Its shiny, high-tech, precise and you can do cool things with it – new SpaceMouse Wireless

Luke Johnson

There are at least three reasons why this is a great product:

  • the new driver package, which provides an onscreen display for the quick selection of shortcuts using the SpaceMouse Wireless.  They call it the “Radial Menu”.  You can customize the Radial Menu to take the place of traditional keyboard shortcuts (but there is a still definitely a place for the higher end pro devices, as you cannot use “multi-selecting” keyboard modifiers like Ctrl or Shift (which you can find on SMP / SPP) via the radial menus as you can’t “hold” them on the radial menu while navigating with the cap)
  • wireless tech combined with 6 degrees of freedom for 3D editing
  • the competitive price point (more accessible to many users than the SpacePilot Pro)

Let’s just say that I have already ordered mine…

Documentation:
Press Release

Q&A document

Drivers:
Release notes

3dxWare 10 for 64bit

According to the release notes, 3DxWare64:  includes  all  x64  (64-bit)  Windows  driver  and  plug-in  software  for  all currently supported 3D except SpacePilot Pro. 

Note: if the above underlining was too subtle, you can download and use this new driver package and get the “Radial Menu” with your current 3Dconnexion device! 

You can also use the driver page at:
http://www.3dconnexion.com/service/drivers.html 



Product Images:

Using an Image Background for 3D Masterplanning in Revit

Luke Johnson

Most of you probably know that you can use a Decal in a 3D view set to Realistic for 3D masterplanning.  The annoying part is that you have to somehow scale the Decal properly.

You may also know that Vasari has a nice built-in method of grabbing Google Earth imagery and unlike Revit, Vasari is happy to show this image in 3D views.

Now, Philip Chan has combined these two methods to make a decent workflow for Revit:

  1. Grab the image in Vasari first
  2. Open that Vasari file in Revit
  3. Import the same image from Vasari into Revit as a Decal and place it on a flat workplane
  4. Use the “borders” of the Vasari image to properly scale the Revit decal
Its a bit fiddly, but until Revit supports images in 3D views, it will have to do.  Or, you could convert the image to a DWG and use that (I’m mostly kidding).

In Philip’s words:
use a trick to get it scale properly. I actually used the Vasari file that I made earlier, I drew some model lines at the boundary of the image, copy the model lines to the clipboard, and then paste them into my site file. Now that I had the actual size of the boundary, I could use the same image export from Vasari and placed it as a decal.

Read the whole post:

Five more Revit productivity tips from Twitter

Luke Johnson

The Bartlett Conference on Education, BIM and Big Data – videos and presentation downloads

Luke Johnson

Pedagogy “is the science and art of education, specifically instructional theory.“

Playlist including lectures by Dr Andy Hudson-Smith and Phil Bernstein:

Downloads — Speakers’ Presentations
Phil Bernstein, BIM: New Directions for Pedagogy (Prezi webpage)
Rob Garvey, BIM Academic Forum, BIM and the Curriculum (PDF 1.3MB)
John Enyon, Open Water Consulting Ltd, BIM as a focus and catalyst for industrial and societal evolution (PDF 1.7MB)
Prof. Anthony Smith, UCL Vice-Provost for Education, The Future of Higher Education (PDF 132KB)
Jorge Gil, PhD Candidate at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, The Backbone of City Information Modelling (CIM): Spatial Data Models and Tools for Urban Design (PDF 4.3MB)
George Roussos, Professor of Pervasive Computing, Birkbeck College, University of London, Mobile Sensing, BYOD and Big Data Analytics for Museum Visitor Studies (PDF 1.6MB)
Phil Langley, PhD Candidate at the University of Sheffield, Branch, Merge, Commit – New forms of Open Source for designing with BIM (PDF 1.6MB)
Dr Stefan Boeykens and PhD Candidate Niels Wouters, Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, BIM, Big Data and Mashup in Architectural Computing – Experimenting with Digital Technoogies (PDF 1.8MB)
Aled Williams, Discipline Lead for the Built Environment, Higher Education Authority, Embedding BIM (Building Inforation Modelling) with the taught curriculum (External link)
Dr Hannah Fry, The Bartlett CASA, UCL, Conference summary highlights and actions (PDF 318KB)

via
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/latest/events/bartlett-conference

Heads-up:

IFC Exporter for Revit (v2.14/v3.6) available — including Revit 2014 version

Luke Johnson
2013:
IFC Exporter for Revit 2013 (v2.13): *NEW*
http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3aifcexporterforrevit%3aen
IFC Export Alternate UI for Revit 2013 (v1.12):
http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3arevitifcexportalternateui%3aen
2014:
IFC Exporter for Revit 2014 (v3.6): *NEW*
http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3aifcexporterforrevit2014%3aen
IFC Export Alternate UI for Revit 2014 (v2.5): *Hotfix for installer crash*
http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/RVT/Detail/Index?id=appstore.exchange.autodesk.com%3arevitifcexportalternateui2014%3aen

PCG Point Clouds exported from Recap will not import into Revit 2013

Luke Johnson

The scenario: you receive raw point cloud data, and want to process it in Recap (part of 2014 suite), export to PCG, and import back into Revit 2013.

Or: you request a PCG from a surveyor for Revit 2013, and they give you a “newer” PCG from Recap that will not import.

The error received in Revit 2013 is:
“Unable to create a Point Cloud instance.  The file may be an incompatible format or corrupt.”

However, if you index the same raw point cloud data using Revit 2013 built-in indexing, the resulting PCG will work fine.

It would seem that there is some difference between the built-in Revit 2013 indexing of PCG point clouds, and the PCG point cloud exporter in Recap.

Workaround:

  1. Process the raw data in Recap (requires indexing time)
  2. Export to PTS file
  3. Import the PTS into Revit 2013 (requires indexing time — again)