STLRUG Jan/Feb 2014 - Happy Hour Event - February 11th, 2014

Save the date and plan on joining us!!!
The January/February St. Louis Revit Users Group Happy Hour Event has been scheduled for Tuesday, February 11th from 5:30 until whenever at the Roadhouse 61 bar and grill in Webster Groves.  They have allowed us to use the upstairs portion of the bar until 7 PM and Open Mic night starts at 7:30 PM, so bring your instruments!!!  (Maybe we can start the STLRUG Band that night!!!)
If you plan on attending, please visit the RSVP site to confirm. This will allow us to let them know how many of us will be coming.  Let's meet and discuss topics for upcoming learning events, and catch up with each other after the holidays.  Hope to see you there!!!

November Learning Event - Handout Available

The presentation Handout from the STLRUG November Learning Event - Revit Multi-Discipline Collaboration, is now available for download.

 

The file has been uploaded to our AUGI Local User Group page and can be found here.

Please let me know if you have issues downloading this file.

 

While you are on our Local User Group page, please think about becoming a member of our Group!

 

An alternate download location has also been made available on Google Drive and can be found here.

Please feel free to email us any questions that you may have. 

You can also email us topics that you would like to see presented at future meetings.

 

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

 

November Learning Event - Revit Multi-Discipline Collaboration

Come join us on Thursday, November 21st from 6-8 pm at Ranken Technical College as we explore the word "Collaboration" and how it applies to a Revit based project environment.

The format for this meeting is a Q & A panel discussion with a twist. Instead of the audience asking questions of the panel, the panel will be posing questions to the audience! These questions will be posed as issues and items that have been encountered in the process of collaboration with other Revit users, and have identified a process or workflow that should be discussed or managed during the project.  For example, "Why do my engineers complain when I delete and replace a ceiling?"

The goal is to develop a document of best practices and techniques for Revit Collaboration and distribute these findings so that we can work together more effectively and efficiently.

So come join us and bring your input and ideas on issues and techniques that you have encountered when working with others in a Revit based project environment.

Please click here to RSVP for the event.

September Happy Hour Meeting

Our September Happy Hour meeting is set for Tuesday, September 17th, 2013 from 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm at the Schlafly Tap Room at Locust and 21st Street in St. Louis.  Please come join us for some drinks (cash bar), pool, darts and food (restaurant open till 9 pm) and as always some networking and discussions about Revit. Please see the RSVP site here for details and to respond.  Share this with your co-workers and colleagues.  See you there!!!

P.S. - Sorry for the short notice!

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