New ARCxl Low Cost Subscriptions

We continue to respond to user input and modify ARCxl.com to suit your needs.  With that in mind we now offer both free details/components and new low cost library subscriptions.  The only difference is in the number of downloads available during a 24 hour period.  As a free service we continue to provide up to 3 free completed details and 20 individual components per day.  As a business we offer increased daily detail download access for those willing to pay a small annual fee for the convenience of using our massive library.

This allows users to sample the details before buying a subscription, or if struggling in a tight economy - continue to get some free production help.  Those busy enough to require more access simply make a modest payment and receive the increased access you'd like for the coming year.

For those that have been asking for the subscriptions we now offer, we regret the delay.  As stated frequently, without your complaints and comments we can't improve - so please do.

Email link: Comments and/or Complaints

Grizzly - The Office Mascot

Every significant sports team has one so why not a personally owned and operated business?  Most others are the over-sized stuffed animals that run around the playing field acting just foolish enough to sometimes take attention away from the other cheerleaders, you know - the ones with the pom-poms.  Generally they are stuffed with a cheerleader that is honored to go unrecognized and sweat inside that giant panda or wildcat costume (though it probably hasn't been laundered in months).  Congratulations if you won that honor!  Did you always want to be a stuffed animal when you grew up?

Grizzly happens to be a Pom-Pomeranian that runs around acting foolish and full of himself as well, but he's got an excuse, he's an actual animal.  We love him and thought you might enjoy meeting him too.  Particularly in this format - his first music video.

Most importantly he's trying to help raise funds for an animal shelter to be built in Elizabethtown Kentucky.  Please check out his music video and pass the link around.  If you love animals and would like to help a community that can really use a great new shelter, please consider making a donation at www.pawsdonations.org.

Thanks! Enjoy the Holiday Season and have a Happy New Year!

ARCxl adds CAD/dwg, PDF and Eases Restrictions

Effective July 19, 2011, two very significant alterations were made to the ARCxl website.  We have added CAD/dwg, and PDF file formats to our library.  We have also removed restrictions on account location and email address types.  Other changes have been made as well.  None should significantly impact current users.  As always we encourage complaints if anyone does have a problem with our updates.

Often the obvious escapes attention.  Such is the case with a decision I made a couple years ago to forego offering CAD/dwg versions of our details.  At the time I thought, "everyone already has their CAD library in place, it's the completed details in Revit format that are truly needed".  I also figured that it would only be a matter of 5-10 years before Revit caught or replaced AutoCAD as the dominant method of providing construction documentation.  These beliefs were probably not entirely off the mark, but what was important that I hadn't given enough consideration to is: that if you've gone to the trouble to provide the Revit library, why not also export to CAD for those that haven't yet made the switch?  When they do they'll already be familiar with ARCxl.  And with some minor adjustments Revit makes beautiful dwg files.

I can't over emphasize that all our details were originally produced native in Revit and only then exported to DWG and PDF format, not the other way around.  You can make a "smart detail" dumb but you can't make a "dumb detail" smart.  My greatest concern about commingling these detail types is that it will create the presumption that our details were somehow converted from AutoCAD to Revit.  I assure you this is not the case and I strongly urge that Revit users never import or convert DWG files.  You always want pure Revit in your Revit project files.

The following video is brief and replaces other introductory demonstrations we have made for our detail library.

The other significant change is that we no longer restrict account creation to North American architects with their own domain addresses.

Less significant changes include making our home page a directory of details instead of requiring that you first enter the site and then reach this detail directory.

Account creation and password reset are now automated but take a few moments to activate so be patient.  All of these should contribute to increased adoption and use of our site.

Warmest regards,

Mark A. Siever, AIA, CSI
ARCxl President and founder

How Smart Can a Detail Be? Part 2

“Hypermodeling” back-to-the-future.

In the June 2 - “How Smart Can a Detail Be?”  I’d really intended no Part 2, but only days after the ink had dried; I was introduced to “HyperModeling” by an old acquaintance and new friend - Rob Snyder.  The term hyper-modeling immediately conjures up intensive and manic models with all their detail built 3-dimensionally.  For someone that has bet the farm on an important continuing role and need for 2-d details, this is a really scary thought, not just for me, but all those that would be expected to do that “hyper”-modeling (and naturally with no added fee).

But fortunately for all of us, the name implies the polar opposite of what it really is.  Assuming I understand it correctly, it is Bentley’s new technology aimed at placing multiple forms of information contextually in 3-dimensional virtual space.  In other words not only might it be a computer generated detail, but it could be scribbled on a napkin, scanned, and located in both the Building Information Model and the drawing sheets referenced with a call-out.  That detail could take many digital forms, pdf, dwg, dng, dxf but apparently not rvt or rfa.

(Now this is where an image and link were supposed to go of Bentley's way-crazy-cool Hypermodeling project. But the video links and a PowerPoint presentation have either disappeared or become broken.  I will check back to fill this gap.)

So what could have been a marriage made in heaven, maybe just an old fashioned shotgun wedding - Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s – Revit and Bentley – or at least ARCxl’s 40,000 details and Bentley’s sexy new place to put them, well let’s just say it looked like the wedding might be called off because of a little file format problem.

Not one to give up easily, I see that Hypermodeling does accept these other file formats.  ARCxl could produce these other file formats.  So why not produce other file formats?  They won’t have all the functionality of our native Revit details but there are still plenty out there using various cad programs that could also use a well made .dwg file. Click on the detail image below to enlarge.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The AutoCAD detail above is an export of an ARCxl detail made with Revit.  In other words, it's a detail from a new technology, exported to an old one (done with near perfect layering standards), that can also be used in the latest technology of a competing product.  So now do you get my Back to the Future analogy?  How about the chalkboard photos of a lecture by Christopher Llyod on time travel and Einstein's lecture on the space-time continuum? No?  If not I probably should have ended at part 1.  As you know sequels are rarely as good as the original.

How "Smart" can a detail be?

As with any two people there are different types of "intelligence". There is the "out-of-the-box" intelligence that Revit comes with, and the "think-outside-the-box" value added intelligence developers and users bring to the table. I'm not knocking out-of-the-box standard intelligence, I'm simply exploiting one of the built in but lesser used options already available in Revit. And making it's usefulness more widely available in addition to keeping the standard stuff.

Recently a BIM manager exploring the possible use of the ARCxl detail library offered me some advice: if we want to be successful, we should dump our "dummy tag" annotations in favor of "intelligent identity information". He went on to explain that the "I" in BIM stands for "information".

As an architect and early BIM adopter, a University Revit/BIM instructor, an invited AIA/CSI presenter and panelist, the recipient of a "Visionary Award" for  work in BIM, I'm familiar with what the BIM acronym stands for.  The suggestion that I didn't know that the "I" stands for "Information" kind of ticked-me-off. But even if the product is free, the customer's always right, right? And I am always inviting comment, so it's a little hypocritical to complain about his sharing a perception if I asked for it. If this perception is shared by others it deserves attention.

There was also a blogger in Denmark that went even further suggesting that we didn't understand BIM at all because we were making 2-d details. Anyone might reasonably come to the same conclusion based on the fact that seemingly no one else is doing what ARCxl is, while everyone and their mother are building 3-d (and 2-d) component families. It's not because we don't know how or why. I've been 3-d modeling since 1991. Seeing the benefits led me to programs like DataCad, Archicad, and Revit in the first place.

Side note: anyone that thinks BIM is only about 3-d modeling needs to read "BIG BIM little bim" by Finith Jernigan. It's much more than Revit, the third, fourth and fifth dimensions, or access to keynotes. I'll elaborate on our planned contributions to these other dimensions below and in future blog postings. Yea I know, you might be thinking, with a name like Finith Jernigan, maybe he was the guy from Denmark dissing your details? I happen to know that he practices architecture and writes in Maryland. I can't say if he approves of our details.

When I hear that a firm is switching to Revit and then I hear it was a false start, it is invariably followed by.... "but you can't do details in Revit". With our own 40,000 and growing completed architectural detail library, I think we've proven otherwise. But their concerns are well documented as evidenced by all the AUGI threads and blogs devoted to the many "troubles" detailing in Revit. More to the point, with all the fuss over this real or imagined "trouble" it is clear there is still the need for architectural details or the issue would be moot.

So this answers the guy in Denmark, but what about the BIM manager who called our annotations "dumb"? He's at least partly right - we purposely did not include identity data knowing we could (and probably would) add it later, but at any time so could he. And is it really such a big deal to fill in the keynotes data and do it the way you want if you're going to have to do it anyway when building details from scratch? 


Important Note: with ARCxl details you must first import them into a project file before they know where to find your keynotes .txt file. If you don't do this you'll get an error message.

From a practical stand-point there are limits to what kind of identity data makes sense with a detail component. Without going into each, the only strong case belongs to the "keynotes" category.

And every firm will have their keynoting preferences. When I started laying the groundwork for ARCxl, Revit did not yet include a keynote .txt file for MasterFormat 04 and I thought we should be up to date. Additionally, I've counted 22 different possible keynote codes in the standard Revit keynote txt file to represent a 2x6. So which one should we include with our 2x6 component section? 06 11 00 - Wood Framing? 06 11 00.F1 - 2x6? 06 11 00.F2 - 2x6 Framing? 06 11 00.F8 - 2x6 Studs 24" O.C.? Or any one of the 18 others? See the problem? No one fits all, or its so generic as to be nearly useless, ultimately leaving the proper choice up to the individual user. So is it better for us to guess incorrectly at your preferences or not risk the error and have you make the determination?

Faced with no good or clear choice the decision was made to choose another path altogether, perhaps not well understood by everyone, but very obvious to others. We have left Revit users the option of deciding the keynotes that serve their use best, and replacing our "dumb" annotations if they like. Hyperlinks are not supported by keynotes.

Ours do contain "Information" in the form of these hyperlinks to product manufactures, specification pages (future), help files, and others as well as already being coordinated with the component they point to and a proper spec section MasterFormat ID. There is an ARCxl annotation family available that contains all section annotations that can be edited by the end user with some care.

Yes there are limitations to details and detail components. And 3-d BIM components serve a needed purpose as do these 2-d completed details. But what is the answer to how smart can a detail be?  If it's now practical and profitable to switch from CAD to BIM, if its flexible enough to allow your office standard keynotes and/or MasterFormat 04 annotations with hyperlinks to building product information, if it takes a fraction of the time to download and modify opposed to building from scratch or locating in your office detail library, or trying to convert from or link to AutoCAD details, if it brought you to the doorstep of a company that wants to help architects start to win back lost financial ground, it might not qualify as genius, but it aint exactly "dumb" either.  Compared to CAD details, relatively speaking ARCxl Revit built details are "an Einstein".

The Twelve Steps of CAD users Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless with CAD—that our projects had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than CAD could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our work over to the care of Revit as we understood BIM.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our construction details.

5. Admitted to our Clients, to ourselves, and to our employers the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have Revit remove all these defects of our documents.

7. Humbly asked BIM to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all clients we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them through our attorney.

9. Made direct amends to such clients wherever possible, except when otherwise advised by our attorney.

10. Continued to take a detail inventory and when we were wrong promptly downloaded another detail.

11. Sought through prayer and tutorials to improve our use of Revit as we understood BIM, praying only for knowledge and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other CAD users, and to practice these principles in all our projects.

- ©  (c) Mark Siever former CAD user, founder of CAD users Anonymous and ARCxl.com

New ARCxl user interface

We've updated the ARCxl user interface to address requests for an indexed directory of our details. I believe these requests came as the result of failed attempts to locate an exact detail match after configuring, roof, wall, and/or floor construction prior to configuring detail options. In other words it took some time and effort to find something close to what you wanted. Though only a fraction of the time and effort required to create a completed Revit detail from scratch, we've all become pretty spoiled and impatient expecting miracles to rain down from the internet.

But it's always been the intent of ARCxl to deliver minor miracles, so we began reevaluating our interface the moment we heard the first complaint. Originally our response was a little defensive and went something like: "If we put 100 detail descriptions on a page, do you really want to read through 400 of these pages?"

This defensive response was based largely in the expense, effort and time that went into creating our original interface. Additionally, there were few complaints so it was hard to justify more expense and effort for another interface when the one we had seemed so magical. It had 3-d renderings of detail types and we assumed architects would rather look at colorful pictures than read descriptions.

We also assumed that ARCxl users would be downloading details in batches of more than 10 for a given project, making the effort required for the initial configurations worth the time. But in practice, the majority download only a few in any given visit. I assume this is because they have not yet realized the value of ARCxl as their office library standard.

The new interface reverses the order of detail definition and allows for immediate selection of a detail type. This verifies that a user will find that particular detail type in the library before investing any time.

Once on a detail type page, an ARCxl user will find preview images of the details described and the preview can be enlarged by holding your cursor over the preview image.

At this stage an ARCxl user has filtered the possible detail selections from ten's of thousands to a few hundred or thousand.

To further drill down to a just a few dozen or a single detail, pull-down filters are provided at the top of the detail pages. Skimming these filters an ARCxl user can pretty quickly find an appropriate filter or two.