Free Upgrade to Building Design Suite for Revit Suite owners!

Luke Johnson

Autodesk is offering a free upgrade to Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium.  I just got off the phone from our reseller (KarelCAD) and those who currently hold one of the Revit Suite subscription licenses (RAC Suite, RMEP Suite, RST Suite) qualify for this free upgrade.

According to our reseller, this is a limited time promotion for 2 months.

I’m unsure if it is going to be rolled out globally, or if it is just limited to Australia.

This is basically equivalent to Autodesk giving you a free copy of Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design to play with.

Here is the only catch – if you accept this free upgrade, your subscription cost will increase.  In our case, it will be an additional $375 (ex GST) per license per year.  In real terms, I guess it will take quite a few years of paying this increased subscription to actually ‘break even’ with how much it would have cost to buy 3ds Max outright.

Challenging article at Arch | Tech

Luke Johnson

Phil Read has posted a confronting analysis of the current state of the BIM software industry.

Here are some quotes I found particularly stimulating:

“When I demonstrated Revit during sales presentations, people were very quick to raise the numerous objections:
  • 3DMax was a better tool for modeling
  • VIZ was a better tool for rendering
  • AutoCAD was a better for detailing and documentation
  • Excel was a better for creating spreadsheets and schedules
And you know what? They were right. And they still right. Compared feature to feature, Revit can’t compete with those kinds of tools.”
” Applications create silos. Exported data means that the everyone is working in separate versions of the truth;”
“…I don’t believe that Revit is capable of evolving beyond it’s designed intent as a tool to resolve coordinated documentation.”
 “Revit isn’t the center of this ecosystem of geometry and data; it seems to orbit other applications (Navis, ProjectWise, etc) that in turn attempt to integrate data across domains.”

Read the entire article:
Arch | Tech: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Something that isn’t mentioned here is monopolization.  At times we feel that an all-in-one Design/BIM/Documentation/Presentation tool would be awesome.  But where is the competition?  If we all end up using one powerful piece of software (ie. Windows), who makes the developer accountable?

More free Revit content – BIMstop BIM Content Network

Luke Johnson

There are lots of Revit content and family sources out there now.  Here is another one…

Revit � BIMstop.com – BIM Content Network

It would be great if there was just one place we could go, and all content was searchable and downloadable from that one place. Seek is still promising, but it doesn’t really have enough content yet.

Let’s combine:

  • manufacturer content
  • donated home-made content
  • Autodesk content (Seek and default)
  • paid content
  • Revitcity content

into one big database…who’s interested?

An Introduction to Sustainable Design in BIM (video download links)

Luke Johnson

Here are some direct links to download the videos detailed on this page.

To download them all quickly, use DownThemAll.

To play the FLV files, you may want to use Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

Sustainable Cities
http://download.autodesk.com/us/bim/video/overview/sustainable_cities_video_800x450.flv

Autodesk Revit Products for BIM-Enabled Sustainable Designhttp://www.aec-projects.com/autodesk-revit-products-for-sustainable-design/content/intro.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/autodesk-revit-products-for-sustainable-design/content/ch_01.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/autodesk-revit-products-for-sustainable-design/content/ch_02.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/autodesk-revit-products-for-sustainable-design/content/ch_03.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/autodesk-revit-products-for-sustainable-design/content/conclusion.flv

Conceptual Energy Analysis Screencast
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/intro.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ch_01.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ch_02.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ch_03.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ch_04.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/ch_05.flv
http://c0377931.cdn2.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/conclusion.flv

Optimizing Building Designs with Autodesk Revit MEP & Autodesk 3ds Max Design
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/intro.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_01.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_02.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_03.flv

http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_04.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_05.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_06.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_07.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/ch_08.flv
http://www.aec-projects.com/optimizing-building-designs/content/conclusion.flv

Revit MEP Sustainable Design – 2010 
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/intro.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_01.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_02.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_03.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_04.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_05.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_06.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_07.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/ch_08.mp4
http://aec-projects.com/mep-engineering-solutions/outro.mp4

REVIT Structure Learning Curve: An Introduction to Sustainable Design in BIM

How to download a previous release of an Autodesk Design & Creation Suite

Luke Johnson

Scenario
You are an active Subscription Customer and have upgraded to an Autodesk Design & Creation Suite, and would like to download a previous release of the Suite, or one of Autodesk software components within the Suite.

Autodesk – Autodesk Revit Architecture Services & Support – How to download a previous release of an Autodesk Design & Creation Suite

Free families from RevitComponents.com

Luke Johnson

I was playing around with the RSS search engine today, and I came across the RevitComponents site.

SERVICE | RevitComponents.com

It has an interesting mode of operation:

Our aim is to showcase professionally built models and allow BIM users to utilize them for their projects. Content is free to download by clicking on the image in each post and/or download link. The use of our Revit© content is open ended with but one restriction; selling the content in any manner is strictly prohibited. We advocate for the free exchange of file sharing with friends, colleagues, and classmates.

Relinquish Your Revit© Families
Millions of quality Families hibernate from lack of use on hard drives around the world, utilized exclusively by content creators and colleagues. We believe this information should be publicly shared to prevent the redundancy of work involved with individuals creating identical models for their sole use. Sharing your efforts and information will save time, money, and energy, and will result in a comprehensive and high quality resource library for all to use.