Autodesk University 2022

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I was just notified that both the presentations I did at Autodesk University (AU) 2022 won the Top-Rated Class Award. This was my first AU since the last physical event was held in Vegas in 2019. I therefore put in a lot of work in the presentations and I am grateful, relieved and very very happy that the people who attended the sessions liked them.

Automating the New Government Quarter in Norway

In this class Morten Ræder from Nordic Office of Architecture and I shared the background, challenges, development and implementation we executed for Revit automation on one of the biggest and certainly the most politically, strategically and emotionally complex building projects in recent Norwegian history.

Credit: Team Urbis

The automation workflows we built saved, and continues to save, the project team, building owner and in turn the Norwegian society, unimaginable expenses in reducing wasted time by automating BIM-related tasks that no architect or engineer should ever do. We also increased the quality of model data outputs that now manifests as the most successful model-based construction project in Norwegian history.

As a side note, the session resulted in a surge of requests for information about Night Runner, the first tools we built on this project. Night Runner standardizes Revit models using a Type File strategy, meaning you make one model and control the content of all other project model from it, automatically. Nicolas Catellier attended the class and graciousely wrote about it on his blog. Check out https://reope.com/nightrunner and fill out the form at the bottom if you want more information about how it works.

Here is a link to the recording that we finished a month before the event, in addition to the presentation and handout PDF’s.

Here are the ratings and reviews we received:

Session content rating: 4.73 (out of 5)
Speaker rating: 4.77
Supporting material rating: 4.68

Number of people in the room: 161

  • Absolutely amazing session, insanely good work. DEVELOPPERS!
  • Excellent presentation on innovative workflow and process
  • Morten is hot as hell.
  • Norway is world leading in BIM! More of this.
  • So much useful info! One of my favorite sessions this year.
  • These are my favourite speakers I was very excited to be able to sign up for this class. Only when I walked in the room was 90% jamb packed like a can of sardines full!!! Not sure if the organizers knew that the chair allotted space is only 18" square which means each and everyone in a full room gets to cuddle hip to hip shoulder to shoulder with a complete stranger. I walked as out odds of manspreading is still high at this conference. I missed standing or sitting on the floor at Vegas.
  • Very interesting method!
  • Very interesting topic and good knowledgeable presenters
  • Well structured, well presented, well done! I enjoyed the focus of specific aspects that were pain points and how they were resolved.

From Drawings to Data

On the final day of AU, Harsh Kedia and I presented the work we have done the last year on creating better workflows for digital construction. The construction industry is moving from dead paper to live databases, and in that process a lot of people struggle with delivering the quality that is required for this change to happen fast. If a contractor doesn’t trust that the property you produce is correct, she will stop using the model for her work.

Photo: Krzysztof Jedrzejewski

We have invested a lot of time and resources in creating an alternative way of creating and validating construction data, using web and database technology. This work has resulted in the product Anker, that we now distribute and implement in many large projects with digital construction on the menu.

In our presentation, Harsh and I talked through the difficulties Revit users face when they are asked to deliver large consistent datasets. We also discussed the lack of good validations processes, and how strange it is that not more tool providers build in native automation. We discussed the use of Dynamo and Grasshopper, and I think I may have broken some hearts when I stated “it’s hard for me to imagine an entire industry’s digital transformation done with Dynamo”.

Photo: Krzysztof Jedrzejewski

If you are interested in testing Anker, you can do that from https://reope.com/anker or simply writing harsh@reope.com an email. Today it has live Revit integration with our Dimitar Venkov-built addin, and IFC import. It also has an amazing validation process that I hope will make more contractors trust data.

Here is a link to the recording that we finished a month before the event, in addition to the presentation and handout PDF’s.

Here are the ratings and reviews that we are so happy to see today:

Session content rating: 4.6
Speaker rating: 4.67
Supporting material rating: 4.53

Number of people in the room: 149

• Great class. Always glad to attend a Reope class.
• Very interesting concept. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I have presented at AU almost yearly during more than a decade now, but this is the first time I get two top rated classes at the event. THANK YOU everyone who attended and gave us feedback, and thank you Morten and Harsh for the collaboration:)

Reope

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Reope is now the name of our company in Norway. We’re changing it from Bad Monkeys to Reope.

I have always been a late bloomer, and have finally come to understand that when you build a company, you also build a brand. And when you build a brand for a company, you need to control and own that brand. It’s as simple as that. We cannot control what the Bad Monkeys brand does, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to! I love the idea of the monkeys running wild, so to speak, and also think that anyone controlling the monkey brand would ruin the monkey identity.

So, we need the company and the network to be two different things; Reope – part of the Bad Monkeys network.

Being part of Bad Monkeys offers a lot of benefits. We collaborate on projects and products. We share resources and knowledge. And we meet up whenever global pandemics are not happening, which is always great fun.

Why Reope?

For us, Reope means a recurring surprise, or a new discovery by accident. It consists of re and ope, where re is Latin for starting over again, and ope is midwestern for oops! This is how it is to program for us. Like I tell my friends sometimes: I just click all the buttons and see what happens.

Our Reope rebrand launch video, where I explain to my mom what’s going on.

So how can Reope help you?

Reope operates as your software development department. Instead of hiring one developer who knows perhaps one or two things really well, you hire us and together we deliver a range of services to you based on what you need most. You get a team of specialists who obsess about delivering valuable tools to you and your organization.

If you’re a building owner, you want to hire us to help your project teams deliver better designs faster. Your hired guns will operate at a higher level of efficiency, deliver more information faster, and spend their time working on value-adding activities and not assembly line repetitive distant look monkey work.

If you’re an architect or engineer, you’ll hire us to reduce your team’s wasted time on projects by scaling your dream workflows to your entire organization. We help your colleagues understand automation and we increase your Level of Happiness (LOH) through the removal of meaningless tasks. You get better tools and processes and happier architects and engineers.

And if you’re a contractor, you would want to hire us to turn the above into profit.

Because we’re architects and engineers, we understand which problems you need to solve and why. That’s also why we deliver fast. Send us your Dynamo script today, and you get a Revit add-in tomorrow.

We have been doing this for 3 years now, and it works. If you want to know more about who we are and what we’ve done, have a look at our website. If you want to know more about our business model and pricing, call me on my phone at +47 918 67 069 or email me at havard@reope.com. If what you need aligns with what we do, we will make your life better.