South Coast Revit Users Group

Thanks to all who attended the May SCRUG meeting. Aiden Bearden, Lauren Kruzel, Taylor Jaskot and Blair Allen - students from Bill Brown's program at Santiago High School - shared their Revit project work. These "kids" still have one more year of high school, and they know Revit well! Autodesk Software Infrastructure consultant John Rodriguez demonstrated the capability and versatility of  InfraWorks , an infrastructure design and presentation tool. Derrick Renn presented Express Tools for Autodesk Revit: BIM Manager Suite and BIM Project Suite - Revit add-ons that are intended to boost productivity by automating routine tasks. Both packages contain  free tools . Jim Balding and Steve Stafford shared news about the recent Revit Technology Conference in Auckland and upcoming  RTC in Vancouver . Our next meeting is Thursday, June 27th:  SCRUG's  BIM-4-Homebuilders  conference. Please register. ~~~ Thanks to our LPA 'ho...

Building Information Modeling  has gained acceptance in market sectors other than home building. BIM has become a requirement for large and complex projects, but even with the current upturn in the housing market, many builders - and the designers who serve them - are hesitant to get involved. At the SCRUG BIM Housing Forum , a panel of the leading residential architects and builders in Orange County will discuss their outlook with regard to Building Information Modeling.  The purpose of the conference is to promote the awareness, adoption and use of BIM and other advanced technologies within the housing industry in Southern California. The BIM-4-Homebuilders Conference will define and clarify: What is happening in the residential BIM world? What is possible? What does "collaboration" really mean?  How can we reduce cost and/or increase profit. How does BIM support Lean, Green, and Sustainable architecture? What is the "M...

The next SCRUG meeting will be held on Thursday, May 23rd. Agenda: Student Revit Work Those who are new to the group may not be familiar with visionary high school teacher Bill Brown and his devotion to BIM education at the high school and community college level. I have invited his students from Santiago High School to present their work and accomplishments to the group. Technical Presentations I've asked for assistance from our sponsors to present some facets of the BIM process which may not be well-known to many users. John Rodriguez will present Autodesk InfraWorks, an infrastructure modeling and presentation software package. Infraworks allows users to "quickly and easily create civil infrastructure design models. Some users may not be familiar with all of the add-ons available for Revit. Many of them are free, and they are as easy to install and use as adding an 'app' to your smart phone. Derek Renn will show a collection of Revit ...

Thanks to everyone who attended last night's meeting. Thanks to our sponsors Kelar Pacific, Microdesk, ProGroup & U.S. CAD. Special thanks to Ann Laughlin of LPA for helping with logistics. Reg Hiebert and Roque DeLa Torre of ISEC displayed some incredibly complex and detailed families for a hospital application, and talked about their process of development and the evolution of this technology, which does involve laser scanning and precise placement of these assemblies using modeled building data. Randy Sharp shared his insight into process change and described how the roles of architectural project team members must change and what skills they must acquire to successfully perform in a BIM project environment. "To efficiently work in the BIM environment we must learn new ways to work.  New ways to work mean new ways to describe the traditional roles of a project delivery team." The next SCRUG meeting will be Thursday, May 23rd. Bill Brown's stu...

The April SCRUG Meeting is this Thursday, 6:30 p.m. at SCRUG's former home, LPA in Irvine. The meeting may be recorded for future webcast. RSVP for the April SCRUG meeting. At SCRUG, Roque DeLa Torre's presentation,  Subcontractor Coordination in the Real World ,  will highlight the fact that implementation must take place throughout the industry. And I guarantee that a few feathers will be ruffled when, in  Essential Roles of the BIM/Revit Team ,  Randy Sharp describes how everyone in the organization must commit to process change.   ~~~ I re-launched the SCRUG in part  to focus on the home building industry, which has been slower to adapt than other market sectors, and because of the  awareness that there are still many firms that are not fully committed and therefore are struggling with BIM implementation. Revit implementation challenges are the same for everyone involved in this area of architectural practice. BIM adoption was slowed...

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, April 25th.  Location to be announced . Subcontractor Coordination in the Real World Speaker: Roque DeLa Torre This presentation is a look at Revit from a construction standpoint, beginning with the process of developing models to full interaction with installation teams working in the field. This is a unique perspective of how Revit can benefit both the design aspect and final implementation of a project, which will highlight the  importance of the developing intelligent models that react to project changes. ISEC Inc. is a specialty interiors subcontractor with offices across the U.S. Roque is a highly accomplished Revit specialist with an international back ground of collaboration with design teams in both Architecture and Construction. Roque's experience extends to Revit Structure and MEP. He is a member of ISEC's Revit development team. This is a condensed version of the class that Roque will give at the upco...

Colleagues,   I was surprised last month when the LA-RUG user group announced its 2014 Preview to be held in Orange County. I assumed that The Consortium had withdrawn after the re-launch of SCRUG . Their last meeting in O.C. was October 2012. Why LARUG | OC Exists  is an unedited excerpt from an email that I (and many others) received from Jay Zallan, President of LA-RUG, which outlines the intentions of that group. I decided it would be in the best interest of the membership not to hold two conflicting meetings, and gave our full support to the LA-RUG. The South Coast Revit Users Group has received commitments from our sponsors , Kelar Pacific , Microdesk , ProGroup , and U.S. CAD , to support and expand this group. However, due to the overlap between the two groups, the SCRUG has agreed with Autodesk Territory Manager Chuck Keeley's proposal to share this sponsorship with LA-RUG.  We will reduce the number of our meetings, skipping every third month, allo...