Below is the official description for each one. If you do plan to attend, feel free to drop me a line via my contact form with ideas and topics you want me to cover in those classes, its always good to get fresh ideas from attendees! See you there!

Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for Lighting and Daylighting simulation

5/7/2012 – 9:00 am to 5:00pm

This session will provide an overview of the tools available to you in the Autodesk products family for exploring, defining and validating lighting projects. Focused on the interoperability of Revit and 3ds Max Design, you will learn what is possible to achieve with Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for electrical lighting design as well as daylighting design.

An overview of the rendering capabilities or mental ray and iray will be provided as well as production oriented strategies to integrate lighting photometry and solar information for lighting studies. Tips and tricks will be provided to support project workflows where the design elements are changing and evolving on a regular basis.

Learning Objectives:

• Get a general overview of BIM technologies applicable to lighting design projects.
• Learn about interoperability strategies to adopt when translating data from one software to another.
• Learn about capabilities and limitations of lighting simulation technologies.
• See production examples used in the context of real projects.

L12D08 - Challenges associated with Weather-Based Annual Daylight Simulations

Co-Speaker: Jack Bailey, One Lux Studio, NYC

5/8/2012 – 9:00 am to 12:00pm

This workshop will walk you through the various challenges associated with annual‐based daylight simulation that we experienced with our projects. From the data collection stage through the validation of weather data, to the development of custom tools to integrate window shades into annual simulation, we will present examples of how to successfully predict a building’s performance with regard to daylighting over a year.

Learning Objectives:

• Become familiar with metrics and guidelines associated with daylight simulation.
• Understand the capabilities and limitations of lighting simulation technologies.
• Gather a knowledge of existing tools for daylight simulation.
• Understand how occupancy and shading devices affect daylight performance.

The FBX import/link or 3ds Max does not create layers based on the file content.

Run this script on freshly imported Revit models via FBX.  It will move all objects on a Layer that corresponds to the Category and Family as illustrated:

It will also restore original Meta data into Parts which are imported without Categories Names, Family Names and Family Types Names.

This script is not a plugin and does not save data in the scene.  You only need to run it on demand.  Note that some entities imported via FBX do not contain meta data from Revit (this is a bug on the Revit side).  Those entities, typically railing posts, lights and parts will remain untouched and left on their original layer.

Note: this assumes that the meta data is available after the FBX import or link. In other words, using Combine by Material will get rid of the Meta information about families (because objects get combined togheter).

Click here to download the script

In Revit you can schedule floor areas and estimate material quantities required for construction.  However, if you want to optimize quantities and placement of building supplies to reduce waste that might not be enough. Pricing estimates might not be accurate either.

To resolve this problem, I wanted to draw each plywood sheet and dry-wall sheet in place so I can get optimal positionning and precise quantities to be ordered. But what if we don’t want to affect the drawing plans? Here is a solution that worked for me, it may work for you as well.

 The concept:

Take advantage of building phases and phase filtering for views.

Example:

1. Add a project Phase at the very end of the list.  Call it “Building Supply Take Off” or something like that:

   

2. Duplicate a floor plan View and assign it to the newly created Phase:

   
   

3. In the newly created view, draw your construction supplies as if you where installing them in reality. Make sure they are also set to the  Phase we created previously. 

   In this case, I inserted 2′ x 8′ panels representing styrofoam insulation. I don’t really have to care about intersections as this is just something used to extract quantities and they will never appear on printed drawings anyways.

   

4. Finally, create a schedule that also filters entities for the “Building Supply Take Off” Phase.