Transcripts
Hello and welcome to another episode of Design Under Influence.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Alex Osenenko.
Speaker A:I work for a company called Arc it.
Speaker A:We do work.
Speaker A:Our own purpose for existence is to help architecture, design, engineering firms to have secure and well operated IT environment so you can focus on doing things like Liz and Megan help you do, which is actually build projects and innovate for your clients.
Speaker A:And speaking of Liz and Megan.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker B:Hello.
Speaker A:Yeah, the usual suspects are all here.
Speaker A:Aurora BIM helps customers with moving into the next phase and getting more effective, efficient, and future proofing your company with BIM Consulting.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker C:Happy to be here again.
Speaker A:So happy.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:Thank you for that.
Speaker A:From Hawaii.
Speaker A:Of course she's happy.
Speaker A:Of course, man.
Speaker A:Gotta be.
Speaker A:But so today is the ribbon.
Speaker A:We're talking about the.
Speaker A:We're talking about the Revit ribbon.
Speaker A:What's in your ribbon?
Speaker C:What's in your ribbon?
Speaker C:Les?
Speaker A:Megan, can you give us a little taste like we're talking about plugins essentially.
Speaker A:But can you.
Speaker A:Can you kind of give us a taste of what should be in your ribbon and what shouldn't?
Speaker A:Maybe we kind of start with that and see where we go.
Speaker C:Well, for those who don't know what a ribbon is, it's the top of your revit screen where all your tools are.
Speaker C:So Revit comes with its own standard ribbons.
Speaker C:So you have your architecture, structure, insert, you know, all these ones you're used to using.
Speaker C:But as you add plugins, you get new little tabs added.
Speaker C:And some companies create their own ribbons so they can put their own special tools up there.
Speaker C:So that's what we're talking about today.
Speaker C:Overall, I don't think there's any rules about what you shouldn't have in there other than things you don't use, perhaps.
Speaker C:I've seen ribbons that are completely full and people clicking through and they have absolutely no idea what any of it does.
Speaker C:So today we wanted to talk about some of the things we do use on a regular basis and what.
Speaker B:Why.
Speaker C:Maybe you should test them out too.
Speaker A:So you mentioned when you take on a client sometimes you see a lot of antiquated or no longer used plugins that actually interfere with workflows instead of helping.
Speaker A:So you want to touch on that first.
Speaker A:How does that happen?
Speaker C:Yeah, so oftentimes, yeah.
Speaker C:When we start with new clients that have been working in Revit for a while, we often get the question about what plugin should we have?
Speaker C:And the first question is, well, what do you have and what do you actually use?
Speaker C:Because oftentimes it's a Whole package.
Speaker C:So you'll buy a package from CTC or from one of these other large companies and you can't just buy one tool.
Speaker C: roject, and now you're paying: Speaker C:So there needs to be, you know, someone keeping track of what have we bought and where, where, where is it being used and is it being used?
Speaker C:And also in educating people that it exists and how it works and encouraging people to actually use those things.
Speaker C:And on the other side of it is that they can cause problems down the road if you either don't keep them updated or if, you know, it could do some update and move something and when Revit opens again, it can't find the plugin it needs to load because something got moved or something didn't get updated.
Speaker C:And then you as a user can't do anything about it except click OK in the warning boxes that keep coming up.
Speaker C:So that will.
Speaker C:That's a plug for our, perhaps next week's topic about BIM and it, right, Megan?
Speaker C:Yes, yes.
Speaker C:And how, how those two need to work together in a good way.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker A:Yeah, we'll touch on that next week.
Speaker A:That's a big, I think that's a big topic.
Speaker A:It might be actually multiple.
Speaker A:But what we're doing next week is talking about it, what role it should play to help architects transition into BIM successfully, smoothly, and, you know, help them save as much money as possible of wasted work and all that stuff.
Speaker A:But there's a lot there.
Speaker A:But let's unpack the plugins.
Speaker C:Make sure.
Speaker A:Megan, I mean, or Liz, you mentioned PI being something that you guys love to get engaged with, involved with on behalf of your clients and is that you doing for all of them?
Speaker C:Or you mean like PI Revit or.
Speaker A:Yeah, PI Revit.
Speaker A:Sorry.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker C:Yeah, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker C:I always recommend downloading and installing that because.
Speaker C:And maybe we can put a link because it's an open source plugin and it's lots of small little tools that people have built over however many years and they're fairly stable because they're written with Python instead of Dynamo or any other software.
Speaker C:So it, it does touch the API in a good way.
Speaker C:And I'm just looking through this, I don't know what most of them do, but that doesn't really matter because they're named well and you can mouse over and see a little description and One of my favorite ones is called who did that?
Speaker C:And it's a little grumpy face because we're always in revit, like, who touched that last?
Speaker C:And it kind of tattles on people in the model.
Speaker C:Yeah, really nice.
Speaker C:So you know who to go.
Speaker C:You'll yell at.
Speaker C:I also use.
Speaker C:There's one called Wipe that helps you delete things that are hard to delete.
Speaker C:That can be dangerous, of course, but when we work with template files or old, old, old revit files that are just full of trash that you need to pull things out of, that can help you remove things like levels or views or, you know, some of the more deeply embedded items.
Speaker C:Another one I've been using a lot is make pattern to make revit patterns, which can be difficult to do.
Speaker C:You can, of course, import AutoCAD PC file, but if you need to edit them, it's like, impossible.
Speaker C:So this little tool helps you.
Speaker C:You just draw line work and you pick two corners and it creates a pattern out of that.
Speaker C:Those are my favorites at the moment.
Speaker C:But what are you.
Speaker C:What's in your ribbon, Megan?
Speaker B:So I have used lately.
Speaker B:There's one.
Speaker B:I forget what it's called, where it will take every work set that you have in your model and make a 3D view out of it with only the elements in that work set turned on.
Speaker B:So it's really nice for keeping an eye on your.
Speaker B:Your work sets and what.
Speaker B:Sometimes elements get lost and put in the wrong work set.
Speaker B:So that can really help you kind of clean up your model and keep an eye on things.
Speaker B:The other one that we've been using a lot too, is the warnings.
Speaker B:So you can also display the warnings in 3D in a 3D view.
Speaker B:It'll isolate all of the elements that have a warning associated with them so that you can start processing through those warnings quicker.
Speaker B:I'm trying to think of the other ones.
Speaker A:Is this all from PI?
Speaker A:You guys still talking pie?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Cool.
Speaker B:I feel like there's at least a hundred.
Speaker B:Is there like.
Speaker C:And there's secret.
Speaker C:There's secret ribbons within the ribbon.
Speaker C:So in settings, because they do like a standard collection.
Speaker C:And then in settings, you can add more stuff.
Speaker B:Oh, I know another one I've been using.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:We have really, really large drawing sets for a big hospital project that we're working on.
Speaker B:And we're.
Speaker B:We are going back and forth on some numbering conventions and some naming conventions.
Speaker B:And that means renaming and renumbering a lot of sheets.
Speaker B:And there's a tool for that in the sheets.
Speaker B:Dropdown list you can do find and replace a word and replace it with what you want it to be.
Speaker B:You can renumber much quicker than there's other add ins that do the same thing.
Speaker B:But I've had them also, like you talked about, Liz, they may expire.
Speaker B:They're from a company that you know is charging you money for it.
Speaker B:And you know, depending on the release of Revit, they may or may not update their plugin that you're in love with using for the next version of Revit and then you're out of luck.
Speaker B:So that is one of the nice things about PY Revit is that it usually all of the, all of the apps work as Revit upgrades each year.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Is pyrevit free then?
Speaker A:If it's open source, yeah.
Speaker A:Wow, that's cool.
Speaker A:So when you engage a client, is the plugin conversation one of the first things you go into or this is something that usually comes up down the line organically as you do the work?
Speaker C:I would say it depends on their level of integration into Revit.
Speaker C:It's definitely not the first thing you ask for a brand new moving from CAD or archicad to Revit, because that's just overwhelming.
Speaker C:Usually for me it comes up when either they're getting warnings, we're helping a client who is getting a lot of these warnings and trying to figure out why either it comes up then, or it comes up when the bill comes through for the year and then they want us to give our opinions on which plugins they should keep or they run into a problem like any of the problems that I mentioned or Megan mentioned that that needs to be solved and we're like, oh, have you tried this button in PY Revit or have you tried this tool?
Speaker C:And that's usually when we start talking about it and then it opens up a whole new world sometimes.
Speaker B:And I, I would add too that it's usually a tool.
Speaker B:I think the tools are more geared towards model management and kind of higher level Bimming, if you.
Speaker B:I would say so, you know, like BIM managers and someone in there looking, you know, to, to look, go through all the warnings or manage the work.
Speaker B:That's not the typical, you know, modeler that's in there just doing red lines and doing work.
Speaker B:Except for some of the tools like the sheet creation and renaming and things like that.
Speaker B:But they are more like global model management tools I would say, as you're working.
Speaker B:So it is more of a higher.
Speaker C:Level.
Speaker B:Higher experience person that would be you using them.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So sometimes That's.
Speaker C:Sorry to interrupt, but sometimes that's also the.
Speaker C:Like when somebody's moving into being a higher level user, when they've hit the.
Speaker C:I'm so tired of doing the same repetitive task over and over again.
Speaker C:There must be a way to do this.
Speaker C:They're like, there is.
Speaker A:So as their use use cases mature and they're getting more, more and more comfortable with Revit, plugins come in to sort of amplify the work and speed things up and then do some really neat tricks like you describe patterns and all things like that.
Speaker A:Are there other plugins you want to call out that you see other architecture firms using successfully?
Speaker A:Anything worth mentioning here to help people kind of look into it and what they solve?
Speaker C:I mean there is the, there's Dynamo, the big elephant in the room.
Speaker C:That is a big learning curve to learn visual programming.
Speaker C:It has a lot of limitations and there's a whole bunch of podcasts we could do on that.
Speaker C:But one part of Dynamo that is gotten, that is better, I would say, is the Dynamo player.
Speaker C:So that you can create these little scripts and then turn them into kind of buttons within your environment.
Speaker C:We have a colleague who works a lot with that.
Speaker C:And the.
Speaker C:In the end of the day, it turns out that it's better to write a Python script instead of working in Dynamos.
Speaker C:A Dynamo can be more like a sandbox to figure out what you want to do and then you can write a, an actual code later.
Speaker C:So I mean that's a, that is hard to build in a way that is like lasts the test of time.
Speaker C:Those tend to be.
Speaker C:I can build it for this project, this version of Revit, this build, and then six months later it's probably not going to work.
Speaker C:You're going to have to either rebuild it or crash it and do something else.
Speaker C:So that can be frustrating.
Speaker C:But that's also free and built in so it can be a place to start.
Speaker C:What do you think, Megan?
Speaker B:There's one tool that we, that I've been using over the last couple years, a newer tool from a company called Bimlogic.
Speaker B:And they do a variety of things, but the tool that we've been testing and working with the most is their Copilot, which I don't know which came first, Microsoft's Copilot or their Copilot, but it is basically an AI engine that ties into Revit.
Speaker B:So if you.
Speaker B:This is for a more experienced user because you do need to know exactly how to ask it to do what you need it to do.
Speaker B:But it can Automate and tie into the API just like any of the other add ins and Dynamo, but you're just typing and talking to it and asking it to do what you need it to do.
Speaker B:So they are actively improving it and building their database.
Speaker B:So if a command that you type in doesn't work, they actually, if you put the thumbs down, they will like email you and make sure that they know why that didn't work so that they can get it to work the next time and you can save different prompts and things like that.
Speaker B:Their other tool that I haven't used a whole lot but I do think is really great is they have a way of like all the, all of the elements in Revit you can tag so you can pull data from them and display it in the model.
Speaker B:When you have really large projects, tags become very cumbersome on a plan.
Speaker B:It can overlap and the placement of them can be kind of time consuming, getting it to clean up and look nice.
Speaker B:So they've created a tool where you can create a template of, okay, I want my tag to go here and if it can't go here because it's overlapping something, put it here and you can create a bunch of rules and then it will go through and you can tag plans in seconds versus a day.
Speaker B:So I think that they've got, it's got a lot of potential and we've been using it more and more with clients and I do recommend checking it out and it's, it's very decently priced right now because they're still kind of starting out, so get in before it gets expensive.
Speaker C:Very good.
Speaker A:I think this was a good overview.
Speaker A:Unless you guys have another standout, you know, let's call this, I think if you are listening or watching and if you need help with your revit, why would you call, why would you not call Aurora pm?
Speaker A:Anybody call.
Speaker A:Anybody call.
Speaker A:Call the ladies first.
Speaker A:See what's, you know, see what they can do for you.
Speaker A:And if you're writing your own IT or you have somebody else running it, you're not happy.
Speaker A:Why not Archive Team?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:We'll at least have a good conversation.
Speaker A:I thank you very much for your time.
Speaker A:As always, Liz and Megan, you're very generous with your time.
Speaker A:I know you're very, very busy.
Speaker A:Your company is growing.
Speaker A:I'm very, very happy for you.
Speaker A:Hopefully this will give you even more work.
Speaker B:No, no, don't hope that.
Speaker C:No, we need more people is what we need.
Speaker B:We need more people.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:If you're a bim, expert and you want to work with Aurora.
Speaker A:Reach out to Aurora Bim.
Speaker C:Please do.
Speaker A:Thank you very much again.
Speaker A:And we'll see you next week.
Speaker A:Which will go to battle next week.
Speaker A:It'll be IT versus Bim or IT plus Bim, depending how you name it.
Speaker B:The end goal.
Speaker B:We work together.
Speaker A:We work together.
Speaker A:And successfully.
Speaker C:Successfully.
Speaker A:All right, Have a good day.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:Bye.
