Category Archives: BIM/Revit

Process, Product AND Lifecycle Use

Posted on May 8, 2012 by nmcclure

There is a lot of debate over the acronym of BIM. I like the ‘brief primer’ from EcoDomus: BIM is an acronym for a few things: 1) Building Information Modeling (virtual design process), 2) Building Information Model (a set of … Continue reading →

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3D or not 3D – that is the question

Posted on April 23, 2012 by nmcclure

First off – not EVERYTHING in a virtual 3D model needs to be in 3D. This is an important concept to emphasize, as the first impulse of a team is that everything will be 3D, and that can be overwhelming  … Continue reading →

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Putting the I in IPD

Posted on February 8, 2012 by nmcclure

More and more, subconsultants are being provided a Building Information Model rather than traditional 2D backgrounds, and are being asked to return a 3D deliverable in kind.  And with that, comes questions: Q:  Do I have to use Revit, too? … Continue reading →

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Customizing PAT files

Posted on December 13, 2011 by nmcclure

Most architectural firms are using Revit heavily for the visualization benefits, and as such want to get as close to reality representing key materials as possible. While some requests just don’t weigh out in the ‘pros/cons’ analysis (modeling battens on … Continue reading →

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Is ‘the cloud’ still a dream?

Posted on November 3, 2011 by nmcclure

Technically speaking, no.  ‘Working in the cloud’ is already a reality – look at your cloud-hosted email services and customer management tools – a tremendous amount of daily data exchange is already up there.   But should your team’s design data … Continue reading →

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Double-clicking files from a browser

Posted on October 27, 2011 by nmcclure

Teams new to Revit often fall back on old habits better suited to other programs – a common behavior I see is double-clicking files from a network browser to open them.  Not a good idea for Revit files!  Here’s why: … Continue reading →

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Geometric Formula Parameters

Posted on October 11, 2011 by nmcclure

Content creation is an evolving skill. Training team members to create symbolic furniture or equipment families is at the lower end of the skill set, where creating multi-referencing parametric families involving rules of proportion are at the higher end.  This … Continue reading →

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BIM and Risk Management

Posted on September 7, 2011 by nmcclure

First off, I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve sat through conferences with many of them, enough to know that the legal liability of an architect is at minimum, daunting, at maximum… well, let’s not (hopefully ever!) go there. A client … Continue reading →

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Introduction to the Revit .ini

Posted on August 18, 2011 by nmcclure

All of the default settings and operations in Revit are controlled by the .ini file in the install.  The ini file is the portal for any customization of your Revit environment, from changing the background color from white to black,  … Continue reading →

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Revit/CAD Hybrid Projects

Posted on August 17, 2011 by nmcclure

This topic came up in a consulting session today, and it echos an exchange I recently had over LinkedIn, so I’ll recap things here: LinkedIn email from a past colleague: How do you recommend to handle details and front end … Continue reading →

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