Technology Product Highlights from AIA 2012 Expo: Part 1

AECbytes Newsletter #57
May 24, 2012 (article by Dr. Lachmi Khemlani)

Article Summary

Last week, I attended the AIA 2012 Convention and Expo that was held in Washington DC from May 17 to 19. The theme of the Convention this year was “Design Connects,” and while there were a lot of interesting keynote presentations and sessions, I did not find them very compelling from an AEC technology perspective or featuring a highly reputed personality like Tom Friedman, who was one of main keynote speakers at last year’s convention. As a result, I devoted all my time at the Convention to exploring the technology products on display at the Expo, which resulted in a more detailed understanding of new products and updates. Unlike earlier AIA articles which provided a brief overview of most of the products that were on display, this two-part series of articles on the AIA 2012 Convention provides more detailed descriptions of the products and services offered by the AEC technology vendors that I visited.

In the current article, we will explore a new pedestrian simulation software integrated into Vectorworks that seemed to be nicely representative of using computational power for more advanced and intelligent tasks, the enhancements in Bluebeam’s new release, Revu 10, for PDF generation, review, and collaboration, and the many enhancements in ArchiCAD 16 that is being released by Graphisoft later this month,. We will also look at the several new iPad apps that were on display this year, suggesting that this new medium is taking off in AEC. The second article on the AIA Convention that will be published next week will look at what was shown at the AIA 2012 Expo by established companies like Bentley, Autodesk, Trelligence, IES, Cadalog, and Axium; newcomers to the show such as Smart Technologies, SmartBIM, and Archability; and some additional highlights relevant to AEC technology.

Article Link

http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2012/issue_57.html