Tuesday 23 April 2013

Revit API - Skipping Unplaced Rooms

Using Revit API, if you want to collect all "Placed" rooms in a given Revit project file and want to skip all "Unplaced" rooms then use the following method.

Get "All" rooms in a project file using standard filter collector method and iterate through each room object to check the following before you add them to your final "Placed Rooms" collection.


// find the rooms, skip those rooms which are not placed but exist in a project file. Checking if Area property of room is 0.0 and location property is null.

                Room tmpRoom = obj as Room;
                if (null != tmpRoom.Location  && Math.Round(tmpRoom.Area) != 0.0)
                {
                    m_rooms.Add(tmpRoom);
                    continue;
                }


The reason why I list this method here is because I used the following up until now and it worked well but for some reason it stopped working in Revit 2013 API while I was updating my plugins. When I checked using Revit snoop database..all unplaced rooms show Level property that they were last placed and deleted and show null property in object type.


// find the rooms, skip those rooms which don't locate at Level yet.

                Room tmpRoom = obj as Room;
                if (null != tmpRoom && null != tmpRoom.Level)
                {
                    m_rooms.Add(tmpRoom);
                    continue;
                }


Friday 12 April 2013

@UniWestminster @UoWBECi Open Lecture on BIM

Recently, I was invited to deliver open lecture on BIM at the University of Westminster. The brief was to start from BIM What, Why, Benefits and then cover where the UK industry is in terms of BIM, role students have to play and some references.



Here is a link to my presentation video. As usual, there is no audio so no need to put on your headphones! Hope you enjoy this and find it somewhat useful for you. 

Disclaimer: The content of this video is not suitable for any person over (x) years of BIM experience. If you fall under this category and ignore this disclaimer and hit the play button then the author does not take any responsibility of loss of...well, your time!


 





Msc BIM Management

It is official now! No, not just the course itself. Some of you would have already heard about this course (that I am going to mention below) but what is official is "BIM Management" as oppose to "Information Management". Ok, this should be enough to provoke your thoughts on lovely Friday afternoon. 

Middlesex University has launched a brand new course called MSC in BIM Management, starting from Oct2013. It is a part-time distance learning course so you can do this while you are doing your day job of Information Management!-;)

I think this is the first BIM course that focuses mainly on management of BIM whereas other courses out there in the UK are more either mixed bag of BIM/Design Management/Construction Management etc or not touching upon management aspect of BIM at all.


"BIM is a process involving the structured sharing and coordination of digital information about a building project throughout its entire lifecycle, from design through procurement and construction and beyond, into the operation and management stage, all the way through to demolishment.

As a direct response to this industry need, we have developed this course which aims to produce practitioners with a qualification to be BIM enabled in their discipline with a critical awareness of contemporary BIM issues informed by technology, research and management skills in standard and unpredictable scenarios.

Importantly, the course provides practitioners in the property and construction sector, and related stakeholders providing services for it, with a qualification to be employed in a management role in BIM projects. These include technical BIM management positions, operational/administrative BIM management positions, and strategic BIM management positions."
 





Thursday 11 April 2013

£20k for Innovative Ideas

No! My BIM friends, this is not for 'BIM' innovative ideas and not for practitioners in the industry. However, I wish someone (you know who I mean from UK perspective) extends this idea to 'BIM' and introduces prize for innovative ideas in BIM adoption. BIM technology is already innovative, well kind of, but what we need to be innovative is in BIM's implementation, engagement at all levels and collaboration. So, the proposed prize for BIM could be called:

"The UK Government's 2016 BIM Prize, looking for innovative ideas from UK students to help the UK Construction industry adopt Level 3 BIM by 70% by 2025"

For now, The mayor of London has launched "The 2013 Mayor's Low Carbon Prize" in partnership with  Seimens for students in London.

"Climate change is the biggest threat to our future and poses a huge challenge for London. That's why we must act now to reduce our emissions and adapt to the changes climate change will bring.

The 2013 Mayor's Low Carbon Prize, in partnership with Siemens, is looking for innovative ideas from London's students to help us slash London's CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2025."

Image Courtesy: www.london.gov.uk
 Read full article HERE.

 

Friday 5 April 2013

4D BIM Case Study

I have been swamped with so many new/exciting things in my work life since I joined my new employer that I hardly get time to share my BIM thoughts with the community. But the good news is that those busy days are over so you should get regular BIM commentary from me. 

Some exciting stuff is coming (including some Revit BOLT-ONS that I was planning to release in Dec 2012)  but today I am going to start with my last week's BIM experience.

I was fortunate to attend the first ever RICS BIM Conference in Scotland on 26th March 2013. The event was a smaller version of RICS BIM National event held in February 2013 in London but the values/objectives were similar to that of any other UK BIM event; that is to raise awareness, learn from project BIM experiences and build your BIM network in Scotland region.


We presented our 4D BIM case study on the largest hospital project on site in the UK, New South Glasgow Hospital. This BIM case study is one of the many lonely/partial BIM case studies out there where project participants used "Lonely BIM" for their own benefits. The whole day was full of collaborative BIM talks so it was kind of a change! for the audience to see how "Lonely BIM" could benefit on such a large project.

Image Courtesy: http://www.nhsggc.org.uk

Here is the full presentation in a video mode for your reference. Apology for no audio in the movie.
Hope you enjoy and learn something from it. As usual, feel free to drop your comments.