Second Annual Central States Revit Workshop

Last Thursday and Friday (August 15th &16th) the Revit Users Group of Omaha Nebraska (RUGON) hosted the second annual Central States Revit Workshop.  The event is a low-cost, high quality Revit focused training workshop, and as always the event was fantastic. I can't say enough about Carla Edwards, Todd Shackelford and the entire volunteer staff from RUGON who put this quality event together.  The event features top quality speakers and presentations on a wide variety of Revit topics and this year included a 1/2 day session focused on BIM for owners to help educate owners on the advantages of using a BIM based approach on their projects.

Top quality speakers for this event included Steve Stafford, Paul Aubin, Brian and Desiree Mackey (with a special guest appearance from the BIMbino (Vienna, See picture), Steven Shell, Shawn Zirbes, Nathan Miller, Kelli Lubeley, and Jason Gardner and a host of others including several presentations from members of the RUGON committee.  In addition, there were presentations from Brigitta Foster from the buildingSMART alliance on the National BIM Standards initiative and a presentation from Andy Jizba (Mayo Clinic) and Chuck Miles (Autodesk) on BIM from the owners perspective.

I attended some amazing presentations including a presentation from Desiree Mackey on a fully parametric design model that had engineering design data built into the families that would adjust the size of the footings, columns, walls, and framing members all automatically with a change in grid spacing or a level adjustment in height. (WOW!) Other great presentations that I attended included some every day uses for Adaptive Components and Intelligent Detailing from Brian Mackey, Driving Parametric Curves in Families from Paul Aubin, and using the DB Link add-in for Interior FF&E Data and Room Data Sheets as well as a great lab presentation on  Lookup Tables from Kelli Lubeley.  There were so many great presentations that my biggest problem with the conference was not being able to be in multiple presentations at once!!! (Where is cloning technology when you really need it!)

There were a few attendees from the St. Louis Revit Users group including myself, Aaron Gipperish from FGM and Josh Bender from M&H Architects.  I hope next year we can have more representation from STLRUG, it is definitely worth the time and expense.
I wanted to give a special thanks to Carla Edwards, Todd Shackelford and all of the volunteer staff at the Revit Users Group of Omaha for taking the time and effort to put on this great event.  This effort is definitely helping us here in the Midwest to become better Revit users and helping us embrace BIM technology for all of its advantages.

Chris



Brian and Dezi Mackey with Vienna (BIMbino)
Note the awesome shirt and bib!



Steve Shell ("The" Revit Rock Star)

Steve Stafford

November Meeting - Revit Multi-discipline Collaboration

Webster defines collaboration as "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor".  This is not an easy topic in the AEC industry, and pages upon pages of information exist on the best ways to collaborate and coordinate a set of design documents.  But throw the term BIM or Revit into the mix, and this discussion becomes all the more complicated. The topic can become overwhelming very quickly.
 At the November meeting of the St. Louis Revit Users Group, we will be looking at what collaboration means in the world of multi-discipline Revit projects.  We want to know what questions you have regarding this topic and we want to try and answer them all.  Our meeting will be half a discussion on tools and techniques that can be used to tackle this daunting task, and the other half will be answering your questions regarding this topic. We want to answer all questions, so we are gathering information in the form below. If your question is not covered at the meeting, we will still try and answer them all via email.  And as always we will share all of these questions and answers on this page or on our AUGI User Group page.

Please submit your questions in this form.

First STLRUG Meeting in the Books!!!

On July 18th the St. Louis Revit Users Group hosted our first "official" meeting.  By "official", I mean a learning event meeting instead of a social event like the first Happy Hour event. The meeting featured a series of videos covering alot of the new features in Revit 2014. We had a great turnout for the first meeting, with approximately 35 in attendance.  We heard good responses from everyone we talked to after the meeting.  I would to thank all of you who attended, and a huge thank you to everyone on the STLRUG Steering Committee for their contributions and sacrifices to make this first meeting happen!  I would not have even known where to begin without your help!  I would also like to give a big shout out to Seiler who was gracious enough to host this first event.

For those who missed the meeting, or those who want to dig a little deeper into the new features of Revit 2014, we have posted all of our videos to the St. Louis Revit Users Group YouTube Channel for you to view and share.

Also if you are not a member of AUGI, we encourage you to join. (it is still an incredible resource that can be accessed for free)  If you join make sure you join our local user group page.  Here we will be sharing resources from our meetings, and it also contains a forum for users to ask questions specific to our group.

A couple of other big upcoming events that are upcoming that you should attend if possible:

AGC St. Louis 2013 Regional BIM Conference
August 8th and 9th, Washington University, Lopata Hall

Central States Revit Workshop
August 15th and 16th, Scott Conference Center, Omaha, NE
This is a great conference that I attended last year and will also be attending this year.
See our previous post from last year.  Registration is still open!!

A couple other "SAVE THE DATE" notes:

Next STLRUG Happy Hour Event
Tuesday, September 17th
Place: TBD
More details coming soon!!!

Next STLRUG Learning Event
Thursday, November 13th
Place: TBD
Topic: Revit Multi-discipline Coordination
More details to follow

It's Official! First STLRUG Meeting Set for July 18th!

It's official!  The very first St. Louis Revit Users Group meeting is set for Thursday, July 18th, 2013.  The meeting will run from 6:00 till 8:00 PM at the Hearth Room at the Hawken House in Webster Groves.  Click here for directions. 
The topic of our first meeting will be the new features in Revit 2014.  This will include all flavors of Revit including Architecture, MEP and Structural.  We are still looking for volunteers that are willing to present your favorite new features in Revit 2014.  E-mail us by June 21st if you are interested. We will also be discussing some of the STLRUG organizational ideas, including ways you can volunteer and get involved in the group.  We will also be taking a poll on what you would like to get out of the group, including future meeting topics.
Space is limited at this first meeting (Approx. 60 people), and we already have 20 people that have RSVP'd so we encourage you to RSVP here.  The RSVP site has a preliminary agenda, so please forward this RSVP site to anyone that you feel would be interested in our group.  Bring your ideas and your Revit knowledge and/or questions! We look forward to seeing you all there!

Save the Date!!! First Official STLRUG Meeting!

Ok everyone, mark your calenders and save this date!  The first official St. Louis Revit Users Group meeting will be held on Thursday July, 18th 2013.  Location and time for the event are still being put together, but should be finalized in the next week or so.  We have set up an RSVP site, so if you plan on attending this meeting, please click on the link below and RSVP.  This will allow us to plan space and refreshments accordingly. 
RSVP here!
The topic for the first meeting is Revit 2014 new features.  We are discussing doing this in a Pecha Kucha format. For those of you who don't know what that means (like me when I first heard it), it means 20 slides presented for 20 seconds each. This means that we can cover each new feature in 6 minutes and 40 seconds. If you are interested in presenting on one of the new features in Revit 2014, (Arch, MEP or Struct flavor) check out our LinkedIn group and send us a message. Not on LinkedIn, simply post a comment here or shoot us an e-mail. 
We will also be covering some of the ever developing details of how the group will function from an organizational standpoint.
We also encourage all of you to create an AUGI account (if you don't have one already), and navigate to the St. Louis Revit Group page in the Local Users Groups section of the site and become a member of our Group. This site will be utilized to post upcoming events, post handouts for download from our meetings and we even have our own forum to post questions, comments and suggestions to other members of our group. Let's take advantage of this great resource that AUGI has provided for us!
I will update this post as additional details for the meeting are developed.  Pass the word on to all of your colleagues and lets make the first meeting a great success!!

Pre-Launch Happy Hour - Recap

The Pre-Launch Happy Hour Event held at the Moonrise Hotel last night was a great success!  Thank you to all who came out to show your interest in the St. Louis Revit Users Group.  I personally had a great time catching up with some old friends and making some new ones!  Just based on the sign in form, we had approximately 40 people in attendance, however I believe we had more than that. (maybe it was just the drinks. LOL)  This was a great start for our group and I was excited to hear the enthusiasm for this group from the people that I got a chance to talk to.
I would like to personally thank the Moonrise Hotel for being such gracious hosts for this event.  I would also like to thank John D. Lark of John Lark and Associates, Steve O'Rourke and Marc Lopata of Microgrid Solar and Jim Sauer and Bill Ferebee of Fixture Contracting for their time to conduct the tour of the wonderful new Moon Room at the Rooftop Terrace Bar.  What a great space and a great project!
I also have to give a big shout out and a huge thank you to the wonderful guys and gals of the St. Louis Revit Steering Committee. (Brian Myers, Melanie Perry, Brok Howard, Ellen Smith, Pamela Beard and Bruce Johnson)  Without the influence, direction and ideas from these folks, STLRUG would still just be an idea and a dream of mine.

There are great things in store for this group, so get involved, volunteer and share your ideas and lets make this a great Revit Users Group ran by Revit users and for Revit users!!

STLRUG Pre-Launch Networking Happy Hour Event

Here we go everyone!! We are one step closer to our first official St. Louis Revit Users Group meeting! The Steering Committee has met several times, we have a few sponsors in place and we have a preliminary draft of the by-laws for the group.  We are planning on having our first meeting in mid July.  In anticipation of that event the Committee is planning a pre-launch networking happy hour event on Friday May 10th, 2013.  The event will be held at the Rooftop Terrace Bar at the Moonrise Hotel in the Delmar Loop from 5:30-7:00 pm.  One of the primary functions of the User Group is to develop relationships with other Revit users in the community. This event is meant to be a time where we can start that networking process and meet the people in the amazing companies that have agreed to sponsor our Group.  What better way to wind down from a long work week? Please plan on joining us for a drink and some networking!  This is a non-sponsored event, so drinks are not provided, but I vow to buy a drink for at least three people, so look me up!!!  Hope to see you there!  In the event of inclement weather, we will utilize the indoor Eclipse Bar Louge area for the event.

UPDATE:  The Happy Hour networking event will also include a tour of the newly opened Moon Room at the Rooftop Terrace Bar!!  This tour will be conducted by the architect and engineer who worked on the project, as well as some Hotel staff. We will also be joined by the St. Louis Young Architects Forum group for the tour and our networking event!!

You can see more details and RSVP for the event here:  http://stlrugprelaunchhappyhour.splashthat.com