No. 3 - August 2009 |
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The Biggest and the Best!
Three days of intense Revit action, and it was over in a flash! More than a month has passed since the conference was concluded and everything was packed away, as we sit back to consider the biggest and best Revit Technology Conference ever:
- 224 registered attendees, from 14 countries.
- 65 classes, presentations and labs: An increase of 110% from 2008.
- 42 speakers, from 6 countries.
- Streamed presentations, including Architecture, Structure, MEP, Visualisation & Presentation and BIM Managers’ with a special new one-day stream for Principals.
- A continuous stream of hands on lab sessions, plus;
- 4 simultaneous seminar streams outside of the general sessions.
The conference, held for the first time in Melbourne, survived the Global Financial Crisis, and the Swine Flu Pandemic, increasing attendance numbers by almost 40%.
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Late News:
Experience the Power of BIM
With Autodesk REVIT in 2010!
Make the most of the economic recovery: Just announced, the
SIXTH INTERNATIONAL
Revit Technology Conference
will be held at the
NOVOTEL MANLY PACIFIC, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Thursday – Saturday
20 – 22 May 2010
www.revitconference.com.au |
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It's not just Revit!
The Revit Technology Conference covers all areas of interest to those using the Revit platform as a base for Building Information Modelling.
- Building Information Modelling
- Environmentally Sustainable Design
- Integrated Project Delivery
- Revit Architecture, Structure and MEP
- Navisworks
- Design Review
- Ecotect
- IES
- 3D Studio
- Mental Ray
- SketchUp
- Rhino
- Generative Components
- Autodesk Impression
- API and .Net
- VSTA
- Plug-Ins
- CostX
- Hardware
- Gadgets
- Business Case
- Outsourcing
- Revision Management
- Case Studies
- Large Projects
- Lighting
- Workflow
- more
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The Great Debate:
Perhaps Lee Lee Ng (of Meinhardt in Melbourne) didn’t realise what she was starting when she brought up the subject of Revit content!
What ensued was the great debate of the conference, culminating in an open forum discussion on the Saturday afternoon, and the formation of a committee to take the matter further.
The discussion lasted an hour before time constraints brought it to a close. Many at the conference voiced their viewpoints. This discussion has since been minuted, and will be used by the committee to guide the development of content standards guidelines for Australia and New Zealand (tomorrow the world!)
Events have continued to move at a rapid pace. The committee has already started active discussions. Paul Hellawell of GHD in Newcastle has set at a web site – AusBIM Downunder Parametrics at the address https://ausbim.com/Wiki/tiki-index.php and Michelle Louw has put considerable effort into mapping out a program for activities over the next year, culminating in the release of new Australia/New Zealand family creation guidelines at RTC 2010.
Others, too numerous to mention have already been making suggestions and defining the scope of the project. Please feel free to check out the Wiki, make your views known, or just check on the progress of this important project.
Early action items include:
- Naming conventions
- Shared Parameters
- Connectors
- Keynotes
- Internal parameters and Construction
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More Beer for Us:
As “discussing the issues you face and connecting with your peers” took precedence over the movie I Robot for many, the capacious supply of beer, wine and popcorn was enjoyed by a select few - along with a great movie starring Will Smith and Bridget Moynahan, based on the novel by Isaac Asimov. This movie was chosen as the sets were designed and documented in Revit, by Bryan Sutton – what a great job to have! |
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Some Class Highlights
- Tom Fussell enlightened and entertained with his terrific Keynote Address – Collaborative Construction. A “passionate and excellent advocate and speaker”, “entertaining, visionary”, “superb and eye-opening”, “an interesting vision…I admire his conviction”, “made me question a lot of what was happening in our office and in the industry” was how some of you saw it.
- Chris Needham showed how not to be a bubble-headed booby in his Lost in Space session - 23 reasons why you can’t see an expected object in a view, and then another 6 sprang to mind. According to reports the session was simply “excellent” and “fantastic…refreshing, inspiring: Clarity combined with genius. Needham the best speaker at RTC to my mind.” Steady on, get a hold of yourself.
- A little-reported wildcat cab strike caught only Steve Fiorio, on Friday morning.
- Wesley Benn quite carefully credited the wrong organisations for their work on Optioneering, in his talk during the Principal's stream... Actual credit should be to Dominik Holzer, of AEC Connect, and Steve Downing, of Arup. Apologies to a couple of pioneering talents.
- The value of methodically trying every possible key combination, by revealing that Alt-N brings the conditional formatting of schedules that Revit MEP enjoys into Revit Architecture and that Alt-Shift-Q does nothing was an entertaining session by Steve Stafford (HINT: you need to be in the schedule dialogue box, in the formatting tab, with a parameter selected...)
- Katia Gard suggested that, if only Le Corbusier had modern tools like Revit, he could have designed Ronchamp Chapel exactly as he did!
- Brandon Heng’s session on Masterplanning to Development Application Workflow slayed them in the aisles, attracting the comments: “brilliant presentation, I want to see it again!”, and “a very useful session- there should be more like this.”
- We saw how CostX 3 brings in the Revit model directly.
- John Hainsworth presented Plug-Ins to the soundtrack of his old Beatles albums to come up with “a great session…simple but useful, and “a great time saver.” He is the egg-man.
- Multi-Discipline collaboration was a hot topic, and both Glenn Jowett and Steve Fiorio’s sessions attracted positive comment such as “excellent presentation that has given me loads of info for implementation into my office templates and training.”
- Leveraging Revit models into BIM Management, collaboration and clash detection using Navisworks and Design Review, presented by Ryan Hanlen was “really interesting, an excellent case study.”
- Revit and Digital Fabrication, presented by Danelle Briscoe, showed us an entirely different side of things with a number of interesting 3d prototypes using different techniques. “Really interesting stuff” was the comment.
- Bruce Gow continues to inspire and inform on the subject of families: “excellent presentation, great content.”
- The Tips and Tricks session and the free discussion from the floor was highly appreciated: “I literally wrote 5 pages of notes,” “great discussion,” “most valuable part [of the conference]” “brought the conference together.”
- Michelle Louw’s session on everything, Revit API , Advanced Revit Families & Generative Components is now being reported as follows:
Attendees liked the session too: “Wow, this is what I came for,” and “excellent session…a wealth of knowledge concerning the black art of families.” |
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Space was Limited
For the first time, the conference offered lab sessions in a room set up with workstations provided by our Gold Sponsor, Lenovo. In all 12 labs were offered, spanning across all disciplines, and in specialist areas like API. As predicted, some of the labs were extremely popular, and filled up fast. 4 labs ‘sold out’ and a number had all workstations occupied.
93% of respondents rated the labs to be valuable.
Mental note: Register early! |
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Who Came To The Conference?
The main field of activity of our conference delegates was as follows:
- Architecture 147
- Structural Engineering 31
- MEP 20
- Other 10
The numbers from fields outside of architecture has been steadily rising from conference to conference, as is reflected in the number of classes that were offered:
- 7 structure-specific classes and labs (5 in 2008).
- 6 MEP-specific classes and labs (5 in 2008).
- 8 Architecture-specific classes and labs (5 in 2008).
- The new Visualisation and Presentation stream had 6 classes and labs, covering areas such as Google SketchUp, Autodesk Impression and Mental Ray rendering.
- The new BIM Managers’ stream covered a wide range of development, management, API and 3rd party tools across 15 classes and labs.
- Principals’ Day consisted of a one-day stream of 4 sessions that were also suited to BIM Managers and those who need to deal with office Management on BIM issues.
- The Opening, Keynote, Showcase, Tips and Tricks, Panel and other general sessions comprised 19 sessions.
- There were 65 sessions overall, compared with 31 in 2008.
- Again, Martin Taurer travelled the furthest, from Delft in the Netherlands, with connections, slightly more than Tony Brown of CADSmart from the UK, and beating Hide Dote from Tokyo (again), and Steve Stafford and his son Jake, from California.
- 70 (+52) registered attendees came from Victoria, 56 (-27) from NSW, 51 (+15) from Queensland, 13 (-8) from New Zealand, 13 (+9) from South Australia, 6 (+3) from WA, 2 (-1) from the ACT, 2 each from India and the United Arab Emirates, and with 1 each from NT, the Netherlands, the US, Iraq, Qatar, the UK and Japan. Tasmania, where are you?
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What Did You Attend?
- 88 were enrolled in Bruce Gow’s ‘Families - What they didn’t tell you - Revit Architecture’ , the largest of any class outside the general sessions.
- Steve Fiorio’s ‘Multi-practice Collaboration In Revit’ (85), Glenn Jowett’s ‘Multi-discipline Collaboration On A Single Central File’ (77), and Steve Stafford’s ‘Managing Large Projects’ (79) were also popular sessions.
- Specialist classes in MEP Massing and Drafting and Graphic Standards in Revit Structure attracted the lowest numbers – a still creditable 15 for each.
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Stay in Touch With RTC
If you are reading this we probably have your email! But if you change jobs, city, country or just your email address we might lose contact with you, which would be a great pity. So connect to RTC Online and stay in touch with us. You will receive regular updates on RTC matters, and be able to make your views known to improve future events. The RTC Community will be online shortly. |
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Call for Papers
For the first time, RTC 2009 had a call for papers, where those who were interested in presenting at the next conference could submit outlines for consideration by the Committee. This was a huge success, and has kept the conference in touch with the trends in practice.
If you are interested in being a presenter at RTC 2010, there will be another call for papers this year, closing on the 6th of November 2009. Hurry! Time is shorter than you think. |
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What the Attendees Thought
Hi Wesley and the RTC committee,
Congratulations on a very well run conference. You should all be really proud!
Royce Lee, Practice Director Modus at BVN Architecture
Congratulations, and thanks for an excellent event. The best one so far!
Franz Hein, BIM Manager, Hayball Architects
It was worth every cent! I have been inspired, and I am really excited about implementing what I’ve learnt into our office.
Murray Chineegadoo, BIM Manager, Meyer Shircore and Associates Architects
Hi, all—
Congratulations on the recently completed RTC, which I think of as Big Day Out for Australia’s Revit crowd. Ya done good!
The technical challenge was clearly much greater than for previous events, and your hard work paid off in the successful lab sessions. I hope conference goers appreciate what had to happen behind the scenes for labs to take place.
The information interchange at RTC always seems tops to me. Both the public sessions and the informal networking make this conference a terrific boost to the Revit community and the AEC industry overall. I look forward to next year’s event.
Cheers,
Christopher Fox
ARCHimage CAD Services |
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Or Just Help Out
Special thanks to Jake Stafford, the youngest conference attendee, who was busy setting up lab computers until late on Wednesday night.
Thanks also to Steve Fiorio, an average-age conference attendee, who walked into the wrong room at the wrong time and was therefore kept busy setting up lab computers until late on Wednesday night.
Thanks also to all the speakers, some of whom answered our call for papers in October 2008, and who spent countless hours preparing their presentations.
Thanks to all the speakers and others who introduced session presenters. |
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Competition
Congratulations to our 2009 competition winners:
Presentation
Documentation
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Conference Feedback
- Excellent 56%
- Very Good 44%
- Conference content was rated as Excellent by 24.4% of respondents, Very Good by 70% and Good or less by 5.6%. Tough crowd!
- 71.25% of respondents indicated that they would be attending RTC 2010, with a further 28.75% saying that maybe they would attend. That means that no-one was definitely not attending.
- 86.25% of delegates said that they were likely to attend future Revit Technology Conferences.
- Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane/Gold Coast were the preferred locations for future conferences. There was strong support for holding the conference in New Zealand, especially Auckland, and some support for Perth and Adelaide, the coast and the countryside as venues. Other international destinations suggested were Delhi, Chicago, London, Paris…
- Sam Saliba aced a perfect score of 4.0 (out of 4) as a presenter for his lab on Autodesk Impression. Both respondents rated him excellent!
- Very honourable mentions go to Sean Zare on 3.83 for his session on hardware, Toby Maple and Chris Price – also 3.83, for their lab on conceptual massing, Chris Needham on 3.80 for his Lost In Space session, and last year’s top rated speaker, Michelle Louw scored 3.76 for her session on everything, Revit API , Advanced Revit Families & Generative Components, with Shane O'Rorke & Chris Needham (getting boring Chris!) on 3.75 for their session on Round-tripping Revit and Civil 3D.
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Social events
Between the Welcome Reception, Friday Evening Film and Farewell Dinner, delegates enjoyed the social and networking opportunities available during the conference. The events continued on Belgian Beer Cafe in some cases, and until dawn in some of the hotel rooms. A great time had by all! |
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Download Conference Presentations:
For any class that you missed at RTC2009, conference materials are available here
RTC 2009 has instituted a password system to limit these downloads to conference attendees. |
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You're a Star, Heidi Earl
During the 362 days of the year when the RTC is not held,
Heidi Earl is busy preparing for our next event. This involves herding cats, turning our rambling meetings into a strong set of minutes, liaison with the venue, and providing the organisation that makes the whole thing possible.
Thanks also to Sarah Dart, bolstering our on-site management and support.
A massive 88% of respondents rated Heidi & Sarah as excellent. Those that didn’t – we have your names!
Our Fallen Hero: Simon Whitbread
After putting in the long hours and hard work of a committee member for the last year, Simon was then prevented by a Swine Flu related company policy from coming to the conference! Thanks to those who picked up his classes.
One strange thing though… Sean England from the same company came to the conference. He just said he was going out to lunch and might be a while.
The Committed
Some quiet thanks must go to the Committee who put this together under the Glorious Leadership of Wesley Benn.
So thanks to Marina Radosevic, Chris Needham, Clay Hickling, Simon Whitbread, and Rodd Perey.
Feel free to join RTC Community
And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors
Our sponsors bring the conference to you at a reasonable price, so we are very happy to have them on board! Many thanks to our partner, Autodesk, who helps us get the word out, and contributes some terrific prizes, and Gold sponsors Lenovo who look after our computing needs (and demonstrated the luscious dual screen W700 mobile workstation), AEC Systems, our very first sponsor, still working behind the scenes in so many ways, and Benn Design, without whom we would simply not exist (and who demonstrated the Archetype practice management software and their latest Revit Content).
Other sponsors of RTC include AEC Consulting, bringing both expertise and support to implementation and BIM management, KarelCAD, always a strong contributor in software and services, Exactal, showing their newest iteration of CostX costing tools for Revit, HP's new Z workstation and T1120 printer were on show and tell, and CADSmart showcased their software designed to test, measure and improve CAD efficiency.
The exhibition hall was a lively area of discussion and networking amidst the sponsor stalls. Thanks to everyone for the enthusiasm, and positive feedback, and we look forward to providing an ever growing range and depth of exhibition to you in the future.
Many firms have also contributed their staffs' time and expertise. Though too numerous to mention, we would like to offer our thanks to all of them also. |
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| Revit Technology Conference History |
| 2005 |
First conference held at the Hydro Majestic Hotel in the Blue Mountains, NSW |
| 2006 |
The second conference was held in Port Stephens, NSW |
| 2007 |
The RTC Roadshow in a one day format toured Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland, Melbourne and Perth |
| 2008 |
Returning to a 3 day format, the conference was held at Brighton Beach NSW |
| 2009 |
Our fourth three-day conference (and ninth event overall!), was held at the Sebel Albert Park in Melbourne, and smashed through the 200 delegate barrier |
| 2010 |
Promises to be the biggest and best Revit conference ever. |
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Revit User Groups
RTC is an independent conference run by Revit users. If you are not in contact with your local Revit user group, here are some details below:
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Start Planning Now for RTC 2010
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RTC 2010 (20-22 May 2010) will be here before you know it! So start planning now to attend. |
We'll be offering more than 60 classes and hands-on labs, as well as the community and social events you've come to expect.
- Learn from some of the world's top instructors and industry experts.
- Share ideas and insights with an international community of your peers.
- Explore the latest trends and technologies
- Cultivate important business and professional contacts that can benefit your company and your career.
RTC is a unique, independent conference covering Revit, BIM and related applications and fields. No other event brings so many opportunities and benefits together in a single location—a tremendous value!
Make the case for your attendance: Members of RTC Community will have access to sample letters to assist with making the case for attendance inside their organisation.
Learn more about RTC 2010, or view course materials from previous RTC Conferences. |
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| To subscribe or unsubscribe from future RTC newsletter, please email to RTC Secretariat. |
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