TT5: Summer Reading
July 2, 2026
This weekly email is my curated selection of interesting and useful topics related to BIM, design, and technology. I aim to provide you with some good information and a few laughs along the way. So, what did I find interesting this week? Read down to find out!
Something a little different this week. I'm taking the month of July off from the newsletter, so instead of five fresh links, I pulled together a best-of from the last few months. Here are five links that stuck with me and are worth a second look. There's a clear thread running through most of them, which is how AI is reshaping the way we work in AEC, with a couple of picks on habits and clear thinking thrown in. I'll be back in your inbox on August 6.
#1: How Habits Actually Work
Scott Young takes apart four things most of us believe about habits: that they're built mainly through repetition, form in thirty days, eventually become automatic, and depend on never breaking the streak. He now thinks all four are wrong. His argument is that durable change comes less from cue-and-response habits and more from building skills and shifting how you see yourself.
Click here to read the full article at Scott H Young.
#2: Build Revit Tools with AI in an Afternoon
I joined The Revit Kid for a session on how AI has changed what a single person can build for Revit, using what I call the Design Intent Pattern: you own what the tool should do, and let the AI handle how it gets coded. We ran through real examples, from turning a photo into a native Revit family to small throwaway tools like a twisting tower generator and StairLab, a page that lays out stairs and checks them against code as you go. The honest takeaway: the value now is not syntax, it's domain knowledge.
Click here to watch the replay at The Revit Kid.
#3: The Expert Button-Pushers Are Gone
Evan Troxel and Jeff Mottle dig into a shift a lot of us feel but don't name: the people whose value was mastering complex software are disappearing as AI finishes the democratization those tools started. The conversation gets into why relationships become the differentiator, and how AI breaks the hourly billing model in AEC. Uncomfortable listening if your value is tied to knowing the software better than everyone else.
Click here to listen to the episode at TRXL.
#4: Decoding Revit Journal Files
Every Revit session quietly writes a journal file that logs every action you take, from the moment the software starts to the moment it stops. This article walks through how to actually read them. Not glamorous, but the kind of skill that saves you an afternoon when a model goes sideways.
Click here to read the full article at Design Tech Field Guide.
#5: Three Fallacies in Today's Technology Discourse
Nate Miller pushes back on the "adapt or die" style of narrative that dominates the feed, unpacking three fallacies baked into our appeals to newness, scale, and adaptation. His point is that real digital transformation is nonlinear and full of tradeoffs, not the tidy winners-versus-losers story that gets clicks. A useful gut check the next time an AI headline tries to rush you into a decision.
Click here to read the full article at Proving Ground.
That's all from me. See you in August!
Michael
