Revit Lecture and Demo

[jcoe]

I have been invited to give a guest lecture and demonstration of Revit at a local State University. I was wondering if others have had this opportunity and if they could share their experience/ direction of attack. I have experience in conducting training, but giving a lecture and a live demo is new to me.

[mmates]

I have one major point to suggest: Make sure you know your material. You may be surprised how easy it is if you truly know what you're talking about. Prepare and practice and over time, they will become easier.

[twiceroadsfool]

I did one at Morrisville, but it was rather improptu and informal. But we did build a model together as a class, which was engaging for the kids.

Have a plan, and have content ready to go. Do a dry run with friends OUTSIDE of the office, to troubleshoot any issues that will come up with your not being in house.

Also, bring a laptop. Relying on their hardware is a nightmare.

And give me a call if you want help.

[cdatechguy]

I did a joint presentation for a marketing group... while everyone said I did okay I knew they were just being nice. I hosed my whole part as I tried to wing the presentation as I know the program but I am terrible at presenting anything. Which is odd as I have no problems at our user group meetings. I stumbled in the presentation part, but for Q&A I had all kinds of answers to questions!

But yeah, have something prearranged and practice prior with your associates, I wish I did.

[jcoe]

I did one at Morrisville...

Well, isn't that funny. That is exactly where I'm headed.

[twiceroadsfool]

Say hi to the professor out there (i forget names... Brian i think?).

I feel bad about it, actually. It was a disasterous personal time for me, i had way too much stuff going on, so i had done very little in the form of prep work, and it certainly coulve gone better.

But at least theyre still interested in it

[mthurnauer]

I would suggest that you ask for them to give you a list of things they would like to see in the presentation. If your presentation is going to be 45minutes to an hour and then open up for questions, you need to keep things pretty global and not worry about explaining in detail how you do every little thing. You could spend the entire time focused on one area of revit such as rendering, massing, documentation, or the power of schedules. You will probably find that there is an interest in touching on some of each. If I were doing an overview, I would do it in this order:
1) Have a project with some geometric complexity. I might make a few slides showing the massing, a plan sheet, a section and detail sheet, a schedule, and some nice renderings.
2) Show the original mass and then quickly show how easy it is to model a mass using solids and voids.
3) Generate floors from mass and schedule the floor areas
4) Make walls, floors, and roof from mass.
5) Create a floor plan and stick it on a sheet. You may want to already have interior walls with doors, ceilings created, etc. Show how you can tag all not tagged. throw on some dimensions and move around some walls by changing the dimensions.
6) Create a section and place it on a sheet
7) Open a 3d view and activate the section box and show how you can cut the model.
Create a callout view and add some detail components to show how you build details.
9) In an area that is completely modeled with entourage, place a camera and show how easy it is to render. You may want a high-quality rendering of the view already complete so you can start a draft view bu then open the final view.
10) If time permits, I would export a 3D dwf and show how easy it is to share the model with people who don't have Revit. Show that you can do a walk-through, query object information, 3d dimension, and make comments.

To get through all of that would be about five minutes per item

Best of luck.

[Dwane Lindsey]

First off, good luck Jason with the presentation.

I jump back and forth between demonstrations/lectures/presentations and training all the time. One of the biggest things between the two is TEACHING vs just plain SHOWING. When you are training, you are teaching someone the tools but when you present, you don't really want to teach them, you want to show them the tools/program. This was hard at first since I was used to teaching people. Like others have said, run through it a couple times and have those folks look for the "teaching" comments.

Things like telling them where you are going to grab a tool is a good example. Example...you are drawing in a wall and when teaching you'd probably say "Go to the Options Bar to set the height or Loc. Line". But when presenting, you'd probably go more the route of "I can easily set the height of the wall prior to placement". While you are saying that, you're actually doing it but not teaching them on how to do it. It takes a little practice, but you'll get the hang of it.

It helps to have an outline pointing out the main points you want to cover. Folks will ask questions even if you say hold questions til the end. The outline will help keep you on task if a question takes you off track a little.

I would get an idea of what they want to see before putting a plan together. I've done a couple where the sales person said the customer wanted to see one thing, but the customer actually wanted to see something different. Never a worse feeling than looking (physically) unprepared. Now, I was able to change the whole presentation on the spot since I've done this for the past 3+ years, but this being your first (from the sounds of it) you definitely want to know what they are expecting from the presentation.

Also, don't be afraid to use a few PPT slides to break it up. If there is something you want to explain but you don't think you'll have time to actually show it, do it before hand and through an image or two of it on the screen. Or, just show the finished product in Revit.

All being said, just rememeber to breathe, take your time and relax!!