Revit & Freedom Tower

[MikeJarosz]

For everyone interested, today's Wall Street Journal has a major story on Revit, SOM and the Freedom Tower. Check it out.

By the way, since the story was written, the Revit scope has expanded to the entire tower, not just the basements....

[davidwlight]

Mike,

Is this on the web? If so do you have the link.

[MikeJarosz]

Sorry, the WSJ is by paid subscription. I haven't figured out how to hack in. For those of you who subscribe, it's on page B1. The detail drawings (in the circles) are from the Revit model. The large renderings are not Revit.

[Phil Read]

Free AP article here (but no pretty pictures!):

http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/newsflash/get_story.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?f0048_BC_WSJ--PropertyReport&&news&newsflash-financial

[Scott D Davis]

Nice article! Thanks Phil! It's great to read published documents where our own are quoted such as this where Mike Jarosz has received credit.

Mike, is there any chance you could post just the pictures used from the WSJ arcticle? Or are they similar to the ones you posted recently?

[Wes Macaulay]

The article indicates that Revit is only being used for the lower floors... could you model the upper sections of the tower in Revit using separate files to keep things managable? I would think you could model the whole thing in a dozen files...

[Scott D Davis]

From Mike's original post starting this thread:


By the way, since the story was written, the Revit scope has expanded to the entire tower, not just the basements....

[MikeJarosz]

Here are the two Revit files (in jpeg) that were in the bubbles......

[christopher.zoog51272]

Great Article! I just read the hard copy, it looked good in color. Congrats Mike and the rest of the SOM team.

[irwin]

Where can I get one of those Revit tattoos?

[Joef]

Great article!! Lot's of great quotes
"Saves a tremendous amount of money" Charles Eastman
"Snappy new technology" Wall Street Journal
"Lets take us into the toilet" Michael Jarosz

[Mencken]

Interesting, but understandable -- I couldn't find a mention of ADT in the WSJ article.

A Revit tattoo, hmmmmmmm.

[Wes Macaulay]

"Lets take us into the toilet" Michael JaroszHA! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Wes Macaulay]

From Mike's original post starting this thread:Hey Scott -- it appears my brain bypass operation was successful!

[Tom Dorner]

We should get some Revit temporary tattoos for AU2004. There are companies that will make them from any graphic. I saw their ad in the inflight magazine this past weekend.

Tom

[JamesVan]

"Larry Silverstein can't look directly at a Revit model," says Mr. Bernstein. "We'd have to send him away to training for a year to jockey this thing."

Or he can sit in on my 2-day Revit crash course. C'mon Phil, give credit where credit is due.

[stadsgebruik]

It was delivered to me in bed this morning believe it or not.
I do not understand the twisting.
I know twisted building designs by Karel Vollers, but this does not look like it at all.

[stadsgebruik]

Did you get the scanned image of the freedom tower?
I cannot see it on my post.

[Scott D Davis]

No, we cannot see any attachment to your post.

[jbalding48677]

Or he can sit in on my 2-day Revit crash course. C'mon Phil, give credit where credit is due.

Quote:
"Larry Silverstein can't look directly at a Revit model," says Mr. Bernstein. "We'd have to send him away to training for a year to jockey this thing."

Larry (Rocha) and I chewed on this one for a while...

[adegnan]

Where can I get one of those Revit tattoos?
I think you could pay for tatoos for all of us, Irwin! And for the laser removal once my wife sees that I've got a new one too....

[stadsgebruik]

The main picture is here:
http://www.som.com/press_release/StackingDiagram.jpg

[MikeJarosz]

Note the plans alongside the section. The parallelogram not only twists, but shrinks also. This results in a twisted, tapering form.

[bmadsen]

Note the plans alongside the section. The parallelogram not only twists, but shrinks also. This results in a twisted, tapering form.

Nice work! In addition to tatoos, your team will qualify for the Revit-Master Black-Belt.

[Scott D Davis]

The main picture is here:
http://www.som.com/press_release/StackingDiagram.jpg
This image is fron the Revit model??? Please say YES!

[MikeJarosz]

The images in the circles are from the Revit model. It may not be immediately apparent, but the three circles show a progressive peeling away of elements to reveal the inner elements of the full 3D model: skin, slabs and core.

The large color section/elevation was done in Acad, months ago. There are no "insides". However, we are moving progressively into Revit. As David Childs said in one of his press conferences "You've only seen 1% so far".

Stay tuned.

[aggockel50321]

Out of curiosity, can you give us a rough idea on how you plan to organize the project within revit, i.e. workgroups, etc.

[JamesVan]

We have gone through some iterations on the organizations of Worksets. Luckily, Revit is fluid enough to let us make changes like that on the fly. Our first priority was to determine the organization of our team and how the work would get divided. It's important to remember that you can't use a drawing-based approach when working in Revit -- you have to think about the building and its integral components. Senior members of the team found out quite early that they could not mark something up on a section, give it to one person, then mark up the same object on a plan and give it to someone else. This triggered some initial rejection by the program when it seemed the team members were constantly asking for workset permissions from others all day long. At first they thought it was the software, but I encouraged them to step back and look at the big picture.

We currently have the subgrade portion divided up by level due to its massive horizontality. The 'guts' of the tower are divided up by zone (lowrise, midrise, highrise) and then by major component (core, structure, slabs, etc.). Other specialty items like the tower skin and cable-net structure will have their own dedicated worksets for those team members assigned to those elements.

[Scott D Davis]

Our office needed a little 'inspiration' so I just printed a 3' x 6' poster of the section you guys had a link to in an earlier post, and pinned it up. Everyone is fascinated with the design!

I would love to replace that poster with a Revit model image when you guys get to that point. We are trying to get people inspired to use Revit, and I can't think of a more inspirational piece of architecture!

[JamesVan]

The images in the circles are from the Revit model. It may not be immediately apparent, but the three circles show a progressive peeling away of elements to reveal the inner elements of the full 3D model: skin, slabs and core.

Just thought I'd clarify that the Journal created a composite of the Press image you see above with the thumbnails Mike posted earlier in this thread. You'd only see this combination if you've received that edition of the Wall Street Journal.

[JamesVan]

Our office needed a little 'inspiration' so I just printed a 3' x 6' poster of the section you guys had a link to in an earlier post, and pinned it up. Everyone is fascinated with the design!

I would love to replace that poster with a Revit model image when you guys get to that point. We are trying to get people inspired to use Revit, and I can't think of a more inspirational piece of architecture!

Here are a couple of images from early Revit studies to whet your appetite. Not poster material, but what the heck!

[Wes Macaulay]

We currently have the subgrade portion divided up by level due to its massive horizontality. The 'guts' of the tower are divided up by zone (lowrise, midrise, highrise) and then by major component (core, structure, slabs, etc.). Other specialty items like the tower skin and cable-net structure will have their own dedicated worksets for those team members assigned to those elements.So are you actually building the model all in one file? :o

[MikeJarosz]

Yes, and it's not been a problem so far.

[brentcarlson892079]

Can you tell us what your computer specs, server/network specs/speed are?

[Steve_Stafford]

I'm sure it's at least Pentium 90's with 2mb of ram...:roll: ;)

[MikeJarosz]

Xeon dual processor - 2.4 HZ / 2 MB memory /
The central model is on a network server with gazillions/ local model on my C drive with 20 GB / Revit says 2MB memory is a Windows limitation

[hand471037]

Revit says 2MB memory is a Windows limitation

Yet more reason to give us Revit on OS X. :D

[FK]

Whoa. Clients with tougher hardware than developers. Well justified for a project of this scale though. How long does it take to open The File?

[FK]

Oh, by the way - I strongly doubt that 2 MB memory size...

[MikeJarosz]

I hope you meant the Windows memory limit. It would be good news if we could have more memory. The file nevertheless takes some time to open. The speed limit is imposed by our network.

[FK]

I meant that Revit.exe is over 16 MB, so it would have a hard time fitting in 2 MB of RAM 8). 2 GB sound pretty good though.

Generally, 32 bit machines can address at most 2^32 bytes = 4 GB. Windows is probably doing something special with one bit, limiting memory to 2 GB. There are ways to access more than 4 GB (good old high memory trick), at a penalty, but the real solution is 64 bit systems. Given that MS is not expected to release another OS for a couple of years, don't get your hopes too high...

[aggockel50321]

This is going to be fun to watch.

Have you thought about fall-back positions, i.e. having the building skin as one project, multiple groups of floors as others, and then linking them together in yet another, whenever needed?

It would be fun to see if this would work out.

[hand471037]

Won't get more memory until Windows goes 64-bit. Right now, the most Windows can give to any one program is Two Gigs. When it goes 64-bit, then that cap will be lifted. OS X & Linux can run on 64-bit systems right now, which is why I kid about a port. ;-)

Imagine Revit on a processor that's faster than a Xeon, and with 8 gigs of ram at it's command... :D

[ilya.bass]

I meant that Revit.exe is over 16 MB, so it would have a hard time fitting in 2 MB of RAM 8). 2 GB sound pretty good though.

Generally, 32 bit machines can address at most 2^32 bytes = 4 GB. Windows is probably doing something special with one bit, limiting memory to 2 GB. There are ways to access more than 4 GB (good old high memory trick), at a penalty, but the real solution is 64 bit systems. Given that MS is not expected to release another OS for a couple of years, don't get your hopes too high...


Sorry Fedor, but I need to make some authoritative corrections here.

First of all, Windows XP has a way to enable a process to use 3G of RAM. Revit has been prepared and tested with this option. It is not widely publicized since it may cause issues with certain versions of graphics card drivers and perhaps other OS drivers. Generally, it is not recommended unless you are really hitting the 2G limit. If you are, please contact Revit Support and they'll be happy to provide the instructions.

Secondly, Microsoft already has 64-bit Windows XP out as a Beta. While the production version release is not certain, the Beta version seems stable enough that it could be used by those who exceed 3G limit (this of course presumes that Revit is ported to 64 bit, which it is not as of 6.1; I am not at liberty to disclose the future plans there).

- Ilya

[FK]

Apologies for possible confusion.

On the bright side, Revit can handle the Freedom Tower in 2 GB RAM.

[beegee]

(this of course presumes that Revit is ported to 64 bit, which it is not as of 6.1; I am not at liberty to disclose the future plans there).
- Ilya
Just a minute till I put on my "read between the lines " specs.

Ah, thats a lot clearer now.

Thanks Ilya. ( and possibly Freedom Tower )

[MikeJarosz]

7.0, maybe??

[ilya.bass]

7.0, maybe??

I did not mean to start the whole guessing game, just stated the facts to make sure everyone is clear on what the current capabilities are.

[Wes Macaulay]

People ask me, what is the point of computers getting faster and faster? Who needs all that power?

A: Revit users. I can't wait for 64bit Windows just so we can have the extra horsepower.

Still, I'm amazed what I get away with working on older spec computers. My PIII 800Mhz laptop opens and works in any file I've seen. 512Mb of RAM seems to be OK. Dunno if such could be said with James' and Mike's project, tho...

[stadsgebruik]

Could this be done with Revit?
Is this very much like the freedom tower?
http://home.wxs.nl/~helle040/home5.htm

[hand471037]

Yes. Look at the 'ruled curtain system' tool, which allows for surfaces just like the ones you show.

[ita]

Phil, would you be willing to provide an update on the article site. I cannot get past the Home page with that URL and access to the other pages is directed towards international news. Would love to read the article!!

[MikeJarosz]

Could this be done with Revit?
Is this very much like the freedom tower?
http://home.wxs.nl/~helle040/home5.htm

This is very much like the Freedom Tower. We are using voids to carve away the floor plates.