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Author: Tim Alatorre

  • TurboSquid Announces Autodesk Agreement

    TurboSquid, the online digital content site issued an announcement this morning about a new deal with Autodesk® making TurboSquid the exclusive marketplace provider for Autodesk Seek.

    Currently all the content on Seek is free.  I have a couple of Revit families on TurboSquid but my sales have come nowhere close to compensating for the time and effort put into their creation.  For content creators this good news because it will hopefully increase exposure of the content given that Seek search is built into Autodesk’s products.  There are still a lot of questions like if TurboSquid’s content will be integrated into Seek’s search results or if there will just be a link saying something like “more content here.”

    We should know more after Autodesk’s official announcement.

    TurboSquid’s announcement is below:

    TurboSquidTurboSquid has some exciting news — today we signed a major agreement with Autodesk to benefit our sellers. TurboSquid has been named as Autodesk® Seek’s exclusive marketplace provider for the purchase of user-generated 3D content. TurboSquid will provide marketplace services for 3ds Max, Revit, Maya, Softimage, AutoCAD, Mudbox and other Autodesk application files.

    We’re so excited about the opportunities this agreement will offer that we wanted to share the news with you right away. We’ll make an official announcement with Autodesk in the next few weeks.

    Matt Wisdom | Chief Executive Officer | TurboSquid.com

  • Comming Soon: Beginner’s Revit Tips!

    I recently started a new project with a bay area Architect helping him complete a transition from an AutoCad work environment to BIM/Revit work flow.  On the many recommendations from another Architect he made the brave leap to a platform that he had zero experience in.  Due to the economic downturn he closed his office and moved his practice to his home, took a Revit class and then…  To help him in the transition he hired a Revit draftsperson.  That draftsman quit and then he hired another.  She left, then me.

    My task is to train, create Revit templates, standards, and generally get things on track.

    This is the first time that I’ve worked with Revit files that I would consider to be done by a “novice,” other than people I’ve trained of course.  I don’t know who the other draftspeople are and I’m sure they are good people, but there are a lot of things that I’m seeing that are common pitfalls of people starting out with Revit.  Over my next posts I’m going to share some Revit tips that will hopefully save you and those that work with you some time and headaches.

  • Google: A Window to Architectural Public Opinion?

    Just out of curiosity yesterday I did a few generic Google searches to see what kinds of results would come up.  First, I searched for “Architecture”.  I was rather surprised by how uninspiring the links were.  Do Google’s search results give us some insight into how the public perceives architecture?  Does is show us where we as architecture professionals need change or improve how we present architecture to others?

    On my Google search last night the first link, as is typical with Google results, was a link to the Wikipedia entry on Architecture.  Next we had the Architectural Record, the AIA, Architecture Magazine, and About.com’s architecture page.   Not until the sixth link on the page did we start to see something that might jump out to a non architectural professional, GreatBuildings.com.  The only news item highlighted on the page was about computer programing architecture.

    Architecture - Aug 5th Google Search
    Architecture – Aug 5th Google Search

    As I was watching So You Think You Can Dance, I next searched for the word “Dance”.  What a contrast!  There were ads for dance lessons and then the first links were for Wikipedia, the hit dance television show “So You Think You Can Dance”, Dance.net, image, video, and news results, and then a map to local dance studios.

    Dance - Aug 5th Google search
    Dance – Aug 5th Google Search

    I then performed similar searches for “fashion”, “art”, and “music”.

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  • A Little Green Humor

    I was recently sent this cartoon via email.  Unfortunately I have been unable to determine the source.

    Besides being funny, I thought the cartoon underscores the point that often our “green” and “sustainable” activities are merely moving the problem to someone else, not necessarily helping the planet our the community as a whole.  For example, driving an electric cars may reduce dependence on fossil fuels locally, but usually it just results on shifting the demand to coal power plants.

    Just a little food for thought.

    Going Green
    Going Green

  • Emc2 Architects releases Keynote Manager 7.1

    (02/16/12 UPDATE: For aditional tips and tricks on keynotes check out Revit OpEd’s latest post Keynotes – Files, Tags and Legends)

    (04/03/11 UPDATE: Version 10.0 has been released.  For the latest information visit the project homepage at http://keynotemanager.revolutiondesign.biz/)

    Emc2 Architects released Version 7.1 of their Keynote Manager software last Wednesday.  Keynotes in Revit are painful to manage, and the latest version of this Revit companion added automatic text casing and a direct link to the Windows’ Character Map from within the keynote editor dialog, as well as some nice interface modifications.  These minor additions and fixes feel like polish on what is already a powerful tool.

    Steven Faust, AIA, NCARBIn my opinion, this keynote manager, developed by Steven Faust at Emc2 Architects, is how keynoting should have been in Revit from the start.  By making the program “save as you go”, Steve has been able to allow multiple users to work on the same keynote file simultaneously.  Also, features like keyboard shortcuts, spell check, and a built in text search make managing keynotes easier than ever.  This program takes the mystery out of keynotes so that the end user doesn’t need to worry about the syntax of the text file.  The program makes it much easier for project managers, who aren’t familiar with the .txt file syntax, to make corrections to keynotes, and for BIM managers to create keynote templates that are readily available through the interface.

    The one problem the program doesn’t solve is the need to reload the keynote file in the Revit project for the changes to take effect.

    You can download the Keynote Manager from Emc2.  For the latest on the Emc2 Keynote Manager, see this thread on the AUGI forums.

    Screen shot of the main window
    Screen shot of the main window

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