RTC - Day One

Thursday. The day started off with the Keynote address and how RTC has grown. Carl Bass, Autodesk CEO, made a presentation and he was smart enough to not talk about Revit in front of several hundred Revit experts. Instead he talked about how he see's computing changing so many things, specifically infinite computing and how it's changing the way we design and build. Hyper-connectivity has affected the resources we can access at any time (accept while at RTC - boo-hiss). Lastly, he tied in Ubiquitous Access as demonstrated by more people having more tools at their disposal. Placing these three things together is how our future will be affected in how we design and build.

David Conant provided a history on the birth and growth of Revit. Showed some great early design concepts and trade show videos they made.

Dan Stine gave a great session on providing Revit support in a larger office. He made a few points that stood out and resonated nicely with me. Specifically, going to a quite conference room and locking yourself in there until you finish what you need to get done along with walking users through answers to avoid getting repeat questions.

I went to session on Bentley's Generative Components tool and found that, as I thought, Revit can do everything it does. Revit just does it with a much better designed interface.

The highlight for me on Thursday was a support session presented by Harlan Brumm from Autodesk support. As he deals with Revit, he gave some great insights to problems. He even addressed a couple issues I was dealing with and gave some things to go check on that I hadn't thought of. Being an Autodesk employee, he gets to take a 6 week sabbatical every now and then. The crazy thing was, he came here to present, despite being on his 6 week sabbatical. That's how much he loves this stuff. He even stayed for the rest of the days as I saw him popping in and out of classes. Harlan also contributes to the Revit Clinic blog, check it out!

Next, Lonnie Cumpton and Beau Turner presented the Revit Model Review add in available to subscription users. Looks like this tool will get some use to ensure standards are followed in the future. A great first day, capped by some nice refreshment afterwards.