "Can't open $filename to write";

open(INPUT, "journal.txt") or die "Can't open journal.txt";

while (<INPUT>)

{

  $this_line = $_;
  if (/Jrn.Command\s*".+?"\s*,\s*"(.+?)\s*,\s*(\w+)"/) {

  # $1 is command description, $2 is ID

  print OUT $2 . " " ;

  }

}

close INPUT;

In pseudo code:

• open journal.txt
• read a line
• look for the lines that have "Jrn.Command" and extract the description and command ID storing these in two variables $1 and $2
• Print out the variable $2(Command ID) to a new file JournalProcessed.txt and add a trailing space
• loop through  journal.txt

The output of JounralProcessed.txt looks like this:

ID_STARTUP_PAGE ID_FILE_NEW_WITH_TEMPLATE1 ID_FAMILY_NEW ID_REVIT_FILE_CLOSE...

It's a long string of command IDs separated by spaces.

Visualization

With a little searching I found someone has done the heavy lifting for me on the IBM Manyeyes website.  On this site you can upload tables and choose many pre-baked visualizations.  In my case I didn't even need a table!  Their "Phrase net" visualization only requires only a block of text.  The Phrasenet renders words with the font size relative to the word frequency and connects these using directional arrows that are also weighted by the relative number of connections.  A lot of data is encoded using this simple method.

Real World Test

So now I have a tool that can process a journal and another that can help me look at it.  The next question is "What to look at?"  Every journal file is different depending on the task at hand.  I could look at journal files from different disciplines or compare files from different phases in a project (creation vs. editing)

For this post I'll process a journal donated by co-conspirator Zach over at Buildz.  He gave me the journal file used to make TROGDOR the Burninator.  Here is trogdor in all his incendiary glory:

Here is a snippet of the processed journal:

ID_REVIT_FILE_NEW ID_FAMILY_NEW ID_OBJECT_3D_CURVE ID_ZOOM_IN ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_OBJECT_POINT ID_OBJECTS_CURVE_CIRCLE ID_SKETCH_PLANE_TOOL ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_EDIT_SCALE ID_BUTTON_DELETE ID_EDIT_SCALE ID_EDIT_SCALE ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_SKETCH_PLANE_TOOL ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_SKETCH_PLANE_TOOL ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_ZOOM_IN ID_OBJECTS_CURVE_LINE ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_OBJECT_POINT ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_SKETCH_PLANE_TOOL ID_OBJECTS_CURVE_CIRCLE ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_EDIT_UNDO ID_EDIT_UNDO ID_EDIT_UNDO ID_EDIT_UNDO ID_IMAGE_WIREFRAME ID_BUTTON_SELECT ID_BUTTON_DELETE ID_BUTTON_DELETE ID_BUTTON_DELETE...

and visualized in ManyEyes:

We can see heavy use of Select, ESC, Points, Sketch Plane, and Zoom.  Points are by far selected the most and the sketch plan tool has a high affinity with drawing lines (id_objects_curve_(circle))

The visualization allows me to select nodes and move them around.  Here is a different arrangement:

And a link to the live visualization so you can play yourself:

Happy visualizing!

_erik

Revit Server Survey

It's that time of year when we are in information gathering and validation mode.  Here is a survey request going out to our Revit Server users posted on behalf of our Revit Platform Feature Product Manager Richard Taylor:

We have compiled a short survey for Revit Server 2011 & Revit Server 2012.   If you have used either version or perhaps plan to implement within the next 6 months, your feedback is highly important.   Even if you evaluated Revit Server but decided not to implement, that particular feedback is also helpful.  I know your time is valuable, so I very much appreciate your participation and thoughts concerning Revit Server.

Your feedback helps us create better solutions for you.   Please feel free to forward this link to any team-member or consultant that may have also implemented Revit Server.  We are looking for general end-user feedback as well as IT or BIM Manager support feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RevitServerSatisfaction

As always, a huge THANK YOU!!    The survey will remain open for 2 weeks, and close on February 24^th.   But , why wait?  Have fun today!

Richard

 

More on Selection (Links & Underlay)

When looking over the state of any feature in Revit it can often lead to a trip down the proverbial "Rabbit Hole".   So far on the topic of selection I have covered Press & Drag, and touched on Chain select.  In this post I want to get some feedback on Underlay and Links with respect to selection.

Underlay

Underlay has always been slightly out of alignment with user mental models.  In 2D processes underlay had one drawing placed under the other yet in Revit we are looking deeper into the model at parallel levels - not placing one view under the other.  Further there is the additional behavior that underlays are open for selection which is also often unexpected.

This can come in handy when using Linework to reference items above yet can also cause accidental changes do to inadvertant selection.  You may note that the system currently prevents box selection from working on anything visible via the underlay and this was implemented after receiving user feedback.

My question to everyone is when is selection of an underlay useful?  MEP workflows or reading property values? What if underlays were never selectable?  Is the work around OK?

Another potential mitigation strategy would be to allow underlays to be selectable in specific tools, such as the Component or Linework tool, yet disallow selection for the Modify (Arrow) tool.

I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

Links

Much like underlay when is the selectability of a Link a problem and when is it advantageous?  Specific examples can help us acheive the best default behavior and/or allow flexibity if required.

_Erik

Windows Vista Compatibility

Now for a bit of news...

Microsoft Vista support will be discontinued for new 2012 Autodesk products (Revit included)

Windows XP & 7 are still supported.  See the following link for more information: http://autode.sk/xY3PHO

Chain Select

First thank you all for the relatively large amount comments on the previous selection post (Press & Drag) that can still be found here.  Again the best comments explain why you use it one way or another since that helps us understand how to best support your tasks and uncover patterns of usage.

In this post I want to briefly talk about Chain Select  This is the behavior that allows you to select a contiguous set of connected lines.  Revit does not have a polyline element so this is one way to speed multi-segment selection.

In the Massing environment the preference is to always select the chain or loop.  Tab will select individual sub elements of the chain.  This is 180 degrees opposite from the project environment where individual elements are given preference and you must tab to select the chain.

Each behavior has its benefits yet having two opposing behaviors can lead to frustration and slow learning.  Is this the case in the field?  Do you prefer one behavior over the other? Why?  Do we need a setting to control this?  can one behavior serve both environments?

I look forward to the discussion.

_Erik

Revit Schedules: A Love Hate relationship

Posted on behalf of David Conant - Principal User Experience Designer:

A product like Revit that is moving from adolescence to early maturity needs to revisit its roots periodically to make sure that it is not coasting on early glory. To illustrate, let me turn on the time machine.

The scene: An architect’s office late 1999.

The action: I am demonstrating a Beta build of Revit 1.0. On screen we see a floor plan, an elevation, and a window schedule. In the floor plan, I add a window. It appears immediately in the elevation and a new line appears on the schedule listing an instance of Window Type 2. I delete another window from the elevation and it disappears from the schedule and plan.

The reaction: “That’s amazing, I love it. Checking window schedules is so tedious. Now how do I put the window type symbol in the schedule? No? I’m going to hate that. What about adding comments or shading every other line? That can’t be hard. I’m sure you’ll fix it soon.”

Now: It’s 2012. Revit schedules can do much more than they did in 1999. You can add new properties, perform some calculations, and group header cells together. Unfortunately they don’t provide full control over cell format, won’t schedule a generic model component, or display a window tag. “You’re killing me” I hear.

Schedules and related elements such as Legends, Takeoffs, Lists, or Reports are powerful and highly useful features of Revit. They do, however, have a number of limitations both in the data that can be presented and how it is presented. Some are the result of constraints imposed by current interface tools, others reflect deeper issues in the Revit data structure and regeneration engines. To build a better picture of how the tools should be working, the AEC User Experience team is studying schedules and related non-graphical data display tools.

As one part of this research effort, I am gathering information on how you use or want to use schedule and schedule like methods in your work. If you are interested in helping us in this, I have provided a link to a short survey focused on your usage and a request for you to share image samples of what you are doing.  Samples of real work are an important part of our research. They will be used as test cases and help us illustrate themes as we explore methods to increase flexibility and capability. They need not be confined to what you can currently produce in Revit. Examples of what does not work well or appear correctly in Revit are more useful than what worked well.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/66BVMW3

_David Conant

 

 

Press & Drag?

Everyone familiar with this little guy?

This control defines what happens when you click on an element and drag while holding the button down. It defaults to being enabled.

Behavior

• When enabled the element under the mouse down action will be selected and then moved as you drag.
• When not enabled the mouse-down/drag/mouse up will select elements only and will not move any selected elements in the same action.

I'm interested in how many people use this setting.  I know one may disable it to try and pick elements that are located over another larger element such as an imported image or import.  The aim is to avoid picking and dragging the background element while making a window selection of a smaller group of elements.

Lets imagine this control is un-checked and removed from Revit.

• You can still select elements then drag them -  just not in the same action.
• Accidental drags are prevented which is good as this can often cause long regen times and slow tasks

What are the downsides?  Please share any you see.  Is drag/move even useful given the lack of accuracy?

FYI, I am looking into this as part of research into face selection.  It is a well known issue that having to pick elements by their edges and tabbing to do so is a usability and learning issue.  Allowing face selection, however,  will increase the potential to accidentally drag elements on selection.

BTW to preview face selection it currently works on the Part category.

_erik

 

Project Browser Research

I'm in the midst of conducting some research related to the Project Browser and wish to crowd source some of this with our readers.

For this specific effort I desire to better understand current usage and context. To this end I'm on the search for screen shots of the following:

• Browser Organization "Folder" and "Filter" tabs for Sheets and Views. (4 images)
• Project Browser Screen shots showing all the nodes expanded.  I realize this may be many as long lists are a known issue in the current design.
• MEP Users feel free to send an image of your System Browser

Anything sent will be for internal use only.  If you use a third party product please mention it as I'm looking at products offered by our partners as well.

From this information I hope to get a better picture of how data is organized (by discipline, project parameters ect..) and also what constitutes a realistic data set (size and diversity) for use in testing new concepts and ideas.

If you can help please send images in any format via email.

I'll follow-up in the weeks ahead with more related topics to help validate known issues, common tasks and requirements.

 

_erik

 

 

 

Revit Spaghetti

Back in September, a little Revit add-in named Dynamo made the rounds through the blog/twitter-sphere. Dynamo is an early exploration into programming for Revit. It was created by Ian Keough, Solution Architect at Vela systems. Ian developed some serious Revit chops while working as an engineer at Buro Happold. He created Dynamo in his spare time and released it as an open source project under the Apache license on gitHub. Dynamo allows you to place and control family instances hosted on points using a familiar node wiring diagram interface – instead of having to write code. The installation is a bit wonky, so here are the steps:

1. Go to the Dynamo repository on github.
2. Click on DynamoInstall or DynamoInstall_32bit (depending on your Revit install)
3. Click on Release
4. Click on both the msi file and setup.exe. For each, click “View Raw” and that will allow you to download the file
5. Run setup.exe and restart Revit. I will post instructions soon on getting it going in Vasari.

Ian clearly admits: It’s incredibly buggy, feature incomplete, and completely undocumented. Regardless, this little science project is really cool and has generated a lot of interest internally as well as at Autodesk University last month. If you were were not lucky enough to attend Matt Jezyk and Zach Kron’s “Energizing Supermodels” course at AU, stay tuned. We will soon share some more cool stuff you can do with Dynamo. In the meantime, I put together a short video to introduce the add-in and show how to get started.

_tom

eTransmit update for Revit now on Autodesk Labs

eTransmit for Revit – Technology Preview 1.1

The eTransmit for Revit team is pleased to announce that a new version of the eTransmit for Revit technology preview is now available for free download from Autodesk Labs.  This preview is available worldwide and will expire after June 30, 2012.

What’s new in 1.1?

You might recall that back in July we did a user survey to gather feedback from those of you who had tried eTransmit for Revit.  One of the things that we heard very clearly is that there are a number of people who were experiencing problems using the initial version.  Based on this, our biggest focus for this version was fixing issues.  For a complete list you can review the release notes and known issues, but highlights include:

• eTransmit will no longer crash when you try to create a transmittal on a network drive.
• The progress bar now updates correctly when there are errors and warnings (previously it gave the impression that the transmittal had failed when there were only warnings).

In addition, there is one new feature.  In version 1.1, you can use eTransmit even if you have one or more models open. 

Known issues:  Unfortunately, transmitted models still do not open correctly if you double-click on them from the operating system.  To open a transmitted model correctly, use Revit’s file open command.  This and other known issues are listed in detail in the release notes and known issues.

 What else did we learn in the user survey?

The survey certainly confirmed that eTransmit for Revit is a useful tool that saves time.  Most of the respondents envisioned using it to share models outside your firm a few times per week and many respondents would use it for archiving models as well.

As part of this survey, we asked participants to prioritize twenty-five wishlist items.  Based on the ranking, the top 25% are:

1. Offer an option to automatically run the purge unused command on all of the Revit models when creating the transmission package.
2. Offer an option to delete particular types of views (such as "all detail views" or "all sections") in all of the Revit models when creating the transmission package.
3. Allow me to remember different combinations of eTransmit settings and save them in named profiles for re-use.
4. Allow me to exclude individual files from the transmission package
5. Offer an option to delete all the sheets in all of the Revit models when creating the transmission package.
6. allow me to upgrade a model and all of its links to the current version of Revit.

The orange bars indicate the total points assigned to each request based on the number of users who classified it as “most important”, “very important”, etc.  Our team can’t promise anything about the future of eTransmit for Revit, but we did want to give you some idea of what your feedback has said.  Many thanks go to everyone who participated in the survey or offered suggestions via other avenues.

Thanks for taking the time to try eTransmit for Revit.   Suggestions, problems, and questions are all welcome at [email protected].

 

Intersecting Roofs

Taking a break from news and design to share some techniques for roof making in Revit.

In northern climates roofs are often steeply pitched to shed snow.  Many structures in New England have collapsed because they failed to follow that simple move.   In this post I'll explore some methods to create this particular pitched roof condition:

One method is to create two roofs and join them.

Joined Roofs

First create a footprint roof.

Next create an extrusion roof choosing a vertical workplane. In the example below the pitch is the same as the main roof and the bottom of the roof sketch starts at the top of the main roof eave soffit.

Once the extrusion roof is created you can adjust its start and end points and use the Join/Unjoin Roof  tool to attach the far end of the extrusion to the face of the main roof.

There are a couple issues with this setup.

1. The main roof is still present under intersecting roof. If the roof is not made from trusses you must use the Dormer Opening tool or an in-place void family to cut it out.
2. If you want the fascia of the intersecting roof to be aligned with fascia of the main roof you will see the following error when you attempt to align them:

Revit doesn't like this condition yet there are always alternatives...

Roof Shape Editing

Below I deleted the intersecting roof, removed the slope arrows from the main roof, and used the shape editing tools to Add Split Lines as my ridge lines.  The Modify Sub Elements tool can then move points up to the desired height.

Roof Slope Arrows

Last I'll share a rather obscure and old way of achieving this roof that might help you win a revit knowlege contest at AU next season.

In this scenario you make a roof sketch with 3 lines on the south boundary - two slope defining and one not.  Next over the non-slope line draw two slope arrows that point to each other.  For accuracy I drew one slope line, set the properties for its head and tail, then mirrored it to create its twin.

The fasicas are aligned, the space under the perpendicular roof is open and all with one sketch!

I'm certain there are other ways to acheive this condition.  Feel free to share or point out other posts on the net.

_erik

Write your first Revit plugin - in VB, at AU and beyond!

We posted back in May about the My First Revit Plug-in Series.  This is a great way for all of you non-programmer types to get your feet wet (and I mean SOAKED) in the Revit API. Now they have added VB.net samples to help lower the bar even further. The explanations in the lessons are still written for C#, but now depending on your language preference you can now follow along in VB.Net.

And if you are so inclined, a little event called Autodesk University is going on right now in a quite corner of Nevada. If you were not able to make it out there this week, starting today is AU Virtual. There are a number of courses related to coding in the Revit API. Check out the archive as well, which includes an Introduction to the Revit API from AU 2010.

Happy Coding!

_tom

Interoperability Survey

Interested in helping Autodesk create a better workflow between Autodesk Products? Ask yourself the questions below – if you said yes to any then we would like your feedback.

• If Revit is your primary design tool have you ever had to include AutoCAD drawings or produce AutoCAD drawings as a deliverable? 
• If AutoCAD (includes all DWG-based products) is your primary design tool have you ever worked with others on a project that might include some Revit information?
• Have you ever worked with others on a project that might include model from software other that Revit?

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NLBM883.

Your input will help us create a more fluid workflow between design solutions.

Thank you!

Vasari Talk

I know most of the readers of this blog are already Revit black belts. However, if you, or some of your colleagues, are new to the concept of energy modeling, you may want to consider tuning in for our Vasari Talk webinar on Wednesday at 11:30 Eastern (-5 GMT.)  This is the first part of a three part series. We will begin by covering inputs, then analyzing and interpreting outputs and finally creating a simulation strategy for your project.

Apologies for the late notice, but we are recording the sessions. Past sessions are available on our wiki site as well. Hope to see you there!

_tom