How can I make my work and ideas more accessible to students of architecture and building? I really believe that “BIM sketching” is a powerful research strategy. Learning by doing. BIM outside the “day-job” box. A tool for understanding, unshackled from the chains of commercial ROI.
This post from 2013 was in response to enquiries I receive from time to time, mostly from students, asking for access to my models. This one made my Ronchamp Chapel model available in DWF format.
https://grevity.blogspot.com/2013/08/chapels-for-free.html
Every now an then I get asked to write an article or speak at a local event by our PR person. (we’ve had 4 or 5 of those over the years, all women, all really great)
The link here seems to be dead now. Generally speaking I find BIM articles quite boring and I can’t hack the usual “BIM expert” persona, so I always go for a provocative angle that subverts the mainstream view of BIM as a fairy-tale solution to commercial issues.
I got the idea of creating a version of the Gartner hype cycle using Revit.
- So I could talk about different stages in the BIM journey
- Introducing the metaphor of “getting on the BIM bus”
- A demonstration of using Revit in a non-standard way, as a communication tool.
https://grevity.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-bim-bus.html
Once in a while I do a fairly straight “tips & tricks” post. Actually I don’t use keyboard shortcuts all that much in Revit. Looking this post over again, I realise that I have forgotten about half of these. Maybe it has to do with me being very “analog / visual oriented”
https://grevity.blogspot.com/2013/08/speed-kills.html
This was a period when I was exploring the conceptual massing tools quite intensively. Just a little experiment looking at the behaviour of three types of family which exhibit some aspect of the conceptual massing approach to form-finding. (Generic Model, Generic Adaptive & Conceptual Mass)
https://grevity.blogspot.com/2013/08/mass-murder.html
Every once in a while I get involved in master-planning or “urban design” … basically design at the scale of groups of buildings, city blocks, housing developments. Sometimes this has been through my day-job. At other times it has evolved out of my interest in a particular architect from history. I did some studies of Palladio’s villas in context, and I looked at Hawksmoor’s six London churches in their different urban settings.
I know there are other tools that can tackle some of this stuff, and I have high hopes for initiatives like TestFit. All the same I do think there are times when it makes sense to work directly in Revit … and WE NEED BETTER TOOLS. For example it would be useful if the “Roads” category actually did something instead of just sitting there for no particular reason.
When I did this post I was very hopeful that I would figure out lots of cool stuff for masterplanning, but it never quite took off. I continue to dabble from time to time, but no major breakthroughs.
https://grevity.blogspot.com/2013/08/master-blaster.html
excellent post Andy!
ReplyDeletewe had a photograph of ronchamp lying around while my kids were looking into old album. my wife took it pretty much from the same angle (of choice).
we need better tools
I am all for KB shortcuts. I always argue Hand is faster than eyes+hand. I hate watching people wandering around the screen with their mouse looking for a specific tool, they know its name, but not always its location. But if they know the name they might as well get to learn or modify the shortcut once and for all.