Please install these software tools on your personal computer, so you can work on the class modules and design projects from anywhere.
Follow these steps to set up your computer to use all the software tools that we’ll be using in class.
To use the building modeling tools on your computer, you’ll need a 64-bit version of Windows 8 or newer. You can check the properties on your computer by right-clicking on the "My Computer" or "This PC" icon in Windows Explorer, then choosing Properties from the pop-up menu.
If you already have a 64-bit version of Windows 8 or newer on your computer, you do not need to download a newer version. Skip to the next step.
Many Students Can Download Windows for Free
- Stanford students can download and install Windows 10 or 11 for free by going to Stanford's Software Licensing Webstore:
- "Purchase" a free license for Window 10 or 11 EDU.
- Download the ISO file to your Mac hard disk.
- Save the Windows product key (the very long code number) in a safe place. You'll need it to activate your copy of Windows
After creating your Parallels virtual machine, you must configure it to provide at least 2 GB of RAM (preferrably 4 GB or more if available) to the Windows partition.
- Open the Parallels application.
- Select the virtual machine from the Parallels Virtual Machines window.
- Open the Virtual Machine menu and choose Configure…
- Click on the Hardware tab, and select CPU & Memory from the left column.
- Check the amount of memory recommended under the Automatic option.
- If your computer has less than the recommended amounts, choose the Manual option and set the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machine Processors to at least 2 GB of RAM (preferably 4 GB or more if available).
- Click on the Options tab, and select Sharing from the left column.
- Turn off (uncheck) Share Mac user folder with Windows.
- Open the Share folders pull-down menu and choose Home Folder only.
- Restart your virtual machine.
- On the Windows desktop, you should see a folder called "Mac Files" with a "Home" folder nested inside. You can access any Mac Files saved to your Mac environment through this folder structure.
- If you already have a student Autodesk ID from another class, you’re all set.
- If you haven’t created a student Autodesk ID (or if you’re currently using one that created for your workplace), sign up for a new student Autodesk ID by following these steps:
- Go to the Autodesk Education Community Website
- Scroll down to the Confirm your eligibility to access the Autodesk Education plan section of the page.
- Click the Create an Autodesk Account link.
- Complete and submit the registration form.
- Be sure to check your email for a message from Autodesk and click the confirmation link to finish activating your new Autodesk ID by providing information about the school you attend.
- Notes about Autodesk IDs
- Most students use their Stanford email address as their Autodesk ID.
- If you already have a student Autodesk ID from another school, you can continue to use it or sign up for a new one.
- You can create as many Autodesk IDs as you like -- but if you use an email address that is not recognized as being from an educational institution, Autodesk may ask you to provide additional documentation of your student students (for example, an image of your student ID) to confirm that you are eligible for their free education offerings.
- If you need to create a second Autodesk ID, you can create an alias to your Stanford email address and then use this alias to create another Autodesk ID.
- Go to the Windows OS environment on your computer:
- On your Windows computer
- In Bootcamp
- Or in your Parallels virtual environment
- Use your web browser (Chrome is preferred) to go to the Students section of Autodesk Education Community website and click the Get Products button:
- Choose the Revit tile, then click:
- Get Started (if you haven't already signed in)
- Get Product (if you are signed in)
- Select Windows 2024 as the version to be installed.
- Click the INSTALL button
- IMPORTANT: If you see a DOWNLOAD button (instead of INSTALL), the Autodesk website has detected that you cannot install the software directly because you are in the wrong environment. This typically happens when you try to install Windows software from the Mac environment.
- If this happens, it's typically better to switch to the Windows environment and let the Autodesk installer do all the work.
- If you choose to Download the files to the Mac environment, you'll need to copy them over to the Windows file system, and do a manual install there by following these steps:
- When you open the Autodesk software for the first time, you will be prompted to login using your Autodesk ID to confirm your eligibility to use the software.
The Dynamo plug-in is now installed as part of Revit 2022, so no additional steps are needed.
Take a look under the Manage tab in the ribbon. Dynamo appears at the far right end of the ribbon under Manage > Visual Programming > Dynamo.
Revit 2021 and newer releases DO NOT install the Autodesk Sample Content Libraries as part of the default installation, so you need to install the sample Revit families separately. You can do that two ways:
- Open Revit Application.
- Switch to the Insert tab in the ribbon, and open the Load Autodesk Family tool (Insert > Load from Library > Load Autodesk Family).
- Browse or search for the Revit Family that you’d like to load, then click the Load button.
- Download the US English Content for Revit 2022 using this link:
- Or, if you prefer to download the content for a different language, use this link:
- Run the RVTCPENU.exe (or app with a similar name for the language you selected), and accept the default choices to install the Autodesk Content Library in your Revit application.
After installing the Revit application, be sure to run the Autodesk Desktop App from the Autodesk folder in your Start menu to install the latest product updates.
- Close the Revit application.
- Open the Autodesk Desktop app.
- Go to the Updates tab and click ALL of the Update buttons to install ALL of the Revit-related product updates and Revit extensions.
If your software is already up-to-date, the list of available updates may be empty.
- Download and install the latest version of Rhino 7 for Windows - One-Time Evaluation from this site:
- https://www.rhino3d.com/download/rhino-for-windows/evaluation
- This Evaluation Version will be valid for 90 days.
- Download and install the latest version of Rhino 7 for Mac - One-Time Evaluation from this site:
- https://www.rhino3d.com/download/rhino-for-mac/evaluation
- This Evaluation Version will be valid for 90 days.
Installing Rhino and Grasshopper is not strictly necessary to complete the course.
We’ll be showing Rhino and Grasshopper equivalents to the workflows demonstrated using Revit and Dynamo. But all the assignments are written in a way that they can be completed using only Revit and Dynamo.If you want to sign up for another 90-day trial of Rhino and Grasshopper, you’ll need to register using another EDU email address.
One strategy is to login to the Stanford University Accounts website (accounts.stanford.edu), then use the Manage > Email > Manage Aliases tool to create an email alias that you can use to register for software downloads.