Autodesk Expands Sustainable Design Product Portfolio

The following link from Autodesk descibes the acquisition of Green Building Studio by Autodesk.

Autodesk Press

and below is the email I just recieved from Green Building Studio

After nearly 10 years of market changing innovation, Green Building Studio is delighted to announce we have signed an agreement for Autodesk, Inc. to acquire our assets. In other words, our Green Building Studio (GBS) web service will soon join the Autodesk product family. Please be assured that our talented team will continue selling, training, and supporting architects as they use our web service to design carbon neutral buildings today and in the future.

“Autodesk is committed to providing technology that makes sustainable design easier and more efficient,” said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, Autodesk AEC Solutions. “We look forward to adding the Green Building Studio technologies to the Autodesk portfolio and helping our customers more easily leverage the coordinated, reliable data created in the Revit® platform for building information modeling (BIM) to help predict performance and design buildings with reduced environmental impact.”

After closing this deal, Autodesk also plans to continue support for the Green Building Studio web service, carbon neutral building design training, and to strengthen the web service’s integration with its BIM software. The gbXML schema will remain an open industry standard, and the GBS web service will continue to be available to any other BIM software.
“We have partnered with Autodesk for many years, and commend their ongoing support for sustainability,” said John Kennedy, President & CTO, Green Building Studio. “We are eager to contribute our industry expertise in green buildings to drive mainstream adoption of sustainability and accelerate the AEC industry’s transition to carbon neutral buildings.”
We expect to finalize the acquisition in the next few months. In the meanwhile, if you have any questions please feel free to contact us.


Green Building Studio - web service facts
6600+ Users
6200+ Projects
646 LEED Projects
35,000+ Simulations
210+ million floor area (ft²)
20 second average simulation time
ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 140-2004

Revit Architecture and Max

Recently, I rendered my first Revit model in Autodesk 3ds Max. While I had extensive previous experience with Autodesk Viz, I had only used AutoCAD models in the Viz environment. I have rendered many Revit models in Accurender within Revit and have been able to tweak the settings enough to get very decent models. On this rendering though, we wanted to create a nightime rendering and that was something that you can not create well in Accurender.I was thrilled at the easy transfer from Revit into Max. While you have to export to AutoCAD first, when you bring that file into Max it allows you to select items by object. This project had three buildings, thus three linked files, and by being able to select the similar objects of each building allowed me to go from Revit to finished renderings in one day. Mix the easy use of the Revit/Max combo with ArchVision's RPC objects (People, Trees and Cars) and you can go from simple to amazing.

I am soon at the end of the 30 day trial that they allow from the download at the Autodesk website but I will be highly recommending the purchase of this product for our company. I will also try a copy of Viz to see if the operability is the same and will report back to everyone once I have reviewed it.

Project North / True North

This has always puzzled me and wanted to find out if anyone else out there felt the same. When setting up a project you do not always know what project north will be on new construction project. The default orientation though for Revit is set to Project North.

So, basically to get things setup correctly from the beginning I have to put in the property coordinates from the surveyor, test out options to figure out the building orientation, rotate the entire project so that it lays out correctly on the sheets, set the view properties to True North and then finally go to Tools > Project Position / Orientation > Rotate True North.

Is it me or is this set backwards? Does anyone out there have a good reason why it is acceptable as it is currently set-up? Is this something that the Revit development team can fix? Kinda like the Ceiling misspelling on a tab that took them a few releases to fix.

Revit Wish List

AUGI has announced wish list voting on AutoCAD, Inventor, Civil 3D, and Revit Architecture. What is important to you in the continuing development of Revit? Click on the this link to voice your opinion. http://www.augi.com/revit/ballot.asp

USG Design Studio

It seems as though in the last month, USG has developed an amazing amount of information able to be downloaded for use in Revit. You can find it at http://www.usgdesignstudio.com

This includes Wall Types, Acoustic Ceiling Tile and their Specialty Ceilings. As you can see below they have a simple search tool for the wall types depending on the what you are looking for. You can choose by material, interior or exterior, fire rating, STC rating and the framing type.



After you have made your selections you can download a Revit file that includes multiple versions of the wall types fitting your search criteria. It shades the insulated walls in yellow and the non-insulated ones are white. You can change these to fit your standards but it makes it easy to distinguish between the types.


You can then create schedules utilizing the impressive amount of information provided if desired or just use it for your reference when creating partition type drawings or specifications. This information includes URL, Fire Rating, Fire Test #, USG Fire Test URL, STC, Sound Test #, UL URL and Specification URL.

Also, if you think this is impressive you should also check out the ceiling information. It is great that manufacturers are now focusing their efforts on Revit rather than just AutoCAD or dxf.