What a Mesh

Updating a conceptual mass between AutoCAD 2010 and Revit Arch 2010

Hi,

I've got a baby coming in a couple of weeks, so life is quite intense, but I want to keep the quality of the postings, even if they don't come twice a week as before. But they will be back to normal around end of September. In the meantime, expect at least one post per week.

This time, I'm posting a video about the best way to manage the link of a conceptual design in AutoCAD with a mass in Revit.

As usual, you can see it in HD if you go to the YouTube link.

Hope it's useful!

More conceptual design and AutoCAD - Revit interoperability

As promised some time ago, this is the second part of a demo in which I'll work with AutoCAD, Revit and Inventor in the project of AutoCAD's hero image for 2010.

As you may be aware, I did the full model in AutoCAD, but in this case, the idea is to show how to integrate these three applications into a more coherent and productive workflow.

Thanks to my friend Juan Carlos Alfonso, from Mexico, who suggested the idea of using my building, and gave me an excellent excuse to work for a couple of hours with three applications I love (AutoCAD, Revit and Inventor).

In following posts, you will see the Inventor pieces. In those cases, I did the integration into Revit, but the work in Inventor was mainly done by Juan Carlos, with the assistance of Jorge Espinel.

So here's the video for today's topic: making a conceptual design in AutoCAD and taking it into Revit.

I'll elaborate on this topic in next post too.

As usual, click on the video and go to YouTube if you want to see it in HD.

AutoCAD AND Revit strike back!

A couple of posts ago, I showed a video about how to make a better use of AutoCAD and Revit together for conceptual design.

I would like to show a more detailed example, which started from AutoCAD's hero image. I made the design, model and first renders in AutoCAD, and the final renders were done with 3ds Max. Some weeks ago, a good friend and colleague Application Engineer Juan Carlos Alfonso, asked me if he could use the building for an integrated demo for some presentations in Latin America. Not only I agreed immediately, but I also felt tempted to make a proof of concept, by going back to the preliminary conceptual stage in AutoCAD, and take it into Revit for the development of the project (as opposed to doing it all in AutoCAD, which we know is absolutely feasible).

This is an introduction to the work, which I will present in following posts, with videos and screen captures, and best practices along the way.

You may have already seen this model in AutoCAD. The whole idea was to see how easy would it be to take this information into Revit.

 

After some imports (which will be explained in following posts), this was the result.

 

I also developed the design for one of the floors, and added two models that Juan Carlos gave me in adsk format (more about this later), which were generated in Inventor. Basically the elevator you can see in the floor plan and the printer that appears in the camera view were imported from Inventor.

 

 

Stay tuned!

AutoCAD AND Revit? yeah!

You may have heard a lot about moving from AutoCAD into Revit if you are an architect. The truth is that Revit is a great tool, and deserves a look if you have not done it yet. BIM is an important cultural change that you definitely need to consider if you haven't yet. But BIM is a process, and not one product, and, guess what? An intelligent use of AutoCAD can perfectly fit in the process.

If at home you probably have a tool box, that means that you not always use the hammer if the screwdriver is better for a certain task, don't you?

Apart from being AutoCAD's Product Manager for 3d and parametric design, I have been using Revit since 4.5, and I can definitely see how to get the best of both worlds by a smart use of the Suite.

AutoCAD's conceptual design offers different advantages to Revit's new conceptual design. Not better, but different. That means more tools to broaden your repertoire. That's never bad.

As the first of a series of posts and videos, this is a short example of a possible workflow between AutoCAD and Revit Architecture for conceptual design. I'll be doing this for other verticals too.

As usual, you will have the HD version if you click on YouTube's link.