TOILET TANTRUMS

The need for better quality sanitary ware families has been a recurring theme on this blog.
For example, early last year I reviewed recently released families for Roca

ROCA POST

Back in 2014 I spent quite a lot of time trying to demonstrate the quality of Duravit content that might be made available to those who want to design stylish modern bathrooms using Revit.

DURAVIT POST

Well the good news is that last month BIMobject published more than a hundred Duravit families.  I was keen to take a closer look, so I downloaded most of them and carried out an analysis that I will share here.

First of all I want to give due credit to BIMobject for making this possible.  I have a pathological aversion to terms like "game-changing" but the truth is that they have had a huge impact on the world of BIM content.  Their major contribution in my view has been to bring so many major manufacturers to the party.  BIM is a journey, and without the manufacturers we will never reach our goal.  I can hardly imagine how much determination and persistence it took.  Certainly it's not the kind of thing that I'm good at. 

But what I can do is to review and comment from the point of view of an experienced Revit user and practising architect.  So what follows should be taken as constructive criticism of a job well done, but a "work in progress", which can surely benefit from end-user input on a regular basis.

I have placed the families I downloaded into a collection file and arranged them according to product family.  The first thing to say is that these are all based on CAD imports.  I know that many of you detest the thought, but quite frankly I don't see any other way to successfully represent the compound curves that so many plumbing fittings exhibit.  You only have to look at some of the native geometry used in some product ranges with their sharp edges and unsightly seams.  Yes you can get fairly close using conceptual massing, but who wants all their plumbing families to be adaptive components? 

So CAD imports have their down side, but now that we have learned to supress the polygon mesh edges, they do a pretty good job.  BUT you have to apply materials via object styles, which means that consisten naming of layers is important.

In most of these families, a porcelain material has been applied to the appropriate layer,  but in some the geometry is on layer 0, which resulted in no material being applied.  I have highlighted this by applying an orange material to layer 0 in the collection file.  This is easy enough to fix, but it turns out to be a little more complicated.  When I open the original families, there IS a material applied to layer 0.  The problem occurred because my collection file already had a layer 0 under "Imports in Families" (but with no material assignment).  So of course the project settings take precedence over the settings in the family being imported.

Another look at Object Styles reveals a deeper problem. Almost all the families use different layer names.  To correct this you have to open them one by one, and to decide on a standard naming convention.  I like to use "_Porcelian", "_Chrome", "_Plastic" etc.  If this is done consistenly, and the families are placed in a collection file, you can rename those layers for all the families at a stroke, from the master collection.

This brings me to another small quible.  I had to download these families one-by-one, and it takes about 9 clicks for each one, to download them and return to the source page. (select, download, download, save as, save, cancel, close, back, remove)   The best way seems to be to favourite a number of families to the "BIM Board" then download them from here, and remove them one-by-one as you download them.  I wish there was a button to download your current BIM board as a zipped package.  The NBS library has this facility, and it works well.  They also have a little symbol that shows you at a glance which families you have already downloaded.  BIMobject stores this information, which you can see as a list under your profile, but it's much more user-friendly to see it displayed on the product images.

You may not often want to download a hundred families as I did in this case, but sanitary ware for a hotel would usually mean a dozen or so items.  If you add accessories, it could easily be 30 or 40.  You really don't want to be downloading these one-by-one.

The families all have masking regions and symbolic lines in the 3 major orthographic views, which is an improvement on the last collection I reviewed.  Again, I know that some people argue against this, but if you need internal elevations details to normal Interior Design standards it's essential.
 

Coarse, medium, and fine detail levels are represented in a logical manner.  I personally don't favour the use of cuboids at coarse scale, but it is common practice so I'll let that pass this time around.

Next quibble.  Many of the families are hosted: face-based or wall-hosted.  They've done this with a nested component, which is good practice in my view, but the components are Generic Model category.  This means that any graphic settings you apply will not behave as expected.  You might be puzzled as to why some toilets have a heavier pen weight than others for example. It's easy to fix: open up the nested component, change the category to Plumbing Fixtures (Family Category & Parameters), load it back in.  Hopefully this will be fixed on the next release. 

Having made my collection, I ran a schedule.  This immediately showed up another small issue.  These families have not all been made using the same shared parameters file.  This has resulted in 3 sets of parameters with the same names, but different GUIDs.  It means that you can't get these items to line up in a single column.  This is unfortunate because the families come embedded with lots of useful data.  Also I couldn't easily tag these files because I didn't have the Shared Parameters file.  I could go through the process of making one, but this is quite laborious and doesn't solve the issue of merging the triplicate sets.  I'm sure BIMobject have the software skills to create an app that will process these families as a batch to correct this "triplication".

Another tiny grumble.  Do we really need 5 different render appearances to represent white porcelain?  I think it's just carelessness in naming actually, someone typed a space where someone else didn't.  It's a very common problem actually.  Very difficult to control with multiple users working long hours under pressure.  But once again it's easy to correct this from a central collection file.  Oh yes, and the white plastic shows up as grey in shaded views. 

Before I close, I want to give another plug for collection files.  They are so useful for giving an overview of the product range, for easily adjusting naming standards, for picking up errors and inconsistencies, for copy-pasting a group of objects into your project in a single action.  It's probably too much to ask for manufacturers to package up their products in this way (although one or two do) but I do like to dream sometimes :)

So all in all, this is a great set of content, that could be even better with a just a little more attention to detail.  Hopefully this can be picked up in the next round of revisions.  So at the risk of repeating myself, I think BIMobject have their priorities right:

1. get the manufacturers on board,
2. build up a substantial library of content with a strong user base,
3. gradually improve standards and quality based on industry feedback. 

They've come an awfully long way over the past 5 years or so.  Imagine how far they can go in the next five. 

So thankyou Stefan, and please take these comments in the spirit intended: one of appreciation and positive encouragement. Oh, and by the way, here's a shot of me and Stefan sitting side-by-side at BCS in Porto last October.  The guy with the mike is Aaron Maller of course, and Stefan has an emoji over his face to indicate the passionate nature of the discussions taking place ... not my emoji by the way, I snipped this from someone else's tweet.

CURTAINS FOR AARHUS

I don't know much about Aarhus.  Didn't know anything until it was announced as the next venue at the conclusion of RTC Europe in Porto.  I won some free accommodation in a not-very-serious quiz at the end of the Building Content Summit (if they remember) which has enticed me into submitting a couple of abstracts.  More to the point, I really enjoyed the atmosphere at my first European version of the event and made some good friends.  No longer RTC of course, this will be the first BiLT Europe, rebranding to reflect a broadening audience, with a somewhat improved logo.

Arhus means "River Mouth" apparently and the town has Viking origins. Turns out to be Denmark's second largest city, with Scandinavia's largest University and a massive container port. I'm looking forward to drinking in some Scandinavian atmosphere, assuming it works out.  Perhaps I will manage a day or two in Copenhagen also, some buildings there I would love to see.  And of course every culture has its own quirks in terms of building techniques and styles: the way these have been expressed over the years.  Always inspiring to visit a new city with a few hundred years of cultural history behind it.

Conferences give me a motivation to explore something more thoroughly and in more depth than I might otherwise do, and I usually try to do something significantly different each time. Over the past year or so I have had some interesting challenges using Revit's Curtain Wall tool, and I realise that I would like to undertake a more systematic review of its capabilities and quirks.

Overlaying an element of randomness onto a regular grid is a simple but effective architectural maneuver, with obvious relevance to the Curtain Wall tool.  I've really enjoyed trying out different approaches to this, and look forward to sharing my experiences.  Nothing fancy, just basic Family Editor stuff with a sprinkling of lateral thinking. 

Revisiting a project to prepare a presentation usually throws up new ideas. 
You wouldn't expect to use curtain walls on Project Soane, but there are many internal areas where he used a finish that imitates stone courses with recessed joints, so I've been experimenting with curtain panels that mimic various tiling patterns.  Fill patterns with matching render appearances are all very well, but sometimes you want to express the 3 dimensionality of the joints in shaded views.

I've had several goes at the Mushrabiya Screen in the past, with varying degrees of success.  Last week I put a couple of ideas together with a slightly different twist.  The result is a very flexible modular system for generating new scalable patterns, rapidly and reliably. It's my best attempt so far, and subject to further development over the next few months.

I worked on a project last year which is just coming back to life again.  Not going to reveal any specific details, but it involves insulated panel walls that slope and curve.  All this is half-hidden behind a slatted screen which is not yet modelled, our scope is the interior fit-out, so I've been modelling someone else's design as context for ours.  It was an interesting challenge and I'll be sharing my solution for what it's worth.  Something of a hybrid, but it does the job.

I've also been giving some support to teams doing concept designs for residential developments.  My contribution has mostly been to develop families that facilitate rapid mocking-up of external façade ideas.  One of the techniques I am playing with involves using the curtain wall tool to model both structural frame and infill treatments.  It shows some potential, at early concept stage, when things are still very fluid. 

I've also done some work, at the request of another colleague, on ways to model junctions of mullions with shaped sections that give better close-up results than the
default "square cut-off".  Again, it's early days and I will be exploring this further before venturing towards the land of the Vikings.

And to conclude this post, I have also been exploring the use of curtain walls to represent timber panelling.  Not so sure about this one.  I think it will only really pay off where there is a lot of regularity and repetition.  Shaping and cutting around doorways, windows, fireplaces etc. is a bit of a nightmare.  Still it's an interesting challenge to stretch the capabilities of the tool.

My second abstract also involves an in-depth study of a particular Revit category: Planting.  But that will be another post.

CURRENT EVENTS

Too many ideas in my head. Too many half written blog posts. Too many long gaps between posts. This one dates back to New Year, the 2 weeks as 2016 faded into 2017. (Remember those numbers, "16 going on 17")

Week one was Christmas in England with family. We rented a flat in Swanage on the south coast .  Corfe Castle, steam train ride, chalk cliffs & lighthouses. Cold, clear days & cold grey seas rolling onto damp, sandy beaches, not a deck chair or swimming costume in sight. Thinking about history, trade, warfare, buildings.

On Christmas eve we picked Tom up at Wareham Station, coming from Singapore via London.  It was a surprise to learn that Wareham was a major town in Saxon times, possibly the third largest in Wessex, thanks to its status as a port, up-river from what is now Poole Harbour. The earth ramparts can still be seen and it has the classic early town form of a crossroads superimposed on a rounded square.  We picked up some vegetables in an open market next to the river and set off home via Corfe Castle.

Again it was a surprise to find out how important this castle was in Norman times.  It seems such a backwater now, but it's a natural defensive location on a very steep hill, with an excellent view of Wareham in the distance.  You could easily watch ships coming and going from the keep.  It was completely trashed by Cromwell's army after resisting two sieges.  Interesting times.  The tail end of absolute monarchy in England and a bumpy road towards a partnership between the landed aristocracy and the rising commercial classes.  Society in transition, the beginnings of parliamentary democracy, a flawed system, but arguably the best we have. This is also the period leading up to the establishment of the Bank of England, which has been much on my mind this past 18 months, thanks to Project Soane.

I'm old enough to remember steam trains in the UK.  I also rode on them in Zimbabwe as late as the 1980s.  There is a heritage railway operating out of Swanage along the branch line from Wareham which was closed to regular commercial traffic in 1972. We took a ride on this to Corfe Castle one afternoon, which rolled back the years for me.  The attention to detail on the station is quite impressive, well worth booking a ride if you get the chance.  Yet another connection to steam power, the industrial revolution, fossil fuels.

I spent the first week of the new year at home in Dubai.  Revit, Project Soane, Reading, Thinking.  2017 is supposed to be the year where I find a better balance in my life, consolidating the health gains of the past 2 years, taking more regular exercise, bringing music back into my daily routine.  Let's hope so.

Many people view 2016 as a disaster but to me it had its ups and downs like any other. Trump and Brexit were disappointing to me, but so what?. The Republicans were going to get another go at running the show sooner or later.  I find that I'm not altogether comfortable with the constant displays of "resistance" that some of my friends are "sharing".  Let's put it this way.  I thought is was wrong when people questioned Obama's credentials and indulged in all kinds of sneers and insults towards their president.  So is it now right to do the same towards a Trump just because I disagree with everything he stands for?  I have little respect for the man, but a very large number of Americans did vote for him.  Do I really want to see a nation split down the middle, polarised, vindictive?  Perhaps we should all be looking inside ourselves and reflecting.  How can we better communicate with those who have such vastly different views of the world from ourselves?

On the plane back from Heathrow to Dubai, I watched the documentary "Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World".  It's well worth following this up by watching a few of Werner Herzog's documentaries on YouTube.  This one resonated with my own ambivalence towards digital technologies.  BIM is hugely important to me.  I have always been a visual thinker, using drawing as a tool for understanding the world.  Digital tools have added super-powers to my visual thinking, which is great but I do miss the intuitive, tactile side. There is a danger of technology worship blinding us to the virtues of a simpler more directly physical past.  Werner Herzog has a knack for catching this, well worth a watch.

Recently I have been working on the Director's Parlours: an area at the junction between Taylor's Court Suite, and Soane's NW Extension.  Historically the Court Suite represents the emergence of the Bank of England as Britain's dominant financial institution, whereas the NW Extension heralded the spreading of paper money to a much broader public.  Here were the printing works and accounting offices responsible for the first 5 pound, 2 pound and 1 pound notes.

The Director's Parlours are a remarkable, complex series of spaces, woven together by Soane, building on Taylor's earlier work and connecting through to Sampson's original Pay Hall via the spaces behind it which had been the original home for these functions:  meetings of the Governing Board, sub-committees, private interviews with important clients, and so on. 

I have been toying with the idea that the Bank of England played a key role in preparing England to host the Industrial Revolution.  Is this justified?  Placing the management of the national debt into corporate hands set up a four way exchange between King, Parliament, Landed Gentry and Corporate Finance.  Of course there is an overlap between these groups, but you get a sense of the emergence of checks and balances, trade-offs, managing risk, trust and suspicion.  I'm not looking for a simplistic, single explanation here, but I do think that the emergence of this kind of "social contract" could have helped to make England into fertile ground for industrialisation to take root. 

These are my own ideas but they owe a great deal to my reading of Daniel Abrahamson's book "Building the Bank of England".  So let's return to the "16 going on 17" theme.

As the late 1600s faded into the early 1700s, a remarkable new institution was founded.  A group of merchants on the fringes of the financial elite managed to form a Joint Stock Company for the purpose of raising a government loan.  Joint Stock Companies were a relatively new Dutch invention, previously used very successfully to finance long distance commerce.  They were a major factor behind early Dutch dominance of the East India trade.  The governors of the Bank of England were mostly Whigs and nonconformists, many of them from immigrant families, Huguenots for example.  Interesting parallels perhaps to the liberal, democrat bankers so hated by the "Alt Right"

I watched part of a YouTube interview last week and read quite a number of the comments below which pitched Trump as the hero who will slay the dragon (aka the Military Industrial Complex, which is claimed to be controlled by a conspiracy of democrats)  It intrigues my that ideas I would normally associate with the likes of Noam Chomsky have been hijacked and inverted by "rednecks & racists".  The big takeaway for me is the danger of a simplistic "goodies and baddies" worldview.  It's so easy to react badly and hurl insults back at people with views like this, but once again, I don't think that helps.  I'm suggesting that the Bank of England succeeded by careful groundwork, building trust, staying the course.  Classic English compromise ?

Soane's role in all of this is quite interesting.  He rose from quite a humble background and his early clients were landed gentry.  He aspired to be accepted into this society of hereditary wealth and power, dreaming of setting up a dynasty.  Unfortunately his two sons were to disappoint him in different ways, something which he felt also contributed to the early death of his beloved wife.  In later life he made a transition that can be compared to the changes occurring in society at large.  His legacy was to be passed on to society at large: his museum collection, his teaching at the Royal Academy, his efforts to establish the foundations of the modern profession of Architecture.  In all of this he learned a good deal from the measured way that the bank did business.  Perhaps this was once again a mutual interchange, Soane and the Directors learning from each other.

So is the Digital Revolution a progress trap? I love my digital tools, but technology worship frightens me.  Technology companies chasing the bottom line, widening the gap between rich and poor, eating what is left of the world's resources. We need to be aware of the dangers.  It's easy to be swept along by the excitement of it all and it's probably already too late to go back.  What happens if/when a solar flare takes the internet down for two weeks?  What kind of social upheaval will we see in Bangladesh when robots have taken all their jobs? Do we have any idea how to manage wealth in a more equitable way? Is it even possible to run an economy that is not based on continuous growth?

John Soane lived through a period of profound social and technical change.  The Bank of England helped to manage these transitions with corporate processes that balanced innovation with caution.  Soane himself laid the foundations for a new kind of profession: academically trained, impartial, balancing public and private interests.  But perhaps the Industrial Revolution simply delayed the inevitable, bought us another 200 years by burning up our fossil fuels.

Is this another hinge point of history?  Can robots dig us out of the hole we dug for ourselves using fossil fuels?  Can the Banks win back our trust?  Do we have the patience to use technology sensibly and to give disadvantaged parts of the world a fair chance?  Back to Werner Herzog I guess.  Meanwhile I will continue with my model of a fascinating institution.

A few comments on the images shown here.  I am trying to set the model up with placeholder families that others can adopt and complete.  Some of these are very basic, others have been taken at least half way to completion.  Some of them may need to be revisited two or three times, adding layers of detail progressively. I'm looking for people to start adding these layers of detail and I have a couple of volunteers already.  Would you like to lend a hand?
 

I'm fascinated by Soane's seemingly endless variations on the vault & dome theme and have enjoyed practicing my ability to model these.  I've enjoyed developing parametric versions, but for the last few I've taken a more direct approach, so I can move more quickly and build up an understanding of the different geometries.  The waiting rooms for example use a hybrid between vault and dome that creates a four pointed star on the ceiling.
 
I've spent quite a lot of time adjusting dimensions and alignments.  This is tedious work and the result will never be an exact replication of the building as it was 200 years ago, but it is important to permit meaningful dimensioning and to make the model manageable.  We need to be able to understand it, to stand back and assess changes that should be made to capture the spirit of the original.

A striking example arose last week.  I don't know why, but I had previously missed the fact that Taylor's Court Suite was aligned precisely on the axis of the rooms behind the Pay Hall.  Since reading Abrahamson's book I have discovered that this was in fact the original location of these spaces, in effect the Director's Parlours.

This prompted me to make a simple block model of Sampson's bank, colour coded to show the location of the various functions.  Starting to see the bank as a set of activities gradually expanding into a growing shell, a bit like a hermit crab perhaps.