Accomplishments
In our annual roundup last year, we took a page from Michael Kilkelly's handbook, he of the ArchSmarter website, and stated some goals for 2016. Let's revisit those and see how we did.
We stated a desire to formulate an Essential Revit Add-ons list. We were successful in this goal, and even presented sessions on this subject at RTC 2016 NA and SeaRUG.
We also wanted to start a series of articles detailing our own explorations with Dynamo and the Revit API. These two we didn't get to. Maybe in the New Year...
We stated a desire to add more human interest stories, such as interviews, to the site. To this end, we chatted with Victoria Manolova of Xinaps. The resultant post was very well received and exceeded our expectations.
We'll also be posting an interview with Christian Proulx of BIM Track soon, perhaps even before year's end.
We expressed a desire to add content to LinkedIn. Shortly after making the resolution, we did write a single LinkedIn article, but we still haven't figured out a way in which LinkedIn would aid our efforts here on Revit Add-ons.
As planned, we celebrated our 5th anniversary in April 2016.
Lastly, we set post and page view goals for the first time. Our posts target was an average of one a day, or 366 in this, a leap year. We eclipsed that goal with a whopping 500!
Our page views target was 500,000, and we fell just a tad short with 488,869. Still, we're quite happy with that total.
Our post count was helped in particular by the Autodesk App Store adding version info and release notes for add-ins. This allowed us to identify and post about relatively significant updates to add-ins. Unfortunately, the App Store's system is far from perfect, and there are many false positives. Fortunately for you, we weed them out by comparing the version numbers with the best database we know of on the subject, our own. 😜
Both posts and page views were healthy improvements over last year, from 281 posts to 500, a jump of 219, and from 300,877 page views to 488,869, an increase of 187,992.
Other things we accomplished during 2016 included re-branding our site, and we're really happy with our new look. We also started a new series, 'The Week that was in Revit Add-ons'. This series is intended as a companion piece to our well-established weekly roundups of what's new and updated on the Autodesk App Store. We started the second series because many add-ins are not published on the App Store, so the initial series was only telling part of the story.
We hosted our first Cyber Monday deals, and we hope to continue that in years to come. We also posted our first comparative roundup. Expect more in the New Year.
Our Advertisers
Revit Add-ons is ad-supported. Our ad revenue doesn't make for a great hourly rate, but it does help us to feel appreciated, and it motivates us to put a lot of effort into the site.
If you value the work we do on Revit Add-ons, please, show your support for our sponsors.
We had the pleasure of meeting ArchVision Founder/CEO Randall Stevens at RTC 2016 NA.
We hope that you agree that we have a great stable of advertisers and sponsors, and hope that you'll show them your appreciation.
Other advertisers we had during the year included 3Dconnexion, BIM One/BIM Track, BIMsmith, CTC, Ideate Software, IMAGINiT Technologies, and Xrev.
Editor's Choice Award Winners
The World's first mouse for CAD professionals. Precision engineering you can feel.
The new standard in engineering performance.
The free and opensource Add-in Manager allows you to disable Revit Add-ins from loading. This is especially handy for Revit debugging purposes.
AutoTURN for Revit delivers an easy to use swept path analysis tool for Revit users, allowing engineers, architects and other design professionals to perform simple turning maneuvers in the Revit environment.
BIMsmith is the free online service from Anguleris for creating wall, floor and ceiling system family assemblies.
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CASE was a company that did some great things in the BIM community. And, for awhile there, it seemed like they were releasing a new add-in every month, usually for free. When WeWork acquired CASE in mid-2015, these CASE Apps were left in limbo.
Never fear though, because the CASE folks eventually released the apps as opensource, courtesy of WeWork.
Not too long after that, BIM One folded the CASE Apps, all now free, into their free BIM One Add-ins Manager, alongside their own free add-ins.
Now that's cooperation for the betterment of the community.
Entourage Workshop for Revit enables one to resymbolize and stylize RPC content. It has a fine level of control, allowing one to modify individual RPCs. Add unique artistic touches to your 3D views and renderings.
The free FilterPLUS add-in is designed to easily and immediately make your Revit experience better by replacing the native Filter tool with a custom-built, beefed-up filter. It allows users to not only filter by Category, but also by Family and Type.
IdeateApps is a set of Revit tools designed to increase productivity. Developed with specific tasks in mind, these tools address the challenges identified most often by Ideate Software customers who use Revit software every day. IdeateApps will decrease the time spent on common tasks and increase the accuracy of BIM data in a Revit model, helping to keep projects of all sizes and complexities on time and on budget.
We at Revit Add-ons are especially keen on XRay and SmartDelete.
The NBS Add-in is a free tool that enables you to browse thousands of consistent and high quality BIM objects from the award-winning NBS National BIM Library while working in Revit. Using the unique NBS plug-in you can drag and drop selected objects directly into your model.
The free Pelco Camera Plugin for Revit app allows you to quickly and efficiently select the Pelco by Schneider Electric camera you need and integrate into the Revit software.
The application enables the user to select a camera, place on a Revit drawing and project its Field of View based on the maximum resolution of the selected camera.
Unlike the built-in Transfer Project Standards, the free Transfer Single add-in allows you to transfer just one item instead of entire categories, even to multiple files at one time. The add-in also enables you to copy additional elements like views, printing setups, section boxes, worksets, and even legends.
The free WorksetCreator enhances Revit by letting you mass change workset names with options like double click name editing, Find and Replace, and the ability to add a prefix. It also allows you to create a bunch of worksets in just a few clicks, from other projects or from text files and the like.
People's Choice Award Winners
Every year at this time we take a peek behind the curtain and see which posts received the most page views over the course of the year. The add-ins in the top-charting posts receive People's Choice Awards. Roundup and other aggregation types of posts are excluded, and only posts from the current year are considered.
Products in the list that also received Editor's Choice Awards include CASE Apps and BIMForge, both of which charted twice, as well as AutoTURN for Revit.
Also charting were qrVR Exporter, Sheet Duplicator, Autodesk LIVE Viewer, CADTracer, Import / Export Sheet Data from Excel, Polantis API, 2D Placer, Enscape, Sweets, Water System Calculation, and Advance Steel 2017 Extension.
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CASE was a company that did some great things in the BIM community. And, for awhile there, it seemed like they were releasing a new add-in every month, usually for free. When WeWork acquired CASE in mid-2015, these CASE Apps were left in limbo.
Never fear though, because the CASE folks eventually released the apps as opensource, courtesy of WeWork.
Not too long after that, BIM One folded the CASE Apps, all now free, into their free BIM One Add-ins Manager, alongside their own free add-ins.
Now that's cooperation for the betterment of the community.
See all of your Autodesk Revit models in Virtual Reality (VR) on Google Cardboard with just one click with qrVR Exporter.
Smart and intuitive Sheet Duplicator to create 100 sheets or more in the matter of seconds. Import sheet names and sheet numbers using Excel and get sorting options when creating new sheets.
Use the Autodesk LIVE Viewer to open and explore interactive visualizations created in Autodesk LIVE, a subscription service used by architects to make Revit files interactive.
AutoTURN for Revit delivers an easy to use swept path analysis tool for Revit users, allowing engineers, architects and other design professionals to perform simple turning maneuvers in the Revit environment.
CADTracer is designed to allow Revit users to replace CAD imports in projects with Revit Line work. CADTracer allows users to map Revit Line Styles with CAD Layers thereby achieving precise control of Line Weights and Line Styles. This tool can be used to convert 3D imports to 2D Line work and vice versa.
Import / Export Sheet Data from Excel will save a lot of time by transferring the sheet list information from Excel and from Revit to Excel.
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With the BIMsmith Forge interface, multiple manufacturers are brought together to form complete Revit assemblies, cut sheets, and specs. BIMsmith allows you to select and configure what you need quickly, without having to jump through the hurdles of merging multiple products or endless data entry.
The Polantis API application permits a direct connection from Revit to a huge object and texture database hosted on dedicated servers and in the cloud, all in .rvt and .rfa formats. It’s a great time-saver allowing AEC professionals to concentrate on what’s most important - conception and planning.
2D Placer is a tool for placing Detail Items and Annotation Symbols. The motivation for creating the 2D Placer is because the standard method for placing such components involves picking an item from a rather small list with all of the families and types expanded. It can take a while to find the family you are looking for if a bunch of families are loaded. 2D Placer provides a simple and useful interface for finding the 2D component that you want to place.
Enscape is a realtime 3D rendered walkthrough plug-in for your projects in Revit. It enables you to show and communicate designs in your team or to your customers effortlessly.
Sweets is a building product resource for design professionals. Sweets app for Revit allows the entire design team (architects, engineers, contractors and designers) to easily SEARCH, SELECT and ANNOTATE (TAG) manufacturer building product data directly into their projects.
Water System Calculations provides three key features:
- Conducts flow calculations according to DIN 1988-W308 norm
- Calculates pressure loss on critical path and shows critical path for Domestic Water
- Filters creation to display colored critical path in 3D
With Advance Steel 2017 Extension, Revit 2017 users can quickly connect their models to Advance Steel 2017 using the export, import and synchronize functionalities to transfer the model BIM data in LOD350 for Structural Steel. This interoperability helps users to more rapidly produce general arrangement drawings, fabrication drawings, BOMs, and NC files for steel structures.
Acknowledgements
Congratulations to all the award winners!
Many thanks to our advertisers!
Thanks to the add-in developers who make the Revit add-ins community such a thriving one!
Most of all, thank you dear readers for frequenting our site. We wouldn't be a success without you!
By the way, speaking of readers, now might be a good time to mention our social media counts. Presently we have 323 followers on Twitter and 976 likes on Facebook. Thank you all!
Happy Holidays everyone and may you enjoy a peaceful and fruitful New Year!
Related
- 2018 – Year in Review
- 2017 – Year in Review
- 2015 – Year in Review
- 2014 – Year in Review
- 2013 – Year in Review
- 2012 – Year in Review, Part 2
- 2012 – Year in Review, Part 1
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