Justin Ribble, LEED AP, Associate AIA, B’Arch ’03 joins us for a conversation about a number of great three letter acronyms:  CAB, CSE, IDP, AIA, ARE, ACE, and BIM.

Don’t forget to tell your friends about us, join our Facebook Group, leave reviews on iTunes, vote for us on Podcast Alley, and follow us on Twitter!

Show Notes

Site News

• New Facebook Fans
  • Monica Shahrokhfar
  • Greg Wynn

• Tim’s big adventure with the CAB
  • A Big thank you to Elise Drakes and Mark Drwyer
  • What are the CAB offices like?
    • Shout out to Erin, receptionist at the CAB
    • Number of employees in the CAB office
  • Why do commissioners volunteer to give the oral exam?
    • They care about the profession
    • Free Food!
  • Shout out to Lily Dong!
  • What about loosing the oral component of the test?
    • Can IDP add it?
  • Pass rate of the California Supplemental Exam (CSE)
    • Haley has some numbers!
      • 2006-2007 –  1,082 candidates – pass rate = 47%
      • 2007-2008 – 901 candidates – pass rate = 50%
      • 2008-2009 – 1,043 candidates – pass rate = 48%
      • 2009-2010 – 838 candidates – pass rate = 51%
    • Tim thinks the pass rate is fair given his understanding of the process
  • Are Californian architects better than other architects from other states?

General News

• THE SIX-MONTH RULE
  • By the time you’re probably listening to this, it’s probably in effect, so get informed and get to logging those IDP hours!!
  • Due to system performance under severe volume pressure the reporting deadline for the Six-Month Rule has been extended to Friday, July 2, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The e-EVR is operating at full capacity. Please be patient as you may encounter lengthy response times. It is strongly recommended that you continue to be diligent in your efforts to access the e-EVR during off-business hours.
  • http://ncarb.org/

Rapid Fire Questions:

• Cal Poly or Berkeley? Cal Poly
• Autocad or Revit? urgh… Revit
• Parallel bar or T-Square? T-square
• Facebook or LinkedIn? Facebook
• Arch Record, Arch Digest, or Architect? Record
• Drafting dots or tape? tape
• Yellow trace or white? yellow… only communists use white
• Ad Markers or Prisma? Ad
• Pen or Pencil? pen, all the way
• Mac or PC? both… Mac for home, PC for work
• What’s the Meaning of Life? FUN (to enjoy the time that you have while you’re still here)

SCORE: 746

Interview

• Who are you?
  • From Oregon, decided to see the world and rather than go to Univeristy of Oregon he decided to go to Cal Poly.
  • San Luis Obispo was actually like his hometown, so the adjustment was good.
  • He finished in 6 years, and is glad that he took the time to enjoy his senior year rather than hurrying up to finish and get out.
  • He was able to work in a few offices before he , so when he needed to find a “real job in the real world” he was able to apply those past experiences.
• He has felt disconnected in the years since graduation?
  • When he found sloarch.com, after searching for a Revit question, he was happy to have a place to feel more connected.
  • He’s only a few hours away from SLO and feels that he should get back and get involved.
  • It’s interesting since it is a larger program and students move all over the place after graduation, so having a chance to reconnect and get back into the network being created is a really good thing.
• He’s worked with a lot of Cal Poly grads.
• He spent his 4th year in the east coast program:
  • While here in CA, you can almost always find a Cal Poly grad in a firm, on the east coast it was “Cal Poly what?”
  • Living outside of D.C. and Alexandria makes you feel the political pressure in the area, so there is more competition and rivalry in all aspects of life let alone the program you come from.
  • It was a great experience, he was able to step outside and feel a part of programs outside Cal Poly, which was a great experience since it gave him persepctive.
  • The diversity of professors at the program, where they came from and their specialties was great.
  • It was nice to see how other schools teach design.
• Why stay in CA after graduation?
  • Looking back he wanted to get back east, it’s a great place to live but it’s hard to afford it.
  • Sacramento was a good market and affordable.
  • While there are parts of Oregon that he misses he feels that he has experienced all he could for the time being there, so he’s happy in Sacramento for the time being.
  • Oregon is to California as Sacramento is to San Francisco, to put it in perspective.
• Working towards licensure?
  • Doesn’t have to complete IDP, so he’s happy about that.
  • Took his first exam about a year or so ago, then work got really busy and it was hard to come home after a long day and study, so recently he’s getting back into studying, taking ARE study classes at the local AIA Chapter.
  • The goal is to take 4 exams between now and September.
  • The firm he works at currently is really supportive about professional development. Use this time to do what you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have time, to become better.
• ACE Mentoring, how is he involved?
  • It’s one of those things that he always wanted to do, mentoring high school students about what the profession is and what a career in the building industry is really like.
  • Pay it forward a bit.
  • He’s learned a lot about how others view our field, their perception of “architects” and what they do.
  • Exposing students to the multidisciplinary aspect of our profession as well as the professional and office conduct that you need to know to be a professional.
• Strong feelings about Autodesk??
  • His office recognizes that Revit is the direction to go, so they’re in the process of transitioning everyone to Revit one by one and they’re currently working on their first Revit project.
  • After going to an outside training session there was a need to develop their own way to use Revit based on the type of high end design and modern work his firm does.
  • His biggest gripe is the license process and releases, having to re-up every year isn’t sustainable or do-able, especially right now with the economy.
  • He’s slowly prying himself away from Sketchup and CAD.
  • He recognizes how powerful Revit is and how you can make it do what you want it to do… as long as you keep up your subscription.
  • Transistion is always slow and has it’s hang ups and resistance.
  • Revit is changing the role of the “CAD drafter”.
  • On the flip side, students now are learning Revit, and by the time they become employees think of the change the profession will have seen.

Still, you can build some functionality into your families to ensure that a value never exceeds a specified range or create warnings for the user of your family.

Lets start with a simple example.  In the plan view below I am showing a basic table.

Lets say in this example that we never want the table’s width to be greater than 1/2 the depth.  We have a few choices.

1. Don’t do anything
2. Display an error message for the user
3. Default to another value

Don’t do Anything

By default your parameters allow the user to input any value they want.  You can set up relationships between parameters using formulas but the results are still dependent on user entered values.

When creating families it’s good practice to set up the basic types that you expect the user  will need.  This will limit the amount they need to edit the parameter values.  Understanding when to use instance versus type parameters will also limit problems in the future and make the family easier to use.

A well designed family should be clear and easily understandable by someone other than the person who made it.  Some things I look for are:

• Model geometry is hosted to reference plans and lines that have meaningful names
• Well named parameters grouped under the appropriate categories
• Parameters are assigned to the geometry in a logical sequence
• Model and dimension locks are kept to a minimum

Even in a well designed family there will be times that a user will be confused as to why a model is breaking, or there are conditions that must be met to keep the model valid in the real world that must be maintained.  For example, a manufacturer won’t make a table longer than 8 feet long.  With the default model there is no way to tell the user that 8 feet is the maximum length or provide clarification as to why the model broke when value “x” exceeded value “y”.  So what can we do?

Display an Error Message

The easiest thing to do is to give the user a message.  Start by creating a text parameter, I placed my error message in the Text category so that it’s at the top of the Family Types browser.

Back to our example of not wanting the table’s width to be greater than 1/2 the depth.  To alert the user to this we create the following formula for our new text parameter.

=if(TableWidth > (0.5 * TableDepth), “TableDepth”, “OK”)

Notice how I am mixing parameter names, numbers and text strings?  Pretty cool right?  If our table with is greater then half the table depth then the user gets the message “TableDepth”.

Of course in the real world you give a more descriptive message like “Table width can not exceed half the depth”.  But I wanted to make sure the formula fit in my screen shots.

If the Width is less than half the Depth then the user gets a simple “OK” message.

I really like this technique.  You can create nested error messages to handle different scenarios too.

=if(TableWidth > (0.5 * TableDepth), “Table is too wide”, (if(TableWidth < (2′-0″), “Table width must be greater than 2 feet”, “OK”)))

Default to Another Value

The guys in my office will point out that this option can be annoying because it overrides the value the user inputs and may cause confusion.  Sometimes inputing a value out of range will break a model completely so this method is necessary to prevent that from occuring.  I recommend using this method in conjunction with the error message to let your users know what you did when they weren’t looking.

In order to build this functionality you need to add some complexity to how your family is structured.  In the examples above the parameters were directly linked to a piece of geometry.  We need to insert some logic between what the user inputs and what the model does.  To make this work we create an additional set of parameters.

The parameters under the Dimensions category are what the user modifies however the parameters under the Analytical Model are what actually control the geometry.

Now we have some flexibility to insert control logic.  We can now assign the following formula to TableWidthActual.

=if(TableWidth > (0.5 * TableDepth), (0.5 * TableDepth), TableWidth)

This formula checks the values the user entered for TableWidth and TableDepth.  If TableWidth exceeds half the depth then the formula ignores the user entered width and defaults to half the depth.  Otherwise the formula passes the user entered width through.  (NOTE:  The formula in the image below is incorrect)

The ability to control the values your users enter is powerful.  Use it with caution, and like I said earlier, creating an error message like this is helpful.

=if(not(TableWidth = TableWidthActual), “Your width was changed because it was too big”, “OK”)

If you have any questions leave them in the comments.  Thanks Faekk for the inspiration for this article.

One of the greatest challenges I have as a BIM manager is the management of Revit Families.  I’ve tried a number of different approaches over the years and I have yet to find one that I like 100%.  I’ve always worked to establish a set of approved office standard families and have had an internal review and approval process.  The standard families account for probably 90% of the families needed on a standard project, the problem lies in the 10% of custom families or the 90% customization needed when we do a new building type we haven’t done before.

In the early days I mistakenly thought that if I left modelers in the dark on how to edit families they wouldn’t do it.  I could train a couple of key people to do all the family modeling.  As you may expect, that didn’t work for long.  People didn’t want to go through the hassle of having someone else make and edit a family, especially when they are under pressure from a project manager.  They created families and edited the families themselves but because they didn’t know what they were doing they created families that couldn’t be reused without extensive reworking.  Usually they spent an extensive amount of time going in circles or not enough time to do something right the first time.  Days later when they would go to make a dimension change the family would break.

The other strategy is train everyone on editing families and hope for the best.  This requires a lot more work for the BIM manager, training, supervision, review, etc.  However the entire staff ends up more educated and because they know the inner workings of the family they can use them more effectively in the building model.

In general the people working on your models are intelligent, want to learn, and want to do a good job.  In the long run teaching them how to create and edit families goes a lot further and will save you time.