Event: BIM in Modular and Prefab Construction

As the president of the New York City Revit Users Group (nyc-rug.com), James organizes monthly meetings around various BIM-related topics. The January 2012 meeting featured guest speaker Ian Atkins who shared some of his real-world experience in applying BIM to modular and prefabricated construction.
UPDATE:
Unfortunately, Kullman requested that the recording of the NYC RUG presentation be removed and we have complied. Please stay connected with our group for future topics and check out recordings from other meetings on our Vimeo group: http://vimeo.com/groups/revitusers

Performance-Based Design at NYCRUG

The next meeting of the New York City Revit Users Group will feature Matt Jezyk and Zach Kron from Autodesk. They will be speaking about advanced form finding techniques in Revit and Vasari that are connected to performance analysis work flows. If you’ve seen Zach’s blog at buildz.blogspot.com or his class at Autodesk University with William Lopez Campo, you’ll know you’re in for a treat!

When: Weds December 14 at 6:00 pm

Complete details can be found at nyc-rug.com, or you can register for the free webcast!

BIM+IPD Ensure Success at HOK New York

The latest monthly meeting of the NYC Revit Users Group was a joint event with the NYC Metro BIM Group and featured a panel discussion about the use of BIM and Integrated Project Delivery for the relocation of HOK’s New York City office. We had a fantastic turnout and many fantastic questions to feed the dialogue. We chose a few key representatives of the project team as follows:

• Architect/Owner – HOK; Jason Zoss
• Engineer – Flack + Kurtz; Cheryl Massie, Frank Padilla and John Gerney
• Construction Mgr – Structuretone; Arash Yaghoubi
• Subcontractor – ABCO Peerless Sprinkler Corp.; Patrick Bowe

Here’s the recorded session (note that the formal presentation starts around 10 minutes into the recording):

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=30524151&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

We were also delighted to have attendees view the live webcast from the following locations: Boston, California, St. Louis, Chicago, Alaska, Egypt, Vancouver, New Jersey, Alabama, and Washington, DC! Watch for our upcoming meetings at http://nyc-rug.com

Generative Design and Parametric Structures

The July 2011 meeting of the New York City Revit Users Group featured a presentation by Robert Otani, PE, LEED AP and Jonatan Schumacher from Thornton Tomasetti.

By creating a collaborative dialog with the designer at the conceptual phase, the architectural, engineering & fabrication models can be developed simultaneously from the same geometric reference model, allowing a holistic design process.  Robert and Jonatan elaborate on this concept with case studies of actual project work with a variety of architectural firms.

Thornton Tomasetti (TT) is an internationally recognized engineering company whose computational geometry and automation team works at the forefront of advanced practices.  TT utilizes a wide range of commercially available as well as customized digital tools and automation procedures to model, simulate, and optimize engineering projects of various scales worldwide.

Note: The TT presenters begin about 7 minutes into the recording.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=26161407&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

>Getting Ready for AU 2010

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If you’re heading out to Las Vegas for Autodesk University next week, I’ve compiled some links to some great preparatory information.

Melanie Perry (aka Mistress of the Dorkness) has a funny, but totally true AU survival guide on her blog. Lynn Allen produced two ‘”primer” videos on YouTube (Part 1 and Part 2 available below).

Being environmentally friendly, Autodesk does not provide printed handouts for classes – except for hands-on labs – so, here’s how I’ll be going paperless this year…

First, the devices: iPhone 3G and iPad – should cover most of my connectivity, tweeted photos and note taking capabilities. Not sure if my laptop will follow me around full-time.

Second, the apps. My favorite all-around app is Evernote. With a limited free account, I can create notes on either the iPhone, iPad, PC or web browser and they are all synchronized. Seriously thinking about upgrading to a Pro account… This is essential for capturing all my notes from the plethora of great class offerings. It offers text/audio/photo notes, tagging, search and a variety of other features. If you’ve read Total Recall by Gordon Bell, you know that Evernote is frequently referenced as one of the main offsprings of the LifeLogging movement. If you haven’t read it…find it on iBooks now!

Don’t expect to receive a printed event guide this year either. Autodesk is offering a mobile app from EventKaddy. The app will be available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry and should be ready as of Friday November 26.

I have downloaded my class handouts into my Dropbox account which also has apps for iPhone and iPad. This gets the files onto my mobile devices, but I highly recommend GoodReader for the iPad. It fluidly reads a variety of document formats and has nice markup tools. It also can display documents externally with the VGA adapter. Open a file in the Dropbox app and click the link in the upper-right to open in another eligible app. Finally, I’ll be keeping track of the tweets via Tweetdeck on either the phone or pad. (www.twitter.com/jvandezande) Also be sure to follow @AutodeskU and the hashtag #AU2010.

I hope to see you there. It’s always been fun meeting readers of my blog, so don’t be shy…come say ‘Hi!’

Getting to AU and registration

Special events and navigating the conference

>BIMForum Atlanta Day 1

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So, I’m trying to beat Greg Arkin to the punch and be the first person to blog about the latest AGC BIMForum being held in Atlanta. Our first day featured a tour of Georgia Tech including Chuck Eastman’s Digital Building Lab as well as a construction site tour of a new annex to the school of architecture by Beck Construction. Really great stuff! More details to come…

>NYC Revit Users Group, August 2010

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The next monthly meeting of the New York City Revit Users Group is this Thursday, August 5 at 6:00 pm Eastern. The featured topic is “BIM for Project Delivery: Methods that Approach Integration” with Scott Wood, AIA, LEED AP from Tishman Construction.

This presentation will explore uses of BIM in post construction document phases, discuss contract language that relates to these uses and describe methods for delivering models that can be efficiently deployed for these uses.

If you are in the NYC area, please RSVP at our meetup site (www.meetup.com/nyc-rug) or you can register for the webcast by clicking here.