CAD, BIM & 3D

I’ve recently launched my new course on Grasshopper for Rhinoceros. Maybe you are familiar with this parametric design software. It is widely used in innovative architectural design offices and in architectural schools and research. It allows complete control over geometry generation, using the Rhinoceros modelling system, but controlled from a Visual Programming workflow. Grasshopper is a free add-in for Rhinoceros and currently requires the Windows version of Rhinoceros (commercial, educational or trial). What can you expect to learn? In this course, you apply a basic knowledge of 3D modelling into a Parametric Approach. Instead of creating one or two design models for a project, you learn how to develop an interactive, adapting model , controlled by a few chosen design parameters and capable of generating a wide range of design variants. Use the clever components to define an efficient and powerful system of interconnected components, creating geometry and applying geometric and mat...

For my introductory classes on 3D Freeform modelling, I re-recorded my Rhino video tutorials. This time, they are in English, so should appeal to more people. What can you expect to learn? This is a basic introduction and overview of modelling complex 3D Freeform shapes in the context of architectural design. Have you ever wondered how certain architectural designs are actually created? You might assume that it is helped by software, but which system is suited for this? In regular CAD software that architects often use, such as AutoCAD or SketchUp, the creation of organic models and surfaces is hard to impossible. We use Rhinoceros , a quite popular NURBS modelling software for McNeel. This is very popular within several innovative architectural offices where it is used for complex forms, organic architecture and extensive tweaking of 3D models. The software can also be used complementary to other architectural design software, although it is quite complete in itself. The course ...

This is part 2 of a series of posts about getting BIM data into Unity. In the first post, we managed to get an ArchiCAD model into Unity. This time we’ll tackle Revit. Direct export from Revit to FBX Let’s start with the “rac_basic_sample_project” which gets installed with Revit. We’re using the 2015 release. Since quite a while Revit supports direct export to the FBX format. At first sight, this seems a perfect workflow option. When we first imported the model and dragged it into the scene, it got too small. When switching the “Scale Factor” to 1 in the FBX Importer settings, the scale is correct. It is best to add a simple cube with known size (e.g. 1x1x1) to compare with. Example of the FBX structure in Unity Looking at the GameObject hierarchy, we see that we get a reasonably structured model, made out of meshes which are named by their Family type and which contain the unique Revit Entity ID in between brackets. That is good to know, as it allows us to relate to the original objec...