3Dconnexion is offering a trip to Autodesk University in Las Vegas on Nov. 29 – Dec. 1, as well as a airfare, accommodations and a SpacePilot PRO 3D mouse. To enter this drawing, please complete required fields in the form that can be found at this link http://bit.ly/qcWJii. Submission will only be accepted by midnight U.S. PDT on November 7, 2011. For details, please see terms and conditions. The winner will be contacted by email or phone on November 8, 2011 and will have 3 days to claim prize.

Hi everyone, my name is Neil Bulger and I am an energy modeler for a small design MP firm on the west coast in Oakland, CA. I’m happy to join the writing team here on the openRevit site. My focus and interest in energy modeling has been to find open-source tools that can both mold to the job required and providing enough information under the hood for engineers and owners to feel comfortable with the results. Today, I’d like to share a neat tool I found a while back called Greenspaceslive (greenspacelive.com). The tool is a plugin that works with Google Sketchup and allows a 3D model of a building to be tagged with surface types and assigned to spaces, building a gbXML file that can then be exported to a number of various software tools, such as Trane Trace or in California, EnergyPro used for code compliance. While this is a free tool that can create gbXML, which is fantastic, it is not without its holes, and it has some major ones. I honestly think this is a great tool, but for purposes of today, I will talk about the shortcomings and some advice. The way the program works … Continue reading →