Design Strategies with FormIt 360

JAROD SCHULTZ: Well, thank you ladies, gentlemen for showing up for my class. You've got hundrds to choose from, right? But you chose mine, which is awesome. So I appreciate you guys taking the time into picking my class. I'm Jarod Schultz. I'm design technology director with initial.aec. Check me out on Twitter. I got blog-- I don't know. I'm all over it.

So what's my agenda and hopefully everybody saw my handout. I try to give you guys all kind of an idea of what's going on with this class. So it's Design Strategies with FormIt 360. So, we got another design solution called SketchUp and we all know that designers love it and use it, but we all know it's a throwaway, and so the idea is I'm trying to show you guys in a bigger picture of all the different things that would help you either modeling-wise, implementing-it-wise, understand how it interacts with SketchUp very, very well.

Anything that's kind of done in SketchUp can be brought in to FormIt, and the big thing, too, is that then FormIt goes into Revit. There's no throwaway, and the other thing I want to make sure everybody understands too is Groups are king. Groups turn into families. You can do all kinds of cool things with this workflow. So, at the end of the class, I'm going to try to give you guys all of this information. I'm also going to throw in here Insight 360.

So as I'm kind of flushing things out and kind of giving you ideas of how to design things and model things within FormIt, I also want to make sure you guys are taking advantage of Insight 360 and the toolset that's available there, and we'll also kind of get some ideas of FormIt to Inishgt 360 and what's available, what's not available, and also, then, if you just do a few extra picks and clicks and take the FormIt model into Reit and then go into Insight 360, what else it gives you-- because it does give you more-- with that workflow. So I want to make sure that you guys understand what's going on with all of that.

The first thing of all things is if you're going to help and get your designers or yourself, and I'm just curious-- a couple of things before I get started. First of all, who's first AU? Just curious. Almost 3/4. All right. All right, who's used FormIt? Awesome. OK.

So there's parts and pieces in here that I might speed up, OK? There's other-- Kimberlee and Mike and a few others-- Carl-- are doing FormIt classes also and you can learn more about some of the basic stuff. I'm going to try to show you some of the tips and tricks working with some of the more advanced tools along with it, but the key ingredient when you're working with any of this is you guys gotta get an A360 account.

So your SketchUp user or whoever you're trying to work with to try to get them to start using this toolset, you gotta get them an A360 account because the beauty of FormIt, right, is, yes there's a Windows version, which is a pro, and I typically-- if you're going to get into this, you're going to have to go down the Pro version. The web browser version is very robust. The iPad version is very robust. The Android version is very robust, but if you're going to work with Insight360, solar analysis, collaboration, the materials library-- as for the Autodesk materials library, you need the Pro version when you're doing some of this-- but all of this information and the beauty is that it doesn't really matter where you start working with the model. If you do it through the web browser version, then when you get into the office you can pick up that model and start running with it. You just need to understand that, in your A360 account, it's all going to go to this FormIt folder.

So it creates this automatically. You don't have to build it. It just does it, OK? So that's the big thing.

The other thing is you've got to get the Add-Ins installed. Just go up to FormIt 360, download it. It's for Revit '15, '16, '17. So you gotta download those, you gotta get those installed, OK? So, working with these workflows, you have to have these Add-Ons, all right.

Tobias-- talking about Tobias, there he is. He's on the development team with FormIt. So I'm kind of-- to be honest, I'm spoiled rotten. I'm in Denver.

The FormIt team's right out of Boulder, so I work with Tobias and Josh and Tom that's out of Boston very much, to say the least. I think I'm talking to those guys every week. Maybe too much, but you gotta work with these tools.

So these tools give you the ability to take SketchUp into FormIt. So we'll talk about that workflow. If you've got Revit families, that's a workflow. That one actually does a roundabout. So if the RevIt family has been converted, you use it in FormIt, it comes back to RevIt, you can basically update it so it goes back to the original Revit family. What it does is basically gets back all the types is what it does, and we'll talk about that, and then obviously the big thing is nothing's being thrown away because FormIt talks with Revit, and there's some different things that you can do with Groups about how it does talk to Revit, and that workflow is going to get even further along as we go.

That's basically what the Add-Ins looks like on the dropdown. So nothing too magic there, nothing too rough there about learning any of that stuff to be honest. The big thing, though, is that for a SketchUp user, if you work with them, they probably have a very robust Entourage library. Trees, people, cars-- they've probably spent time implementing, working with this, updating those.

Just understand that some of those things like furniture that they worked on or got from 3D Warehouse might have watertight issues. So understand FormIt and Revit's kind of a solid modeler, to be honest, at the end of the day. There's a toolset that I'll show you here in five seconds that shows you where those issues are. So just a heads up. So if you do bring in some of that content converted or whatever, you might have to go back through and work on some of those surfaces.

So if I jump back and I look at FormIt for a second, this is a design model. It has Groups in it. We'll talk about what's going on with Groups. It's got layers. If I bring on the example units here for a second, there's a display mechanism built into the software and if you go up to the Visual Styles, it's basically watertight issues. If you turn this on or use your shortcut key of dw, it'll basically flag it.

So, like this here, this bed, at some point was maybe a SketchUp model that came in and that's something that we might have to address. If this is something that's going to be converted and wants to get brought in to Revit, we might need to work on that, OK? So there's something with that surface where it's not watertight, OK. At least we got something built into FormIt to show us where those issues are.

So if you ever do something like this and you bring it into RevIt and you're like, why is this thing not converting right? It's probably because of this issue, OK? So you might have to address some of this with some of their content OK? So just a heads-up as you're working with this.

So that's something you gotta be aware with but, to be honest, I don't know if everybody knows the backstory of FormIt, but just understand that when Trimble bought SketchUp there was three core developers that jumped ship and came over to Autodesk. That's how we got a hold of FormIt. That's why it works so fluidly with SketchUp, OK? So if you don't know that story, that kind of gives you-- what did they do here? Well, they got the developers that, in essence, kind of built SketchUp over the years.

So that's why it works so well, and these are just some examples that I wanted to show you based on that toolset. So you can see here we have a SketchUp model. This is what it looks like when it's in FormIt.

So the other beauty of all of this-- I've got some designers that have used SketchUp for 10 years or more and they've spent time with their materials and made their trees look beautiful. All those materials come across perfectly into FormIt. So all of that time that they spent is not being thrown away in any way.

So I think that's a big hurdle. So when you're telling them that, hey, let's try out this other design tool, that's probably one of the first things they're going to throw at you. Well, I don't want to abandon my library.

Well, you're not abandoning anything. We can bring all that across, and we'll talk about how you can work with a library. There's a library tool with FormIt, but you don't have to deal with a library if you don't want to.

In Revit, if you've converted your families, those families come into FormIt. We'll talk about, when we get into the library piece, kind of what that looks like. If that family comes back into Revit, there's a tool to convert it back to the original family. It's just dealing with types is what's going on and you'll see this, and this will make a little bit more sense once we show you what's going on with the library.

Like I mentioned with the SketchUp content, if they've got a ton of stuff, hopefully they at least break it out into some normal folders for you, like people are in a people folder and trees are in the trees folder. We would cross our fingers maybe. Maybe I'm dreaming. Sometimes I'm [INAUDIBLE]. Maybe it's just a big fat mess, but either way there's a tool to do a conversion in a multiple fashion.

So if they got, I don't know, 60 different plants and that needs to be converted, just understand this tool will do a multiple conversion, OK? I personally like to dump the converted format files right in the same folder where the SketchUp files are. I like to have that intermixture because they already know where that folder is, so why have to teach them a new folder structure? They can just jump right where they are before.

Also, too, there's nothing stopping them to actually adopt to a library. I mean, it's nice, obviously, if we have content that everybody should be using, but this is sometimes, when it comes to designers, very individual, to say the least. So this might or might not fly. It is available to you guys, but just understand that you have an import 3D model which you can convert the file format to SketchUp and you can just bring in SketchUp content literally right on fly.

So if they're used to that workflow, where, hey, I just need this particular tree, or this particular person, or whatever, don't disrupt that work flow to them. Don't say hey, you've got to use this library. Implement the library, whenever, in the background as you learn more about what's going off their content, start building that for them and it just magically starts appearing.

When you build that folder structure, just understand there's a plus button. You go in there. You can see here, you can have more than one path. But just understand if it goes to one main folder, and all the content folders, and underneath that, it reads that, and I'll show you that here when we get into this. So let's look at this a little bit more. So when let me go open another file. So I got some multiple different files I want to show you guys as we go through this.

So in this example, some of these trees came in from SketchUp, and one other thing, it's just a subtle trick. Who works with Revit too? Just curious. OK, everybody and their brother. All right. Everybody knows this trick, right? That if you pick on something it kind of centers the orbit. I would hope everybody knows this trick. If not, I guess I just blew your brain. I don't know.

[CHUCKLES]

FormIt does it too. The other thing, if you hold down the Shift key in the wheel you can do that. This was here, and then it got broke, and now it's back again, I'm happy to say. Some SketchUp users are going to be used to just using the right-click to do the orbit. All right? And now I'm getting all confused because I jump back and forth between it.

AUDIENCE: Does FormIt use the same? Because I know SketchUp uses different key commands to orbit. Does FormIt use the same ones as [INAUDIBLE] that always messes me up.

JAROD SCHULTZ: I think Tobias can answer. I think they're close, but I don't think they're exact, though. Tobias is still here or not? Did he run away. He ran away. So yeah, you'll see this today. I'll jump over to Revit, and I'll hit my right-click to try to orbit, and it's like oh, I'm getting a right-click menu. Oh, stupid me, shift key. Here I go so, but just understand that that's available.

So the thing is, you don't have to use this library tool. I like it. If you do convert your Revit families over, just understand the types will come in like this. So it does take advantage of all the types in your families, it's just a drop down when you're dealing with it. If I come in here and pick on my actual library, and this is the plus button. This is where you add the pass, and by the way, if they want to, the library can live in A 360.

So if they're working on their iPad, if they're working on their windows version, it could feed off all the same library if they wanted to. So that's an option. So just a heads up. But mine's going into a main folder. So what does this look like? Well, you can see it sees the sub folders automatically. I didn't have to build any of that, I just built the folders, of course, but it builds the tiles. And if I pick on the trees, then here's my trees.

Now, I can do it this way. I can bring this in, I can place it, and off I go. If they're more into that's not how I'm used to doing it, well, that's fine. You just show them how they can just grab import, switch this to SketchUp, grab that same tree, except it's a SketchUp tree, and then they can just bring it in and place it wherever they want to place it. Either methodology would work, it's just up to them. All right?

A nice little trick that I learned, the SketchUp tree here, it's flat, and this little trick-- just to give you guys an example, what I did here is I rotated this, basically three times. I like this trick, it kind of gives it more fullness to it. The shadows, if I-- I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but the shadows look really nice if I do it that way. So just a little trick. So maybe enhancing the SketchUp content a little further than what it is, instead of it being flat. So just a couple of things.

So it's up to you. You can implement this library over time. In that they can just grab import and just start going for it. OK? And where did my trees come from? The 3D warehouse. So I went up there and went, hey, these are really cool looking. And all those materials, all the materials that you're seeing, that all came in from SketchUp. I didn't do any of that. All right, all I do is I just open it up and rotated a few times.

So some enhancements there upon the SketchUp content, and then like I said, the zoom and orbit shortcut keys. I'll try not to use the shortcut keys as much as possible. I'll try to get them off the menu, but I'm very much into using shortcut keys. If you have the pro version, you can actually customize the shortcut list. You can export it out, you can import it into other machines, so on and so on.

Drawing things--

AUDIENCE: What about bringing in the content directly from SketchUp files? When you bring that into Revit, does it pollute the model in any way [INAUDIBLE] AutoCAD does?

JAROD SCHULTZ: We'll talk about that. No, short answer, no. I'll talk about it. There's a wonderful thing that FormIt and Revit do. It's called groups equals families. So it's pretty nice. Just going through it real quick since you guys kind of worked with FormIt. Drawing lines, the precision is all there. Alignments are all there. I don't know, hopefully everybody knows if you hold down the shift key FormIt, basically it flips it into an ortho mode. So horizontal, vertical, straight up, either way.

When you close the shape it turns into a surface. If you pick on the surface it turns into a push-pull example, which basically turns it into an extrude. From there you can use your tab key. So for you that work with Revit, it's called tab, tab, tab your life away in Revit. Some of my clients are like, Jared, is there a way to get rid of the tab, tab, tab, my life away? Well, here's even more tab, tab of your life away.

So FormIt's into tab using also. So in this case, if you want to do precision, I like to use the Tab key. It pops up a little dialog box. You can punch in the number. By the way, FormIt 10 is 10 feet, so just like Revit. OK? If you want 10 inches, you got to get the inch mark in. OK? So just a heads up with that.

Layer's, obviously just like SketchUp, we have layers in here. When you draw things, nothing gets put on a layer. So there's nothing-- I'm going to, of all things, I'm going to bring up AutoCAD. There's no such thing as layer 0. OK? When you draw things in FormIt, it's just on no layer at all. So it's up to you as you want to do visibility control, either for yourself, or through your scenes, it's up to you to pick on that information, and put it on the correct layer, and then you have the control over turning it on and off whenever you want. OK? So yes, we do have layers, and again, if they've used layers in their SketchUp stuff, that comes along for the ride. OK? So all of that's fluent as we're working with it.

Aligning edges, like I said, if you hold down the Shift key, it kind of locks it in. You can pick a point up way off somewhere else to make it align, which is great. So remind yourself of the trick there. There is a tool to actually taper things. I like to just pick on edges, and just push and pull from there. One of the things I want to mention, as for the push-pull technology, it's push and pull based on a surface, an edge, and even a point. So I could pick literally onto the corner of that point and stretch it wherever I want to go with it. So you have all of that control factor as you're working with it.

And then the other thing is, FormIt does an awesome job of understanding where you're at. So when you grab a drawing tool, whatever that drawing tool is, it very, very quickly understands that hey, you're on this surface, you must want to draw on this surface. It very much assumes a lot of that, and does a very good job of doing that for you. There is a tool in FormIt where you can change the work plane. So if you want absolute control, saying no, FormIt, I want you to only look at this surface, and only this surface.

If you right-click-- and this is the biggest thing with FormIt, when in doubt, what do you do? Right-click. There's a lot of right-click menus going on with FormIt. OK? So understand that if you right-click, you can grab the work plane tool, you can pick it wherever you want, you can rotate the axis around wherever you need, and then you have complete control. Even though the axis is on that surface, you can still pick points through the grid.

So if there is a point in the back of where that surface is, you can still align to it. So your object stamps are still free to go wherever it is, it just knows that hey, when you draw that line, don't go off into that back point, stay on this surface. OK? That's one of the reasons why they came up with the work plane tool, is to just give us more control over that.

All right, so I blurted all that out. All I'm going to do at this point, and I'll do it real quick since a lot of you worked with FormIt, but I just wanted to make sure that I wanted to go through-- and I'm just doing some shortcut keys just to turn on the grids and stuff. The line command is just L and hit Enter. Again, if I want to do precision, it's basically the Tab key. I just typed in the Tab key, type in whatever distance I want to do, hit enter. Obviously, you can zoom and pan around if your mouse is acting normally. So my Dell mouse sometimes likes to not think I'm doing that.

And so I can just come in, type in, flush out whatever I want to do. Obviously all of this can be changed at any given time. Once you go back to that, it builds the surface. I can pick on it. Once I pick on the surface, then I can push and pull it. Again, I can type it in what exact distance I want to do on all of that. I can come in and pick on an edge, and maybe I want to taper that back. Again, if I want to do an exact distance, I can hit the Tab key.

The other thing that FormIt does, which SketchUp sometimes does a really bad job with this, is lines on top of lines. Now, FormIt doesn't get bogged down with this. If I literally want to start a line saying, hey, I want to come down-- and notice how it's just picking up on that edge-- and I want to come down 14 feet, and then I want to come over 14 feet, and then I want to go straight down from that.

You can see how it's automatically picking up on the edge, it's picking up on that surface, but there's not a line on top of a line. It's not going to freak out on this. So just a heads up. So it does things like this. Sometimes it's not something that you always want to do with SketchUp at times, but when it comes to FormIt, it's not really having an issue if I come in, and want to draw something off of this distance, and then come down. At the end of the day, yes, that's an edge, but it's not two lines. It's just a single line.

So you can see I can very quickly build things onto surfaces. I can select on this. Maybe I want to push this in five feet. Dealing with the alignments, again, I can grab the line command. It does a wonderful job with picking up on what I'm trying to do here. I mean, I'm not having to do any extra. I'm just doing a single escape, by the way, to jump in and out between the lines as I'm drawing it. I can pick on the surface. I can push this back in five feet if I hit the Tab key.

All right, so now I'm getting more of what I'm thinking of as for what I want to do for a facade. Maybe over here, I want to do something a little different. Again, maybe I know that I want to come down 10 feet. I want to come over eight feet. If I go R for rectangle, it will help me start drawing a rectangle. Maybe I push this thing down. I don't need that extra line, so I pick on it and delete it. I pick on this, push this in if I wanted. Maybe I want to do that five feet.

Here's a wonderful trick, by the way, if I want to take this and push it all the way down, I don't have to build something else to subtract or whatever. I can just pick this surface and just push all the way down. It just instantly subtracts. I love that. All right? Someone from a design standpoint using SketchUp might think extra about that, and it's like no, just pick on the surface. Just push it down. You're done.

OK, so very quickly just laying this out. Let me save this real quick because we'll continue on with this model as we go through it . And we'll call this Fun Times. All right. We're all him fun, right? This is cool. Or maybe not, FormIt sucks. I would hope not. I love FormIt, man. And it's just like, man I'm just trying to get my clients to change their workflow. That's the battle I'm running into.

Sweeps. So I want to go through, talk about sweeps. Give you some ideas about working with designs with this. Lofts, giving you some ideas of how to do that with some design strategies. This is very unique. I've never seen a tool like this. It's called cover. So getting back to that piece of furniture that had that watertight issue. Well, ultimately to fix that, what I'm going to do is go back, pick on that surface, and just delete it.

And then what I can do is go back, look at what's going on, and then to put that surface back on there, they have this awesome tool called cover. And a lot of times I tell people, when you want to put a surface back on top of something, grab this tool. You are thinking, oh, I got to go edge, edge, edge, edge, right? No, no, no, no. Grab cover, pick one edge, hit Enter.

More than not, it'll find the boundary and just do it. If it doesn't, well, OK, I got to go pick, pick, pick, pick, and then hit Enter. But a lot of times you can do a single edge and it'll find the boundary automatically for you. So when you're trying to-- a lot of times you have to delete surfaces, look inside, clean up some things maybe that's going on, and then how do I put that surface back on there, it's just called cover.

Offset, when this thing came out, this is like yay, I can finally go from mass to a detail model very quickly. So this is just picking on a surface, right-clicking, telling it what the offset distance is. Obviously, you can see I can go from a mass model to something that looks like walls very quickly. You can also do this with parapets. All kinds of different ways, and the more you start fooling around with the offset tool, you'll find all kinds of different places where you can use this.

And then they came out with Shell. That was earlier this year. They came out with this and this, because this-- I started fooling around with this. I'm like, this is awesome guys. I like this, but when I get into something that's got all these tapered edges, and sloping, and is curved, the offset might not be working so hot in those examples. The shell tool, basically what it does is you pick on the surface that you simply just want to completely delete, which is typically the floor, the bottom floor, and then it asks you what's the offset. It defaults to negative one foot, and then it basically shells everything out in about, I don't know, half of a second. I mean, it's super quick.

So again, sometimes people are starting to look at FormIt and think, oh, it just does massing. No, no, no, you can geek out just as bad as you can with SketchUp, with FormIt. There's plenty of examples up on their site where people are totally geeking out with it. The array tool, again, I'm showing you stairs, but you can do it with your sunshades, something maybe where you're trying to convey wall, design intent.

All of this, when you're working with this, by the way, this groups. So if you change one group, it automatically updates. If I developed this shade, and then I array it, this turns into a series of groups. If I change one, it changes all of them. You can select on one, make one unique if you needed to. All right? So you have options there, working with your array tool.

And then one other one. Just put this one in your back pocket. This is kind of before we had groups. So one of the developers decided hey, we've got to have the ability to go out there and pick like surfaces. So in other words, surfaces that have the same area to them. So it's just a fast selection tool, and I'll show you an example. This is where I kind of was flushing out this window frame, and instead of me going in there and having to pick all those little skinny surfaces on there, to push and pull on it, I hover over one, hit the tab key, and it grabs all of them. And then I can pick on the surface and yank it in and out, and I'll show that to you.

So this is a nice one to put in your back pocket, that if you have surfaces that are the same size, instead of you sitting down and going pick, pick, pick, you can let FormIt basically do that for you. So jumping in. Let's see here, I did save this, but I'll save it just one more time just in case. But if I go in here, and let's open up this guy. So I got a bunch of different examples here of what I just mentioned.

So, what we have here is we kind of got a before and after scenario. So basically, this is dealing with a suite. So just understand going further, I'm just going to type in SW at this point. So the idea, the concept is you basically are taking a profile. In this case it's a surface. Again, I don't want to sit here and see anybody go pick, pick, pick, on any of this. All you've got to do is hover over it, hit the Tab key, it grabs all the edges all at once. Hopefully you know that trick in Revit with walls.

So you can pick on that. Once I hit Enter, it just immediately then sweeps it all. Again, if I just type in SW, I basically pick on the surface, pick on the profile, hit Enter. Now I got this curvy looking wall system. If I grab SW, again, I can pick on the profile. Now, this is cool. and I'll show you some other tricks with this. I'm picking on the surface and it just knows to loop around this surface. So I'm not actually picking an edge, I'm actually picking on the surface, and it sees the edge on the surface.

So with that trick, this is another one like if you're dealing with parapets. This is a good one to put in your back pocket. If I grab SW, I'm actually picking on the surface, but instead of sitting here and picking the edges, or using the Tab key, just pick on the surface and look what it does. All right? So it just immediately went all the way around and looped on that. All right, pretty cool. Yes? All right. Is everybody alive? All right, just testing you guys.

All right, and then same thing there. I just grabbed SW, picked at the surface, and off to town I went. So, kind of cool. All right, using the array. Now, a little trick. If you're ever selecting something to convert it to a group, or in this case, I'm going to array it. You have selection windows, of course, you don't have to do that. Just double click and it'll select the whole thing. And then I can right-click on top of it. So when in doubt, right-click. I grab a ray. I feel like I'm in my super duper tricks class.

I grab length between copies. Let's say I want 10 of those, and I pick OK. I snap onto this. The array goes vertically, diagonally, whatever the heck you want to do. So hey, now I've got instant stairs. Now, did you guys see how there's a dash box around that? That's how I know that that's a group. So it just did that automatically for me. I didn't have to do that. It just did it for me, and then if I double click-- so how do you edit the group? Just get on with your life. It's called double click. All right?

I pick on the surface. I can stretch this out. If I need it to be a certain distance I can type that in. If I pick on the edge, let's say I want to grab this edge, and I got to taper it because that would be a lot better if I did that. Do you see how they're all updating? Not too bad. Very quick. That's kind of what I did here with this window detail. This is the same thing. But let's say someone comes back and changes their mind. That will never happen, right?

So I don't want to sit there and watch you guys, oh, I got to zoom in. Pick, hold down the Control key, now go grab the other 35 million of these. All you got to do is hover over it, hit the Tab key. Do you see how? It's really slight. It just picked up on all those surfaces. Now, if I select it, and pick on it, and I can start yanking and pulling. You see how they're all doing it together? So put that one in your back pocket. It's handy at times knowing this little secret of hey, instead of me sitting there picking all those surfaces, let FormIt do that. So it was a nice little added trick that they threw in there.

And then lofting. So this is kind of a base of a high rise I was fooling around with, and so how did I get up with this shape? Well, after working with the design a little bit and dealing with levels, which we haven't talked about, I kind of came up with-- I don't know, you can call it floor plates if you want. But I come in here and I say, well, I want a loft. So I grab this, and all I'm doing is I'm just picking on the individual surfaces, and then I just hit Enter. So it locks that in.

If I go back up, grab loft again, I can then get the other ones. So I'm just picking on the individual surfaces to grab that, and again, I can hit Enter. So that does that. If I go back and I grab loft one more time-- whoops, not groups. But if I come in and grab loft one more time, I'm going to grab this surface, I'm going to push down, grab that surface. So I grab both of those surfaces and then I hit Enter. So that's how I got that individual. Now, I might have to work on that a little bit. It's a little funky there, but you get the idea.

And then if I want to shell this out, well, my first tool that they gave me was my offset tool. This is the one I've been wanting. So they gave this to me where I can pick on a surface. I can right-click. I grab my offset tool. I love this tool. You think about this. You can use this tool in all kinds of crazy places. But I come in here and I say, hey, I want to do one foot, let's say. All right, so based on that, now I have this other surface. I can pick on this.

Maybe this turns into a parapet, or maybe I reverse it. Maybe I pick on this surface, and maybe I use that trick where I know that I just push all the way down, and now I just basically flush this out, and now I've just got wall systems in here. OK? Not too bad. All right, giving everybody some ideas and some design strategies to kind of look at the different building types you might be working with, and how you can tackle some of that.

The other thing that I want to mention is the shell tool. This is my favorite tool. I come in here and I grab a shell, and I'm going to do negative one foot, and the idea behind the shell tool is if you don't do anything, it's going to empty out the whole entire thing, except for a one foot thickness. Me, I like to know that I did this. So I like to tell FormIt, this surface, delete that surface. So I'm picking one surface, hitting Enter, and now it just shelled out that whole shape. Pretty cool?

So you can do some very organic shapes and it doesn't freak out. The modeler that they are using is a very, very robust modeler, to say the least. So it can handle most things that you throw at it. If you do break it, they want to fix it, trust me. They are very open and wanting to listen to what's going on. All right? Hopefully that gives everybody some ideas. All right, so moving on.

Now, this is kind of leading into the other half of this, and that is I started thinking about facades, especially curved designs. How am I going to break those things down? How am I going to convey design intent that this is some sort of glazing system? How am I going to go about pulling this stuff off and what tool set do I need to bring to the table to be able to pull that off?

So one of the developers basically gave me a tool called facet faces. So I can pick on curve surfaces, and what am I going to do? Right-click. I'm going to grab facet face, and it's basically going to break that down into individual surfaces. Now, talking to the developer, it's in the works. Basically, me and Josh told the story. I think they're going to give us the ability to do a properties to tell exactly how much control we want over that. So I think that's coming in the pipeline pretty quick.

So that'll be coming, but even with that said, that doesn't mean I can't grab the lines and manipulate and change. It's just, it would be nice if I had the extra properties and would just speed up the process. And then once that breaks down, I can use my magic tab key to grab that edges, and then I can array that up to convey then the vertical breakup of it. OK? And remember, these blue lines are dealing with levels. That's what's going on with that. So just understand this. I have a building, I'm trying to figure out square footage with it.

Now, the big thing. Working with Josh Goldstein on the FormIt team, they flew me down for the Revit technology conference to do a workshop with him on FormIt, and him and I were sitting down and showing them. I was telling them what I'm looking at doing for the AU class, and he's like, you know what? Let me sit down and let's kind of work on some Dynamo scripts to see if we can speed up this process. This is in your class files. So when you guys download my class files and unzip it, these are in there, by the way.

Now, there's a caveat to this. You have to have Dynamo studio to be able to work with these scripts. Not Dynamo that comes with Revit. I'm saying Dynamo studio. If you don't know what that is, look it up. What it is, the difference is this interface. Dynamo studio gives you the ability to control an interface, a UI. So that's the piece that you need. That's why they need Dynamo studio.

So once I bring this script in I can actually have all the control factors. So this is another method. Now, I'm going to show you both ways, but I want to make sure that you guys understand that I'm giving you two scripts that you can break down your facade design if you want to use it through the scripts. OK? So either way, you've got both methodologies to this.

So let me show you both of these. OK? We'll come back to this file. So I'm going to leave this and come back in here to the panelization, and let me grab this guy. All right, so here it is. And the control factor is basically through here. So, Dynamo Studio, basically what you do is you publish the script to the cloud. That supplies a link, and you put that link in, that URL, l and that it shows up over here in your panel. That's basically how the process is.

And then if you want to use this, then basically what you do is you simply pick on it, it takes a little bit for it to load or run, however you want to put it. So do be patient. And then you just place it. Then from that point, you can move it, you can rotate it, you can do whatever you want. All right, so that's kind of how the process works, and you guys have these scripts. OK?

So if I double click-- this is how you start working with them. If you double click on them, that's how it opens up the interface for you. So I noticed that it's short. So I want to come in here. I want to type in 30 for 30 feet. Again, when I put my cursor-- it's kind of like Revit. Once I put my cursor out under the drawing window, it basically looks and says oh, you made a change to this, and basically updates it. So this has given you some automation process. OK? So if you want to take FormIt up to the next level, this is your process that you can do.

If I want to come in and divide this up even further, maybe I want that to be two feet, not four feet. Again, it's got to go through, it's got to run it. Now you can see how the panels are even tighter. Now that's the animation way that you can do this. OK? There's some stipulations, right? Dynamo Studio. You don't need to know a little bit about Dynamo along with it. Every firm's not going to have that capability, right? Everybody with me on this?

So I know that, and I don't want to leave anybody high and dry. So I basically wanted to go back and say OK, well, going back to my modeling tricks, let's just do it through some right-clicks and how we can do that process. So this is how I pulled this off. So this whole process that you're seeing here, this is how I came about doing this. So it's not overly hard. It's just at times, it gets tedious.