Blankety Blank Blank Blank...

Just when I thought Revit was the lowest Autodesk could go - I hear about a 'program' (using that term in the loosest possible context) that has apparently been rattling around in Autodesk's 'portfolio of suites' for the last four years or so called 'ReCap' (apparently short for 'Reality Capture').

It's not surprising that Autodesk could take something with as much potential as 3D Scanning and Photogrammetry and turn it into a cloud-based clusterfuck (that charges 'credits').  A little online searching found more questions about what people were using to replace it with than anything else.

Apparently there was another program called 'ReMake' that was actually functional, and they couldn't have that, so they decided to pop a ReCap in that ass (sorry, I couldn't resist) - and, of course now that everything is 'subscription based', once it's gone - it's fucking gone.

While reading the comments on the Autodesk ReCap forum (which has a terrible format, is slow as fuck, and is just... so fucking packed full of Autodesk staff making false promises and informing users of functionality that is being removed), I got an eerie feeling that I've been here before.

Oh yeah - they are almost identical to Revit forums.

The only difference is that people seem to be a little more united in their derision.  Oh - there are 'true believers' here too, but they seem to be more of the 'please sir, could I have some more' variety than a cult of cock-gobblers with chips on their shoulders.

Interestingly, the last new thread was from an Autodesk employee on 9/20 informing users that 'project cleanup and object mesh' feature has been removed, and the previous dozen or so were also from Autodesk employees (some responding to their own posts).

Scrolling further down you start to see people posting their issues, only to have their questions/concerns replied to with more questions or the classic 'known bug , working on that, maybe in the next relase' type of nonsense that Revit users are so used to.

Considering the apparent breakdown of this forum, it wouldn't surprise me if 'ReCap' itself wasn't being 'ReCycled' into another program so that Autodesk can stop supporting it and sell people another license.

What's especially amusing to me about the whole thing is that the people working in the industry that is driving this type of technology are sinking ungodly amounts of money into equipment, software, and time (just so much time ya'll), in order to reproduce things that already exist in reality.

I can see the point to it, but only just barely - because when it takes more time, money, and mental effort to create the final project than if you just used 3D design software to reproduce it, then what the fuck do you think you have actually gained?  Oh - and if you don't maintain a license, you can't even access your own shit!

I'm a bit cynical - because over the years I've seen so many attempts at automating processes, only to get worse results, or require someone who knows what the fuck they are doing to go out and undo the mess.  It's also frightening, because people who know what the fuck they are doing are getting in dangerously short supply, and people aren't bothering to learn anything from them.

At the risk of sounding like 'the old guy' for just a minute - I'm going to blame it on staring at their goddamned phones and tablets all the time while trying to get out of doing actual work.  It's ironic, because all of these devices we carry around are intended to improve our ability to communicate, but in practice, they are making people more isolated and putting them in echo chambers.

I've seen more get accomplished in a 15 minute meeting with paper and pen than in three weeks of jerking off to the latest and greatest technology.  I'm no fucking luddite, but you can't tell me I'm wrong.  Walk into damn near any engineering office anywhere and peek into conference rooms/offices/cubicles, and you'll see the same fucking thing.

I've seen technology put to good use - but I've also seen it thrown up as a smoke screen of buzzwords and bullshit.

And all I can say is FUCK THAT SHIT.

-ckSkullfu

Next Time: All In Together Now

Revderps

 

Welcome to the latest edition of 'Revderps' where we look at yet another embarrasing example of a 'coordinated' set of drawings (that were sadly issued for construction)!  The winner this week is an architectural/engineering firm whose principals are apparently more concerned about adding letters after their names than with actually looking at their garbage output.

Gaze upon this glorious restroom, that through the magic of modern engineering and design, has a spare toilet wedged into the wall of an adjacent storage closet (in addition to having a pair of toilets in each stall for those times when those girls REALLY NEED TO SHIT!!!)

 

The boys room was no better - with a combination  toilet/urinal stall - I thought this was a mistake at first, but then I realized it was actually a feature for those times when you start taking a piss, think you just need to fart, but then panic and realize that you desperately need to take a shit.



Obviously these little gems were the result of the Architecture team putting their own toilets into their model, then changing the number of stalls (and the size of the bathrooms and adjacent storage rooms) and not bothering to tell anyone.  It was such a ignorant fuckup that I actually didn't even notice the receptacles dangling off in space at first.

Until I saw that, I was almost willing to give whoever the fuck did these drawings the benefit of the doubt, since we are obviously seeing what Revit exported into CAD, and it's entirely possible that it didn't actually go out like that - but now there is little doubt in my mind that this exact clusterfuck (and god knows what else) was issued as is.

Funniest of all was the Civil plan - which was still showing the original stall layouts (since they were using an outdated plan that the 'Revit Gods' never deemed to update).  Now, Civil generally doesn't give a flying fuck about stalls, numbers of toilets, etc. (but they do care about doors lining up with sidewalks, sewer/gas/water pipes lining up with service entrances, etc.).

Hilariously enough (as the Electrical Design guy who fucking hated Revit, and given the opportunity would simply export the Architectural plan and do my work in ACAD) it often fell to me to be the one to notice that the Architects (and M & P) weren't coordinating jack or shit with Civil - despite them being in the SAME FUCKING BUILDING.

I can't tell you how many times I saw wasted effort and last minute runarounds due to this lack of communication (and fucks given).  Unfortunately the people on the Civil team were rather 'civil' (ha) and wouldn't beat an Architect half to death, so it is unlikely that this will ever change.  Even if the Civil team requested a weekly plan update (which would be, just like, so hard to export from Revit guys - you don't even know...) it would almost certainly come down to those last minute changes.

If you've never watched what Civil Engineers/Designers have to put up with - trying to cram buildings, parking spaces, sidewalks, services, setbacks, easements, drainage, water detention/retention, etc. etc. onto properties that are TOO FUCKING SMALL, only to have a Revitard come through like a bull in a china shop - it's really amazing that they are able to hold it together.

On a related note, some Skullfuck fans have been commenting regarding the financial status of Autodesk - which has been shedding employees and closing offices for the last couple of years, seems to be having trouble turning a profit, despite the supposed success of its 'subscription' model (which is going, just, so well guys)



I honestly don't see them going anywhere anytime soon, but there is little doubt that they are inflating their numbers, because no company that is doing as well as they claim to be doing has to resort to the kinds of layoffs that they have had to.  There's also no doubt that they took the big-ass corporate tax-break and bought back at least some of their own stock (as most other corporations have done).

The only thing that will 'trickle down' is shittier and shittier software.

And that's why we say 'Fuck Autodesk', 'Fuck Revit', and if you don't like it 'FUCK YOU!'

-kSkullfuc

Next Time:Cap'n Crock

Come On In - The Water Is AAAAAAARGH!!!!!

Just another day here in paradise.

So, for the last few days, any time I've been walking past our break room - which has been converted into a temporary Revit enslavement camp (er... 'training center), I've been bemusedly stopping off for a second to listen to what these poor fucking saps that work for the other firm sharing our building are being told about how they will proceed at slamming their dicks in their desk drawers repeatedly for the foreseeable future.

I was surprised to find that the girl doing the training was an actual Revitard (and not just some poor shmuck reading off a power point presentation), and when I finally had a chance to talk to one of the new batch of Revit dick-sockets this morning, he told me she claims to have been using it since the early 2000's (which would predate Autodesk picking it up in 2002).

It sounded a bit questionable - since she didn't look old enough to have been using 3d design software 18 years ago (and I can't even imagine what a mess it would've been at that point).  At any rate, she was able to strap their heads down and get their eyesockets ready for Revit dick insertion - which she did for several days in a row.

The Revit Padawans had this glazed look of 'bleep blorp too much information input bzzzz'  I figured the best I could do was give them a list of things to make sure to ask before they were cut loose.  Supposedly they will have access to the trainer for a little while after she leaves, so when the 14 billion questions they will have (and the other 14 billion they won't even know how to ask) will be summarily ignored.

I let them know that I would be available at any time to laugh and point at them should they run into any issues on their first Revit project (that almost certainly doesn't have enough of a budget or schedule to be done in Revit).

In the meantime, I ran across this beautiful piece of prose: "A Fuckbonnet For Our Time" written by an individual named David Simon to Twitter co-founder/CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured at the top of that link) who (the best I can tell) had his account blocked over one post (#10 out of #18) where he says 'so die of boils @Jack'.

I believe the point he was trying to make was that this glorified message board (that, in the interest of full disclosure, I don't use - primarily due to it being full of what I lovingly refer to as 'twats') has been, and continues to be used, to amplify the voices of racists, anti-semites, and other festering  shit-gibbon denizens of the Interwebs (while generating profits for Dorsey and others).

Having spent considerable time on other message boards, chat rooms, and comment sections - I've seen countless examples of this kind of behavior from everyone ranging from bored kids (who rarely understand what they are saying), trolls (who get their kicks from getting reactions out of people) to full-grown 'adults' who actually espouse the fucked up views they spout online (and/or in real life).

There is often an uneven response to the types of conflicts that arise when the 'true believers' get on a roll - and other well-meaning users attempt to (in Simons' words):"tell the fucker he’s a piece of shit and should die of throat clap" only to find their own comments flagged and accounts blocked/deleted.

Of course, removing even the most disgusting content results in howls of 'censorship' and threats of litigation (while they simultaneously paint themselves 'victims' when people point out exactly what kind of shitty human beings they are).  There's no simple solution, and monitoring the sheer amount of content on sites like this can be a daunting task.

I'm honestly surprised that, despite having heard from a handful of Autodesk fuckheads over the years, I've never actually received any kind of cease and desist threat (it's possible they either view my writing as parody or just another stupid/immature person on the internet that they don't want to give the pleasure to).

Speaking of which - fuck Revit, fuck Autodesk, and fuck anyone buying, using, training people on, or otherwise involved with Revit.

Twice.

-Skullfuck

Next Time: The Derpies!

Grab Some Motherfucking Popcorn

Oh Glory Be...

There is an engineering firm that shares the same office building as my company, and one of their engineers dropped by today to ask if anyone from our office would like to sit in on a Revit training seminar they are having tomorrow.

When I got done laughing, I found out that apparently they are taking on their very first Revit job ever, and HOLY JESUS are they about to get buttfucked into another dimension.

I talked with the engineer for a few minutes (I admitted that I'm not the most objective person when it comes to Revit), and it was pretty apparent that neither he, nor anyone who works for him, have any idea how royally screwed they are.

He said that he had been told to 'forget everything you know about cad', which is the understatement of the year.  'Forget everything you know - period' would be more accurate - and 'Just fucking forget it' would be spot on.

I mentioned the large files that he would be dealing with - and he told me that it's all 'cloud based' (at which point I started laughing so hard I had to use a wall to keep from falling down (accidentally switching off some lights).

I told him I hoped he had plans to upgrade his computers (which I know for a fact haven't been upgraded in quite some time - and are nowhere near capable of handling Revit).  I didn't mention the decrepit state of his network server - or the fact that his Internet connection is about to get reamed out.

I let him know about how Autodesk bought Revit from 'Charles River Software' rather than develop it from scratch (or simply give ACAD BIM abilities without breaking it's basic functionality), and how they did an end run around our collective industries to get it included as a deliverable by clients.

I just hope he's getting a REALLY good fee - because he's going to be shelling out for Revit licenses, new computers and other equipment, and then trying to figure out how to get his staff up to speed.  I offered to come by and make fun of them as they take their first baby steps on broken glass.

The only advantage I can give them is to really push for what the final deliverables need to include.  This is often left completely undefined - even by long-time Revit using firms.  This is primarily due to so few non-Revit people knowing (or caring) what the hell 'Doing It In Revit' really entails.

The fact is 'Doing It In Revit' could mean anything from 'Fully 3-D modeled self-calculating systems that are coordinated and integrated with all other disciplines' to 'Poorly slapping in a few families and finishing it up with 2D linework' (or anywhere in-between).

In my experience, almost nobody had the time to worry about what other people were doing with it because they were rushing to squeeze something even remotely passable out before (i.e. way after) the due date.

We were lucky that most of our clients did not request our Revit models, or ever actually look at them past maybe a little 'ooh' and 'ahh' walkthrough - a lot of which was faked (and had little to nothing to do with the actual building plans).

My fear (and what this engineer's fear needs to be) was always someone getting hold of the process, defining exact expectations, and then holding everyone involved's feet to the fire until they had met these expectations.

We've got at least one government client that we do work for that is psychotic when it comes to details - I mentioned them a while back when talking about how one of our equipment providers didn't have complete (or accurate) dimensions on some of their enclosures.

99.9% of the time, and probably the reason nobody ever noticed (or cared) about the oversights, these enclosures would simply show up on a job site and be installed.  The only dimension anyone cared about was the distance between the first two holes you had to drill to hand the enclosure on the wall - then everything else was gravy.

These people came back several times on the project where I took accurate measurements and provided a complete diagram of the enclosures, and kept asking for more and more detail on the diagrams showing the equipment in the panels.

Just yesterday I was going through and adding in factory provided (and in some cases installed) ribbon cables, molded plugs, etc. that they would NEVER have any reason to think about after the equipment was installed (that also junked up the diagrams).

I can't imagine if this client got ahold of Revit (if they haven't already) and started requiring different disciplines to provide their Revit models so they could be thoroughly scrubbed for any 'BIM Washing' or other (perceived) deficiencies.

Ironically, both the firm getting ready to accept the Revit dick into their eye sockets - and the psychotic client I'm describing are the same ones that required me to step in at the end of one of their massive projects and declusterfuck it - well, this time they won't have that luxury, because there's no way I'm fucking with their broke-ass Revit shit.

If they want to export it to CAD, I might consider taking a look - but when (not if) they get that far behind the eight-ball, it's going to be mega-crunch time, and I will absolutely school them on just how fucked they allowed their project to get.

The only saving grace is that my firm still has no plans to waste time with Revit - and as I've said before, the day they make the mistake of trying to convert is the day I update my Resume and GTFO.  I'm already considering a change in career (ironically one that involves 3D - but is as far removed from Revit as the East is from the West).

Anyway - Fuck Revit, yadda yadda yadda - and these poor fucks don't know what they are in for (maybe one will run across my blog when they get really frustrated and start typing combinations of 'Revit' and various curse words into Google... lol)

Sincerely,
The Laughing SkullFuck.

Next Time:Drowning In Stupidity