Thursday, June 26, 2014

GitHub and RevitAPI as well as RTCNA Wrapup

Hey Guys

I thought I would jump in with a quick post to cover API stuff and RTCNA wrap up for this year.

First off I have put all my source code from my 4 RevitAPI coding labs onto github.
https://github.com/Gytaco/RevitAPI
It's got a bunch of starter code, I plan to get the rest of the handout, powerpoint information up today.

The plan is to get people to sign up, and post their own problems as code on Github and we can all start to work as a team. It's not designed to be ALL of your program or secret tool, but the key snippets that helps build a program up and I know we all could use those to assemble our code from assemblies of underlying stuff.

So get on board it also will help you learn to use Version Control for those who are new to coding, which is always a good idea.


So I was lucky enough to attend RTCNA2014  held in Chicago this year and I have to say wow!!!
Not only did the event sell out and hit the cap for attendees the presentations from Autodesk and users were really really top notch.

Check out Erik's blog for all the pics of which I am in there somewhere:)

Some of the examples simply blew me away with what people are trying to do and how they are getting there, and it's the willingness to share successes and failures with the broader community that is always exciting.

On top of the classes the other best part of any RTC is the networking. The conference is geared towards networking and again this one was awesome, I met a bunch of new friends from the US and the UK bumped into people who are running things with firms we are about to start working with. RTC really helps you make good connections and people you can talk to, and more and more you like going to RTC not only for the presentations but to trade war stories as each person struggles to innovate, collaborate and integrate their people, projects and companies to achieve better outcomes for everyone.

You always come back refreshed and ready to take on another year of slogging through broken Revit files, imported CAD data, PDF markups, paper and other things people secretly do when your not constantly on watch.

This really raised the bar for me and as the number of RTC events grows it becomes harder to figure out which one's you are planning to attend for both friends and content which you only get to see once a year.

For me RTC is the only international BIM technical conference I put my time and effort into. There are others but they simply don't have the culture, expertise and spirit the RTC seems to embody in everybody.

Last but not least there is always some good tech on show and this year did not disappoint with our firm becoming part of the Revizto clan and getting the software for collaboration on our designs.

I hope to see some of you at one or maybe all events next year.



Wednesday, June 4, 2014

RTCAUS quick review

I have returned from RTC and I am now back at work, nothing like getting off a plane and walking into a 6 hour site co-ordination meeting. :)

I just wanted to do quick recap of RTCAUS2014. For those unaware check out www.rtcevents.com

This year the event was held in Melbourne, which was great to be back into a milder climate, I find each year the quality of the presentations and the knowledge of attendees simply jumps in leaps and bounds.What is even more interesting is much more of the focus is away from BIM Authoring technologies themselves, Although there are a still a great number of BIM software howto's and productivity talks and labs. The bigger focus and the more engaging presentations seem to be those based around workflow, government adoption, and most importantly collaboration.

These are still at the heart of what causes most of our friction in this day and age, and how to address these varies greatly in each companies political climate. But what is nice is to hear how others are doing this and looking at what methods, formats and systems to put in place to attempt to achieve not only the technological issues which are actually quite minor today in the Australian market with users, but how to now get information in front of managers of people, projects and collaboration at that higher level.

I did a talk on Revit API, of which I am doing a repeat at the RTCUS conference aswell. From there I have a couple of people interested in starting a group to share coding bits & pieces. This will appear in the future by the end of June on GitHub for people to download, upload point out solutions and so forth.

The idea of the GitHub will be code snippets for other users that can be copied and placed, it's mean to be very easy to read with lots of comments to allow new API users learn to tinker, break build and ultimately share bits and pieces of how to do things.

For now I'm working on some interesting Dynamo stuff, and preparing for RTCNA I hope to show something on in July maybe and see those attending in 2 weeks in Chicago.