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.

1. Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for Lighting and Daylighting simulation (Monday all day)
2. Challenges associated with Weather-Based Annual Daylight Simulations (Tuesday a.m.)

The official Lightfair 2012 schedule can be found here

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

Or what about listing the type of object as well as its material name and type?

This can be done with a relatively simple MAXScript that you must install  under the \Scripts\Startup directory of your 3ds Max installation.

By doing so, the script will execute each time 3ds Max is launched and will  instruct the Scene Explorer to fetch data about your objects and create new columns that you can drag and drop in place:

• Material Name
• Material Type
• Object Plugin Type
• Layer Name

Save Target as… to download the MAXScript

Save Target as… to download the SceneExplorer.ini file that you can load from the Tools > Manage Scene Explorers dialog.

1. Fine-Tune Your Autodesk® Revit® Models for Autodesk 3ds Max®

• • Class handout here

1. Stump the Autodesk® 3ds Max® Champions

1. In Revit, go in the 3D view you will export to FBX
2. Edit the Graphic Display Options
3. Specify a Location and Time that matches your project settings, for a single day:

   

4. Export to FBX
5. Import in 3ds Max

Your Daylight System should now match the Revit model in Location and Time.

Always verify your data otherwise your project can go wrong – here are a couple advices on the topic:

IES file can contain wrong information: double check them!

I have once seen a manufacturer using the wrong values in their IES files.  I had to contact them and demonstrate that their data was wrong. It turned out that one of their engineer made a mistake with their database system where North American IES files where published using European measurements. That basically means that errors can come from anywhere in the process. Double check your work!

In the ideal scenario, you need to get a physical sample of the luminaire in your office, measure intensities with an illuminance meter and compare with the IES data provided to you in a simple test scene.

Do the numbers match up?  You are good to go. They don’t match up? Keep reading..

Check the 3ds Max scene units:

This is a typical trap: wrong units, wrong light intensities reported on light meters!

3ds Max and Revit has bugs too!

There is a issue  with the IES file reader that can affect you in rare occasions.  The bug has to do with a certain “feature” of the IES file format that some manufacturers rely on. Let me explain:

The IES file format is divided in two main sections: a header section and a data section:

In the header section, there is a special ”bit” that instruct the software to either use the “raw” data or apply a multiplier to it. For example, a manufacturer might have measured a luminaire only once with a 100W lamp in it. Knowing that the same luminaire with a 200W lamp** would emit twice as much light, the manufacturer could publish a different IES file based on the same measurements and simply state that the “raw” data should be multiplied by a factor of 2.0 by changing this special “bit” in the file as illustrated:

For some reason, 3ds Max and Revit are ignoring this multiplier and always read the “raw” data from the IES files, resulting in incorrect simulations. The work around is to use the built-in multiplier (dimmer) feature of the photometric lights:

Note about linear and area lights:

In many occurences, I am asked to perform lighting analysis reports in spaces designed with cove lights.  Unfortunately, this is still not possible to do precisely - and this problem has not been solved by the industry yet!

  There are currently two major problems with linear and area lights in lighting simulation softwares:

1. First, the IESNA standards for photometric measurements assumes that luminaires are measured from a certain distance, making any calculated points inside this distance mathematically inaccurate. If you search for “Near Field Photometry” or “Far Field Photometry”, you will find plently of information on the subject.
2. Second, 3ds max (and Revit btw, as both share the same code for rendering) still has issues to deal with linear and area lights calculation making them unreliable photometric-wise.

As I write these lines, cove lighting situations cannot be mathematically correct with photometric files in 3ds Max: you will have to do some guess work when working with theses scenarios.

**I know, a 200W lamp does not emit twice as much light than a 100W lamp that was only for keeping the example simple.

To get rid of those edges, you can hide them from the editable mesh panel:

Or better, use a Maxscript tool that will let you hide them all at once.

Click here to download the MaxScript

Usage: Select all your EditableMesh objects and execute the script. The script will only affect selected EditableMesh objects so the selection can contain lights, lines, cameras: they won’t be affected by the script.

The result:

Special Thanks to Chris P. Johnson who helped improving the speed and stability of the script on large models containing several instances.

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.

   

The size of the FBX files exported by Revit is influenced by the following aspects:

Model size:

Obviously, the more details in your 3D view, the larger it will be.  There is not much you can do about it besides controlling the way your families are drawn (fine, medium, coarse display settings).

Texture Maps used by the Render Appearances:

All textures used by the Revit materials are embedded in the exported FBX for portability reasons. On one hand, this is useful because you don’t have to bother about file paths issues (“texture not found” errors) but it has a cost in terms of file size. If you don’t render in Revit, you might want to think about editing your materials in a way that textures are not used at all.  This way, the exported FBX file will not contain additionnal image files.

Environment Maps:

Revit defaults to a rendering setting that uses a texture map for clouds.  This texture map on itself weights about 20Mb and cannot be compressed more. Since it is also zipped up with the exported FBX models, you take a 20Mb hit right away. To resolve this issue, switch the render settings of Revit to use a clear sky (no clouds). Doing so will remove the large clouds image file and reduce the size of the exported FBX file.