Macro-scopic

 WTF?

 Just thought I'd drop a quick one to complain about something other than Autodesk/Revit (refreshing - I know!)

 So... Microsoft.

 Fuck Microsoft. 

 I've had a long running visceral hatred for Microsoft, and their seeming inability to remove their collective heads from their collective asses on a number of fronts - but especially when it comes to their flagship O/S.

 But I didn't come here to tell you about that today.

 Today - it's Office 365.

 Fuck Office 365.

Specifically Excel, and even more specifically, the decision to block macros.

Theoretically, it should be as simple as allowing macros, either file by file, by publisher, etc. - but after fighting it for several hours the other day, the only way it would work was to dump the file I needed to open into a folder, and then add that folder to the 'Trust Center'.

Once I figured this out, I was immediately up against a problem with the glorified spreadsheet the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify - where they added a new option that promptly broke it

 Fuck the manufacturer of the equipment that I specify.

They regularly make changes to this glorified spreadsheet that break functionality, while adding questionable benefit (sound familiar? cough Revit cough).

In this case, the solution was incredibly simple, but even after contacting my rep, and him contacting his rep, nobody was able to explain what the solution was, but it was suddenly not running extremely important calculations that I needed to do projects and produce accurate bills of material.

Only after sitting down with one of our more intelligent salesmen and going through it line by line were we able to figure out what they had changed, and how to fix it.  I told  my rep about it, but amusingly never got any response - and I'm sure it's going to fuck other people who are under the gun, and make the mistake of using the most recent spreadsheet.

There will also be a fuckload of them up against the macro blocking - and it was one of my co-workers running up against it today that reminded me (and making me have to recall the steps I took to fix it).  I forwarded both the file and instructions of how to fix both problems to another one of our salesmen, but I'm probably going to have to make sure everyone at all of our branches that use it get this information as well.

The stated reason for the macro blocking (which apparently started last year, rolled back, then re-implemented again) was to 'to stop threat actors from abusing the feature to deliver malware via email attachments', which is great and all, but if it prevents me from (or requires me to scour the internet for a solution of how to) use files that I know the origin of, purposefully downloaded, and didn't even come from an e-mail (for fucks sake) then 'fuck  you' is the only proper response.

Apparently it has been effective, as 'threat actors' have been moving away from using macros to distribute malware - but (of course) it just means they've moved on to another way of accomplishing the same task, while leaving legitimate users attempting to access legitimate files to have to find workarounds when the 'official solution' doesn't fucking work.

C'est la vie I guess.

 But I don't have to like it - and everyone responsible (including 'threat actors') can go fuck themselves.

Sincerely,

-Skullfuck

The Slow Painful Death Of An Art

Greetings and Salutations from the land of Zero Revit,

I never get a chance to post here anymore, because it seems somewhat redundant to keep pointing out the same old shit, but the last two projects I have worked on were especially egregious examples of how far the mighty have fallen.

The first was actually someone else's project - a community center, which I was doing some revisions to due to the Electrical Engineer being a dumbass, and the Fire Marshall having to come back and point out his many (many) fuckups.

Some of my co-workers don't have the fucks to give to do the clean-up work that I do to drawings that we receive that were sharted out of the Revit Box, but due to my background, as well as an outsized sense of pride I take at the quality of my work, I find it necessary to at least make them less cringy to look at.

Sometimes I wish I could not care how shit my backgrounds look, and just do my job, but as I've said in the past, it sometimes helps me to become intimately familiar with the project to spend some time cleaning it up, and I often find items that need clarification so I can get those questions in at the beginning, rather than getting  halfway through the project, only to find out that it was poorly and/or unclearly designed (shocking, I know).

It also helps facilitate my workflow as, once I get to doing my actual job, I don't have to stop every five minutes to stare in disbelief at the absolute garbage people apparently considered 'good enough' to issue to the world with their names, and the names of their firms emblazoned upon the titleblocks of (often with misspelled and/or incorrect project names, address errors/omissions, and other comedy gold.

The community center I was working on was the epitome of Revit, with excruciating levels of detail all throughout - but my absolute favorite were the turnbuckles on the swimming lane marking ropes:

 

They contain nearly 700 lines (and there are 50 of them).  You can also see in that image, the drain system around the perimeter of the pool, and 'no diving' signs, all lovingly crafted in a way that turns into black blobs of nothing once you actually print them out.

 This project also includes a waterslide, that I'm sure looked fantastic in a 3D model, but ended up looking like unwashed assholes in 2D.  I had a similar one in an indoor waterpark I did recently, that was so fucking overwrought that it obscured tons of rather important information.

That underscores one of the other problems that I run into attempting to use 2D drawings exported from Revit - anything that (whether intentionally or accidentally, due to idiots who don't understand view range settings) obscures part of something below it, ends up wiping out whatever it obscured.

This will include structural elements, duct work, and other unrelated elements that make their way onto electrical drawings (my old forte, and the ones I still rely on to do my current designs) resulting in having to sometimes recreate entire sections of drawings after eliminating the offending elements.

Fortunately I'm pretty good at guessing what the fuck all of the countless lines upon lines upon lines are actually supposed to represent, which ones are surplus to needs, and which ones I can use to reproduce what should've just been shown clearly and concisely, but instead... Revit.

The second project I received, and am currently working on is a courthouse building, and while it may be devoid of swimming pools and water slides, the Revitards took great pride in using as many ridiculously elaborate families as they could put their hands on - just to make sure... of... something?

I present to you one that I've seen over and over (and have maybe even posted here before), what I like to call the 'Way The Fuck Too Much Information To Show How A Goddamned Window Goes Together'

For those keeping track, that's 365 lines (x2 for each window in the entire goddamned building), that basically disappears completely when you zoom out (or turns into a little black blob when printed). Interestingly, this family only appears on the second floor of the building, which means two different Revitards were most likely being employed to design one building, and they weren't talking to each other (also meaning they have at least two window families loaded into the model, causing bloat on the Revit end as well - OR the person doing the first floor knew how to set the family to not show unnecessary detail).

It was also evident that (at least) two people worked on it, as there is a courtroom on both the first and second floors - and while one is laid out correctly, the other one has tons of overlaps and other signs that the person either didn't know what they were doing, ran out of time near the end of the project, or just didn't give a shit.

All throughout there are walls jammed together in a haphazard manner, and other weirdness - but I was able to get it all cleaned up fairly quickly.  Then I had to start figuring out what the fuck the electrical engineer had actually designed.  This was made more difficult by his keynotes on every sheet being different (so from floor to floor the tags might mean different things).

In addition to this stupid shit, we had actually requested CAD files for this nearly a year ago - and for some reason the salesman responsible for it kept sending us CAD files for a different project.  We would inform him they were the wrong ones, we would wait a couple of months, then he would attempt to send the wrong ones again.

The problem being, that this gave them ample time to fuck with the project, so now the CAD files have little changes all throughout.  I just got done making a fairly exhaustive list of the changes (including, amusingly, that they managed to delete a door into a mechanical room, while also duplicating the same room number from the corridor outside this room).

At any rate, this has sadly become standard for nearly every single project I do these days.  The only reason it is tenable, is that I have the ability to use ACAD to process the complete and utter shit I am given into semi-comprehensible floor plans. 

I've bemoaned the lack of giving a fuck on many occasions, but these last few projects were just another reminder of how an industry that used to pride itself on producing clear, concise, accurate drawings, has just fallen into a pit of shit, driven almost entirely by Autodesk shilling Revit, and incompetent little cunts being brought in to try to make it generate anything remotely passable.

I never tire of saying fuck Revit, fuck Autodesk, fuck everyone generating garbage with it - and, as it has been since the beginning, and will be until the end... If you don't like it, then FUCK YOU.

Ecstatically Yours, 

-The Revit MEP Skullfuck

 Next Time: 'EXCEL-SIOR!!!'

Order First! Design Afterward!!!

Holy Mother Of All Fucks Ya'll.

So I managed to put a bow on that goddamned piece of shit project and get it off my desk (where it is now hovering in mid-air, because we aren't sending them shit until they agree to paying us for the extra work that their incompetence generated).

I knocked out a few small items that had piled up - then dove into another project with GUSTO!!! only to find out that it required me to learn a completely different system than the one we normally install.  Fortunately I had another project using that same system to use as a 'go by' but unfortunately they didn't really resemble each other.  I managed to squeeze out something passable (I actually caught a few mistakes on the 'go by' so mine is at least an improvement over it).

Next I had to split a five-story apartment building in half because the dipshits who are building it want to build it in 'phases' and rather than just figure it out, they wanted those phases documented (and were willing to pay us to do it - so hey!)  At first they wanted to break it into four phases, which would've been... clusterfuck, but now that they just wanted two, I started looking at it closer, and damned if I hadn't already designed it almost perfectly to be broken in half.

The location of the main equipment looked a little stupid - being in a room on the opposite end of a parking garage, but that's where it was originally, and nobody told me to move it, so that's where it stayed.  Eventually, once they build Phase 2, it will look a little less silly.  After pondering a few different ways to issue it (including just circling one half and saying 'Phase 1' and the other half and saying 'Phase 2' - which I opted not to do because they had actually agreed to a fairly hefty sum of money to do the redesign), I decided to issue two sets of drawings.

The first set required me to delete the sections of the floor plan that wouldn't be built until the second phase, including removing some doors that were just going to open into nothing, and didn't take very long - until I got to the top floor and realized that I had circuits originating in panels located in rooms that weren't going to exist yet. This required me to add one extra panel (they can get over it) and actually ended up being a better overall design anyway (so they can get over it twice).

The second phase drawings I basically just lightly hatched the 'phase 1' portions and marked them as 'existing', and I'm pretty sure they can figure the rest out.  I addressed a small handful of other comments that had come back on the original drawings (including removing an entire secondary system), and I sent it out (hopefully to never come back - because it was already on its second go-around thanks to a dumbass engineer who dropped the ball (resulting in a change order for us - and thus more money, but also me having to revisit a job that I was sick and tired of already).

 THEN it was on to a complete system upgrade for a massive industrial plant and other associated buildings.  I thought I was ahead of the game on it, because I had (out of the goodness of my heart) already helped the salesman do a bid package showing all of the buildings, locations of devices/equipment, etc. (which was one of the factors that resulted in him being awarded the job), but then I remembered getting an e-mail from the guy who does our ordering asking about colors/markings on devices - despite the fact that I hadn't actually designed the project or put together a bill of materials to order from.

It turned out that the salesman had gotten a sales rep for the company whose equipment we spec to give it a look, put together a list of equipment - and then go ahead and fucking order it.

I wasn't too concerned, because the assumption would be that the rep should know their equipment and give a pretty accurate assessment of what would be necessary for the installation - but then I started looking into what had been ordered, and asking the salesman basic questions that he couldn't answer, so I started to be concerned about trying to shoehorn my design into a pile of equipment what was already (theoretically) on its way.

I made contact with the rep to ask him some simple questions, which he (very annoyingly) decided to turn into a 'teaching moment' which I was not in the fucking mood for.  Rather than *answer my goddamned questions* he decided to suggest that it would be better for me to learn how to figure it out for myself.  In the first e-mail I wrote (and deleted) I basically let him know that I am a motherfucking figuring it out MASTER with decades of experience figuring shit the fuck out - even when I am provided with incomplete/incorrect/misleading information, dealing with incompetents (and incompetence), and even where information is purposefully being withheld from me (or I am 'out of the loop' for one reason or another).

My second e-mail was a bit more on point, and I started off by thanking him for his frank response, telling him that I share his sentiment about figuring things out rather than expecting people to tell me how to do them.  I then proceeded to explain to him that the only reason I was asking for clarification was that our standard operating procedure of me going through the design process and ONLY THEN ordering goddamned equipment had been circumvented, so I basically just needed to know what the fuck he was thinking when he put this particular list of equipment together so I could make my design align with it.

I followed that up by gleefully pointing out two major fuckups that I found in the information he provided me - which ended up making his exhortation to me to 'learn to figure it out' goddamned prophetic, because I *figured out* that he had duplicated the name of a panel (answering my first question about why there wasn't enough room for equipment inside of the panels).  

 The second question I had was about how to derive circuits from the panels, and while he did point me in (sort of) the right direction on what piece of equipment would accomplish this, it required two more e-mails for him to raise a question, answer his own question, only for it to turn out that this piece of equipment was TOTALLY NOT GOING TO FUCKING DO WHAT I NEEDED IT TO DO.

 I thought it was strange that I had never heard of that particular piece of equipment, but it's because we don't fucking use them, because they are outdated, would require additional equipment to make them do what we need them to do, and COST MORE TO BEGIN WITH.  I'm not saying he was intentionally trying to unload this old shit on us, or bilk us for money - but by removing these pieces of equipment from the job (which the salesman can either cancel the orders for, or simply return them) we will save a couple grand (which can go towards fixing other fuckups in the order - such as the batteries for nearly every building in the project being undersized - and the correct size batteries requiring external cabinets (at a hundred bucks a pop).

Despite all of this dumbfuckery, the project itself is actually quite simple, and despite the fact that it is one of the first ones I'm designing using a new iteration of the systems we specify, I am actually already very close to completing it.  I had to rely a little bit on our install manager and some other guys that work here to hash out a few details about the fiber-optic network to connect all of the panels (in this new system) together (because I sure as fuck was done asking that dumbass rep for any more help).

In retrospect, I should've more or less ignored the list of equipment they had ordered, designed the system the way I normally would, and then let them fix the order (in a brief discussion with the owner of my company before lunch, he basically said as much).  I'm disinclined to do a complete redesign now though, so I'll keep shoehorning it in (with a few notable improvements).

After this, I've got one more change-order on a building to complete, and I'll actually be completely caught up (there are other projects that I'll be able to work on - but my backlog will officially be cleared).  Of course, that doesn't mean that one (or more.... or all) of the projects I've done won't come screaming back needing major fixes (or complete redo's).

 All in all it's been a crazy January - we usually start off the year slow, and struggling to find stuff to do while everyone else gets geared up, but this year it's been balls-to-the-wall.

 And anyone who gets in my way can get my balls-on-their-chin.

-SkullFuck

Next Time: Death From Avove!!!

I Know You Are Right, But I Want You To Do It Wrong Anyways.

So holy goddamned fuck ya'll.

I was actually making progress (against all odds) on the shithole piece of fucking shit project that will... not... end..., then the guy who took over the project from the one who originally sold it (and then left the company - leaving us to have to deal with it) decided to come back and throw a wrench in my design - after the fact.

I had managed to complete a relatively decent set of floor plans, and only needed to finish up some calculations and details - when he pointed out that plugging my design into a new spreadsheet resulted in most (damn near all) of the circuits being overloaded.... and I.. fucking snapped.

I punched every single door on the way back to my office while screaming 'FUCK' over and over - then chucked a chair across my office, before kicking the shit out of another chair.  While I'm sure a few people heard it, only 2-3 were actually in their offices (including the dipshit who set me off).

I wandered outside, and pondered just leaving for the day (if not permanently) but my keys were still in my office (along with my jacket, and it was fucking cold out) so I wandered back in again.  It was nearly lunch time, so I grabbed my shit and left - in no condition to be behind the wheel of a car, but I managed to get something to eat (only punching the fucking shit out of my steering wheel a few times), and came back to see what the fallout would be.

Fortunately nobody really gives a fuck how I act/talk at my office - and the guy who set me off had decided to go get lunch too, so he wasn't there.  I pulled another guy in (who also hates the guy who set me off) and we reviewed what it was that he was babbling about when he told me my circuits were overloaded.

That was when I remembered overhearing the guy talking to an engineer a few weeks prior on a project that we had completed and issued.  He was concerned about the way we did the circuit calculations, and was refusing to put his stamp on the drawings unless we did what he wanted.  What it basically came down to (without going into too much detail) is that he acknowledged that our (already conservative) calculations (related to battery sizing) were right - but he wanted to make them even more conservative.

The result would've been having to go back through the project and completely redo every single circuit in the building - BUT we were able to head it off by up-sizing the wire for the circuits (probably at our own cost).  I was given the updated spreadsheet that reflected this dumbass method of designing (basically ignoring the size of battery we are putting in... for... reasons?), but I had already been doing my layout based on our standard calculations.

 This isn't the first time this has happened - we had another (government) client who decided to start getting up in our shit, and the resulting calculations would've had us limited to putting a small handful of devices per circuit, and only being able to run very limited distances (the upshot of which would be having to add extra power supplies).

Upon finding out that we were being asked to do this (not just on that particular project - but every project we do - whether or not the client was a dumbass) we went back to doing it correctly - right up until this most recent clusterfuck.  After calming down a bit - I was able to convince the guy (who I hopefully scared - at least a little bit) that we just needed to submit my drawings as-is, and only make changes if the client (another government client) actually requested that we do so.

I went back to my office, but the stress meant the rest of my day was fucking shot due to not being able to concentrate on shit.  We revisited the discussion right before I left, and he was right back to trying to convince me that we needed to redo the vast majority of the project as if we had never talked (this guy is super-smart when it comes to electronics/electrical stuff, but is an abject moron when it comes to just about everything else).

This morning we discussed it briefly again, and I have hopefully convinced him that we're going to use the idiotic calculations, up-size the wire - and if the owner of our company balks at the extra cost, telling him that the other option would be to add more power supplies (in addition to spending even  more time re-designing this stupid fucking project) - so it's basically a wash.  

 I'm currently pondering whether or not to just pull the owner in now, and pit him up against dipshit - because I'm basically being asked to 'fix' a functional design based on new criteria that doesn't make any sense, basically allowing a different client to dictate how we design.  I acknowledged to dipshit that his decision to kowtow to that client (and attempt to sidestep any future bitching by this client) is due to him being exhausted with having to argue with idiots - but this is a hill I would absolutely be willing to die on.

Now I get to see if I can stay focused enough to finish the rest of the project (I'm going to need to bring dipshit in for one last thing, which I can guarantee is going to be like pulling teeth) and get it the fuck out - just so they can eat it the fuck alive, and fuck me in the ass so hard I want to drive to wherever they are and spoon feed them their own feces.

This whole 'lets try to appease them before the fact' attitude is a massive waste of time - because (as I discussed with dipshit) while it's possible that they may obsess over the same thing as the other client, chances are their obsession will lie elsewhere, on some other aspect of the design.  It's also not a good precedent to set - allowing the lowest common denominator to dictate how we (who have designed and installed countless fully-functional systems) do our work.

He did have one good suggestion - that we could go to the codes officials (since it is dumbasses quoting/misinterpreting code to us that is driving this problem), present our case, and request an official interpretation - so that we will have something to point future dumbasses to when they attempt to dumbass.

I doubt that's going to happen though, we'll just keep being beholden to dumbasses - many of whom are simply bored and want to run us through the wringer in order to justify their own bloated wages.

The thing that gets me, is that if it's not Revit (as it was with my last job - and tangentially at this one as I've been describing in my previous posts) - it's the same fucking mentality keeping me from being able to do my job.  Once I get this thing done, I've got several other projects lined up behind it, and to be brutally honest, I don't know what the fucking point is anymore.

I think the only thing that keeps me going is that I'm not going to allow dumbasses and dipshits to break me.

The problem is that I may very well end up breaking (at least a few) of them.

-SkullFuck

 <<<UPDATE: The owner ended up coming to me for a status update (mainly because he's concerned about other projects piling up behind this one).  I informed him of the dipshit throwing a wrench in it (dipshit heard us talking and came in to be part of the conversation) and long story short - the owner agreed that we don't let the engineer on one project dictate how we design a project they aren't involved in - so we're back doing it the way I planned all along, and fuck the dipshit.

Oh and on a side note, I might've mentioned it before, but dipshit is also unsurprisingly our resident Covid denying, Fauci hating, Anti-Vaxx Trumptard who somehow manages to make every single conversation, regardless of topic, into a rant about 'libtards', 'tree huggers', etc. as if it has any bearing on what the fuck we are doing at any given point in time.

He just ducked his head into my office a few minutes ago and the first thing I said to him was 'fuck you'.  He laughed and we had a brief conversation - I'm pretty sure he's blissfully unaware of (i.e. too stupid to understand) how close he comes to dying on a daily basis.>>>

(Next Time: 'Let's order the equipment first - THEN design the project')

The 'Competition'

Let's get right to it, shall we?

So I'm fighting the good fight on the never-ending clusterfuck project (without actually engaging in the type of ass-whooping that these people desperate deserve), and after requesting some additional information, I manage to get a floor plan for the small building that they've decided to try to issue first (which, unsurprisingly, has changed extensively).

The envelope of the building has grown, and nearly (read: every) wall in the interior has moved - with entire areas being rearranged.  Fortunately the owner of the company I work for now happened to be standing in the room when I got it, and I was able to show him an overlay of the old vs. new plans so he knows that I'm not just saying these people are incompetent, it's right there in black and white (or black, white, and the purplish color I use for my background).

I've mentioned this in the past, but I don't know if it is possible (and even if it is, I've never seen anyone do it) to overlay two plans over the top of each other in Revit in order to compare differences.  I'm willing to bet it's not possible, since you would have to somehow have two models overlaid in order to accomplish it, and even if you put one higher than the other and then fiddled with view range settings, who the fuck  knows what the result would be?

It has helped me on countless occasions, because unlike opening a model and having to hunt down what has moved, it is (again) right there.  'Coordination' gets bandied about as a benefit of sucking the Revit cock, but I'm actually staring at a floor plan (on the larger building) where offices were removed, but the engineer designing the system I'm working on (and/or their Revit lackeys) didn't notice, so there is equipment still shown as if the offices were still there (resulting in their design being both *wrong* and *stupid looking*.

I've also noticed another area where elevator lobbies on two floor have had doors added, closing off from corridors - and because they didn't notice, there is now no equipment in those elevator lobbies (another door blocks off the stairwell on one level - creating a landing with no equipment on it either).  The only reason I'm catching this stuff (besides being meticulous as fuck) is that instead of allowing Revit to fuck me up, I'm actually paying attention and getting work done - 'coordination' my ass. 

So, after fiddling with the small building for a while, I requested mechanical drawings - so I could verify that more equipment wouldn't be necessary that nobody had thought of (happens on nearly every single project I do - sometimes *fucktons* of extra equipment that everyone thought would magically get 'coordinated' (there's that word again).  Instead, one of the idiots in charge of the project promptly sent me electrical drawings, and electrical riser (by itself, for some reason).

In their defense, they did send me *some* of the mechanical information for the larger building, but even it was incomplete, as they had decided at some point to break part of that building off, give it a TLA (three letter acronym) and apparently make it its own project (unless I'm told otherwise, it's staying as part of the building in my drawings, because they can go fuck themselves).  They did eventually provide me the rest of what I needed (which all looks like shit, and will require me to scour it to make sure we're kosher.

I was glad they had sent me the electrical though, because I was able to verify that they didn't have any electrical connections to the type of equipment I was looking for on the mechanical - but also because it gave me a glimpse of what these people think is acceptable work product:

 

That is a little snippet of a building (I'd love to post the whole thing, but I don't want to get in trouble - and I doubt anybody could tell what the fuck it is based on this little snip).  What you *can* see is... holy shit, are those structural elements?  Did the Revit Dick Socket (tm) that scribbled this nonsense not know how to limit his view range and/or turn them off (or at least shade them out)?  Did they actually think this looked good?  An actual 'electrical engineer' apparently thought it was good enough to put his seal/signature on.

That snippet really doesn't do it justice, because the whole drawing looks like that.  Just... fucking gobbledygook.  If I had attempted to hand that drawing to the electrical engineer I used to work for, he would've printed it out, wrapped it around his fist, and beaten me half to death with it (while making disparaging remarks about my mother) - and you know what?  He would be 100% justified in doing so.

As someone who did that type of work for over a decade, it's embarrassing to see what Revit has reduced these fucktards to.  I would piss directly on the person/people responsible for this shit, and if I were a project manager/client/etc. - and I opened a set of drawings to find this (not to mention an electrician who is expected to install based on this), I'd make sure it was the last time that particular firm was ever involved in one of my projects - ever again.

The saddest part of all - is that it probably took them considerable time, and herculean amounts of effort to get this pathetic fucking garbage out of Revit - to the point that they might even feel proud of what they accomplished.  I thought for a second of entertaining the idea that it was intentional - like a 'fuck you for making me use Revit' kind of thing, but I put that idea out of my head quickly.

This is what a once proud industry has been reduced to ladies and gentlemen.

I'm not even going to post pictures of 'what the fuckery' from the larger building - the architectural fuckups alone could fill volumes.  Zoom in on any two walls in the building and its just 'good enough'.  Delete any hatching and 'oh - that's what they were hiding behind hatching'.  Try to ignore the glaring errors and start doing your job - and your eyeballs will implode.  Does every piece of millwork in the building extend through walls?  Yes... yes it does.  Are half the dividers in the bathroom embedded into walls?  Yes... yes they are.

Are bulkheads and areas that are open to other floors so poorly rendered that you can't tell what the fuck is going on?  You fuckin' bet they are.

Do the people doing this project have any idea what they are doing (or how bad they are fucking everyone else involved)? Not a fucking chance.

Fuck Revit.

Fuck BIM, fuck Autodesk, fuck everyone responsible for this project specifically, and more broadly - fuck anyone selling, propagating, or willfully using Revit.

Not to sound like a broken fucking record - but fuck every one of you back-asswards, shit stench, monkey fucking, diseased donkey dick smoking, drain-bamaged, good-for-nothing asswipes.

That is all for now.

Sincerely,

SkullFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

Next Time: 'Durrr...I don't know how a battery works... durrr...'

Still Fucking Up The System

 Hola Fuckfaces,

So I had stopped all work on a project a while back because the client refused to stop fucking around with the design (the one that required us to use Bluebeam to review .pdfs), but had a request to go ahead and waste yet more time to issue a 'complete' set based on the current iteration of their plans - which I agreed to do, because they had at least nailed down how some of it was going to need to be circuited to handle 'secure' areas (and 'super-secure' areas within those 'secure' areas).

They had *finally* provided some CAD files a few weeks ago - which I had been requesting since day one, and which would've taken them thirty seconds to export (but would also be an admission that they are still spinning in circles and changing things on the fly).  These CAD files turned out to be Architectural plans from June (and were probably exported for someone else's use, because I'm not privy to anything).

I started to clean them up, and almost immediately noticed that, based on the most up-to-date .pdf (which we only have access to the most current version of at any given time (see also 'not wanting to admit how much they keep changing this goddamned thing), that they had... (bum bum BUMMMM) continued to make floor plan changes in the interim.  Unsurprising, I know - but this was what made me stop working on it the first time.

I remember cleaning up the original floor plans (converted .pdfs that were total garbage) and then trying to play 'catch-up' by updating the floor plans every time I would see an updated .pdf show up - before finally throwing my hands up because how the fuck can I keep up with constant modifications to a design that are going to require me to scour every new set of plans for what they did and didn't change?

The minute I thought I had a complete set of drawings to move forward with, it would turn out that as I was updating my plans, they were busy making the next set of changes.  The salesman is fucking useless, because he's playing their game - while trying to figure out a way to charge them for changes (which should be a no-brainer, because they refuse to stop changing things).

I, on the other hand, am fucking done playing their game - because it's *painfully* obvious that the Revit mentality has thoroughly infected all of the people involved in this project.  I'm sure they would love nothing more than if I were forced to remotely access their model and work in Revit as well - which, while it would give me access to every change they made in real-time, doesn't change the fact that their inability to get to a substantial level of completion would require me to keep reworking and reworking my design - but now in Revit instead of CAD, which would open a massive can of worms.

Even when I was working at a firm where I was on the same network as the other Revitards, it would regularly shit itself, requiring everyone to run around and find who had the most complete non-corrupted Revit model, make it the central model, and have everyone switch to using it (then figure out how hard it had fucked them).  I can't imagine being in a remote office, accessing Revit via the Internet, and that not being 10 or even 20 times more of a clusterfuck, as I would have to be in constant contact with these idiots to make sure they aren't fucking me directly into a black hole (even moreso than they are already doing).

I've got the project sitting open right now, staring at it, with no idea of how to procede - and this is even before I start doing my actual job - which should not (but generally does) involve fixing floor plans to make them even remotely passable.  I've contacted one guy (the one who finally showed me where to access CAD files), who I will probably not hear back from, and/or will probably not actually provide any help.  I could contact other people involved in the project, but the e-mails would most likely be made entirely of the word 'fuck', and threats to exhume their dead grandparent's corpses for the purposes of rape.

It's just... completely retarded at this point.  I've bitched endlessly to this salesman, to the owner, and anyone else who will listen, and it's pointless.  Usually I can get mad about a project, and use that anger to propel me forward - knowing full well that any 'progress' I make will undoubtedly be rendered moot by things completely out of my control (but which will also undoubtedly result in more work for me).  In this case, it's just making me want to put my thumbs in the eyes of the people responsible, and push until I feel the atrophied remains of their brains.

Of course, since they've all gone down the Revit circle-jerk hole, actually identifying who is to blame becomes considerably more difficult.  I'm sure they've got teams of Revitards (most of whom, based on how shitty their drawings look) probably couldn't join two walls together if you put a gun to their heads) who shoulder much of the blame - because changes that are being fed to them take weeks instead of days to filter down through.

There are also their bosses, who almost certainly don't understand Revit, or what it has done to a once thriving and productive industry.  It's a buzz word to them - something they can sell to clients who don't understand it either - but who will be pissed off when their projects languish in modelling hell rather than getting completed correctly and quickly.

There are the clients themselves, who (especially in this case) are driving a lot of the changes - with no idea of how that trickles down to everyone involved (up to and including me) instead of getting a plan together and waiting until they've worked out at least *some* of the bugs before everyone high-dives into the shallow end of the pool.

I'm fucking lost, and I'm fucking done.  The rest of this day is probably shot - unless I can somehow motivate myself to finish putting together a set of plans (goddamned backgrounds for fucks sake) which will involve having to manually modify the drawings.  It's do-able, but damned if I don't find myself back, exactly where I was months ago - already WAAAAY over budget for my time (because the guy who originally sold it, and who is no longer with us) had zero idea of how much of a clusterfuck it would turn into  - and no closer to the goal of sawing off even a half-ass version of it so we can figure out how to proceed.

It's mind numbing - and I can't help but blame Revit for at least part of it.  The mindset if nothing else.

Fuck Revit.  Fuck this client. Fuck the engineers and architects involved in this project.  Fuck their Revitards. Fuck Autodesk for dumping this bullshit on the world....

 Oh - and if you don't like it and/or are (in any fashion) willfully using, or forcing anyone else to use Revit...  I've got three words for you: EAT A DICK.

-Skullfuck

Update: The guy actually got back to me, agreed that 'yes - these 2d plans are woefully out of date'. He got them to export new ones, but no sooner than I tried to start downloading them, he sent another e-mail to inform me that they were updating them again. I waited for a little while - saw one update, noticed they had neglected to export the lowest floor - contacted the guy to let him know - and *now* he might be able to get me, not just architectural floor plans - but the actual design drawings showing locations of all of the devices I need to circuit. I'm not holding my breath, but I might actually be able to get something out by the end of the year.)

Next Time: The Competition

Floor Plans That Suck

 G'day SkullFuckTards!

It's day 1 billion of the ongoing pandemic clusterfuck that won't ever go away because people are stupid as fuck and need their eyeballs popped out of their heads with a spoon - but I digress.

So I'm staring at yet another attempt by some dumbass to design a floor plan in what I can only assume is Revit, but the files I received were in Microstation so it's entirely possible that it's an unholy union of the two - but I'm also looking at a set of .pdfs generated from... who the fuck knows anymore - all I see is the plan having to completely regenerate every time I pan or move because they slapped hundreds of what appear to be lovingly crafted 3d mesh chairs (including a stack of them in a storage closet... for fucks sake).

I went into the .pdf to investigate why the plans that the engineer generated were showing several rooms with no doors on the second floor - as well as zero wall penetrations for windows or doors (and no room names/numbers - because 'why the fuck even care?').

At first I thought the plans had been modified (at which point I would have to figure out which ones were newer and hope to god it didn't totally fuck everything up), but then I started to realize I was looking at even more headers - because whoever the fuck did this fucking thing does not fucking grasp the fucking concept of fucking view range.

I honestly wish I had the time and energy to track down every single goddamned one of the cocksucking morons that generate these shitty floor plans and show them what I, a lowly 'dinosaur' CAD holdout/luddite was able to make them look like (i.e. - a functional set of plans where you can actually see things like... oh I don't know... 'doors' or whatever).

It's stunning the level of unnecessary detail that is provided for things like rollup doors (including like.. every goddamned bracket holding it together), but the most basic shit is completely overlooked (oh, and a column from a different level is shown in the middle of the door opening).

It's entirely possible that they simply hit their due date, and were forced to just chuck whatever shitty looking shit their shitty software shat out into the world - but it's equally possible they have eschewed things like 'good functional plans' for 'me am big smart, me 3d model man' (or some combination of the two).

In any case, their response would most likely be to drool, interspersed with various 'herps' and 'derps' about how their process (which they've allowed themselves to be coerced into using) is obviously 'superior' to the way we used to do things, because back then you had to... actually give a shit?

Seriously, almost every 'benefit' I've heard a BIMtard throw at me involves 'we don't have to do x or y anymore', basically meaning they aren't spending the time and effort to actually think about the project, and are just expecting their fancy (and expensive) software to figure it all out for them.

It's fucking embarrassing to see the state of the industry at this point - and these aren't just some shitty throw-away strip-mall projects either, these plans are being generated for large-scale commercial, industrial, government, and other types of projects - and they just look like unwashed assholes once you get past the 'ooh ahh' of how much unnecessary crap they shove into the plans and notice that the fundamentals are just... not fucking there.

Once I turn off (or more often simply delete) their massively over-detailed landscape furniture and other components, and start looking at the basic layouts, the holes in their designs immediately become apparent.

Then I get to manually fix just... dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of places where I'm... just not going to allow my drawings to look like this.  No.  Not today, not tomorrow, and I don't give a fuck how long it takes me - EVER.

Like I said, the only thing I wish I could do is put my finished plans next to theirs - grab them by their skulls and force them to look at the difference.  Then when they open their mouths to say literally anything at all other than 'I will strive to do better sir', I will bounce their fucking heads off the table until they lose consciousness, and then piss on them.

Fuck.  These.  People.

Sincerely,

-SkullFuck

Next Time: Still Getting Skullfucked