The Musing Mill

There’s been a lot of talk among my friends about Second Life, an Internet MMORPG environment, otherwise known as SL. I’ve been experimenting with getting 3D geometry into SL. I’ve found other people trying to do it with Sketchup and Blender. The screenshot is from Blender. I came across this article on a Rhino plugin that might be promising;

Rhino has an internal “MeshToNurb” command. This command converts each and every face of the mesh into a Nurbs surface and joins them together. This makes the final solid object complicated and difficult to work with.

Mesh To Solid for Rhino, on the other hand, studies the mesh object and determines the features that define the geometry of the model. It then creates a single trimmed Nurbs surface for a group of mesh faces that collectively define a feature. Finally it joins all the trimmed Nurbs surfaces to form the final solid. The resulting solid contains a far lesser number of faces and is much easier to work with.

Mesh To Solid for Rhino is very easy to use. It adds a new command to Rhino called “MeshToSolid”. Simply type “MeshToSolid” at the command prompt and select the mesh you wish to convert into a solid.

I’d like to try and find a good path to get Revit data into SL. Programming the API is an option, but I think it will give you faces, not solid primitives, like those needed in SL. Rhino might be the best cleanup helper tool. I’ll keep ya posted.

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I have an interview with Product Management at Google tomorrow and I came across this document while doing research. The design and development philosophy expressed in it is very similar to the one we had at Revit. No surprise such a process yields a great product. They have a ‘Top 100′ list, we had a ‘Top 50.’ Oh well, I guess we weren’t as big!

Maybe there are similarities due to Sergey Brin’s russian heritage. He was born in Moscow, and his family came to America in 1979. His father was a math teacher. Leonid (founder of Revit technology) was born in St. Petersburg and WAS a math teacher (just kidding).

The notes were taken by Evelyn Rodriguez and posted on her blog. My great thanks to her for the insight into the way Google creates products.

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AU was a blast and a whirlwind 2 days. Skipping class to go was dicey since I have a round of midterms starting Friday. But, it was really great seeing everybody that I had not seen in a year. The Revit classes were packed this year, even the API class with about 300 people. Some of the old-timers crammed into a picture booth late one night. The identities of those involved are revealed on the Revit forums at AUGI.com. Ahhh - good times.

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Tonight I fly to Orlando to spend a day at Autodesk University. I was originally scheduled to speak, but was replaced when I left Autodesk. Given the amount of BU work, it was a blesing in disguise.

Although I’ve kept in touch with folks in Waltham, I haven’t seen or talked to many in the Revit community since July. I’m looking forward to running into a lot of old Reviteers.

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If you’re a student (like me ) then here’s [what looks like] a good link to find academic software…including Revit and Revit Series.

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A little ode to James Brown. So I read this on the Revit Augi Forum last night (thread 22442) and it made me feel really good so I thought I’d post it;

I happen to teach Architectural drafting at the college level. I can tell you from experience that everyone, thus far, is speaking the truth - as I’ve experienced it. Yes, the professional world is frustrated that current graduates understand the technology (software) more than they do how a building actually goes together.

I teach my students AutoCAD and ADT because it’s a mandate by our local professionals. However, in the students’ last semester, they complete a medium-sized commercial project using Revit. WOW! What a difference. Throughout the AutoCAD and ADT projects, I get questions about connecting “lines” and “How do you want this line to look?”.

As soon as we start the Revit project, the entire atmosphere changes. Revit is forcing the students to think about the construction of the building; the connection of the pieces and the purpose of the elements. They begin asking me “How does this steel-stud wall connect to the precast exterior wall?”. No more questions about lines, arcs and circles. The students, when they begin using Revit, begin thinking about the building as a building and not a collection of linework. They are forced to think about connections and assemblies instead of “fudging” around them as a CAD application allows you to do.

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Today is my last day on the Revit team at Autodesk. Wow - six years have just flown by. During that time, Sue and I had 2 kids and moved twice. Change is good, but I don’t think we want to move anymore

In cleaning out my office, I am compelled into re-quoting this item I found on another blog somewhere;

Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point author and general pied piper of intellectuals everywhere, wrote a New Yorker article in 2002 explaining a similar phenomenon: why our desks are messy. Gladwell writes:

“But why do we pile documents instead of filing them? Because piles represent the process of active, ongoing thinking. The psychologist Alison Kidd […] argues that “knowledge workers” use the physical space of the desktop to hold “ideas which they cannot yet categorize or even decide how they might use. “The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven’t yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to “recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay.”

Interesting, but not helpful now that it’s all in boxes…(insert George Carlin’s rant on ’stuff’)

Anyway, it’s bittersweet to leave the great product design team for Revit. But, I’d trust those guys with my life…they will continue to do great things. You know who you are…Change is good.

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I found a link to a video of Honda’s experimental robot, Asimo. The Japanese are really into this robotics stuff. Check this out! Watch him run.

While I’m on the robot topic, one thing that came out at AU (if, like me, you aren’t glued to the AUGI Revit forums every day) is that the sets for iRobot (the movie) were designed using Revit. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve heard it’s not so great - but the sets are COOL. I’m going to have to buy the DVD just for the sets.

What’s cooler is they used Revit models for the CDs and then did the construction docs in Revit to build the physical sets 2-3 stories tall. The images show a bunch of excellent work posted to AUGI by Bryan Sutton.

iBod, iRobot - didn’t we do this ‘i-prefix’ thing in 1999?

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Revit had a great Autodesk University this year - many landmarks and milestones. It was a record year for attendance, close to 4500 people. I’m editing some video of it to play for the Waltham staff at a pizza lunch this week. You can see the video here. No - I’m not in it, but you can see our VPs and marketing folks

All the Revit classes were packed. Each of the 2 classes I taught had 200 signed up, and over 300 showed up for each one!

We unveiled Revit Structure which will ship next year. The video has a pretty extensive demo. It was really a lot of work but worth every second! Congrats everybody!

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Many conversations about how product planning on Revit might be structured with the org changes at Autodesk. More to follow tomorrow.

On the house construction, the tile guys have all the bathroom walls done and are doing the floors tomorrow. Whew! That means the plumber can come back in and finish his fixtures in my parents place. After the the hardwood guy can refinish the floors and Joe will install the countertop, also on my parents unit.

I’ll probably take a shot at pouring our concrete countertops this weekend. Tomorrow, I have to go to the Middlesex house straight from work and finish the formwork and reinforcement for them. Also, the painter shows up to paint the trim and doors in our unit. After that, Gary can install the locksets in the doors. Finally, the electrician will be back tomorrow to finish their fixtures on our unit. Oh - and the siding guys are blasting thru their stuff too. Well, it’s just money.

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