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Scott D Davis
2003-12-07, 11:04 PM
Power, Simplicity, and Community

Carl Bass, in his keynote address at AU, used these 3 words to describe the guiding principles for Autodesk products in the near and long term future. As I listened to him speak, I could not help but think he was talking about Revit. My thoughts:

1. Power - we could not ask for a more powerful piece of software. The single file database which assures drawing coordination across all views, draws all of our plans, sections, and elevations for us live as we construct a model, and allows access to every piece of data contained in the model through ODBC export. We have the power!

2. Simplicity - It has been said many times: Revit is simple to use. Yes it has more complicated components such as worksets, but first time users can get a handle on Revit, and it's simple user interface in very little time. Users are taking days, not months, to learn the basics, and are learning much of it on their own with the included tutorials. Revit works te way architects work. Build the model as you would build he building. Hey, that makes sense! We don't need to be programmers, writing LISP or GDL code to make our product work, we just need to be architects and designers. Simple!

3. Community - Well, we all know about our community. We have to be one of the best, well-connected communities in the CAD/BIM world. Thanks mostly to Chris Zoog, who has given us this forum in which we can stay connected. We just went over the 600 member mark in under 7 months! Our members include the founders of Revit, Leonid and Irwin, as well as most of the rest of the Revit team. Other members include important members of Autodesk, including one of our most recently added: Phil Berstein. (Welcome!) Each of them, plus all the rest of the members of this forum, add to the importance of this community. It was evident at AU, when I had the chance to meet many of the people we speak to here every day. We all got along like we had known each other for years! I am sure we are one of the few forums that has come to know such a strong sense of community!

To wrap up, these are the kinds of thoughts that were going through my head as Carl spoke about Autodesk. Power. Simplicity. Community. He could have simplified it, and said one word: Revit!

tatlin
2003-12-08, 01:55 AM
Scott,

You big softy! Great write up, really touching.

Just for the record, Carl was talking about all the autodesk products during the keynote.

It was pretty wild sitting there with Phil Read, Scott and Scott while listening to Rob Reim (sp?) describe how his firm uses Revit to 2500 people, though. Really woke up the crowd after the gentleman from 3M and his virtual PostIt notes...

Scott D Davis
2003-12-08, 05:44 AM
Yeah, his 'virtual' post-it note never fell down, but I can never keep mine stuck to the frame on my monitor for more than 5 minutes!

christopher.zoog51272
2003-12-09, 02:33 PM
We all got along like we had known each other for years! I am sure we are one of the few forums that has come to know such a strong sense of community!

You hit the nail on the head Scott. It was like a high school reunion or something. Meeting everyone (here and at revit/autodesk) face to face was one of my favorite parts of AU. 8)

mlgatzke
2003-12-11, 05:23 AM
Did any of you see that Lynn Allen's post-it fell down shortly after she stuck it on the screen? Also, I met Ron at the airport on Friday while we were waiting for your planes. Nice guy. He (like many of us) is trying to convice his clients of Revit's power and possibilities and thereby allow him to submit Revit files rather than (currently) requiring NATIVE Architectural Desktop files (which cannot be done in Revit).