Simply Complex

The Revit Cow

2011-09-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

I am posting some images of the Revit Cow, in case anyone has not seen this Revit family yet.

The Revit Cow (Mass Family)

I built this cow out of surfaces in the mass family editor that consists of hundreds of reference lines and thousands of reference points. (see the image below)

The Revit Cow (points and curves)

Why did I create a Bovine in Revit you ask? Actually, someone from Autodesk wanted a Cow family in Revit to determine if some of the new wall features would work on such a complex organic shape. I was approached by Zach Kron, and I happily took up the challenge. The Revit Cow has been featured in a class I taught at the The North America Revit Technology Conference, is in an article I wrote for the September 2011 issue of AUGI World, and is the official mascot of the Los Angeles Revit User Group (LARUG). Thanks Jay Zallan and Co.

The Revit Cow (Walls Applied to Mass Surface)

I am happy to push Revit to its modeling limits to determine if something that is geometrically complex "COULD" be created in Revit. I do not worry myself with determining if something that is geometrically complex "SHOULD" be created in Revit. I will leave that discussion to the Revit Community.

The Adaptive F150 Revit Family

2011-08-02T01:19:00.000-07:00

The F150 Revit Family
I created this F150 Revit Family using the Mass Family Editor.
All the exterior parts including the quarter panels and hood are separate families. They are nested together to make one entire F150 model.

I also made the F150 "adaptive". The hood, doors, and tailgate are able to be opened and closed using the an adaptive component shape handle point. If you have not experimented or used the adaptive component family yet, run as fast as you can and try it out. You will be glad you did.

This adaptive Revit Family was featured in a lab class I taught at the Revit Technology Conference. All attendees learned how to make the hood of the F150 move by mouse drag.
See the video below for a demonstration.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the treads on the tires are curtain wall panels.

Telehandler family tire creation

2011-07-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

As I promised in the previous post, I would explain how to model the tires on the telehandlers.

Its very simple!

Tires and Tire Rims are the easiest family to build because they are circular.

Any circular family element should be built with the revolve command.

TIRE

draw tire profile as shown and draw a revolve line at where you want the center of the tire to occur.
Revolve the profile about the line.
Presto!
Use this same process for the rim.
You should end up with a rim that looks like the 3d image below.
The treads in this family were built with arrays and every tread was physically modeled.
The tire treads on the pick truck family (to be shown at some later blog posting) were created out of curtain wall panels. If you use curtain wall panels, you don't have to model every tread.

RIM

Telehandler Families Available to all RTC attendees!

2011-07-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

The telehandler revit families that were featured at the revitforum.org website (http://www.revitforum.org/showthread.php/1575-Awesome-families) and at the Adaptive Component Lab at the Revit Technology Conference are now available to all Revit Technology attendees!
More information may be found at the RTC USA website.
http://www.revitconference.com.au/rtc2011us/index.htm
See Below images.
In the next posting I will explain how to model the tires that were used in the telehandler families!

Flexing Some Parameters

two telehandler families

Telehandler Tires

Flexing Some Parameters

Profile

Family Parameters

The Elephant in the room re-post

2011-07-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

RE-POST OF The Elephant in the room post from Zach Kron of Autodesk. HTTP://BUILDZ.BLOGSPOT.COM/2010/04/ELEPHANT-IN-ROOM.HTML

The Elephant in the room

Marcello Sgambelluri has done what I think it is safe to say no one has done before in Revit. Yes, this is a 100% native Revit elephant. No Shit.

And it apparently wasn't enough to just model it . . . he made it parametric . . . and did a stop action animation.

Last year he did a 747 and a Lexus, so this year he wanted to push a little further.

I hope that this puts to rest the question "can you make [insert geomtric desctiption here] in Revit?" It's just not an interesting question anymore.

Yes, you can make it. Of course you still need to ask "Why?!?!", but yes, you can.

Marcello is the BIM Manager at John A Martin and Associates Structural Engineers in LA. He builds families to Beta Test revit in his spare time and has also spoken at AU about Revit.

We are humbled, Marcello, and look forward to what comes next.

Welcome to the Simply Complex Blog!

2011-07-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

This is my first post and I wanted to welcome you to my blog site. I started this blog site to be able to profile projects and Revit families that incorporate complex geometry.
The first few posts will be re-posts of blogs that have shown some of my work in the past.
Welcome!