Creating Experts

Back in 2003, Revit would change the way architects thought about process. The excitement I felt all those years ago would spread like a virus and all who came in contact with its greatness would be swept up in the coming apocalypse. There was just so many ground breaking, sea changing capabilities in this software; literally doing in 2 minutes what used to take 2 weeks. How could this not catch on?

A decade later and the question I have is this:

How do you make someone an expert?

Pictured: Shared Parameters

Or put a little differently. What makes someone an expert? 

Why doesn't everyone understand how Phases work? Or what Schedule Keys are? Or even that there are such a thing as View Templates?  I think the answer is basically experience, but is there something else? Training is great, mentoring is required, evangelizing is in my job description, but I can't make the horse drink (a Texas proverb, apologies). Maybe it's something else entirely. Gamma radiation exposure, anyone?

HULK SMASH BEST PRACTICES!!

How are you fostering individual growth in your company? Are your experts treated differently by management? Incentives? Accountability? Or are we relegated to the 'CAD Manager/Expert' business model? Sitting in the darkened cave in the back of the office, wishing everyone would just 'get it'.

Revit 2013 - Sweet View Templates

Last year, I had a conversation extolling the virtues of view templates and their basic underutilization. Revit 2013, as most of you, has finally taken the greatness of the view template and made it easy to implement and maintain. For the first time, we can predispose a particular view type to a certain view template upon its creation and even have it linked dynamically to said template for future modification.

Template-y goodness, now with more dependents

Although it seems to be quite a small step, in reality, this is a giant leap in the right direction. Graphics and drawings are still very important to many project leads and having global control over every view in the project with such ease could finally put to bed the idea that document control is confusing in Revit. No more re-applying templates by view or hoping no one changed the Default View Template on your views (you see, Revit now categorizes your views automatically by View Type).

Soon, it will track you via GPS - coming 2015

Now there is no reason we shouldn't know what's going on in our views and what controls are in place. This makes me very happy.