RTC 2016 NA from a Revit Add-ons Perspective

It's been a busy few days here in Phoenix. RTC Events Management knows how to put on a show. If you haven't been, put attending an RTC event on your to-do list!

Many of the major Revit bloggers/authors/speakers are here, including Paul Aubin, Michael Kilkelly, Jeffrey Pinheiro, Steven Shell and Steve Stafford, just to name a few. You can check out a full list of speakers here. Heck, they even let me talk.

I've spent a lot of time on the exhibit floor talking with vendors and add-in developers. It's been great to finally meet some of our Revit Add-ons advertisers in person, including Jason Howden of RTV Tools, Randall Stevens of ArchVision, Christian Proulx and Alexandre Cantin of BIM Track, Steve Germano of Unifi, Benjamin Glunz and Abbi Koko of BIMsmith, Chris Price of Xrev, Craig Dodge and Richard Taylor of Ideate Software, and the guys at CTC Express Tools.

Image from the Exhibit Hall courtesy of Revizto

I also enjoyed meeting my IMAGINiT Technologies co workers Matt Mason, Jeff Stueck and Carl Storms for the first time. Matt's the product manager for the IMAGINiT Revit add-in products Clarity, Scan to BIM and IMAGINiT Utilities for Revit, which were on display at the IMAGINiT booth.

In terms of new or updated Revit add-in applications announced at the show, Invicara launched their BIM Assure product to coincide with the event. I'll post more information about this collaborative, cloud-based model checker in the coming days.

Several products that are nearing launch were also shown on the exhibit floor. Avail, the agnostic content management system from ArchVision, is looking great, with a clean, elegant interface and deep Revit integration.

Ideate Software is nearing release of a productivity suite, IdeateApps. It will include a tool named Ideate X-Ray for diagnosing and, in some cases fixing, the pesky "none of the created elements are visible in the current view" situation in Revit. More details to come as we have them.

Xrev is almost ready to launch the next generation of their popular Xrev Transmit product.

Other exhibitors of interest to the Revit add-ons community included Advance2000, Chaos Group, CLEV3R, Enscape, dRofus, Elumtools, Faro Technologies*, IrisVR*, Lumion, Oasys, Peer Software*, Revizto, Sefaira, StrucSoft Solutions**, and SysQue**.

* We haven't posted about these vendors' products before. Expect posts in the coming days.
** Also expect posts about updated products from these vendors in the coming days.

Online training solutions providers CADLearning, Eagle Point Software, Global eTraining and Pluralsight also exhibited at RTC NA this year.

I see from Twitter that Harry Mattison of Boost Your BIM has again been busy granting RTC NA Revit API wishes. Expect a post on that here soon too.

As for the weather in Phoenix, all I can say is that it's better in July than it would be in August, when one can sometimes literally smell the dirt baking in the heat.

As I write this though, I've opened my balcony door to the stifling heat to hear the indelible refrain of bagpipes that have been played outside every evening during the event. I don't know what the significance of the bagpiper is to the area or to the resort, but the haunting beauty of the music will remain in my memory long after the event has ended.