Got Essential Skills?

Last week inside the factory we held our (mostly) weekly design pinup. These lunch time pinups give interaction and product designers the opportunity to pin up an unfinished design and have others throw darts. You know the drill. This particular pinup was not focused on a particular interface or feature design. Instead, we brainstormed on what constitutes the absolute essential skills for first-time Revit users to learn. Our colleagues in the Media & Entertainment division pioneered the concept of Essential Skills Movies back in 2002 when they released the Personal Learning Edition of Maya. This was a free version intended to introduce the product to new audiences. During usability testing, the user research team noticed common problem areas that made users stumble and sometimes even abandon learning the product. The team distilled these issues into seven 60 second movies that introduce the most essential skills needed to have a successful first learning experience. It is interesting to note, we have been talking a lot about in-canvas and more direct model interactions vs. "traditional" user interfaces such as toolbars, ribbons and menus. The problem is, our industry has not standardized most "direct" interactions, so they remain hidden to users. This technique is a nice way of lowering that initial steep learning curve and introducing features that may be, by there nature, hard to discover.

The Maya 2010 Essential Skills Movies starter screen. Notice the topics focus on basic concepts such as navigation and selection - more advanced topics are accessible from the red button.

We decided that this method was intriguing and deserved some thought on how it could be applied to Revit. Below is the list we came up with. Note: the ultimate goal is to get this down to no more that seven movies. And each should be no longer that 60 seconds. The Maya team has done a lot of research and found that this combination of quantity and length strikes the right balance. In your experience learning and/or teaching Revit, which items would you add? Remove? Modify?

• Families: Parametric, coordinated models, not just 3D forms.
• Views: Coordinated views of a single model, not just 2D projections
• Constraints and hosting
• Navigation:  Mouse wheel, viewcube,
• Datums: Grids, levels and workplanes and why they are the important building blocks of any model
• Selection: Pre-highlight, ESC key, Tab select, right-click, displaying properties
• Temporary dimensions

Comments

[pierre-felix breton]

from a long background of autocad experience, it took me a while to get used to revit with the following items. I now assimiilated them and i don't find them an issue at all, but it might be worth to consider for new users of revit. Here is what I recall as to my main issues starting in revit:

- to avoid unwanted constraints, create objects in the void, then move them as opposed to create them on the proper place at first.

- moving objects took me a little while to get, especially when typing distances

- withtout levels, you are doomed, show me that it is so important as a start

- show me how to make a basic family with the notion of reference planes: that is key in families

- show me how to nest families: it took me a while to figure out the workplane concept. coming from the acad block world, this is quite new as a concept

- show me how to orient the north properly (true north) for solar concepts

- show me how to create a family where 3d and 3d (as well as masks) are properly defined, for example, a pocket door symbol

- teach me how to define view ranges: this is one area where as new users we trip over. often resulting in creating objects disappearing right away

- how to make a camera view and manipulate it (perspective projection). it is not obvious to figure that the only way to select a camera is to pick the crop region in the view, then switch to a plan view to then manipulate it.

- teach me that detail works can be done as hybrid where coarse things are done in 3d and small details are simple add-ons.

- show me the difference between model lines and detail lines. not obvious at first.

that is more less what I noted while learning revit the first time...

[BimGuru]

That's an excellent idea for Revit newbies.
So lets talk about those "Essentials" or I prefer the word "fundamentals".
1. Navigation (View cube, Mouse Wheel, project browser, selection, nudge
2. Modeling (create basic elements, modify)
3. Query (Temporary dimension, Measure)
4. Datum (Levels and Grids)

For newbies that's enough to start then they will go to more advance skills.
I like the box ala Maya.
Thanks for listening
Kal

[Adam Sheather]

I think we need to call these Pre-Essentials

I would have the Following

Getting around your Project Browser - open files - Displaying different views, sheets, schedules from project Browser.

Navigation - Pan Zoom in 2D, Rotate, Steering Wheel - 3D.Quick Overview of Status Bar (Hide elements, Detail Level)

Inserting Levels & Grids and creating new plans - Create new level and Grid and change dimensions and names. Show creation of plan view when level is created.

Creating and manipulating walls - Explanation on drawing walls and the basic modify tools - move, rotate, copy.

Inserting Components - Windows, doors, furniture etc. Loading and Placing objects just include hosted item (window) and non hosted furniture example) showing how to load an item from the library.

Manipulating Object Properties - instance and Type properties of inserted objects, manipulating values, create new type of items in the project.

Creating Sketch Elements - Floors Roofs and Stairs - more complex but vital elements needed.

Placing Views on Sheets.Placing Views on a sheet add shadows and visual style to make it more pretty.

[Theo Dore]

I am somewhat surprised that the Revit<>User interaction and the GUI itself is not listed. The comments reflect this partly.

Navigating the project browser with its views sheets families etc, the element and type properties, the visibility settings dialog and the Ribbon are all essential skills. I would list view navigation along this category, also going from a section marker in plan view to the section itself, and possibly right clicking as well.

[Tom Vollaro]

Theo, good point. We thought of that, but instead of having an entire video dedicated to just the GUI, we thought we could address most of those issues within the context of the other videos.