Our television arm swings into gear with a slate of four concepts this season; one hour-long drama, two reality shows and an educational/reality hybrid for kids. Details are under wraps while deals are closing but we promise you that half of them will make you smile and half of them will make you grimace in pain. The Cortez Brother's Story Department (specializing in Anything And Everything That You Want Written) contributed visual and written treatments for BMW, Dawn, Honda, Jeep, Pine-Sol, State Farm, T-Mobile, and the NFL as well as original re-branding concepts for a network that cannot be named just yet. More than a third of those jobs from the last two months have already booked and shot... Commercially, Simón Bross just wrapped a shoot in Mexico for Bromley starring everybody's favorite breakfast cereal (Honey Nut Cheerios, front and center).

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Revit Technology Conference 2007

Hey Reviteers,

I hope those of you who have been to the RTC07 roadshow have found at least some of it beneficial?

Feel free to post your comments...

I've just got back from the Auckland Conference which went very well apart from a minor hardware glitch on one of the laptops (the video card kicked the bucket during a hot swap). On a whole and from speaking to a few of the attendees I feel it is running well and people are getting something out of it.

I've learned a couple of nifty little tricks myself! I especially liked Chris Needham's awakening of the Scope boxes which I've never really used. I had no idea they had that many uses.

During the roadshow I've had a couple of requests for tutorials/families to be uploaded.

So far they have been the "generic wall hosted opening I use for curtain wall strip glazing to cleanup the corners" and "a step by step tutorial on how to create families with swappable components".

Both of these I'll upload in the next two weeks or so. Hold me to that, if you don't see it in that time frame add your comments and abuse me and hopefully that will kick me into gear.

Its been great putting faces to so many of the people that have found my online contributions beneficial over the years.

Cheers.

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EP Ed Rivero and writer Bernadette just wrapped a Producers Guild of America workshop that culminated in a marketing plan and fully-developed pitch for their one-hour drama pilot NATIVE SON. The PGA program was a highly competitive process; the pilot entering into territory even more so at ABC/Disney, where it's being mentored. Meanwhile, The Cortez Brothers has just acquired the film rights for award-winning Spanish author Juan Bonilla's novel THE NUBIAN PRINCE; Alfredo de Villa (YELLOW, ADRIFT IN MANHATTAN) is set to direct. Director Simón Bross' BAD HABITS garnered a La Próxima Ola Jury Prize at the 2007 CineVegas Film Festival in a new program block focused on the best, brightest and freshest voices in Mexican Cinema. Back on the commercial side of things, Doble Nelson brought home an armload of awards from this year's Iberoamerican Advertising Festival, including a Silver for Coca-Cola Light's "Levante La Mano" (Santo Buenos Aires) and a Gold for Coca-Cola's "Treintaytantos" (McCann Erickson Madrid).

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Our commercial division hits the ground running this May; we just wrapped a Gardasil spot with Mexican director Raúl Martínez... The whole shebang was shot in Miami and included a print campaign as well. On the award side of the equation, our favorite Argentine directing team (Doble Nelson, of course) won Gold at FIAP for their Coca-Cola campaign. Our newest L.A.-based director, Martín Romanella, will be honored at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival next month as a new, up-and-coming director to watch (thanks to Saatchi & Saatchi for the nomination). In slightly more cinematic but no less thrilling news, director Simón Bross's feature film, "Bad Habits" ("Malos Hábitos") is getting an unprecedented special screening at the Cannes Film Festival during Critics' Week.

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Revit 2008 - Point edit Floor & Roof Tool

Finally we are able to create those complicated falls of roofs and floors that occur on nearly every project, natively in Revit.

So how powerful is this new tool? Can it do everything I want it to? What can't it do?

I'll try to answer these questions as best I can:

To save the new users the frustration of trying to do something that the tool can't yet create I'll list the shortfalls and bugs that currently exist in this fantastic new tool.

1. As it states in the Revit help, the new point edit tool cannot be used if the floor or roof sketch contains curved segments. This doesn't mean you can't have a curvy roof though :) You just have to create your roof with straight segments first and then use Modelling->Opening->Vertical Opening to cut the element to the desired shape.

2. Further extrapolating on the above functionality with curves. There are certain circumstances where the opening will NOT cut the element and instead reports an error "can't create geometry". I've experienced this once on a floor that had 85 point edits on it as well as multiple cuts to create a curved edge. The current workaround to this is to create smaller openings until you can identify the location that is causing the issue.

3. If you have two split lines very close together (say less than 2mm) you begin to get some strange occurences in sections. That is, the floor/roof will not get cut by a section OR section box for that matter. Instead the whole floor or roof displays similar to the behaviour of certain family categories such as furniture... In this case you are better use a single line and break it into segments.

4. You can only have 1 variable layer or all variable layers. That is, you can't have the top layer of your floor a variable thickness as well as the bottom layer having separate points and its own variable thickness. The solution being to use multiples floors and to join them together - it helps if you make them overlap so you don't get the can't join geometry error.

That about covers the issues i'm currently aware of. But hey, lets stop being so negative and look at what this new tool can do for us...

So far my office has made use of this tool for tiles with a topping slab with falls to floor wastes, also sidewalks or footpaths, variable thickness rigid insulation, and tapered floors that even include thickenings.

This is just some of the uses of the new tool, as you can see my uses have been primarily floors but i'm sure others have plenty of other uses for the tool (FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR USES).

So how does it work? (images to come later)

1. First you create your floor using straight lines only and finish sketch.

2. Now select your floor. You see 5 new options display in the element toolbar.

3. ...to be continued when I have some free time in the next week or so...

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Congrats to our director Simón Bross for taking the Best Mexican Feature prize at the 22nd Guadalajara Film Festival. Simón's debut, "Bad Habits" ("Malos Hábitos," if you are Spanish-ly inclined) is a dark drama about a family torn apart by diverse eating disorders. Cortez Brothers' story analyst and writer Bernadette Rivero provided subtitles on the film, which was produced by GB y Asociados, Altavista Films and Santo Domingo Films. Cortez Brothers has its collective fingers crossed for Cannes and wishes Simón the best of luck...

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Spring brings a series of eclectic projects, including an Eclipse campaign for Bravo starring none other than LatAm superstar El Puma. The spots were helmed by Argentine comedy team Doble Nelson and shot in various locations throughout Barcelona -- including an open grave. On an even more un-serious note, we welcome tabletop and comedy director Nes Buzzalino to our roster. Nes comes to us by way of Buenos Aires and in the wake of his involvement in film projects like BLUE EYES (Germany) and NAKED TANGO. At the same time, we are nearly set to launch the Cortez, Jr. division aimed at introducing fresh new Latin directing talent to the world (or, more precisely, U.S. and Latin American markets).

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