BIM and others

This is and old story for Revit: when you try to change a level for a pipe, duct or cable tray, the offset of the element changes automatically to adapt to the new selection and the element doesn't move from his location but, when you try to do this with a fitting, this is another story. All the system connected to that fitting will move to a new location. Actually what happens is that the level is changing but the offset is still the same. Here a small script to prevent this. Is only for pipe fittings but you can easily adapt to other types of categories with the same issue ;) Download the  DYN  file for Dynamo 1.2.1 and enjoy!

This is really a critical issue when it comes to create builders work drawings. We have to create a section per each wall that has penetrations and this is really taking time. With this simple script you'll be able to create section on selected walls and name them with the id of the wall, so it'll be very easy also to recognize the location. Together with the void opening script, this will help you in this tedious task... Enjoy! Download

This time just a little bit of fun with grids and levels. I'm a passionate of steel structures and Tekla so, I decided to create a script to reproduce Tekla style input for grids and levels. [DYN] Enjoy Cesare

I'm back again with a simple construction workflow with Dynamo. In this first part I'll focus on element placement that I'll use in the second part, with help of Excel, to compare design with real site execution. A professional way to conduct this site comparison is to use Autodesk Point Layout but, sometimes the job is easy and we can use Dynamo for this. This time I'll use some screencast to show the workflow and I'll share all the DYN, RVT files used for this workflow. First video shows how to create 3D grids useful to be exported in other software like Navisworks for visual checking. Actually navisworks already has a functionality to show grids from the models but simply this is a 3D double check. At the same time, I'll place a family as a placeholder at each intersection of grids and I'll write in this family, the real coordinates based on the project base point. In the second video I'll use almost the same workflow but, this time, I'll ...

Today I want to share a very simple and useful tip to add more columns to you quantification template. I'm sure that you faced my same issue when you try to use some customization during the quantification export and you want to direct map properties from the model directly to a item field.  First of all this is a very simple quantification template. The construction team is able to select from the selection set a category (i.e. Ducts) and automatically take off the selected models element.  Most of the field are taken directly from the model and you have to fields for description tha tyou can easily map with custom information. But, unfortunately we have only two fields and you know that your team is asking always for more than two, maybe three, but of course more than two :) So now the solution...navigate to this folder (depends on you version it may be different), and open this file for editing. Rember to create a backup copy of the file just in case some...

I'm back with some new workflow for MEP addicted. I tried couple of plugin for placing supports but all of them are either expensive or useless, so I decided to create a small definition to place families based on point, parameters and levels matching my requirements. First of all what we have: piping, duct, cable tray or trunking (duct in my case). In this first example II'm using a family of U-Bolt created to change dimensions according to the diameter of the pipe and the insultaion thickness. This articles is not dedicated to the creation of families but basically the family as a parameter for the DN and with this parameter I read the outside diameter of the pipe from a lookup table, then apply the insulation thickness and everiything is matching with pipe axis. Then a simple project just to test the definition, different diameter, different elevation, different angles, some of them with insulation. Now is time for Dynamo The definition starts selecting all the...

A little test about the workflow between Revit, Advance Steel and Navisworks Manage. Is really interesting how you can simply quantify columns and other suffs by property. Next time I will focus on time management.

The first step in making the parametric bridge, is to create the "skeleton" Thanks to Zack Kron for the inspiration :) Dynamo file

This is is a simple example about the power of Dynamo inside Revit First example is a simple structural framing with analitycal model inside And this is a parametric roof made with the power of adaptive components Some tutorials ASAP

Some images made with 3ds Max using a model made with Plant and managed with Navisworks. This are 2 frames from the entire animation.

This is an example on how to use maya fluids to create fire. You can download the example file at this location https://www.dropbox.com/s/uq3ri39jxt44s83/testFire.mb Here the video of the simulation.

As Autodesk Approved Instructor I'm happy to learn about the latest Autodesk acquisition. Take a look at this news... http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?id=20307972&siteID=123112

How to use: Select the object to contrain SHIFT+Select all the object that must constrain the first one Execute the script On the target object there's a new attribute called "parentTo" and you can select from list. Now I'm trying to resolve the snap problem and create a simple pyQt interface... This is the base script you can add to the Shelf _________________________________________________ import maya.cmds as cmds attrString = '' selection = cmds.ls (sl=True) target = selection[0] l = len(selection) for i in range(1,l):     cmds.group(em=True, n = 'grp_' + selection[i])     cmds.select('grp_' + selection[i],selection[i])     cmds.parent()     cmds.select('grp_' + selection[i],target)     cmds.parentConstraint(mo=True, weight=1)     cmds.select(cl=True)     attrString += selection[i] + ':'       cmds.select(target, r=True) cmds.addAttr(ln='parent...

The model is downloaded from creative crash. It's named "The librarian" and is a rigged model. I've just elinated all rig and texture information and I start the project from the beginning. I'm starting from texture!

Here a little breakdown of the video: 1. minute 00:00: Biped autorig system developed with Python scripting. - Full IK/FK - Full leg and arms stretch - IK/FK spine and some others interesting features 2. minute 01:00: Full lighting automated pipeline implementation with Mental Ray - Light/Extra lights RGB pass - Shadows/Extra shadows RGB pass - Contact shadows - Contact occlusion - Full pass: diffuse, ambient, occlusion, motion vector, beauty, separated front and back scatter - Lighting setup - Render layer override implementation 3. minute 3:30: Maya fluid example 4. minute 4:11 - Exotic Matter Naiad fluid simulation - main fluid pass - splash pass - foam pass - rib export 5. minute 4:31 -  Exotic Matter Naiad  water fall simulation - main fluid pass - splash pass - foam pass - rib export - Mental ray main fluid rendering - 3delight particle rendering 6. minute 4:51 -  Exotic Matter Naiad  smoke...

Here's a video presentation about my last wip on a custom lighting pipeline integration.

Hi, here a simple shader example tutorial. With this code we'll realize a lambert shader with 3 custom parameter: diffuse color, texture color, opacity. Here the code with some comment due to explain all the lines. \\definition of the shader tipe "surface" and the name. Between the brackets there's the parameter, one of color type, one of string type and one of float type. surface Lambert(color diffuseColor=color(1,0,0); string colorTexture=""; float opacity=1) {          \\definition of the texture projection coordinates in world space     point worldP = transform("world",P);         \\function to normalize vector normal     normal Nn = normalize(N);     \\with this function we normalize the vector for pointing to the camera eye ("I")     vector Nf = faceforward(Nn,I);     \\definition of a texture file with path passed by ...

Let's start "The city" project. In this step I'll cover the body simulation of the fluid. Stay tuned!

Oggi ho ufficialmente ricevuto la chiamata da mamma Autodesk per partecipare al programma di beta testing di 3ds Max 2013 e Maya 2013... A breve vi darò qualche news sulle novità! Stay tuned...