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Kool Aid

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Everything posted by Kool Aid

  1. Good point once again, Dexie! I have to add this facility to my Forest Simulator tool.
  2. By definition, a Tool requires a click, a Command does not. After the click, all user interface methods should be available, though. EDIT Your script would work best as a Menu Command with a keyboard shortcut.
  3. Yes. However, as comes to editable 3D-sections, things are not necessarily simple and easy, because unlike in at least some other 3D-programs, in VW we have constructs that cannot be edited in arbitrary 3D-views. In conceptually simpler programs, things are, well, simpler.
  4. Llareggub was last. Llareggub is a part of the largest economy in the world: the EU. We make the rules, you obey. Ask your god, Bill Gates, who must pay hundreds of millions of real money (euros, not USA pesos) in fines.
  5. Au contraire. The very reason why the Llareggubian construcion industry, with generous hand-outs by the tax payer, has invested some 50 million euros in BIM-implementation, is because in D&B BIM-approach works best in this particular delivery model. Detailed design has, in reality, little - if any - effect on the cost.
  6. Doesn't matter if the software knows about the door. Mira los planos! Well: you don't know either, so fair enough.
  7. One exists already. We've done that 200 years ago.
  8. "Partnering" was the name of the AIA's previous attempt to shift the sort of liability only big firms can absorb to the architect. My E&O carrier doesn't cover me for contractual obligations beyond a traditional standard of care. I represent my level of documentation as "better" at my sole risk. There are probably more court jurisdictions within 100 miles of me than there are in all of Finland. Ha ha! The U. S. of A. represents some 4 % of world's population. Court jurisdictions? Great! Now, there's a reason for software design! Q: Why is it that New Jersey has most of the toxic dumps in America and California most of the lawyers? A: NJ had the first pick.
  9. Repeating information leads to errors. Calling out a door as left hand reverse opening on the schedule doesn't have any benefit. Mira los planos! What can one say? A decent BIM tool knows what eg. a door is like to the minute detail. The NNA door does not, but it is an Integrated Product by NNA and, by definition, totally useless.
  10. Integrated project deleivery is just today's "partnering." Yes. Partners are expected to be able to dimension and schedule. You have very clearly told that you can't.
  11. Your math might work if humans were organized like bees. Let the record show that our resident caravan-park wannabe-architect has nothing to contribute.
  12. Right. Now what is the market share of your God, Microsoft? Surely 500 million flies can't be wrong. S H I T is good!
  13. Ohh, Wes: such visible structures are another story altogether! You can't parametrize those! But are they reality in the 80% of American homes that are allegedly constructed using prefab trusses? Not that I'd be an 80/80 -person, rather a 90/90, but there's a limit? (80/80: the general target of large software companies; that their products do 80% of required things to 80% of users. So, they meet 64% of the demand?) But here's a much nicer timber truss:
  14. Digression, part 2 The incompetent would-be architects, who can't tell whether a door is left- or right-handed, may well feel clever and superior when the contractor has to make a loss because he or she has not been able to correctly interpret the Design Intent from pretty pictures. The one-off proprietor is likely to believe that his or her Chosen Architect has saved money. Nothing could be further from truth. The loss is factored into every tender of every project.
  15. I think this risk sharing is a bit of a conceptual misconstruction and the architect is unduly made a part of it. If the quantities provided by the architect eg. in what we here call the Proprietor's Bill of Quantities are not grossly or negligently wrong, no-one actually loses money, if variation conditions are sensible. The definite advantage of the PBoQ is that all tenders are based on the same quantities and the winning tenderer has the best price & quality delivery. Should the quantities vary (within reason & acceptable error margin), there's no reason to assume that the winner would not have been the winner in any case. The building, unfortunately, costs what it costs. If anything, the method (whoops: you have one!) reduces the risk of the contractor and subbies. Thus, they can price without the risk factor; ergo, the cost is lower. Enter useful BIM tools and you can reduce the error margin even more. Variations are a pain and many a contractor makes his or her profit largely from those. When the contractor wins a job, it is finally the time for the estimators to earn their livelihood. The poor souls: when the firm does not win a job, they're blamed, vilified and mocked for overestimating; when it does, they're hanged, drawn and quartered for underestimating. Underestimating what? Yes, mate: quantities! But I digress?
  16. Theoretically it should not matter, but an IFC object, when imported, does generally not have parameters that the receiving program could access. Also there are geometric conversion problems: in some cases the IFC model fails (ie. is blown to pieces) and clients who have a system, do not want to be bothered with problems or idiosyncracies. Finally, many of NNA's tools do not generate valid alphanumeric IFC-data. In fact, the other way around: few do.
  17. So am I. Potentially it could be a nice additional earner of bread and butter for architects. ArchiCAD is their favourite (& in-house) program, but Revit, Bentley and AutoCAD are accepted, too. Technically anything that passes the Solibri test, but I understand that they want to see the Certificate to consider other software.
  18. Well, even that depends. Here, the local arm of one of the largest construction companies in the world, Skanska, specifically requires the architect to have an IFC-model pretty much from day one in their D&B -projects, in order to control costs, supply, timeline etc. No IFC, no job. I suspect that Skanska uses the Land of Sanity Clause as a testing ground, since Finnish architects are required to have IFC-models in state government (and larger cities) projects. By the look of things, VW is not likely to be an accepted CAD-program for Skanska anywhere in the world. EDIT Potentially interesting to the handful of VW users residing in the USA: Skanska was ranked the 10th largest contractor in the world in 2008[7] and was the 6th largest contractor in the United States.[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skanska With it's fine (lack of) action, NNA has soon excluded even its American users from D&B jobs of Skanska! Well done!
  19. It is probably a part of the preferences XML, but what you should do is to install a toggle command to each computer. See eg. Zoom line thickness There would be pre-made menu commands floating around, too, but learning to make & install one from supplied code is a good idea.
  20. Ummm? Since all you are able and willing to provide to your clients, is the design intent, what exactly are you responsible of? No quantities (ie. no dimensions or reliable schedules of anything.) No means. No method.
  21. Right. Here in the Free Market Economy and Competitive Tendering, architects have always been responsible of door handednesses etc. In the United Soviet America, that does not seem to be the case. Lucky you! No responsibility for anything! Just draw some pretty pictures!
  22. Hey! You are running with the goal posts! We were discussing quantities, not methods. No wonder you have problems with litigation.
  23. As I've just started to improve my truss tool, this is very interesting. Here in North Pole & surrounds, the truss fabricator only needs dimensions ? at most also a supporting diagram ? for ?normal? (invisible) trusses. Their combination of software and a structural engineer will then take care of the detailed design, which is CNCd without a human touch, except in special cases. Certified and ISOed. I see no value in modeling ? by an Architect at least! ? of the detailed geometry and members. Not to mention nailing plates, in detailed 3D? Solid subtractions showing how each ?nail? actually interferes with a particular piece of timber? And the finger-joints of reconstituted longer members? Whatever. How large part of your roof trusses could, in your experience, be described with simple parameters and shown just like this? EDIT In 3D
  24. Have you had a serious look at ArchiCAD lately? Anyway, you seem to want to have & eat you cake, too. There's no way an object-oriented BIM-system, closer or further away, could be quite as simple as a drafting program. However and very unfortunately NNA has decided to rely on dialogs that look good in demos and trade shows, but are a pain in the real world. In my ?VW Architect Llareggub, North Pole & Nordic Countries, possibly including the UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? there's only the Obj Info for design desicions. So in essence only one UI.
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