Change Door From and Door To

These settings for doors are determined initially by which side of a wall the door swings into. A door swinging into a room inherits that room as its "to" value. Later if someone flips the door to swing out of the room the parameter does not change. This is intentional and I've written about this before.

Harry started Boost Your BIM a few months ago and he's really dedicated himself to it, bravo! Back then he asked me for some ideas and naturally my mind went blank I could only muster a couple ideas. The beauty of blogging is that the more readers you have the more ideas you'll get. He's been keeping busy with many interesting examples.

The other day I was chatting with a Revit user who was expressing frustration with the From/To issue and I thought that a simple "click this click that" experience might at least improve the situation for him. I wrote to Harry and a day or so later we've got this to consider. Cool!

OpEd Links Broken for AUGI Forums

I realized last week that I've got over a thousand posts on this blog now since I started it at the end of 2004. Over these past years I've created a fair number of links to other sites. Seems like a good idea because I can just point readers to another spot easily. That is until that site either changes something, the information just goes away...or in the case of AUGI the forums, the domain name service (DNS) isn't pointing at the same server anymore. While AUGI sorts out the details of that situation my posts here have an untold number of broken links. When the forum data is migrated into AUGI at some point I have no illusion that my original URL's will still work. It would be wonderful if they do, or if even some of them do...

Long story short...if you click on a link that promises to take you to a AUGI forum post/thread...it's more than likely to generate this message.

In fact any bookmarks or shortcuts you have created to get to certain parts of the AUGI site will generate the error too. I've received more than a few emails from people about their bookmarks and shortcuts not working anymore.

An aside, reading through the posts at AUGI the past few days I get the impression that members believe that AUGI has a very broad presence in the industry. Seems reasonable based on our combined involvement with AUGI but oddly enough in my travels during the last 6 years the one consistent thing about AUGI is how FEW people have actually heard of it. Stepping in a room of +/-10 architects/engineers about 40 weeks a year I've been surprised to find that at the most one or two are members and often none are. As for those who aren't members most of the time they haven't even heard of AUGI. Considering I do nothing but Revit and Navisworks consulting I've always expected people to be pretty aware of it. So as prolific as the Revit community has been at AUGI it is surprising to find how few are actually aware of it. What's my point? Just that we aren't nearly as famous as we think we are? 8-)

In a recent post Alan (blog: Revit Structure Learning Curve) mentions a survey completed by NBS (National Building Service in the UK) that suggests that about half the "industry" is aware of BIM. I wonder if the survey should be run asking about awareness of Revit instead? I'd be curious if more are aware of the product than of the concept. The reason I mention this is that it is like AUGI in a way, as hot or as relevant as something seems to me, there is always a group of people outside of it all. Unaware or even uninterested.

Even further off topic! I also read that Chris Zoog (founded the Revit forum at Zoogdesign which merged with AUGI in 2004) would be rolling over in his grave (regarding the forum data issue). Rumors of Mr. Zoog's death are greatly exaggerated. If he were dead perhaps he'd be rolling...many years we must wait for that. I for one would be very disappointed if the rumor were true!

Architectural Fonts - A Blog Link

I read THIS post at the blog, Mirage Studio 7. It is written by a guy named Ngan and the blog is focused on architecture and Life/Humor. He provides related tutorials too.

I like the way he collected the various fonts that are available into this one post. For those of you interested in using the flair of an architectural font there may be one for you?

Basic Design Bar Tab - Trivia Test

So why has there been a Basics Design Bar tab all these years?

a - Because user studies said it was needed
b - Because Leonid Raiz said so
c - Because Jim Balding said so
d - Because Basics just sounded good
e - none of the above

Well the true story was shared recently by Erik from Inside the Factory. He wrote:

"Lets take as an example the old Basics tab. Some users we tested indicated they liked Basics. But when pressed, they usually conveyed a story about not being able to find something as they grew with the product. A little known fact: Basics was originally designed to make the product easier to demonstrate; the marketing guy would not have to flip around too much during the demo. In reality, Basics becomes a crutch. After using it for a while, user find themselves asking, "Hmm, Floor is on Basics, but Floor by Face is not. Is it on the Massing tab or the Modeling Menu or somewhere else? " This results in a lot of wasted searching - even after learning where the tool is located."

The above is an excerpt discussing the motivation for the upcoming user interface changes we will see in the Revit 2010 products. I love little stuff like that and had to share it here...so what are you waiting for? Go read the blog yourself!