Just wanted to shamelessly self promote for a minute and post a link to my brand new etsy shop: shelf help.  I only have a few items for sale at the moment, but I will be adding more as they are developed.  Please share with any friends you think might enjoy them.  Need some extra incentive? Use coupon code lowendblog15 to get a cool 15% off!

Currently for sale: birds!  Laser cut and hand assembled right here in Philly!  Several patterns and colors available.  Take a look and let me know what you think!

Thanks!

-Dan

(Adapted from HOK BIM Solutions )

Make a new sun setting with the time set to 2:30 AM or so.

Set the Exposure Value on the Rendering to somewhere between 2 and 2.5

Render with Exterior: Sun Only and a white background (or sky if you prefer)

Export and Enjoy!

Today, Mr. Bittman reposted some of his favorite suggestions and one of mine made it (sans attribution, but thats cool with me)!  He calls it “a kind of Modern PB&J”.  Huzzah!  Give it a try for a late-night snack sometime and let me know what you think.

A kind of modern PB&J: spread onto a soft flour tortilla with a bit of apricot preserves, the folded in half and browned in a buttered pan.

(Sorry for the lack of postings in recent months… I wish I could say I’ve been too busy, but I’ve mostly been too lazy.  I’ll probably be posting a reply to a comment made by a friend [requesting suggestions for Revit novices] within the next few days.)

Dear Members of the Cult of Done,

I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Found this manifesto via a friend-of-a-friend’s blog (Up Your Architecture), and thought that it was a great way to approach design/creative work in general, and specifically for this blog, Revit.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to tell a few Revit-resistant people in my office to just do it in Revit already.  Its impossible to get anywhere without starting, and we all know that things get revised a thousand times before the building is built anyways.  So why not just do it Revit for the first time?!? Then you can do it again and it will be better.  By the third or fourth time, you will know what you are doing and the design will have evolved by then anyhow.

Additionally, there is a lot of other fun stuff on Pettis’s blog.  Check it out.  The video of the wooden / marble binary adding machine is great, as is the video of the destruction of chocolate bunnies via heat in various forms.