PLM for the masses, courtesy of Autodesk 360 Nexus

Every company, whether manufacturing a product, designing a building or providing a service (IT, consulting, etc.) has a concept, a plan, process or design reviews, and procedures related to the startup, production, management and pass-off or completion of their product, building or service. And all aspects of that lifecycle ideally should be documented and accessible (at various permission levels) throughout the entire organization.

Some of the traditional objections to implementing PLM have been the massive infrastructure and investment in costly programming needed to link disparate and non-communicative technologies. Try connecting Vaulted Inventor assembly data to an ERP system based on a "home grown" AS400 platform for example...it works about as well as Monty Python's Hungarian at the Tobacconist using an English phrase book. And if you don't know how that sketch ended, look it up on YouTube - not pretty!
This is where Autodesk 360 Nexus appears to have an ingenious way of clearing the hurdle mentioned above - by keeping the data inside the firewall and providing a Cloud based, zero infrastructure investment model whereby anyone collaborating or doing business with a company can view data about various stages of the lifecycle, from virtually anywhere.

When considering Autodesk’s diversification and continued gains in the markets as a software provider to the AEC, manufacturing and M&E (media and entertainment) segments, tight integration of Nexus 360 with their mature Vault and Buzzsaw product lines is a given.

So when you start hearing the term PLM, don't think that it's limited to manufacturing companies, or only Product Lifecycle Management. It is about to become whatever you need it to be...

Learn more at http://usa.autodesk.com/360-lifecycle-management-software/plm/, and sign up at the top right of the page for information as this exciting new offering from Autodesk takes shape.

Integrate Design and Analysis

Teams regularly spend time recreating various aspects of the project design in separate analysis software. Different aspects of civil designs must be
analyzed at various stages of a civil project. The designer needs a good understanding of slopes, earthwork volumes, stormwater management, and more.  Analysis results must be considered as a whole in order to make design decisions  that satisfy the project requirements. Civil 3D helps eliminate redundancy in  your workflow by analyzing the model you’ve already built. Designers can get
feedback in real time, while there is still an opportunity to refine the design
and make changes.

• Analyze pre- and post development hydrologic conditions
using integrated hydraulic and hydrology tools.

• Analyze your AutoCAD Civil 3D pipe network models, culverts, and channels using Autodesk® Storm and Sanitary Analysis 2012 software to help make design decisions. Automate the
generation of robust reports for submittal to review agencies.

• The mass haul and earthwork features enable contractors and engineers to more effectively
plan the movements, amounts, and placements of material during construction. As
designs are changed, Civil 3D can help to quickly analyze earthwork balance
points, determine the amount and direction of material to be moved, and identify
optimal locations for borrow pits and dump sites.

• Directly import customized pay item information into AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 software for use in
assigning pay item values to objects in the drawing, including AutoCAD entities
and AutoCAD Civil 3D model elements. Automatically calculate quantities and
generate reports based on pay item values.

Kenneth Driscol

Convert MEP Object-based families to Face-based families

The great majority of manufacturers who are developing families of their respective product lines, are building the families for architects rather than engineers.  As a result, often the families developed cannot be used in a RMEP project due to the need for RMEP objects to be Face-hosted rather than ceiling-hosted, wall-hosted or floor-hosted.  In the past, engineers needed to rebuild families to use within the RMEP project.  Not any longer.  Now we can use the Copy-Monitor function to accomplish the conversion.

Below you will see where I have placed some walls to allow the mounting of the wall-hosted light families.

If I select one of the lights, take it into the Family Editor, you can see from the Properties that the host object is a Wall.

Next, I will start a RMEP project and link in the model with the wall that hosts the light fixtures.  And then use the Copy-Monitor function to Copy one of the light fixtures.

Upon completion of the Copy-Monitor function, by selecting the light fixture, you can see that it is a monitored object and resides natively in the RMEP project now.

Then when I take it into the Family Editor, you can see the host-object is now Other.  The light fixture family can be saved now to your library as a Face-based hosted object rather than a Wall-hosted object.

What's the key with keynoting?

What is sheetrock? I mean drywall? Or is it Gypsum Wall Board? Maybe GWB? No, it called Gyp Board... I think... When we detail drawings, we need to label elements and materials. We have always done this with leaders. A leader is the arrow pointing the object. However, in AutoCAD, the leader command is used to place text with the arrow connected to it. We can do the same in Revit but with the text tool; we can specify if a leader should be part of the text element.


So what is keynoting and what does it have to do with text and leaders? Keynoting is placing "smart text" with a leader pointing to an element or material. Keynoting automatically fills in the "text" for you. How does it do this?


In short, when you touch an element or material, Revit looks at it's assigned keynote number and places keynote tag it in the view. The keynote tag can display the keynote number or keynote text. Keynote text can look just like plain text with an arrow. However, you don't type anything; Revit fills in the information for you.


The keynote number and its associated text is kept in an external text file called RevitKeynotes_Imperial_2004.txt. Click on Annotate ->Tag Panel (Expanded)->Keynote Settings. You can see the path where this file is kept and the name. You can also view the file.


Many, if not all, 2D Detail Components have been configured to work with Keynote Elements. Most materials, however, are not configured to use Keynote Materials. It's not hard to do but it requires time to configure.


Once configured, any user in an office who keynotes 1/2" drywall, with a few clicks of the mouse and no typing, a leader (a keynote tag) will appear with the words " 1/2" Gypsum Wallboard ". No need to worry someone might write 1/2" G Wall B!


Watch for a follow-up blog about how to edit the keynote file and change the the text to upper case.
Mark Petrucci

Autodesk's 360 Nexus PLM solution - Changing the landscape for the SMB market

While en route to the first of 4 Innovation Forums at Autodesk University this year, there were 2 buzzwords that I knew I'd hear many times during the conference: "Cloud", and "PLM". And while the former certainly has multiple definitions, the latter has traditionally been defined as Product Lifecycle Management. However, with the launch of Autodesk 360 Nexus, PLM may soon be democratized and more accessible to SMB (small to medium sized businesses) than ever.

First, let's distinguish the differences between PDM and PLM. At it's core, PDM focuses on the data involved in the design and manufacture of a product, and therefore, is most important to those divisions of an organization. In more progressive firms, the data is shared with sales, marketing and ERP, though frequently as a non-collaborative, one way push. Many clients of ours have a PDM system courtesy of the Autodesk Vault, which is an engineering centric tool for data management.

But PDM, through Vault, DBWorks or even Windows Explorer (yikes) is merely one component of PLM, which focuses on the lifecycle of a product, from concept to retirement. With PLM, each division of a firm is a participant in the product, including
documenting its origin

• versioning its iterations 

• releasing the manufacturable content for build 

• itemizing the purchased and manufactured parts for accounting 

• creating service manuals, sales and marketing content 

• And finally, maintaining the product once sold in the field, until ultimately being withdrawn or replaced with a newer product line.

If you're in a manufacturing company that fits the criteria above, then the traditional PLM acronym certainly applies. But given that the "L" stands for lifecycle, if we consider the functions of non-manufacturing firms in relation to my laymans definition of PLM,, then why couldn't the "P" stand for "people", "project" or even "process"?

If this concept can gain traction in non-manufacturing firms, THIS is where Autodesk may revolutionize the PLM market.

Next time - "PLM for the masses, courtesy of Autodesk"

Upper Case Keynote File

Keynote file is not all upper case. So how do you make all letter upper case? First, open RevitKeynotes_Imperial_2004.txt with Microsoft Excel. With MS Excel, you can add, remove, or modify keynote numbers and text.


While in Excel, you will need to create a new tab and link to the cells in the first tab named RevitKeynotes_Imperial_2004. To do this, click on a blank sheet; there should be one called Sheet1. Click in cell A1 and paste this line without the quotes, "=UPPER(RevitKeynotes_Imperial_2004!A1". Then drag this cell down to row 5376! Yes, that's how many rows there are in this file. Next drag and copy the entire column to the right 3 columns. Hit the save button. You will be warned that this file may contain feature that are not compatible with Text (Tab delimited). Click yes to the save the tab with upper case letter and you are finished. However, if you want an even faster way, you can download this file

Color Display of Worksharing

The “Worksharing Display Settings” is a tool to help you display a view in your model based on Worksharing status. This is a relatively unnoticed addition to Revit in 2012. The tools can be accessed in the View display tools in the bottom left corner of a view after a project has been Workshared. See Image above for example.

This tool is a way to color display some critical information about the current view related to Worksharing. There are four settings: Checkout Status, Owners, Model Updates and Worksets. The Colors can be changed for each topic for a more desirable look. See image below for example.