Wooden homes are one of the cornerstones of American culture. That’s something we’ve come to know very well while working with our clients from the United States.

Europeans are often surprised when they see how densely timber houses are built throughout the US. Whether it’s a suburb or a big city, you’ll find whole neighborhoods built from wood; building after building, lined up one after the other, reminiscent of the idyllic suburban areas of the 1950s.

In fact, not much has changed since the 1950s. With 93% of new houses in 2018 built using wooden materials, Americans are sticking to their lumber with pride.

The user interface of our Wood/Metal Framing software is going to be enhanced next week! After this update, users will see the changes in Wall+ and Wall+ M as well as Floor+ and Floor+ M. A separate update for Roof+ and Roof+ M will be coming out soon.

Don‘t worry, no functionality will be lost due to the UI update: the commands will simply be re-arranged and complemented with icons. In addition to the UI change, a few new features are going to be added as well.

But before we get to the new features, let's quickly get familiarized with the renewed ribbons.

House building is an expensive long-term project that requires lots of planning in advance, with any mistakes that are made resulting in wasted time and additional expenses. The good news is that there is a way to avoid human error and build a house that is both eco-friendly and cost-effective. Using structural insulated panels (SIPs) not only enables you to assemble the structure as easy as a doll house at the construction site, but with the right software also speeds up other building phases like modelling, documentation, and fabrication.

What are SIPs?

Most house builders go through the traditional motions of setting up traditional timber framing and insulation. But these guys obviously didn’t feel like dealing with stick-frames; they decided to stray from the rule book, get some SIP panels, and assemble a house in two weeks. Sounds almost like building with Legos, doesn’t it? The secret is that SIP panels already have both framing and insulation inside of them – a foam core sandwiched between two structural facings, typically oriented strand board (OSB).

The beginning of the 20th century was a very exciting time for builders and architects as they witnessed the birth of steel and concrete structures. The ingenious mix of these two components made it possible to build much higher than ever before, and that eventually led to the construction of skyscrapers. Wood as a building material seemed like a thing of the past. More than 100 years later, however, architects are once again thinking about using wood as their main building material. There are already apartment blocks built entirely of cross-laminated timber, and some ambitious companies are preparing blueprints for the first wooden skyscraper.

CLT reduces the carbon footprint

Turning towards wood might seem like a weird idea, to say the least. Why reintroduce something that burns and easily breaks? Isn’t that the reason why we moved on to concrete and steel? That is true to some extent since regular timber is neither malleable (unlike steel or concrete) nor strong enough to build high-rises.

Our Precast Concrete solution is great for automating modelling, numbering, and shop-drawing creation in Revit, but efficiently modelling reinforcement in a 3D model can still be a challenge. Following our post about using a Dynamo script to create rebar by selected edges, here we show how to make a layout based on certain rules and apply it automatically to elements of different length. This can be done in the same Dynamo script.

You’ll recall that we created a rebar layout via a simple Code Block with a defined bar number and step.

Let’s add another node to select one more Edge, and read its length with the Curve.Length node like this:

Setting up hangers and creating openings for MEP elements is not the most exciting part of modelling in Autodesk® Revit®. It’s rather boring and takes up too much time. An engineer could spend days manually working around pipes and ducts, checking how they intersect with other structural and architectural elements. All of this can be done much faster using AGACAD tools such as MEP Hangers and Cut Opening. These solutions have been proven to prevent human error, save money, and dramatically reduce time spent on tasks during the BIM process.

Autodesk Revit by default doesn’t provide any easy workflow for quickly creating multiple openings or connecting MEP systems to the structural model, so engineers waste time doing things by hand. AGACAD is solving this problem by developing tools that eliminate boring manual work and provide more control over the project.

“The best part of AGACAD solutions is that they are being constantly improved and the user gets updates for free when they are released.

We've been hard at work testing our brand new DOCK* against Revit 2020 to ensure complete compatibility. To those of you who have been anxiously awaiting the news, thank you for your patience. We're glad to say our tools are ready to use with Revit 2020!*The Dock is an interactive window in Autodesk® Revit® that allows you to access and manage all Revit® products developed by AGACAD.

Here's how to get our tools running on Revit 2020.

For current users of our software

To companies/individuals who have an active license maintenance/subscription of at least one of our tools, we've sent an email containing software activation codes and a link to download our 2020 Tools4BIM Dock. (If you can't find it in your inbox, please check your spam folder.)

NB: If you're with a company, please ask your BIM manager or IT coordinator for these codes.

What you need to do:

A cost-focused and energy-conscious Australian building design firm intent to extract all possible value from BIM considers AGACAD a key ally for the uniquely powerful and flexible functionality of its tools and solutions for Revit®.

Client Profile	BELA DESIGN BUILDING of Australia are BIM professionals offering building design and modelling, engineering expertise, and CNC services for prefabrication and modular construction. Founded in 2003, they specialize in mechanised light steel construction with masonry concrete tilt-ups. Cost- and energy-conscious, the firm administers projects online, thus extending its reach to clients well beyond its home in Palmers Island, New South Wales.

Smart Assemblies has always helped Revit® users save hours of work when creating schedules for assemblies, and we continue to make this BIM solution ever more powerful. The latest update adds a new Schedule View Template option (in addition to the already-existing Schedule Instance.

Schedule Instance uses the actual schedule from the project browser as a schedule template. The user needs to have that schedule in the project with Schedule View Template assigned (for more about that, see Automated Schedules in Smart Assemblies).

This post is about the Dynamo script for reinforcement created during our Precast Concrete webinar entitled "BIM modeling in Revit, CAM, drawings and reinforcement using Dynamo" (hosted May 9, 2019; recording available on YouTube). It should be helpful for anyone interested in modeling reinforcement more efficiently.

During the webinar we added some precast elements and placed connections and reinforcement. We also showed how to auto-generate shop drawings with Revit^® and the Precast Concrete add-on developed by AGACAD. For the reinforcement, we produced a Dynamo script to create rebar based on 4 selected edges of the Host element with some simple parameters to control the rebar size and number.

Important notes: This post is intended for Revit 2019 and later editions since some nodes for rebar are not available in previous versions. We also suggest you review the additional Packages added to Dynamo (the add-ons in the image below). The reinforcement settings for Revit elements are already set to the correct values.