Boston Revit Users Group

Sorry for the long time in between posts. I have been working on internal presentations and a couple RUG groups (both internal and external). This post is to announce the Boston RUG group going public. This group is run and attended by users just like you. Please sign up if you are interested in being part of this exciting group. If you have any questions about the group please feel free to email me. (Email Address on Right Bar)

http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Revit-Users-Group

The following is from a email that Laura Handler (BIMx) sent out.
Next Meeting
Our next meeting is February 17th, at ADD Inc. You can get more info and RSVP on the website.

Organization of the Group

As you may have heard (via an email from Steve Rines), the leadership of the group is morphing. We are starting to utilize an advisory board method of organization, with representation from ALL of the ‘players’: Architecture, Structure, Systems Engineering (MEP), Contractors, Subcontractors, Owners, Facilities Management, etc. However, we need to find all of these people first. We will introduce the current board members at the first meeting and discuss this structure in greater detail.

Funny Coversation while at AU

While I have been in Vegas my 4 year old son has been asking my wife when I will be home. This is a conversation that he had while on his way home from school today:

K: I don’t want to take a nap.
Mama: I know, but you have to.
K: But, I need Papa to be there so that you can sing and he can (motions waving with his hands).

I sometimes make hand/arm motions while my wife sings
Mama: I know, but Papa had to go on a business trip.
K: But, I don’t know. Where is he?
Mama: He went to Las Vegas.
K: Space! (Very Excited)
Mama: No, Las Vegas… it’s a city.
K: Yeah, but I don’t know what Las Vegas is…

Maybe AU 2030 will find that the largest venue available for the attendees is the moon and then my son won't be so confused.

AU 2008

I'm off to Autodesk University. If you want to get together to network please send me an email. Hope to see you there!

Always Test before Mass Update

Sometimes I forget with simple "Service Packs" of any program, that they all should get adequately tested before installing on a mass of computers. So, we have a user that was having serious issues that the rest of their team was not having on a 180mb Revit file. Even though none of this user's issues were on the fix list I had hoped that it would resolve some of the issues until we could get the user a new computer. After installing the Service Pack 2, the user would have Revit close (without warning or error report) when they would attemp a save to central command. I had to do a system restore because there was nothing I could alter on the machine that would allow the program to save to central. Luckily, since we are switching out hardware so that the users will have Vista 64bit with Revit 64, I only installed the Service Pack (Web Update) 2 on one computer.

Just a reminder that you should always test before installing on too many computers. I almost forgot and if we were not changing out hardware I would probably have suggested installing it on 50 computers. That would have been a headache!

This could have been a system issue so I am in no way suggesting that you not use the new Revit update.

Revit 64-Bit Benchmark Results

Before the 64-Bit was even released I was just finishing up a benchmark program that was very difficult and taxing on RAM and processor. We were trying to figure out what laptop would be best for our Revit users. Since the 64-Bit has been released I have now run it and was shocked at the improvement. On another note, I was let down that the SP2 for 2009 was actually slower then the WU1 but that quickly disappeared when I heard about the 64-Bit version. Below are the results:Below is an image from the benchmark. It is way overmodeled with bolts, complex chairs, glass beakers in the shelves in the lab and so forth.