20th Time Presenting at RTC / BILT Conferences

RTC 2014 - Pump Up the Volume - Competition Entry

Last year this blog reached a milestone of 1 Million views.

This year I reached another milestone: Presenting at my 20th RTC / BILT Conference on various Revit topics.  At several of the conferences I did multiple presentations, so the actual total is more than 20.

For the record, here is a list of :
RTC & BILT conferences over the years:

RTC (Revit Technology Conference) grew out the Sydney Revit user group, started by Wesley Benn.  The first conference was organised by RUGS (Revit User Group, Sydney - the longest running Revit user group in the world).  As the conferences went from strength to strength, they were run by a company RTC Events, which has now morphed into DBEI (Digital Built Environment Institute).

RTC 2005 - Blue Mountains (West of Sydney), NSW, Australia 

The inaugural conference.

• I missed this one, sadly.

RTC 2006 - Shoal Bay (North of Sydney), NSW, Australia

• Attended as a delegate only - and learnt a huge amount about Revit.

RTC 2007 - Roadshow event held in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth (Australia) & Auckland (New Zealand)

• 1.  I presented at the Sydney event: "Documentation in Revit"

RTC 2008 - Brighton Beach, Sydney,  Australia

• 2.  Presented: "Revit Architecture - Advanced Modelling"

RTC 2009 - Albert Park, Melbourne,  Australia

• Attended as a delegate only - the first year of having to submit abstracts (which I failed to do)

RTC 2010 - Manly Beach, Sydney,  Australia

• 3.  Presented: "Locking Down Revit Drawings"

RTC 2011 (Australasia) - Broadbeach, Gold Coast, QLD,  Australia

• 4.  Presented: "Designing in Revit Using Parametric Formulas"

RTC 2011 (North America) - Huntington Beach, California, USA (NE of Sydney)

Inaugural North American conference

• 5.  Presented: "Designing in Revit Using Parametric Formulas"

RTC 2012 (Australasia) - Northbeach, Wollongong (South of Sydney), NSW,  Australia

• 6a.  Presented: "Divide and Conquer Revit v2013" - Adaptive Components & Repeaters
• 6b.  Presented: "New Stair Tools in Revit Architecture v2013"

RTC 2012 (North America) - Stone Mountain, Alanta, Georgia, USA

• 7.  Presented: "Divide and Conquer Revit v2013" - Adaptive Components & Repeaters
• Won the "Innovation" drawing competition.  Prize: Building Design Suite from Autodesk 

 

RTC 2013 (Australasia) - Auckland, New Zealand (East of Sydney)

• 8.  Presented: "Fractal Fun with Revit Repeaters & Adaptive Components"

 

RTC 2013 (North America) - Bayshore, Vancouver, Canada

•      Attended DTS (Design Technology Summit) as a delegate 
• 9.  Presented: "Fractal Fun with Revit Repeaters & Adaptive Components"

 

RTC 2013 (Europe) - Delft, The Netherlands

Inaugural European conference- one of my favourite venues/events

• 10.  Presented: "Fractal Fun with Revit Repeaters & Adaptive Components"

 

RTC 2014 (Australasia) - Albert Park, Melbourne,  Australia

• 11.  Presented: "Pump Up the Volume- With or Without Dynamo"

RTC 2014 (North America) - Schaumburg (West of Chicago), Illinois, USA

• 12.  Presented: "Pump Up the Volume- With or Without Dynamo"

RTC 2014 (Europe) - Dublin, Ireland

• First international conference I missed

RTC 2015 (Australasia) - Broadbeach, Gold Coast, QLD,  Australia

• 13.  Conducted a LAB: "Stairway to Heaven"

RTC 2015 (Asia) - Sentosa Island, Singapore

Inaugural Asian conference

• 14a.  Presented: "Best Tall Building in the World - in Revit" - a case study on One Central Park in Sydney
• 14b.  Conducted a LAB: "Stairway to Heaven"

RTC 2015 (North America) - Washington DC, USA

• Missed this one - 4 events in one year would be too much!

RTC 2015 (Europe) - Budapest, Hungary

• 15a.  Presented a case study: "Best Tall Building in the World - in Revit"
• 15b.  Conducted a LAB: "Stairway to Heaven"

RTC 2016 (Australasia) - Hunter Valley (North of Sydney), NSW,  Australia

• Attended as a one-day delegate (taking a break due to presenter burn-out)

RTC 2016 (North America) - Kierland Resort and Spa, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA

• 16a.  Presented: "Computational Design - Power to the People" - Global Parameters in Revit
• 16b.  Presented: "Making Component Stairs Work for You"

 

RTC 2016 (Europe) - Porto, Portugal

• Missed this one

 

RTC to BILT

In 2017, the name RTC was changed to BILT - as the conferences were no longer restricted to Revit

BILT 2017 (Asia) - Singapore

• Missed this one

BILT ANZ 2017 - Adelaide, SA (West of Sydney),  Australia

• 17.  Presented: "Power to the People - Global Parameters New Revit Feature"

BILT 2017 (North America) - Harbour Castle, Toronto, Canada

• 18.  Presented: "Create Good Looking Organic Nurby Revit Content" - Massing in Revit

BILT 2017 (Europe) - Aarhus, Denmark

• Missed this one

BILT 2018 (Asia) - Singapore

• Missed this one

BILT ANZ 2018 - Fortitude Valley, Brisbane (North of Sydney),  Australia

• 19.  Presented: "Create Good Looking Organic Nurby Revit Content" - Massing in Revit

BILT 2018 (North America) -St Louis, Missouri, USA

• Missed this one

BILT 2018 (Europe) - Ljubljana, Slovenia, Denmark

• Missed this one

BILT ANZ 2019 - South Bank, Melbourne, Vic (South of Sydney), Australia

• 20.  Presented: "Choosing Standards from 50 Ways to Do That in Revit"

 Anyone notice a theme in the locations?  Beaches, parks, islands, bays, valleys . . . .

*NB. This list does not include the various ancillary events such as 'Data Days', DTS, BCS etc

Revit Nurby Forms at BILT ANZ 2018 in Brisbane

I am looking forward to the next BILT ANZ Conference in Brisbane on 24 - 26 May 2018, where I will be presenting a session on creating 'Nurby Forms in Revit' - ie. creating complex forms with NURBS surfaces (double-curved), which are notoriously difficult in the Revit Conceptual Massing Environment.

In this session I will start by looking at using the Conceptual Massing Environment to create the equivalent traditional Revit 3D forms (Extrusion, Revolve, Sweep, Blend, Swept Blend), and examining the subtleties of different methods.  This will inform the next stage of creating sinuous forms in Revit, and the workarounds you'll need to overcome some of Revit's limitations.  Then I will demonstrate some techniques for creating parametric NURBS forms that you would not expect Revit to be able to handle.  Finally I will look at how to make these forms look better, as Revit is not good at displaying NURBS.  All this will be done without using any API, Dynamo or Add-ins of any kind.

Hope to see you at BILT in Brisbane for my session:  #1.3 'Create Good Looking Organic Nurby Revit Content' at 1.45 on Thursday 24th May 2018.

Transferring Global Parameters Between Revit Projects

In preparation for my upcoming presentation 'Power to the People - Global Parameters' at BILT ANZ 2017 in Adelaide (2.3 at 1.30pm Friday 26 May), I have done some in-depth analysis of how Global Parameters work. I don't want to spend too much time during the presentation on the nuts and bolts as there is much more exciting stuff to look at with what Global Parameters can achieve - so I plan to publish some of that research here . . . .

. . . . .Starting with how to copy Global Parameters between Revit projects:

There are two ways to achieve this, with varying results.

Transfer Project Standards

From v2017 it is possible to copy Global Parameters between projects  using the 'Transfer Project Standards' function.   However, it is 'all or nothing', as per usual for this feature - it copies every single Global Parameter in one project to the other one, along with all the values and formulas.  So it is like applying a sledgehammer - you could transfer two hundred parameters when you only want two. 

• It does not copy any associations between modelled elements and Global Parameters - these would have to be re-associated to elements in the new project.

• NB. If there are any materials selected for any material type global parameters, the materials will be transferred too.

• If Global Parameters already exist in the project (with the same names), Revit will ask if you want to overwrite them - it will overwrite both values and formulas.
  Be careful not to lose any values or formulas if the names happen to be the same by coincidence.

Copy & Paste

Copy & Paste of elements between projects will also transfer any associated Global Parameters. This will in turn bring with it any formulas included in those Global Parameters, and any further GPs referred to within those formulas. This does not guarantee that the whole GP relationship will necessarily work properly once copied because there could be GPs that rely on such things as reporting parameters driven by dimensions that were not copied.

• The benefit of this method is that it only brings with it the Global Parameters associated with the elements that you want to copy anyway.
• It also maintains any associations between selected elements and Global Parameters.

If identically named Global Parameters already exist in the project:

• It does not copy/overwrite existing Global Parameters
• If the Global Parameter values and formulas are the same, it maintains them, and maintains the element associations to the Global Parameters.
• If the Global Parameter values and formulas are different it will try to maintain associations, but using the new values - if this causes significant changes it will warn you that it needs to break the associations

Conclusion

Use whichever method best suits your purpose:

• If you want to overwrite Global Parameters, use 'Transfer Project Standards - but it copies all your Global Parameters.  You may need to transfer them to an intermediate blank project, then delete the ones you don't need, keeping only the ones to transfer - then transfer those into the final destination project.
• If you want to maintain associations with elements, or only want to copy specific Global Parameters - use Copy and Paste.