Ideate Explorer for Revit

We have been using Ideate Explorer for about 4 months now and have been finding it very useful in supporting and troubleshooting projects. It allows you to find lost CAD imports and links, export results to excel, view zone and space information, amongst many other features. There’s a free trial so check it out.

Noteblock for tracking comments in Revit

This is one of those ingenious uses of the tools in Revit to make collaborating better:
BIM Troublemaker: Comment Tracking Using Noteblock Scheduling

AIA Philadelphia TAP Announcement

In the AIA Philadelphia Chapter newsletter that was published July 27th 2011, the AIA announced the creation of the Philadelphia TAP group. I am posting this here because Revit currently plays a major role in the technology of the AEC industry and will most likely be a consistent thread of commonality weaving through the many topics of discussion. Follow the link to read the announcement. The announcement describes the need for a Technology in Architectural Practice(TAP) discussion in Philadelphia, it's affiliation with the National TAP group and identifies it’s Groupspaces website and contact information.
The announcement also requests nominations for Advisory Board members and encourages membership by all industry professionals in the Philadelphia area. If you are in Philadelphia, join the discussion here.

Open Revit Standard

The Twittersphere and bloggersphere is igniting over the "Open Revit Standard" http://openrevitstandards.com. I was reading the Knowledgesmart blog whom we are evaluating as a resource for evaluating new hires and staff, and think that their perspective may be shared as well by others. 
I would be interested to hear your thoughts, discussion, and if there’s participation from your companies?
Our 60-year old company is so far sticking firmly to it's belief that the contractor and client care deeply about our unique view titles and section marks and graphic titleblock and lineweights and symbols and so on. And they may be right, who knows. There is the aspect of professional pride in this as well. But as BIM standards go, and in terms of the National BIM standard and the success of the UK National BIM standard, an Open Standard following the form of Wikipedia in my opinion has got legs that can run and run.
It's an interesting concept and far from the proprietary environments of the past. One of the creators of this movement is Dave Fano who is a friend and colleague of mine and a is one of the geniuses behind the Design Reform site and Case Inc.

New Revit uniforms

If your office is considering implimenting Revit, make a splash with a Revit outfit like this. If you already are amongst the Revit guru firms, your star Revit team will look like real pros outfitted with these!

There's also a "Revit-Rave" pant with codpiece and shin balls(?) and Revit printed on the ass, made by the same company, for the more extreme Reviteers: