CASE architects have developed an interesting whitepaper for Autodesk that illustrates nicely the conceptual design process in Revit 2010. In this paper, a highrise development is taken from the conceptual stage through some Ecotect solar analysis all the way to facade panelization using the new Revit tools.

You can download the document from Autodesk here.

On the SketchUp and Google Earth front, Google has retooled their aceptance criteria for buildings for 3D Warehouse. A nice explanation was published on their blog. Maybe more of our UMass campus buildings will make it now into the 3D buildings layer.

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Instead of producing a late-night infomercial for SketchUp Pro (Buy two copies, get a free pocket protector), we decided to go a simpler route: Helen put together a promo code that knocks $100 US off the price of a single-user Pro license (it’s normally $495). European and UK customers save 20%, which works out to about the same thing.

Here’s the catch: Chris designed the promo coupon into a LayOut 2 doc – you’ll need to have LayOut 2 installed on your computer to open the file and read the coupon. If you haven’t already, you can download a trial version of SketchUp Pro 7 (which includes LayOut 2) in order to open the file. Sneaky, no?

Once you’ve installed SketchUp Pro 7, you can download the promo coupon and see it in LayOut. Mosey on over to our online store to take advantage of the discount until June 19th of this year.

Here’s the original posting:

Official Google SketchUp Blog: Save some cash on SketchUp Pro.

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Here’s a method that I found recently on the buildz blog: Although it is not clear from the rendering dialog, it is easily possible to do a soft-shadowed ambient-occlusion rendering in Revit’s implementation of MentalRay.

This is done by setting the time of the rendering to sometime during the night. After the rendering, just open the exposure settings dialog and increase the exposure until it looks right. The result is below:

Credit for this method goes to David!

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The first news about SketchUp is news itself. To be more to the point, the folks at SketchUcation.com have just launched an interesting news portal. It is called The Daily CatchUp and it was created to bring frequently updated news to us SU users. So far, posts seem to follow the major topics and announcements on the SCF forum and add whatever else happens in SU world. Definitely a good daily read! (And I like to see that the site was built on WordPress)

NPR Tools from Render Plus

Render Plus Software

The recent announcement of the release of NPR tools by Render Plus Systems is a good reminder for me to mention their lineup of products, which all look very interesting. Here is a short list:

• NprTools – Adds non-photorealistic rendering like soft shadows or sketchy shadows
• IRender nXt and IRender Lite – Another renderer for SU
• RpTreeMaker – A free tool to create trees and shrubs
• RpTools and RpEdits – Copy and mirror tools (free)
• RpWallMaker – Create thick walls with openings easier
• ProjectSketch – An office-planning tool
• RpReports – Attribute definition and reporting tool
• RPS 3D PDF – And last but definitely not least a tool to create 3D PDFs

And for all Revit users that may want an alternative to MentalRay, there is also AccuRender nXt for Revit.

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After years of us using high-quality rendering software for free, it just makes sense for their developers to eventually turn their endeavors into profit. This happened recently with Indigo and today, Ioannis Pantazopoulos, the creator of Kerkythea announced a similar move. Both have been freely available renderers for SketchUp and other 3D modeling applications.

Here are some of the details gathered from the announcement and forums. Beyond the standard “Kerky” features (3-platform software, modeling environment, various biased and unbiased rendering methods, advanced material editor etc.), “Thea” will have:

• Displacement textures
• Texture baking
• Exporters can be re-used
• “Interactive render” – whatever that means (possibly lights)
  
• Fair price – Good!
  

The new software’s home is at www.thearender.com. There is also a forum for questions etc. The new price hasn’t been announced yet but that should happen soon. In any case, Kerkythea will apparently remain free – but we have already been cautioned about longer development cycles.

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Now that the Autodesk 2010 versions are finally available, it is time to get familiar with them. I am particularly looking forward to the new Revit functionality (3D modeling and paneling tools), but there’s far more than that in the Autodesk software roster. Maybe the main change to grapple with is the ribbon menu UI. To help you along with the transition, here are a  few resources that looked useful:

• Ralph Grabowski from WorldCAD Access just posted a tip on the Acad 2010 Alt-Shortcuts.
• nichitecture has a great Flash-based visual reference for Revit 2010 called “Where’s my Tool“. You click on a tool in the old interface and it shows you where it is in the new one.
• David Fano of design.reform has posted several tutorials on Revit 2010. These are mainly about 3D geometry creation and curtain wall panels.
• Another new and interesting blog is buildz by Zach Kron. His posts (so far) are mainly about modeling, curtain panels and rendering. One of his posts shared a great tip for rendering in Revit: Set the time to midnight, let Revit render the scene and then crank up the exposure. This yields great ambient occlusion renders in Revit.
• If you want to know more about the background for the new Autodesk UI, read the “Inside the Factory” blog. It explains the thinking behind the recent changes and (as of their latest post) also offers a forum for feedback on UI-related decisions.

  Here is their video on the new ribbon UI:

• Finally, if you are a student and haven’t downloaded the 2010 versions yet, then you can do so at students.autodesk.com. It might be a good idea to finish your final projects off first, though. You never know…

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Membrane, imported into SketchUp and rendered with Kerkythea

Shells and tension structures (cable nets or fabrics) are beautiful structural elements that provide a very lightweight organic shape with a visually clear structural language. When it comes to creating these, however, specialized tools are required since the underlying math is anything but trivial.

If you want to work with shells or tension structures, try out these approaches:

• Membranes24.com – This site provides a free online service for form finding of tensile fabric structures. They have several basic shapes where you only have to provide node locations. As an added bonus, for some of those shapes, cut patterns can be downloaded. As can be expected, the free version does not allow for input of material properties. For added functionality, a plugin for Rhino is offered that provides more design freedom.
• SoapSkin Bubble – This is a SketchUp plugin that takes a closed loop of 3D edges and then fits a soap-skin type shell between those. Beyond this basic functionality, fabric property ratios can be defined and a pressure can be applied (try a very large one for an interesting effect). See the last image in this post for an example of a shell.

A reconfigured version of the shape shown above

A shell made with the Soapskin Bubble plugin

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Overall this sounds like a good offer – all you need to provide is your former employer’s name and address. Of course this is a great way for Autodesk to get people to use their software (and stick with it once the economy heats up again), but the idea is very useful.

As reported by Ralph Grabowsky, there are other CAD manufacturers that do this as well. Solidworks for example. It may also be a good idea to just talk to a software company and ask for a similar offer – even if they don’t publish it. And even if you don’t get anywhere – get yourself an external harddisk and load a bunch of trial version on it and start learning!

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Fredo6's tools did this! Poor Sang. (bend, twist, taper, shear, scale)

A few days ago, a new tool for SketchUp was released. It’s called FreeScale 2.0 and it allows to do a lot of geometry manipulations that SketchUp by itself wasn’t able to do. It should be a default plugin for any serious SU-user. The links below lead to this and other great geometry deformation tools.

• Fredo’s FreeScale 2.0 tools
• Fredo’s Joint Push-Pull tool
• Subdivide and Smooth by Dale Martens
• Subdivide by Rick Wilson
• SketchyFFD by Chris Philips

Finally, here’s a video to introduce FreeScale 2.0:

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Some CAD news that landed in my inbox recently:

SketchUp:

• This year’s SketchUp modeling competition for students has nothing to do with campuses. Google wants you to model a bridge over your favourite crossing instead. Deadline is June 15, 2009.
• Another competition has been announced by Dwell Magazine together with Volkswagen. For this one, you can use SketchUp to re-design your favorite object. Deadline for the first phase is very soon (March 31st).

Revit:

• This one’s also true for the rest of Autodesk software: The new versions are out! For example, Revit 2010 can be found here. and the new features are here.  As always, I will likely have to wait a while until we get the academic license…

Rhino / Grasshopper:

• LIFT architects (Andrew Payne of LIFT and Rajaa Issa of McNeel to be exact) have published the second edition of their free Grasshopper Primer. This book was written for the latest version (0.6) and includes scripting.
• There’s one more: A book by an architecture student from London: “Algorithmic Modeling with Grasshopper“. Download here…

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