Book Review: Google SketchUp for Site Design

Book Review: #Google #SketchUp for Site #Design: http://bit.ly/cyrHCN #architecture #3d #archiless than a minute ago via webAnkit Surti
ankit_surti

ArchiCAD 14

Graphisoft #Archicad 14 features: http://bit.ly/d1Cc4F #BIM #architecture #archi #3dless than a minute ago via webAnkit Surti
ankit_surti

RhinoBIM Structure Available

“RhinoBIM is a suite of a number of planned plug-ins to enhance Rhino 5.0 for the Architectural, Engineering and Construction Industries. Developed by Virtual Build Technologies LLC, the first module now available is called RhinoBIM Structure, for 3D structure modeling, Clash & Clear analysis and structural analysis.

Using Rhino 5.0’s new light extrusion technology, RhinoBIM Structure builds 3D structural design elements that are much lighter in data weight significantly decreasing model size.

With the light database the Clash & Clear analysis finds errors within seconds and there is no need to export the model to another program to perform the analysis.

This work-in-progress version is nearly feature complete and the final version is expected to be released later this year.

RhinoBIM Structure Features:

• Robust tools for adding and editing structural steel beams
• Extensive library of steel shapes, including international standards
• User definable steel shapes
• Assign materials, attributes, and process treatments to each element
• Extract data for downstream application, including structural analysis, detailing, cost estimating, scheduling, staging, and fabrication
• Very fast Clash & Clear analysis
• Very large model support using new Rhino 5.0 technology

Read More at blgsim

Via blgsim

Plugin: Model Function

A fairly new SketchUp plug-in has become available named the ModelFunction Plugin for SketchUp.

Model Function looks to be a set of parametric tools for defining and editing paths. From the video, it appears you can define paths, and then apply constraints to the path. Then you can associate Components to the nodes on the path.

Via sketchup plugins

Fur Maker plugin for sketchup

Amazing new sketchup plugin that can create fur/grass:


Fur Maker is available for download for free from this thread on SketchUcation. If you think it’s as terrific as I do, leave tak2hata a note (on the thread) to thank him. Note: you have to first register to sketchucation

To install it, download the fur_en.rb and fur_lang_en.txt files from the above link and drop them in your plugins folder. If you’d prefer another language, download the relevant .txt file instead (as of today, kind volunteers have provided translations for Japanese, Spanish, French and Persian).

Fur Maker is a young script, meaning it’s only been around for a very short time. As such, there’s always a chance it’ll exhibit erratic behavior. Save early and often.

For further info visit google sketchup blog

New Releases of Major BIM Applications Revit and ArchiCAD

Here are some highlights from the recently released / announced Versions of two of the major players in the architectural BIM field: Revit Architecture 2011 and ArchiCAD 14. See these following videos highlighting some of the interesting innovations.

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011  Sun Path Simulation

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Conceptual Design Enhancements

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Workflow Enhancements

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 User Interface Enhancements

ArchiCAD 14 New Features – Refined Model Mapping

ArchiCAD 14 New Features – Direct Link to Structural and MEP Applications

ArchiCAD 14 New Features – Next Generation Teamwork

ArchiCAD 14 New Features – Direct Import of Site-Survey Data

Via Blgsim

Creating an Analysis Display Style in Revit 2011

Using the recently released Solar Radiation Technology Preview, we can create or modify an analysis display style.  Additional documentation is also available in the video here.

By default, the solar radiation add-in will create an analysis display style called Solar Radiation Default.  You can access the menu under the view Properties > Analysis Display Style.  Once in the menu there are 3 tabs to modify the display style settings or create a new style; Settings, Color & Legend.

Let’s look at the Settings tab first:

The only option here is if you would like to see or hide gridlines in the analysis view:

 

Next on the Color tab:

There are 2 options for the graphical display; Gradient & Ranges.  Gradient will allow you to specify colors for the max, auto and min values and blend them with a gradient display.  Ranges will allow you to add \ remove rows of color as well, using the + or – buttons, but leave the rows of color separation:

 

The last tab is for the Legend, which by default appears in the view:

The legend should be visible in the view where the analysis display is active.

 

The Legend tab will allow you to specify the display of the legend in general, along with visibility for units, name and description.  You can additionally specify the font and rounding settings:

Via Revitclinic

Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit 2011

Use the Autodesk Solar Radiation Technology Preview for Revit 2011 to understand and quantify solar radiation on various surfaces of your conceptual building model.

Using the Autodesk Solar Radiation Technology Preview during the conceptual design stage of your project can help you make informed design decisions about building shape, orientation, and shading strategies early on when changes are least expensive.

The technology preview uses the geometry of conceptual massing elements from Revit and calculates the amount of solar radiation hitting the selected surfaces of the massing shapes, based on location and weather data. It is possible to display the distribution and availability of solar radiation over an entire building or even a city block. This can be particularly useful when considering shading requirements or assessing the best areas to place photovoltaics for maximum collection.

The Autodesk Solar Radiation Technology Preview is modeless and delivers an integrated experience within the Revit environment. This experience is made possible by the Analysis Visualization Framework, Dynamic Model Update, and other new API’s made available with the Autodesk Revit 2011 family of products.

This technology preview is a limited term release to seek customer feedback on its performance and expires on November 5th, 2010.

Below is video showing the presentation:

Via Autodesk Labs

List of New Sketchup Plug-ins and updates

There have been a number of New and Updated Plug-ins released recently. Here's a list:

• Twighlight Render 1.4 -"Our latest version fixes a longstanding material problem, providing better, faster results!"
• LibFredo6 and ToolsOnSurface - Important updates to fix the menu gray-out problems.
• Make Fur - New plug-in for creating fur or grass component arrays.
• ShapeBender plug-in by Chris Fullmer has been recently updated.
• PickIt - A new plug-in by Thomas Thomassen pops-up a menu of selectable entities when there is ambiguity.
• Cleanup - Thomas' essential utility has improved methods for cleaning up, and now also repairs broken lines.
• Edge Tools - Yet another of Thomas' growing and great collection of plug-ins. Adds a face division tool. (see video)
  
• Camera Stats - A plug-in to inspect and manipulate the Camera in SketchUp by Martin Rinehart.
• Extrude Edges by Rails to Lattice - Another fantastic addition to TIG's powerful Extrude Toolset.
• Probes - Recently updated query and inspection tool by TT. Shows face normal, edge normals, UVQ values, and more.
• RayTrace and RaySpray - A couple of TIG Tools that add construction geometry to trace ray paths.
• Fix Component Names - A TT plug-in that fixes a bug that happens when 2 Components have the same name.
• Delete Internal Faces- New scripter kyyu released a plug-in to remove internal faces from faces.
  
• Key Rotate - A shortcut for rotating things also by kyyu.
• OnTime5D Plugin - connect 3D objects with schedule made with OnTime software.
• Automatic SketchUp - The first Ruby book aimed at SketchUp development has been published.
• 3D Printing - i.materialize has released a plug-in to help create and upload models for 3d printing directly from SketchUp.

Via sketchup plugins

Green Building Trends in Europe with Jerry Yudelson

This replay of Jerry Yudelson’s green building webinar provides an overview of the subject, as well as the ways that Europe is currently ahead of the United States.

Green Building Trends: Europe is the first definitive study of European green building design and construction. What can U.S. building professionals learn from their European counterparts? In his upcoming webinar, Yudelson will explain why Europe leads the world in green building practices, and how to adopt these cutting-edge techniques and ideas in American and Canadian cities. His presentation will include case studies drawn from a year of on-the-ground research in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany that show how European green buildings routinely use 50% to 90% less energy than comparable certified green projects in the U.S.

We’ve reached the point when we have not only the capacity to use sustainable techniques and materials for all building practices, but the responsibility to use them. In this webinar, Yudelson will details the lessons from Green Building Trends Europe and shine a light on how they can be implemented.

Jerry Yudelson is an expert in the LEED green building rating system and president of Yudelson Associates in Tucson, Arizona. He provides Yudelson Associates’ clients with expert guidance on creating, developing, designing and marketing green building projects. He has more than 25 years of experience with renewable energy systems, green building design, site planning, environmental remediation, water conservation and solid waste management. Jerry Yudelson is a registered professional engineer and author of several books, including The Green Building Revolution (Island Press, 2008).

Via Blgsim

Download AutoCAD 2011 Tips and Tricks booklet by Lynn Allen

The AutoCAD 2011 Tips and Tricks booklet by Lynn Allen is now available for download. Click HERE to download it. Also available HERE.

Via Lyn's blogpost.

The 3D Warehouse goes social

Are you proud of your work? Now you can share it with your friends, followers, family or anyone in your social network.

Today we introduced a new feature in the Google 3D Warehouse that allows you to quickly and easily share 3D models using popular social networking applications including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and of course our very own Google Reader.

The ability to share news stories, videos and other Internet content has been around for a while (we use it ourselves on YouTube), so we thought our avid modeling community might enjoy sharing 3D models. You’ll find the new Share feature in the top-right corner on the model details page (like this one).

In most cases we simply incorporate the model name and a link to the Google 3D Warehouse into the respective social application, like Twitter for example:


With Google Reader however we went a step further by including swivel-views:

We’ll be enhancing this feature in the very near future, but we wanted to let you start sharing as soon as possible.

Via Google

Castlepoint, Masterton NZ

photos from my trip to castlepoint, masterton:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Photoshop CS5 Sneak Preview Feature

A glimpse on CS5 feature adobe is working on:

Creating laser cut 3D forms super easily

Ponoko.com blog has posted an article with some ideas for easily creating parts for laser-cutting using SketchUp and the svg export plugin by flightsofideas.com, and the non-free slice modeller.

Via sketchup Plugins

Augmented Sculpture – Grosse8 & Lichtfront

In January 2010 the Cologne based design agencies Grosse8 and Lichtfront presented their cross-media installation titled Augmented Sculpture. The core of the installation is a 2.5m tall wooden form that builds the screen for a 360° projection.

In constant transformation over a score by Jon Hopkins, the 2:32 minute performance is described by Svenja Kubler of Lichtfront as a “mirror of changing realities… a kind of real virtuality arises to confront virtual reality.” I’m not sure what that all means but I really like it.

www.lichtfront.com
www.grosse8.de

Via interactive architecture

Highlights from South India

Some of the highlights from my trip to south india: Mysore, Ooty, Kodaikanal:

Marilena Skavara – Adaptive Fa[ca]de

Here’s a great project that came out of the Adapative Architecture and Computation programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture. ‘Adaptive Fa[ca]de’ by Marilena Skavara explores the functional possibilities and performative characteristics of cellular automata (CA). In addition to the unique emergent behaviour of CA, a neural network enables a further computational layer to evolve CA behaviour to the context of its surrounding environment.

Building upon the early work of Conway’s ‘Game of life’ and Stephen Wolfram’s extensive research on the wider implementation of CA, ‘Adaptive Fa[ca]de’ becomes a living adapting skin, constantly training itself from the history of its own errors and achievements. For a more detailed description of the project, read Marilena’s article for Vague Terrain.

Via interactive architecture

Export Revit to EnergyPlus via Ecotect – Video Tutorials

workflow mthod is mentioned in earlier post here: “Export Revit to EnergyPlus“, now these video tutorials are up on the openRevit YouTube channel:

Introduction

Room Bounding Objects and Material Construction

Zones, Model Review and GBXML Export

Ecotect Import, Model Review and Prep for IDF Export

Exporting IDF for EnergyPlus

Importing IDF into OpenStudio/Sketchup for Review

Construction Verification and Review in IDF Editor

Via blgsim

The future of architectural visualization

Zebra Imaging 3D brings the future of 3D visualization, thanks to this thin holographic sheets.

Zebra Imaging makes digitally-mastered, actively-animated, true-color, full-parallax holographic images. These holographic images are available in full color, or in monochrome (green). Zebra’s holographic images can be scaled to any size, large or small. By tiling together multiple tiles, it is possible to create large city maps, full sized cars, humans, and machinery. The minimum you have to do is supply the digital data set–Zebra can do the rest.

More info here. Via Arch Daily.

Realistic Architectural Viz with max second edition

he 2nd Edition of the book "Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and mental ray" is now available.

The book was co-authored by Roger Cusson and Jamie Cardoso. It features sections on the basics of mental ray, and project based sections where you develop materials and lighting for real scenes. These scenes include; an interior of a living room, a photomontage of an exterior of a building, an interior atrium, and a harbor.

You can order the book in the US on online sites like Amazon.

Here are a few more images from the book, which are based on the projects you work through in the chapters.






Via Roger Cusson's blog

Water Drop at 2000 Frames Per Second

Stunning video from “Discovery Channel’s series ‘Time Warp’ where MIT scientist and teacher Jeff Lieberman and digital-imaging expert Matt Kearney use the latest in high-speed photography to turn never-before-seen wonders into an experience of beauty and learning.”

It shows an experiment in which a water drop is filmed at 2000 frames per second, revealing something you probably never knew about the behavior of water.

Via petapixel and Derren Brown Blog

Video Made with Sketchup: James Bond Lego

here's a video made using SketchUp and SketchyPhysics. Nicely produced:

Via sketchup plugins

Google Granted the Right to Buy and Sell Electricity

Google’s ever-expanding empire has added another branch: subsidiary Google Energy has been granted an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy at market rates.

Does this mean Google is set to become your power company? Not yet — instead, Google wants more control over the high energy costs of its many data centers, and also aims to become carbon neutral. A Google spokesperson told CNET: “Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets. We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits.”

There’s the possibility, however, that Google might become an energy provider. The same spokesperson said to CNET in January: “We don’t have any concrete plans. We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio.”

Via Mashable

SU Podium V2 beta 2

This is an interim release with another beta coming after in about 2 weeks. This beta is Windows only.

The V2 engine is multi-threaded. You also need a reasonable amount of RAM to hold 3d scene data. The more RAM you have, the more complex models you can render.

This build represents a stable code base where as far as we are aware, all features are working, although some may need some modification before final release. There will be additional features as well. V2 uses a new, higher-quality render engine. As a result, scenes set up in V1.x will not look the same in V2.


What's New

• In beta2 there is an options dialog box which allows you to choose presets, resolution size for the rendered image, image file format (JPG/PNG/HDR) and Physical Sky vs SketchUp Sky. Point light soft shadows have also been added. Sun turbidity and exposure are controlled in the presets.
• There are several pre made presets that have been crafted for certain rendering environments
• With Beta_34you have the choice of resolutions size or matching the resolution size to the your SketchUp's viewport. You also have the option to choose PNG/JPG/HDR as image formats. We will be adding a option to allow you to save your images to a folder of your choice. Currently the images are saved to where the SketchUp model being rendered is located.
• The Environment option allows you to choose between SketchUp background which could be plain background style or SketchUp Sky color or Podium's Physical Sky. When your SketchUp shadows are on, Podium Sun is on regardless of what background option has been chosen. Clay mode is currently not implemented. Sky turbidity (haziness caused by particles suspended in the atmosphere) and exposure are configured in the presets you choose. The preset files are plain text files which are editable. We will release a preset configuration guide.

Download and more @ su-podium.com