Three Ways to go from Grasshopper to Revit

It seems that more and more people are trying to move intelligent data from Grasshopper to Revit.  There are at least 3 different ways to do this:

• Chameleon
• Hummingbird
• IFC export / import

Have you tried all three?  Which worked best for you?

You may also be interested in:
Rhino to Revit with Hummingbird | WhiteFeetTools

A recent and very informative post from LMNts describes their experience in moving data from Grasshopper to Revit.  Here is just one paragraph:
Chameleon appeared a few months ago and has proven to be an effective tool for adaptive components. The interface is intuitive on both the GH and Revit sides and we are yet to find any serious bugs with it. Another recent plugin is named Hummingbird (keep track of all these animals), a similar program which accesses the WhiteFeet Modeler to import adaptive components as well as Revit primitives (this has a lot of potential and will be discussed more in a future post). Take your pick, these are both great plugins.

Read more:
Adaptive Components, GH to Revit | LMNts

Note - the awesome glass Revit logo is from here - you can download it and use it as a desktop.  The grasshopper is from here.

Via What Revit Wants Blog

Modeling SketchUp roofs on a click with Build Edge PLAN

If you’ve ever taught someone to use SketchUp, you’ve probably drawn the basic SketchUp house and then breezed over the details when it comes to detailing the roof. The truth is that designing roofs is not always a straightforward task, even for experienced modelers.

We’ve explored some solutions for boosting roof design productivity on this blog, and today we’re happy to share a new plugin, Build Edge PLAN, that employs a bit of BIM for quickly creating dynamic walls and roofs. Here’s a quick look at how it works, courtesy of Aaron from Build Edge:

If you couldn’t sit still for the video, here’s the skinny: Build Edge PLAN plugin makes it easier to...

Draw Walls: Rather than outlining walls in a 2D view, and using Push/Pull to extrude them to full height, PLAN can draw complete 3D walls based on your desired dimensions. Each wall can be input as quickly as drawing a single line.

Edit Walls: Even if you are precise when it comes to grouping objects and creating components, modifying walls in an existing structure can be a trying process. With walls created by BuildEdge PLAN, you can move one wall, and all of the attached walls (not to mention the roof) will stretch to stay connected.

Model Roofs: Modeling a pitched roof in 3D is not a straightforward task. Properly projecting surfaces so that they intersect each-other to form a proper roof is time consuming, and if you want to model for framing, including proper heel heights and overhang geometry can be a challenge. BuildEdge PLAN simplifies the process by generating roof geometry from a simple roof outline. Just specify the slope and heel geometry of each side of the roof, and the plugin does the heavy lifting. PLAN also lets you set properties of each roof side individually, so there is plenty of wiggle room for customization.

Roof Creation in Build Edge PLAN: Roofs are created by outlining their profile; selecting individual sections allows for customization

Edit Roofs: Since BuildEdge PLAN recognizes walls and roofs as they are input, you can modify the house as a whole, and move walls or change properties of a roof on the fly. This allows you to quickly change the look of the entire house or any individual properties. For instance, switching from a hip to a gable is literally a single click.

Currently, Build Edge PLAN is only available for PC (a Mac version is in the works). The folks at Build Edge have some quick tutorials to get you going and are pretty great about helping modelers to get the most out of their plugin; give it a try, and the next time you teach someone SketchUp, don’t skimp on the roof.

Via Google SketchUP Blog

Download Resources for: Mastering Revit Architecture 2013

Here is a link to download the 2013 edition of files:
Wiley: Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2013

You can also read some parts free:
Read Excerpt 1 (PDF)
Read Excerpt 2 (PDF)
Read Excerpt 3 (PDF)

Via What Revit Wants Blog

3DS Max Camera Matching Tutorial

This basic level tutorial will introduce you to the early stages of compositing 3D elements into 2D images and videos:

Via Youtube

Enhanced Interoperability with Revit

With the new 3dsmax 2013 and 3dsmax Design 2013 you can import your Revit files directly into 3dsmax without using the FBX feature. Checkout this video showing the feature and other sneak peak into 3dsmax 2013:

Quick intro to iray in 3ds Max 2012

here’s a quick video: intro to iray in 3ds Max 2012 thanks to Jeff Patton:

iray renderer comes built in within 3dsmax 2012 however,you need a Subscription Advantage Pack for ActiveShade for iray. Via Jeff Patton Blog

How to Install Wordpress on your Website

Heres a great video tutorial on the process of installing wordpress on you website:

LINKS:

http://wordpress.org/ - Download Wordpress from here
http://filezilla-project.org/ - A Excellent free FTP Client , FTP Clients are needed to install Wordpress
http://www.000webhost.com/ - Free Web Host, A Web Host is needed to install Wordpress

Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6

Blender Cookie have just announced there new Blender Training Course on Interior 3D Architectural Visualization using Blender 2.6. For those who don't know, Blender is a Free open source 3D animation and rendering software. Details of the training course can be found HERE.

Vray for Sketchup Resources: Links to Tutorials and Blogs

Tutorials:

Link to: The Complete V-Ray for Sketchup Rendering Process - From Start to Finish HERE

Link to: How to Use Vray for Sketchup to create an Animation HERE and More Video tutorials from Arzi3d HERE

More tutorial videos visit youtube chanel HERE

Online Blogs on Vray for Sketchup:

Sketchup Vray Resources: HERE

Sketchup Vray Materials: HERE

Groups on Facebook:

Join Vray Sketchup Group HERE for further resources and discuss any issues

Join sketchup-vray artists Group HERE for further resources and discuss any issues

Join Sketchup Texture HERE

Sketchup to Revit with Materials

There have been many posts about how you can control Sketchup materials in Revit using Object Styles. However, this relies on the existence of different layers for each distinct material in the original file. If you have an SKP file and would like to create the layers you need (without using Sketchup itself), you can use this method:

1. Import Sketchup SKP file in to 3ds Max Design
2. Export as FBX file
3. Use Import command in AutoCAD, choose the FBX file - choose to have a layer for each material (Assign Objects to Layers - By Material)
4. For some reason, I had to untick the Block option - otherwise the file would not import at all.
5. Save the DWG file
6. Import to Revit - you now have granular control over each Material / Layer combination through Object Styles...

An alternative way can be found HERE by Revit TotD which may be helpful.

Via What Revit Wants

Creating A Final Gather Map and its Benefit: 3dsmax Mental Ray Rendering Tip

Creating a Final Gather(FG) Map is useful so you can re-use the FG map for a final render. And How to do this? Well Once you are ready to do a proper render after doing a series of test renders Just tweak your FG settings under indirect illumination to what you think is necessary to achieve a good looking render. Set your render resolution to say 640x480. Once you've done that, under indirect illumination scroll down till you find "Reuse (FG and GI disk caching)" . Under that you will see "Final Gather Map" as shown in the image below:



In the dialogue box choose "Read FG Points Only from Existing Map Files" and click on the "..." icon to save the FG map in a directory. And then you can just click on "Generate Final Gather Map File Now". Once you have clicked this, it will generate a FG map by rendering it out.

You will see under the rendered frame window, Final Gather will be ticked and locked meaning that it is going to use a FG map to render the next image as shown below:



Once the FG map is generated, You can then change the resolution of the final render that you want to produce say 1024 x 768 because resolution doesnt matter for FG map. And then change the rest of the settings under the render frame window such as antialiasing as shown in the image below:



So, when you are creating your FG map you can make the presets lower under the rendered frame window and also render at a smaller resolution but making sure your FG settings are the best. And Once your FG map is created, you can use that same map for the same scene and create a larger resolution render and changing the presets to high quality settings that are under the rendered frame window.

By doing this it saves a lot of time as Final Gather computation can take a long time. So if you render the Final gather at a lower resolution it will be faster than rendering at a lager resolution and their is no need to render with FG at a higher resolution as it doenst really matter if you create a FG map.

Revit to 3dsmax using Vray workflow video

This video capture is the third and final video of the three part series covering migrating the Revit models to 3ds Max to develop the renders using V-ray:

check out my previous post for the first two videos.

Click Here for further info on the project.

Photoshop Tutorial: How to add backgound image onto a rendered scene

Below is a quick tutorial I made on how to add background image onto a rendered scene in photoshop. This could be helpful to add context into ur renders and exisiting site conditions.

Basically, when you render your image out from rendering softwares such as 3dsmax or through rendering plugins within sketchup, save your image as .PNG file or .TGA file as it removes the alpha channel automatically.

However, some rendering programs such as Podium is able to save as .PNG file but not able to remove the alpha channel. Well for me it didn't work when I opened up the .png file in photoshop. Therefore, I had to remove the background manually and add a new background image as shown in the video below:

The video can be downloaded here for better quality viewing: http://www.mediafire.com/?ut82560645ea252