San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk, Inc., a manufacturer of architectural design software, announced its Revit Building Information Modeling (BIM) software has been installed on more than 100,000 computers, less than 6 years after its acquisition, this week at the American Institute of Architects Convention and Exposition in Los Angeles.
"The tool is very well aligned with what's going on in the broader industry," said Phil Bernstein, AIA, VP of Autodesk's building industry division. "And that's a desire to do much more sophisticated design." Autodesk purchased Revit, Inc. in 2002 and said at the time that they viewed it as a complementary product to its AutoCAD program. Autodesk competes with Gehry Technologies and Cadalyst, but is the first to reach such wide acceptance in the Architecture, Engineering, and construction industries. The user base for AutoCAD is still larger than that of Revit, but its growth is not nearly as strong as that of the object-enabled Revit. "There was definitely a shift in the conversation we've been having about integrated practice, and that happened about 14 months ago," Bernstein said. "At the AIA convention last year they had Thom Mayne, myself and some others appear on stage and talk about BIM. If there was a tipping point, I'd say that was it."
