Thursday, December 8, 2016
Battle Hymn of the Revitpublic
GUTEN TAG FUCKTARDS!!!
I've been in an inexplicably good mood lately. Not having to use Revit or deal with Architects/Engineers - other than tangentially (and getting a raise) probably has a lot to do with that).
Then, out of the blue, some faggots start babbling about how awesome Revit is (see comments in: No Wonder This Revit Shit Eats Itself). As you can see, I made the distinct mistake of trying to defend my attitude towards Revit, rather than simply reminding myself that anyone extolling the virtues of Revit is likely to have sustained multiple severe head injuries.
They will agree with me that Revit has "a lot of messed up functionality", and have run into times where they are "wasting hours trying to figure things out" or having to "fake it" (kind of like any women unlucky enough to find themselves on the receiving end of attempted penetration from their micro-penises), but listening to them make excuses for Revit - and blaming themselves when things don't show up on a drawing (which is fine if they are only fucking themselves over - but when other people rely on your shit to be right, it's not fine) is a reminder of just how masochistic someone can willingly be.
One of my favorite bits was the claim that "when everyone is working in CAD, everyone is dumb, all the information is dumb, nothing is connected, and everything is manual input, unless you are using add-ins or other MEP functions with it, either way information is not typically active. You have zero ability to assign parameters to information, filter information efficiently, actively schedule information, or even assign formulas for schedules or blocks to add more intelligent useful information".
Holy Fucking Shit.
It's almost hard to believe that much bullshit can pour out of one person's brain - like they are repeating the Revit sales pitch they were given verbatim. Now, in theory - some of these things are great 'it's all connected', yeah - until 'it's all fucked'. Revit was ALLOWING people to fuck themselves (and by extension - me) into a hole in the ground on every single project - which is why I didn't really differentiate between Revit problems and user error.
So much of what was being done with Revit at my old firm was 'cutting edge', meaning that they were constantly experimenting with it - leading to all kinds of new and exciting ways for things to fuck up. I knew the fun was about to start anytime I saw the Revit Buttfuckery Team huddled around somebodies desk discussing something along the lines of "we've determined that the way we've been doing things doesn't open enough people up to the risk of having their whole day wasted".
Another gem is "I have found if you use just about anything third party for Revit, especially for electrical, you are definitely going to be doing it the hard way". So, in addition to being responsible for figuring out how to use Revit, I was now responsible for generating content as well - with little to no way of knowing whether something that I was doing wouldn't decide to fuck me later (as bad, if not worse than 3rd party content - or content included with Revit would).
The other problem being that I wasn't in control of what other people put into a model. I had a mechanical designer who was convinced that (at some point) they would slap mechanical units onto a drawing and it would magically populate my panel schedule (he actually said this so many times, I was starting to question whether he hadn't been replaced by a recording).
By the time I left, I was still manually entering information into my panel schedules (CAD) or manually entering information into a disconnect switch (Revit). Half of the time I would get their mechanical schedule, and immediately start spotting inconsistencies, errors, etc. (none of which I would've noticed if I just let a program fill shit out for me - and at least some of which the person making that schedule would have noticed if they were paying attention to scheduling units instead of expecting that to happen automatically as well.
Now - Revit vs. CAD stability. Revit fucking crashes - that's just a goddamned fact. It doesn't matter what kind of machine you have (the one I had before I left my last firm was a FUCKING BEAST), and while they might've managed to make it 'more stable' over time, I don't think there was a day that went by where I didn't have to deal with it locking up, throwing up some apocryphal error, or just plain eating itself.
Again, I had little to no control over how projects were started, especially after the 'one file for all' revolution. When I would bring up problems with stability, they were consistently met with an indifferent 'yeah, it does that'. Could one of you fucktards have been able to show them how to do it better? Maybe. Maybe fucking not.
In the rare event that ACAD crashes, locks up, etc. (and it is rare), in the time it takes to fire Revit up and load a model, I can have CAD up, file open, and replace any work I've lost (15 minutes max between autosaves - which still always seems to be the most productive 14 minutes and 59 seconds of the day) and then some done. Oh - and rather than 'putting my computer into a coma' pressing 'shift' while I pan does 3D orbit in ACAD - not that I ever need to do that.
Just this morning, I received a CAD file of a site plan for an almost 700,000 s.f. industrial building (that I had already designed systems for - and was waiting for the owner to quit fucking with the location of the guard shack/entrance gates so I could finish the project). I had it cleaned up and ready to issue within an hour. Revit wouldn't have even known what the fuck to do with it. Then I dove back into the 164,000 s.f. middle school I've been working on for the last couple of days (after issuing a 267,000 s.f. high school earlier this week), and at no point did I think 'Revit would've improved my ability to do this job' (even if it worked as advertised - which it doesn't).
But hey, keep on assigning formulas for schedules or blocks to add more intelligent useful information - I'll be busy putting projects out the door.
Fuck Revit.
-S.F.
Next Time: Somebody probably tries to convince me I'm wrong.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Getting Down To Business
Knock Knock Fuckheads!
Last time we had a little fun bitching about Microsoft Word - which, in the meantime, I used to fix up the formatting on a few more papers for my wife. Unsurprisingly it came up with new and exciting ways to fuck things up, every one of which I was able to overcome. She actually used the template her professor provided, which (ironically) had things broken in it (sheets weren't numbered correctly, etc.), so I got to learn a bit more about how things work. It had one fairly impressive feature - a table of contents that automatically populated based on headings (although nothing I couldn't do in a few seconds and not have to worry about it automatically fucking things up).
Back at my job, It's amazing to think that I've been here for an entire year - which (combined with the two months I took off before jumping on this opportunity) gives me just over 14 months of Revit clean time. It's still inconceivable how much damage was done to my psyche having to deal with an army of fuckwits trying to convince me that the poorly designed and implemented piece software that they've had jammed up their ass would be a good fit for me as well.
This company is configured quite a bit differently than my previous one - which did reviews twice a year, one of which would be accompanied by a raise based on performance (and, despite having two middle fingers up at Revit the whole time, I would always get one). Here, it was up to me to go to the owner and convince them that I deserve more money. Fortunately I've made a good impression on everyone I work with, and I'm on good terms with the owner (we ended up talking about classic cars for the majority of the time).
I didn't get quite what I was hoping for, but it was still fairly substantial (enough to keep me from immediately going back to job hunting), and since we've been busy, I've been averaging 5 hours of overtime a week, which puts me almost back to where I was at before (especially since my old job had switched me over to salary - meaning no more overtime). And, of course, the fact that I can simply do my job, and not have some moron standing in the way of my ability to be productive is worth an almost incalculable sum.
I was also surprised a few months back to find out that I have been amassing considerably more paid time off than I was originally led to believe - which means I'll be taking off damn near the entire end of the year (and still rolling some over). This job isn't the be all end all, but it's been a good opportunity for me to learn more useful stuff to add to my resume (as opposed to just slapping a piece of software on my list of skills - which I will most likely remove at some point in time in the future).
One of these days I'm going to figure out what I want to do with my life, but one thing I can guarantee - it won't involve Revit, because fuck Revit.
-SF
Next Time: Bring the Butthurt
Last time we had a little fun bitching about Microsoft Word - which, in the meantime, I used to fix up the formatting on a few more papers for my wife. Unsurprisingly it came up with new and exciting ways to fuck things up, every one of which I was able to overcome. She actually used the template her professor provided, which (ironically) had things broken in it (sheets weren't numbered correctly, etc.), so I got to learn a bit more about how things work. It had one fairly impressive feature - a table of contents that automatically populated based on headings (although nothing I couldn't do in a few seconds and not have to worry about it automatically fucking things up).
Back at my job, It's amazing to think that I've been here for an entire year - which (combined with the two months I took off before jumping on this opportunity) gives me just over 14 months of Revit clean time. It's still inconceivable how much damage was done to my psyche having to deal with an army of fuckwits trying to convince me that the poorly designed and implemented piece software that they've had jammed up their ass would be a good fit for me as well.
This company is configured quite a bit differently than my previous one - which did reviews twice a year, one of which would be accompanied by a raise based on performance (and, despite having two middle fingers up at Revit the whole time, I would always get one). Here, it was up to me to go to the owner and convince them that I deserve more money. Fortunately I've made a good impression on everyone I work with, and I'm on good terms with the owner (we ended up talking about classic cars for the majority of the time).
I didn't get quite what I was hoping for, but it was still fairly substantial (enough to keep me from immediately going back to job hunting), and since we've been busy, I've been averaging 5 hours of overtime a week, which puts me almost back to where I was at before (especially since my old job had switched me over to salary - meaning no more overtime). And, of course, the fact that I can simply do my job, and not have some moron standing in the way of my ability to be productive is worth an almost incalculable sum.
I was also surprised a few months back to find out that I have been amassing considerably more paid time off than I was originally led to believe - which means I'll be taking off damn near the entire end of the year (and still rolling some over). This job isn't the be all end all, but it's been a good opportunity for me to learn more useful stuff to add to my resume (as opposed to just slapping a piece of software on my list of skills - which I will most likely remove at some point in time in the future).
One of these days I'm going to figure out what I want to do with my life, but one thing I can guarantee - it won't involve Revit, because fuck Revit.
-SF
Next Time: Bring the Butthurt
Friday, November 11, 2016
Microsoft Word 2016 Can Suck My Dick
Bonjour Le Skullfuckers!!!
I figured with Revit out of the picture, I should probably turn my ire to my second least favorite software company - Microsoft. They've obviously sucked a lot of dick for a lot of years, and don't seem to be showing any signs of slowing down (if anything, they are doubling down on it).
This became especially obvious when my wife recently started a Doctorate program, which seems to mostly revolve around writing fucktons of papers. Fortunately for her she is an excellent writer, but technology seems to fucking hate her - exacerbated by the fact that most of it is designed by half-wit morons whose idea of 'user friendly' is hiding extremely important functionality behind a wall of ribbons (sound familiar?)
For her, if something can go wrong with a computer, piece of software, or printer - it will, and at the worst possible time. I could use the exact same shit all day long without fail, but the second she sits down, it's a goddamned miracle when it doesn't catch on fire. She's highly intelligent, and isn't a technophobe, but her experience has left her without a lot of confidence that she won't get screwed over somehow.
The format they have to use for their papers is different than what she is used to, and despite being given a template (that doesn't seem to work correctly - probably because it was made in an older version of Word) and having a book that shows how everything is supposed to look, it still took over an hour last night to get everything formatted correctly - while every strange fucking thing that could come out of the woodwork seemed to be conspiring against her.
Now that we've done it all, I'm going to make this paper into a 'template' (not one to be applied, just one to open up and start a new paper - with all of the headers, numbering, spacing, etc. already in place and ready for editing/writing). Now, I'm no 'Word Guru' (I prefer OpenOffice - both due to it being free - and not a Microsoft product) but I've used it for as long as it has existed - and while I don't tend to use a lot of the formatting functions (preferring to stick to manually formatting) I have had to delve into them more than once.
The first thing we ran into was that she had several sources that were hyperlinks, and they wouldn't break where she wanted them to (they would jump down to the next line - and only THEN would they wrap). They didn't have to stay hyperlinks, but even after turning it off, it would not allow me to break it where I wanted to - forcing me to manually type the part that I wanted to stay on the first line, then delete what I had typed from the rest of the 'link'.
Then - lo and behold, the line spacing was fucked up because it was taking it upon itself to insert a paragraph symbol, and deleting it would cause it to go back to wrapping incorrectly (a little fiddling around and I found that I could put an extra space at the end to make it stay put and keep the line spacing the same.
After I fixed the first link, I figured I would go online and see if anyone had a better way to do it - the first one I ran across was to insert a special character called an 'no width optional break' and it... didn't fucking work. At all. I went ahead and fixed the rest manually - and later I ran across a suggestion to use a no-width empty character (I'll try that the next time I get pulled in to assist).
Next was setting up the header(s). I had actually gone through the process once, so I was fairly confident I could do it again. Started by using the header that showed up at the top of the page, but of course that's wrong. Went into 'Insert' and 'Header', and was off to the races. Right up until I accidentally held down 'shift' for too long and the stupid 'sticky keys' menu popped up - then disappeared and left me unable to type (it would just 'tick tick') requiring a reboot (and then a quick search on how to make that shit go away permanently).
Each issue that I had to fix was stupider than the last (constantly having to fix line spacing and other 'auto-formatting' that needed to take a fucking hike), but I finally beat it - because the one indispensable tool I have is the fact that I'm goddamned relentless when it comes to figuring shit out, which was one of the reasons Revit left such a bad taste in my mouth. People would get the incorrect impression that I just didn't want to learn something 'different'. The reality was that it wasn't just 'different' it was FUCKED.
At least with Microsoft products like Windows and Word I can go online and find where other people have had the same problems (and have a 50/50 chance of finding a solution that actually works). With Revit it was a wasteland of nothingness - especially at first. But even years later, I would try searching for a solution to an issue and the vast majority of the hits were either out of date (and/or didn't address the problem) or were for places offering 'Revit training' (i.e. - pay us money to show you the useless tutorials that are already available for free online.
I came to the conclusion last night that the only reason that these people get away with putting out shit software with shitty 'features' is that they are safely esconced somewhere that I can't get hold of them and slam their fucking hands into a drawer repeatedly. It's pretty much the same with everything else - faceless corporations who don't give a fuck about who they screw over, and a populous willing to shrug and say 'it is what it is'.
Fuck that.
And if you think like that - then FUCK YOU.
Sincerely,
S.F.
Next Time: Getting Down To Business
I figured with Revit out of the picture, I should probably turn my ire to my second least favorite software company - Microsoft. They've obviously sucked a lot of dick for a lot of years, and don't seem to be showing any signs of slowing down (if anything, they are doubling down on it).
This became especially obvious when my wife recently started a Doctorate program, which seems to mostly revolve around writing fucktons of papers. Fortunately for her she is an excellent writer, but technology seems to fucking hate her - exacerbated by the fact that most of it is designed by half-wit morons whose idea of 'user friendly' is hiding extremely important functionality behind a wall of ribbons (sound familiar?)
For her, if something can go wrong with a computer, piece of software, or printer - it will, and at the worst possible time. I could use the exact same shit all day long without fail, but the second she sits down, it's a goddamned miracle when it doesn't catch on fire. She's highly intelligent, and isn't a technophobe, but her experience has left her without a lot of confidence that she won't get screwed over somehow.
The format they have to use for their papers is different than what she is used to, and despite being given a template (that doesn't seem to work correctly - probably because it was made in an older version of Word) and having a book that shows how everything is supposed to look, it still took over an hour last night to get everything formatted correctly - while every strange fucking thing that could come out of the woodwork seemed to be conspiring against her.
Now that we've done it all, I'm going to make this paper into a 'template' (not one to be applied, just one to open up and start a new paper - with all of the headers, numbering, spacing, etc. already in place and ready for editing/writing). Now, I'm no 'Word Guru' (I prefer OpenOffice - both due to it being free - and not a Microsoft product) but I've used it for as long as it has existed - and while I don't tend to use a lot of the formatting functions (preferring to stick to manually formatting) I have had to delve into them more than once.
The first thing we ran into was that she had several sources that were hyperlinks, and they wouldn't break where she wanted them to (they would jump down to the next line - and only THEN would they wrap). They didn't have to stay hyperlinks, but even after turning it off, it would not allow me to break it where I wanted to - forcing me to manually type the part that I wanted to stay on the first line, then delete what I had typed from the rest of the 'link'.
Then - lo and behold, the line spacing was fucked up because it was taking it upon itself to insert a paragraph symbol, and deleting it would cause it to go back to wrapping incorrectly (a little fiddling around and I found that I could put an extra space at the end to make it stay put and keep the line spacing the same.
After I fixed the first link, I figured I would go online and see if anyone had a better way to do it - the first one I ran across was to insert a special character called an 'no width optional break' and it... didn't fucking work. At all. I went ahead and fixed the rest manually - and later I ran across a suggestion to use a no-width empty character (I'll try that the next time I get pulled in to assist).
Next was setting up the header(s). I had actually gone through the process once, so I was fairly confident I could do it again. Started by using the header that showed up at the top of the page, but of course that's wrong. Went into 'Insert' and 'Header', and was off to the races. Right up until I accidentally held down 'shift' for too long and the stupid 'sticky keys' menu popped up - then disappeared and left me unable to type (it would just 'tick tick') requiring a reboot (and then a quick search on how to make that shit go away permanently).
Each issue that I had to fix was stupider than the last (constantly having to fix line spacing and other 'auto-formatting' that needed to take a fucking hike), but I finally beat it - because the one indispensable tool I have is the fact that I'm goddamned relentless when it comes to figuring shit out, which was one of the reasons Revit left such a bad taste in my mouth. People would get the incorrect impression that I just didn't want to learn something 'different'. The reality was that it wasn't just 'different' it was FUCKED.
At least with Microsoft products like Windows and Word I can go online and find where other people have had the same problems (and have a 50/50 chance of finding a solution that actually works). With Revit it was a wasteland of nothingness - especially at first. But even years later, I would try searching for a solution to an issue and the vast majority of the hits were either out of date (and/or didn't address the problem) or were for places offering 'Revit training' (i.e. - pay us money to show you the useless tutorials that are already available for free online.
I came to the conclusion last night that the only reason that these people get away with putting out shit software with shitty 'features' is that they are safely esconced somewhere that I can't get hold of them and slam their fucking hands into a drawer repeatedly. It's pretty much the same with everything else - faceless corporations who don't give a fuck about who they screw over, and a populous willing to shrug and say 'it is what it is'.
Fuck that.
And if you think like that - then FUCK YOU.
Sincerely,
S.F.
Next Time: Getting Down To Business
Monday, November 7, 2016
No Wonder This Revit Shit Fucking Eats Itself
Yo Fuckheads,
I was going to waste my time talking about this bullshit election - but that's depressing, plus I'm working on my third massive High School project in the last few months, and this thing was Revited to the goddamned gills before being sent to me as a CAD file. A lot of the exterior windows/storefront have so much fucking detail (cross-sections of extrusions, fasteners, brackets, glass, etc.) that just to change everything to my background layer (without losing linetype information) required grabbing dozens and dozens of little bites.
I'm sure whoever modeled it was busy sucking their own dick over how awesome it was that they could grab views of all of the various connections to use as details and just note them up, and probably set their larger views to lower detail, but when I get the thing it's just black blobs as far as the eye can see, (and literal fucktons of extra linework - ONE GODDAMNED corner joint has 2456 lines).
Hell - one 52' wall (that has an exploded hexagonal grid hatching in it for some reason - possibly some kind of insulated glass?) contained nearly 80,000 lines. Obviously Revit handles objects differently than what I'm seeing in the exported file, but as many people have pointed out, EVERY SINGLE PERSON using a Revit model has to be aware of how much shit their families are bringing to the table (even if you are just linking a file) to keep it from turning into a bloated clusterfuck that crashes every time you look at it wrong.
I'm sure if the person who exported this file gave a shit (instead of most likely opining why anyone wouldn't just do everything in Revit) they could have set up a background specifically for export that didn't have 4 trillion extra lines that add zero value to the plan to anyone who isn't an Architect (and questionable value for those who are). Even then, there are always fucked up view problems, overlapping shit due to multiple disciplines. Overlapping (or more amusingly - slightly offset) architectural + mechanical families for toilets/sinks/etc. is a common one - I deleted a couple from this plan as well.
A stylized plan with a little extra detail is cool - and I will leave one alone (other than a little tidying up) if it isn't horribly bloated. I can remember a time when I could select an entire floor plan (sometimes even multiple floors of a building) and change layer all at once from properties. I'm not sure what the upward limit is - but it's in excess of what is necessary to depict a floor plan, that's for damn sure. I've talked (at great length) about how I get a little OCD when I start cleaning one up - but there is nothing quite like having a super-clean background to work on.
Keeping the file size reasonable also guarantees that the file will open/save quickly - change views quickly (not sure why, but the last one would take forever to switch paper space views - and I'm making damn sure this one doesn't go the same route). Someone else set that one up (and had started this one) and while I did some cleanup on the other one, I'm going to beat every last bit of unnecessary shit out of this one. There were a few other systems that the other guy was going to leave in just in case we pick them up later, but I'm ditching them (we can always bring them back in from the original drawings we received).
What's great is that even though I like to complain about the garbage files I receive - I can slap on my headphones, crank up some death metal, and fix any stupid fucked up piece of shit that some moron sent me with ACAD. Nobody is going to build anything off of my drawings, so as long as I'm accurately representing what the people installing my systems need to see, then I've got a lot of leeway. Even if it takes the majority of a day to get it ready to go forward - I used to spend the majority of a day trying to get one stupid fucking thing to work in Revit (on an annoyingly regular basis) and that didn't guarantee I wouldn't actually be further into a fucking hole than when I started.
I was highly amused by a recent response to a post I did back in December of 2013 while I was still under the Revit bootheel. Some idiotic fucking glitch (that came out of nowhere) was making it to where I suddenly couldn't add light fixtures to a circuit. Apparently, despite multiple new releases of Revit since then, they were running into exactly the same issue. It seems like it was limited to one file (could have been one of the thousands and thousands of unnecessary settings - but both I and others went through it repeatedly with no success, leaving me having to fake it in).
But hey - at least they've got 'sketchy lines' now (oh, and the ability to make stuff in the foreground stand out better).
Fucking Fuckwits.
Fuck Autodesk, Fuck Revit, Fuck anyone forcing good, hardworking individuals into using Revit, and if you don't like it - GET FUCKED.
Sincerely,
S.F.
Next Time - I go after Motherfucking Microsoft Word (it will make more sense when you read it).
I was going to waste my time talking about this bullshit election - but that's depressing, plus I'm working on my third massive High School project in the last few months, and this thing was Revited to the goddamned gills before being sent to me as a CAD file. A lot of the exterior windows/storefront have so much fucking detail (cross-sections of extrusions, fasteners, brackets, glass, etc.) that just to change everything to my background layer (without losing linetype information) required grabbing dozens and dozens of little bites.
I'm sure whoever modeled it was busy sucking their own dick over how awesome it was that they could grab views of all of the various connections to use as details and just note them up, and probably set their larger views to lower detail, but when I get the thing it's just black blobs as far as the eye can see, (and literal fucktons of extra linework - ONE GODDAMNED corner joint has 2456 lines).
Hell - one 52' wall (that has an exploded hexagonal grid hatching in it for some reason - possibly some kind of insulated glass?) contained nearly 80,000 lines. Obviously Revit handles objects differently than what I'm seeing in the exported file, but as many people have pointed out, EVERY SINGLE PERSON using a Revit model has to be aware of how much shit their families are bringing to the table (even if you are just linking a file) to keep it from turning into a bloated clusterfuck that crashes every time you look at it wrong.
I'm sure if the person who exported this file gave a shit (instead of most likely opining why anyone wouldn't just do everything in Revit) they could have set up a background specifically for export that didn't have 4 trillion extra lines that add zero value to the plan to anyone who isn't an Architect (and questionable value for those who are). Even then, there are always fucked up view problems, overlapping shit due to multiple disciplines. Overlapping (or more amusingly - slightly offset) architectural + mechanical families for toilets/sinks/etc. is a common one - I deleted a couple from this plan as well.
A stylized plan with a little extra detail is cool - and I will leave one alone (other than a little tidying up) if it isn't horribly bloated. I can remember a time when I could select an entire floor plan (sometimes even multiple floors of a building) and change layer all at once from properties. I'm not sure what the upward limit is - but it's in excess of what is necessary to depict a floor plan, that's for damn sure. I've talked (at great length) about how I get a little OCD when I start cleaning one up - but there is nothing quite like having a super-clean background to work on.
Keeping the file size reasonable also guarantees that the file will open/save quickly - change views quickly (not sure why, but the last one would take forever to switch paper space views - and I'm making damn sure this one doesn't go the same route). Someone else set that one up (and had started this one) and while I did some cleanup on the other one, I'm going to beat every last bit of unnecessary shit out of this one. There were a few other systems that the other guy was going to leave in just in case we pick them up later, but I'm ditching them (we can always bring them back in from the original drawings we received).
What's great is that even though I like to complain about the garbage files I receive - I can slap on my headphones, crank up some death metal, and fix any stupid fucked up piece of shit that some moron sent me with ACAD. Nobody is going to build anything off of my drawings, so as long as I'm accurately representing what the people installing my systems need to see, then I've got a lot of leeway. Even if it takes the majority of a day to get it ready to go forward - I used to spend the majority of a day trying to get one stupid fucking thing to work in Revit (on an annoyingly regular basis) and that didn't guarantee I wouldn't actually be further into a fucking hole than when I started.
I was highly amused by a recent response to a post I did back in December of 2013 while I was still under the Revit bootheel. Some idiotic fucking glitch (that came out of nowhere) was making it to where I suddenly couldn't add light fixtures to a circuit. Apparently, despite multiple new releases of Revit since then, they were running into exactly the same issue. It seems like it was limited to one file (could have been one of the thousands and thousands of unnecessary settings - but both I and others went through it repeatedly with no success, leaving me having to fake it in).
But hey - at least they've got 'sketchy lines' now (oh, and the ability to make stuff in the foreground stand out better).
Fucking Fuckwits.
Fuck Autodesk, Fuck Revit, Fuck anyone forcing good, hardworking individuals into using Revit, and if you don't like it - GET FUCKED.
Sincerely,
S.F.
Next Time - I go after Motherfucking Microsoft Word (it will make more sense when you read it).
Friday, November 4, 2016
On Your Mark, Get Set, Achieve 'Real Speed-to-Market Success?'
Guten Tag Skullfriends!
I can't remember what I was doing the other day - but I ran across this 'design-build' company's website:
http://www.connectwithbutler.
Their incessant use of buzzwords/phrases ('employing collaborative upfront design', 'integrated 'project delivery', etc.) immediately made me think of the B.S. generator a reader had brought to my attention: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
Despite this, they actually make a few good points when it comes to how projects go from poorly thought out concept to horribly implemented design.
They start off with some 'Preliminary Questions to Consider':
1) Do you have the right decision makers at the table?
The answer to this question is almost always 'not only no - but fuck no'. The people you ARE guaranteed to have are 'The Dreamer' (who has grandiose ideas - but doesn't have any concept of things like budget, schedule, etc.), 'The Unrealist' (who really should know better - but still thinks that everything is going to be much cheaper than it demonstrably will be), 'The Dabbler' (who shouldn't fucking be there, but has inserted himself into the process, and if not carefully monitored, will throw the whole thing off course - also known as 'The Interloper'), and if you are really really lucky - you might get 'The Guy With The Purse Strings' (really the only guy you should ever actually pay attention to).
2) Are they a collaborative team that can work together seamlessly and simultaneously or are the linearly dependent following a step-by-step, on track path?
I'm assuming they meant 'are *they* linearly dependent' but were too busy cramming in buzzwords to worry about spelling/grammar. At any rate - it's almost a given in every case that people are going to be working simultaneously at both the design and construction level - the only 'step-by-step' you run into is when the aforementioned interlopers and other fuckups won't stop changing shit, causing the 'seamless' approach to turn into a long, drug out clusterfuck. Note - this happens regardless of how much work you do on the front end to prevent it.
3) Do your construction suppliers have the 'optimal value chain' to deliver a 'lean project cycle time' (whew)?
With any experienced firm, there is considerable attention paid to long lead-time items and coordinating their arrival on-site to where they won't hold up work (or be in the way/require storage). Again, this goes to shit due to the lack of understanding on the part of people who just will not stop fucking with the design WAY after the point where they needed to fuck right off.
I've been in so many meetings where people keep coming up with 'brilliant' ideas about how to 'improve' a design (typically with the aim of saving money) that get shot down once we force them to wrap their heads around 1) The fact that you can't just go pick up some of this shit at a Home Depot, and 2) The correct shit is already on-site (if not installed or in the process of being installed.
The assumption that you can swap out 'apples for apples' with different systems is another classic mistake. We regularly run into situations where there might only be one source for a device that will do what we need it to do. There might be other solutions, but they quickly become untenable due to the need for extra pieces/parts/etc. to interface a competitors devices with any given system.
The simplest solution is (almost) always best - but people want to layer on unnecessary bullshit to make themselves feel 'part of the project'. A firm can talk all day about how adept they are at coordinating a project - but I have yet to run across even a single one where one or more (if not all) of the people I described above to come crashing through at the most inopportune moment and drag a project off schedule.
I completed a massive warehouse/production facility a while back, and then we got the contract to do security equipment. No big deal - I knocked it out in short order, but we didn't receive a cad site plan - which was fortunate, because it turned out to have changed (and despite having requested it two weeks ago - the owner won't stop making changes for long enough for me to get it.
Hilariously, they keep operating under the delusion that the delivery date is still firm, even though they are the ones holding up our ability to complete it. That's pretty standard though - as is everyone's lack of willingness to confront yet another out of control client.
As always - if you stand in the way of my ability to do my goddamned job, you can take a long fucking hike to 'Gofuckyourselfville'.
Sinsquarely, SF
Next time: No Fucking Wonder This Shit Eats Itself
I can't remember what I was doing the other day - but I ran across this 'design-build' company's website:
http://www.connectwithbutler.
Their incessant use of buzzwords/phrases ('employing collaborative upfront design', 'integrated 'project delivery', etc.) immediately made me think of the B.S. generator a reader had brought to my attention: http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
Despite this, they actually make a few good points when it comes to how projects go from poorly thought out concept to horribly implemented design.
They start off with some 'Preliminary Questions to Consider':
1) Do you have the right decision makers at the table?
The answer to this question is almost always 'not only no - but fuck no'. The people you ARE guaranteed to have are 'The Dreamer' (who has grandiose ideas - but doesn't have any concept of things like budget, schedule, etc.), 'The Unrealist' (who really should know better - but still thinks that everything is going to be much cheaper than it demonstrably will be), 'The Dabbler' (who shouldn't fucking be there, but has inserted himself into the process, and if not carefully monitored, will throw the whole thing off course - also known as 'The Interloper'), and if you are really really lucky - you might get 'The Guy With The Purse Strings' (really the only guy you should ever actually pay attention to).
2) Are they a collaborative team that can work together seamlessly and simultaneously or are the linearly dependent following a step-by-step, on track path?
I'm assuming they meant 'are *they* linearly dependent' but were too busy cramming in buzzwords to worry about spelling/grammar. At any rate - it's almost a given in every case that people are going to be working simultaneously at both the design and construction level - the only 'step-by-step' you run into is when the aforementioned interlopers and other fuckups won't stop changing shit, causing the 'seamless' approach to turn into a long, drug out clusterfuck. Note - this happens regardless of how much work you do on the front end to prevent it.
3) Do your construction suppliers have the 'optimal value chain' to deliver a 'lean project cycle time' (whew)?
With any experienced firm, there is considerable attention paid to long lead-time items and coordinating their arrival on-site to where they won't hold up work (or be in the way/require storage). Again, this goes to shit due to the lack of understanding on the part of people who just will not stop fucking with the design WAY after the point where they needed to fuck right off.
I've been in so many meetings where people keep coming up with 'brilliant' ideas about how to 'improve' a design (typically with the aim of saving money) that get shot down once we force them to wrap their heads around 1) The fact that you can't just go pick up some of this shit at a Home Depot, and 2) The correct shit is already on-site (if not installed or in the process of being installed.
The assumption that you can swap out 'apples for apples' with different systems is another classic mistake. We regularly run into situations where there might only be one source for a device that will do what we need it to do. There might be other solutions, but they quickly become untenable due to the need for extra pieces/parts/etc. to interface a competitors devices with any given system.
The simplest solution is (almost) always best - but people want to layer on unnecessary bullshit to make themselves feel 'part of the project'. A firm can talk all day about how adept they are at coordinating a project - but I have yet to run across even a single one where one or more (if not all) of the people I described above to come crashing through at the most inopportune moment and drag a project off schedule.
I completed a massive warehouse/production facility a while back, and then we got the contract to do security equipment. No big deal - I knocked it out in short order, but we didn't receive a cad site plan - which was fortunate, because it turned out to have changed (and despite having requested it two weeks ago - the owner won't stop making changes for long enough for me to get it.
Hilariously, they keep operating under the delusion that the delivery date is still firm, even though they are the ones holding up our ability to complete it. That's pretty standard though - as is everyone's lack of willingness to confront yet another out of control client.
As always - if you stand in the way of my ability to do my goddamned job, you can take a long fucking hike to 'Gofuckyourselfville'.
Sinsquarely, SF
Next time: No Fucking Wonder This Shit Eats Itself
Friday, October 7, 2016
WTF Windows 10?
Hola Skullfuckarinos!
Well, Autodesk didn't fucking do it - but Microsoft finally fucking did it (if they didn't do it goddamned conjunction).
They managed to break something in my perfectly functional ACAD 2014. It still works, but after they installed Windows 10 on my machine, it started making it to where I couldn't use the 'look in' pull down to change the target folder when using my .pdf printer. I had already had to remove .dwg to .pdf to keep from having it lock up, and hadn't been having any problems - until now, when the fucking thing decides to intermittently be blank and lock up when I use the 'look in' pulldown to try to change the folder I am in to open a file.
At first I thought it was just ACAD - but in Explorer (or any other program) the pull down is just blank (at least it doesn't fucking lock up the other programs). One suggested 'workaround' was to change the User Account Control Setting to 'Never Notify' and reboot (doesn't fucking work). I almost ended up losing work this morning (thank god for autosaves) when I had to crash out of it in Task Manager. Another suggestion was to reinstall, but supposedly the problem comes back eventually.
The fucked up thing is that I can still browse from the icons on the side - or just open files from explorer, but goddammit if I'm busy and need to open another file, forget, and use the pull down - I actually did lose some work the other day, and it's going to end up resulting in holes in walls if I can't figure out a way to make it fuck off.
Of course, I'm busy as fuck right now, and our IT guy is just going to give me some stock IT guy non-answer, so I'm going to have to just be extremely careful when I am working. I was going to leave it locked up when I went to lunch to see if it ever comes back, but of course - it magically decides to work perfectly (almost like it knows when it can fuck me).
Oh well - at least it's not Revit (it wouldn't surprise me if it locked up too - which takes five times as long to open a file back up). If anybody has any ideas I would love to hear them (I've already googled every variation on the problem I could think of). I'll post more if I figure it out (or if it gets worse).
Ciao!
-S.F.
Next Time: An Amusing Look At 'Achieving Real Speed-to-Market Success' with Butler Manufacturing.
Well, Autodesk didn't fucking do it - but Microsoft finally fucking did it (if they didn't do it goddamned conjunction).
They managed to break something in my perfectly functional ACAD 2014. It still works, but after they installed Windows 10 on my machine, it started making it to where I couldn't use the 'look in' pull down to change the target folder when using my .pdf printer. I had already had to remove .dwg to .pdf to keep from having it lock up, and hadn't been having any problems - until now, when the fucking thing decides to intermittently be blank and lock up when I use the 'look in' pulldown to try to change the folder I am in to open a file.
At first I thought it was just ACAD - but in Explorer (or any other program) the pull down is just blank (at least it doesn't fucking lock up the other programs). One suggested 'workaround' was to change the User Account Control Setting to 'Never Notify' and reboot (doesn't fucking work). I almost ended up losing work this morning (thank god for autosaves) when I had to crash out of it in Task Manager. Another suggestion was to reinstall, but supposedly the problem comes back eventually.
The fucked up thing is that I can still browse from the icons on the side - or just open files from explorer, but goddammit if I'm busy and need to open another file, forget, and use the pull down - I actually did lose some work the other day, and it's going to end up resulting in holes in walls if I can't figure out a way to make it fuck off.
Of course, I'm busy as fuck right now, and our IT guy is just going to give me some stock IT guy non-answer, so I'm going to have to just be extremely careful when I am working. I was going to leave it locked up when I went to lunch to see if it ever comes back, but of course - it magically decides to work perfectly (almost like it knows when it can fuck me).
Oh well - at least it's not Revit (it wouldn't surprise me if it locked up too - which takes five times as long to open a file back up). If anybody has any ideas I would love to hear them (I've already googled every variation on the problem I could think of). I'll post more if I figure it out (or if it gets worse).
Ciao!
-S.F.
Next Time: An Amusing Look At 'Achieving Real Speed-to-Market Success' with Butler Manufacturing.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
SuBMiSSioN DoMiNaTioN
Sup?
So that last post got me thinking - other than a few emergency situations (always as a result of other people's poor planning) after a certain point there was never any necessity for anyone to manually sign/seal drawings other than one hold out (New Jersey - if I recall correctly that still required a raised seal), andsome jurisdictions that required a wet stamp/signature (to make sure that the drawings had actually been in front of an Architect/Engineer at least once).
Florida was the other raised seal hold-out, but even they got a regular stamp seal a few years back. Since the Electrical Engineer I used to work for thought that iPads (which many of the Architects and other Engineers used to sign - and in some cases - review and markup their drawings) were fucking retarded, the process was to put the necessary stamp on a piece of paper, have him sign/date, scan it in and then slap it on the drawings (ACAD/Revit, or directly on the. pdf).
It was a little bit tedious, especially if people kept changing the date (typically due to Revit related delays, or pure incompetence), but it beat plotting out the drawings and stamping each one for him to sign. Regardless, the final result still usually ended up being a hardcopy submittal - and the main reason for this is that whoever was reviewing it didn't have to worry about having the correct software, file format, file size, etc. in order to view it.
The thing is, electronic files can be manipulated, older versions can accidentally end up getting used (or overwriting newer versions), and you can't always rely on someone to grab the correct ones from their e-mail, dropbox, website, server, etc. I've seen pdfs get submitted that were total shit - even if you opened and looked at them, you wouldn't notice missing information or other glaring mistakes - but holy shit when you print them out and look at them full-size (or even half-size).
Now I get it, the dream is to design, review, submit, receive approval, then fabricate/construct/install - all from an electronic file (a model specifically), but even aside from dragging the necessary people/jurisdictions/departments kicking and screaming into 'the future', that hardcopy represents something that no electronic file ever will.
In the last week I've submitted two separate projects - one that required an Engineer (from another company that we share a building with) to sign/seal, and one that did not. Both required hardcopies - the first had to be shipped to the State Board of Health, the second I hand delivered to the County Fire Marshall in the City/County building downtown.
Another project was completed and uploaded to the City for their review - but damned if their website wasn't fucked up and wouldn't allow me to create a folder to upload the files. When I called to ask if they were having a problem, they said they had received other submittals (meaning the problem was most likely on our end - possibly related to the website requiring an older version of IE for it to work properly).
My wife (a college English teacher) had run into the same problem with some State school websites that (like the City's website) appear to have been written by a five year old and are hopelessly tied to some functionality that has long been defunct and removed from newer browsers. Fortunately the guy who I was sending the files to was able to generate the necessary folder and I was able to upload the project (but, of course, this meant that two other projects has taken precedence).
The point is that a physical copy of a project is a snapshot in time - it requires that all dicking around cease in order to put together something that someone can hold in their hands. It can be unrolled, anywhere, without the need for software, any kind of electronic device (or even electricity). Once signed/sealed it becomes an official document.
In the future, it won't matter if the software to read the file exists (think government agencies that have to keep ancient systems limping along in order to continue to read files in hopelessly outdated formats), or the data gets corrupted (unbeknownst to most people - data degrades over time, regardless of how it is saved). Fuck, a Revit file could barely keep from getting corrupted several times while the project was being worked on.
Listening to Revitards opine that they can't just model something and hand it off (most likely incomplete, inaccurate, and nigh impossible to actually see anything) is hilarious. They seem to view the process of getting usable documentation out of their model as some kind of massive inconvenience ('Just look at the model!'). I'm sure they have beaten (or will beat) a few 'forward thinking' jurisdictions/AHJ's into starting to accept the model as part (if not the whole) submittal, but they are going to face massive push back by people that can very easily hold up construction.
It has less to do with forcing people to do things a new way, and more to do with the 'new way' being a fucking smokescreen - and people who haven't plugged themselves into the Revit hive-mind can see it plain as day. One thing that you see come up time and again (and that several commenters have mentioned) is the matter of who takes on liability when a project goes 'less than swimmingly'.
Just like having solid, well-written contracts prevents a firm from getting it in the nuts when things go FUBAR, a well-engineered (or architected) set of drawings that you can whip out and see directly in front of you can prevent you from having those nuts sliced directly off and stuffed in your mouth. This is also right about the same time most people go into panic mode, and it's really easy for someone to be tempted to tweak a digital file to try to cover their ass (seen it happen - more than once).
Obviously if the fuckup is right there in black-and-white, it can be just as damaging - but that's kind of the point. If nobody ever actually looked at the drawings, and just gave some .pdfs the same glassy-eyed stare that monitors/tablets/phones tend to invoke in people, then it's nobodies fault but their own.
Fuck 'em.
Sincesquarely,
S.F.
Next Time: What the Fuck Windows 10?
The point is that a physical copy of a project is a snapshot in time - it requires that all dicking around cease in order to put together something that someone can hold in their hands. It can be unrolled, anywhere, without the need for software, any kind of electronic device (or even electricity). Once signed/sealed it becomes an official document.
In the future, it won't matter if the software to read the file exists (think government agencies that have to keep ancient systems limping along in order to continue to read files in hopelessly outdated formats), or the data gets corrupted (unbeknownst to most people - data degrades over time, regardless of how it is saved). Fuck, a Revit file could barely keep from getting corrupted several times while the project was being worked on.
Listening to Revitards opine that they can't just model something and hand it off (most likely incomplete, inaccurate, and nigh impossible to actually see anything) is hilarious. They seem to view the process of getting usable documentation out of their model as some kind of massive inconvenience ('Just look at the model!'). I'm sure they have beaten (or will beat) a few 'forward thinking' jurisdictions/AHJ's into starting to accept the model as part (if not the whole) submittal, but they are going to face massive push back by people that can very easily hold up construction.
It has less to do with forcing people to do things a new way, and more to do with the 'new way' being a fucking smokescreen - and people who haven't plugged themselves into the Revit hive-mind can see it plain as day. One thing that you see come up time and again (and that several commenters have mentioned) is the matter of who takes on liability when a project goes 'less than swimmingly'.
Just like having solid, well-written contracts prevents a firm from getting it in the nuts when things go FUBAR, a well-engineered (or architected) set of drawings that you can whip out and see directly in front of you can prevent you from having those nuts sliced directly off and stuffed in your mouth. This is also right about the same time most people go into panic mode, and it's really easy for someone to be tempted to tweak a digital file to try to cover their ass (seen it happen - more than once).
Obviously if the fuckup is right there in black-and-white, it can be just as damaging - but that's kind of the point. If nobody ever actually looked at the drawings, and just gave some .pdfs the same glassy-eyed stare that monitors/tablets/phones tend to invoke in people, then it's nobodies fault but their own.
Fuck 'em.
Sincesquarely,
S.F.
Next Time: What the Fuck Windows 10?
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