2011 Book Recommendations?

[donnyvz]

To get this thread back on track...
I have ordered Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 and Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011: No Experience Required.
Already purchased Introducing Revit Architecture 2010 (only Revit book in stock at the store).
I'll let you know what I think of them next week.

[iru69]

There's now "Introducing Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011". Steve Stafford is a contributor! I know it's available at Amazon. Also Kindle and iBook editions. That would be pretty cool on an iPad, but not so great if you wanted to loan it to a coworker.

[STHRevit]

The Paul Aubin book is good (although I did pick up an error in it today)
You can access on line training material so you can work through the material and learn by doing. That said, I agree with the "just do it" philosophy. Nothing like a client letting you know something doesn't look right. You will certainly find a way to fix it and you will learn quickly. Books are good to refresh knowledge though.

[twiceroadsfool]

It sure would be nice for someone to write (and maintain) a definitive guide to using Revit in architecture. Maybe there should be a wiki.

We have just that, in our office, on the Network. Works wonders for training.

[iru69]

Curious what wiki software you're using?

We have just that, in our office, on the Network. Works wonders for training.

[twiceroadsfool]

Our intranet is just a Sharepoint site, and the Wiki's are just a bunch of pages inside a Part on the sharepoint portal. Its very low tech, but for the Revit users it reads very much like a Powerpoint, with Navigation Buttons.

But they can search it by training class, or by what theyre trying to do, and get to the same pages.

[iru69]

Thanks for the info - hadn't thought of using it that way. I admin sharepoint (SBS 200, but it's a challenge to find the time. But that looks like it could work great!

[twiceroadsfool]

I dont admin squat. LOL. Im not a Sharepoint master at ALL, hehe. But, they had an "Architectural Wiki" for our Drawing Standards, on our Sharepoint Portal, which is our "home page."

I asked the SP guy how hard it is to make a "wiki" and he said it was ten minutes for him to set it up. So he gave me a link off the portal to the "Revit Wiki Home page," with its own directory of pages, and a File Store. And then i just started making pages, and pasting stuff.

The training documents are great, because they cover "revit" and then "revit at our office." They also link to our content libraries, our standards, how we work with consultants, etc.

And we have a Training Curriculum that it follows. Building a Model is a two day course. Documenting a Model is a two day course. Then there is a "Revit for Estimating and Construction" one day course, and we have a few half day courses set up too... "Building custom parametric content," "rendering in Revit," "Design Review," etc.

The guys on the Construction and Estimating side teach all of the non-Revit apps. But Revit is the first one with the wiki training guide. It just makes sense. Now, if they miss part of the class, everything is accessible. If Revit changes a portion of the UI, all the images are NOT in the file store, theyre in a directory on our network. i recapture the image, and replace it in the directory. Done. Someone emails me asking how to use a Scope Box, i point them to the correct page. Im loving it so far.

If i knew more about web pages and sharepoint, id make the navigation more slick. Its a little ghetto right now.