Days 2 & 3 – Inaugural RTCUSA

 

Day 2

So Day 2 of RTC started with a thought provoking class by Alexjandro Ogata of HNTB on BIM Beyond the Documentation. This was a great class & it seems that HNTB are using similar techniques we are trying to implement at HOK. What was very apparent is that team structures & leadership skills fundamentally need to change when implementing a BIM process. The typical roles are changing & the knowledge required to fully implement BIM are not being fully understood by many firms.

After meeting with Newforma & discussing how it could potentially be used for FM, I caught the tail end of Doug Williams of Perkins & Wills class on “How to Establish a BIM Execution Plan to Assist Your IPD projects”. After lunch I sat in on Lee Millers class on using Revit for Urban Design. Even though I know most of what Lee showed as I have seen it many times before, it always amazes me how impressive this is. I hear it again & again that Revit really isn’t the right tool for this type of work. However, if you set things up correctly & utilise some of the scheduling capabilities of Revit, this is “so” the right tool. Towards the end of the day I drifted into Marcelio Sgambelluri class on adaptive families. I just wanted to see the parametric elephant & cow for my own eyes! Marcelio is an insane genius! It was then onto the RTC BBQ. Steve Staffords son DJ’d & my kids had a blast.

 

Day 3

I joined Lee Miller & Matt Jezyk in Stephen Taskin class on Conceptual Massing. A superb class to start the day. Stephen showed some incredible panelling concepts, both Matt & I where equalled excited about what we saw. To quote Matt “holy shit, this stuff is insane”! After a short coffee break I joined Jason Grant class where he showed how he has developed presentation techniques to improve the quality of output from Revit. Everything you see in the screen grab below was undertaken in Revit; no Photoshop work here!

During lunch Matt J then showed some secret squirrel stuff he & his team are working on. More details to follow on this in the next month or so.

It was then onto the closing speeches by Alan Preger of Newforma & then Paul Doherty of Screampoint to close RTC USA. Paul highlighted some great development technologies he & his teams are working on. Some of it was rather scary stuff, but as Paul emphasized, Architects need to realise that they will be the masters of this new digital world. This will provide Architects with greater business opportunities over & above just designing buildings. His most thought provoking comment, was in the very near future “architects will be in a far greater demand” which certainly got a laugh from the audience. Whilst I am not an architect, just a humble technician at heart, I hope Architects do realise that this is genuine opportunity & they need to think beyond just good design & traditional ways of working.

Jim Baldings ANT group finished off proceedings with “glorious gadgets”. Doug from P+W showed how they had developed Ipad apps to showcase projects, Eon Reality showed 3d glasses & we where also exposed to some amazing VR stuff.

Wesley Benn wound up the formal side event with the assistance of Phil Read before the Gala Dinner.

Steve Shells band Shell Shock rocked the night away, with a drum appearance from Steve Stafford. Is there no end to this guy’s talent? A good drummer & a sound Revit aficionado.

My children then ripped up the dance floor with the likes of Jim Balding, , Wesley Benn, Dave Conant & others!

So my opinion of RTC USA? It was beyond excellent. It had a totally different feel to AU. The quality of speakers was brilliant, I didn’t attend one duff class. The venue was extremely good & the connectivity with others within the Revit community made this event invaluable. RTC plan to move the event around, so maybe it will be on the East Coast next year. Running an new event in this continued challenging economic climate is always risky, but the RTC team certainly pulled it off. I would guess the biggest challenge for the RTC event organisers will to maintain the events sense of community social feel without growing too large.