For the last few days I have been working on Beaulieu Abbey using Autodesk's Revit Architecture 2008. The software is the ideal tool for creating 3D buildings whether old or new, and the Abbey is certainly proving its capability for old. I have a floor plan and artistic sketch to guide the way the building used to look before it was torn down in the 1500s. These are by an authority on Beaulieu Abbey, Harold Brakspeare, drawn in 1901-2.
Other references have been remaining Cistercian abbeys such as Pontigny in France, one of the very few reasonably intact examples, and the reference material mentioned in an earlier post. The area that I have scratched my head about more than anything else are the heights involved, windows, doors, roof. And with Revit, it is important to know this, as soon as possible really.
The doors, windows etc are components, (termed family files in Revit), and can be made to your exact measurements, they understand that they cut holes in walls and when removed the wall fills in. They are parametric, Revit is parametric, a building information modelling solution for architects. Everything created in the project builds a database. This database can then be called upon to give almost any information relating to the project, or edited via schedules. Which is all very good, but you need the information first, hence the importance of heights and widths above.
This is one of the programs that I teach, over the last two years or so, pretty consistently on behalf of Excitech Ltd, who 'lead in the provision of design solutions for the construction industry and for facilities management'. Not being an architect and therefore not using the software everyday, it is projects like this that really help to push my knowledge of the software, and allows me to understand a few of the problems that the people I teach may come up against.
Revit Architecture 2008 has been really great over the last year, and certainly over the last month, but I will shortly move the project into Revit Architecture 2009, as there are several really good enhancements in the latest release, which will make my life a little easier again. For me, the best has to be the FBX export to Max. Whilst still modelling, either 2008 or 9 will be fine, it is when I come to develop the animations, walkthrough's, and full renders that I will need to have it in 2009 to export it completely to Max. David Light expands a little on this via Autodesk's whitepaper. on his excellent blogsite.
These images are a month's worth of work - in between training, and are only shaded rather than rendered, but they give a reasonably good impression of the work completed to date. The buildings are accurate to the measurements provided by Brakspeare, and follow cistercian references / style as much as possible. There is a lot of finer detail still to produce, columns, archway details, wall and window tracery, which will take a little longer again, but they are still easier to create accurately in Revit, than in Max. This would have taken much longer to have created completely within Max, so thank goodness for Revit.
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