AIA 2005 National Convention and Expo

This year marked another record-breaking AIA National Convention and Expo, held from May 19-21, where the final attendance tally was 24,444, beating the previous record of a little over 22,000 set last year at the AIA National Convention held in Chicago. Some would attribute this to the venue of the conference being amidst the glitz and glitter of Las Vegas, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. But hopefully, the continued increase in attendance at the annual National Convention over the past few years is a testament to the vibrant and healthy state of the architectural profession and the building industry as a whole, which has been sustained despite the overall slowdown of the US economy. Clearly, building construction and renovation continue to remain one of society's basic necessities and the market remains far from saturated. Besides, with the increase in globalization, several firms are working in projects in other parts of the world, many of which are just embarking on their development and industrialization. The building industry can expect to get only busier in the months and years ahead.

This issue of the AECbytes newsletter describes the highlights of the AIA National Convention from a technology perspective and provides an overview of the products that were on display at the Expo. Detailed reviews of some of these products will also soon follow in the AECbytes Product Review series.

Recall that the highlights of the AIA Technology in Architectural Practice conference, which was held as a pre-convention workshop at the National Convention, were captured in the last newsletter. To contrast this year's convention with last year's event, see AECbytes Newsletter #10. For reports on earlier AIA national conventions, please see Issues 51, 52, 75, 76, and 77 of my Cadence AEC Tech Newsletter.

Convention Highlights

The official theme of this year's AIA convention was "Imagine, Create, Transform: The Power of Architecture," continuing the AIA tradition of coming up with themes that are broad and all-encompassing rather than focused on any specific aspect of architecture. Still, last year's convention demonstrated a strong emphasis on green buildings and sustainable architecture, but there was no such noticeable emphasis on any particular aspect this year. The highlights of the opening general session were the inauguration of a set of 12 spectacular-looking stamps by the USPS commemorating modern architecture and a documentary produced exclusively for the convention which explored the concept of communities, the architect's role in developing them, how developers and residents perceive them, and the driving forces that will shape and alter them in the future. The closing session was devoted to a presentation by the 2005 AIA Gold Medalist, Santiago Calatrava, the well-known architect, sculptor, and engineer, whose architecture is characterized by curvilinear roofs, great soaring spaces, symmetry, and organic and kinetic forms. Using an imaging device that allowed him to draw and paint before the audience, Calatrava was able to interactively demonstrate the key elements of his architecture, evident in high-profile projects such as the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New Work, the Athens Olympic Sports Complex, the Tenerife Opera House in the Canary Islands of Spain, and the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion in Wisconsin. For a good overview of Calatrava's work, see this article in Architectural Record.

Compared to last year's convention where sessions focused on the use of technology were few and far between, this year's AIA convention not only had noticeably more technology-related sessions, but pushed technology right to the forefront by having a panel discussion on Building Information Modeling (BIM) as the theme presentation for the general session on the second day. The discussion was focused on examining BIM and its benefits from varied perspectives, including that of the owner, architect, contractor, and software vendor, who were represented by William Tibbett (Johnson & Johnson), Patrick MacLeamy (CEO of HOK and Chair of the International Alliance for Interoperability), Thom Mayne (principal of Morphosis and this year's Pritzker Prize winner), Joseph Burns (vice president of Thorton-Thomasetti Engineers), and Phil Bernstein (VP of Building Solutions Division at Autodesk). Since the benefits of BIM have been well documented in AECbytes already, we won't get into the specifics of this panel discussion here. The main message that emerged, loud and clear, was that the days of 2D drawing are numbered. We need to work smarter, not harder, and get back to having fun instead of being trapped in an old process. The current 2D mode only creates an adversarial relationship between the architect and the contractor, whereas the use of BIM will allow for more collaborative, integrated design-construction teams. BIM is a revolutionary, not an evolutionary technology, which requires a complete rethinking of how we practice architecture. We should just get going with implementing it, without worrying about contractual and liability issues. It ultimately boils down to a question of survival—if we don't get up to speed on this technology soon, we will be out of business.

It was great to see technology emerge as a mainstream issue in architectural practice at this AIA Convention, instead of being limited to the technology enthusiasts in smaller conferences such as the AIA TAP. The case for BIM is finally being made to the profession at large, and the AIA is taking it upon itself to stimulate the broader implementation of BIM in practice, with the realization that we have only the next 3 to 5 years within which to do it. By then, if we haven't made the change, someone else will lead the charge and architects will see their role in the building process greatly diminished.

News from the Expo Floor

The Expo floor this year played host to all the established AEC technology vendors as well as several new ones who hadn't exhibited at the AIA show before. Autodesk took the opportunity to demonstrate its recently released AutoCAD 2006 family of products (see my reviews of AutoCAD 2006 and ADT 2006), Revit Building 8.0, and the first version of Revit Structure, scheduled for release this month (watch out for reviews of both these products next month). The other key area Autodesk focused on during the show was its electronic publishing solution, DWF, which now features 3D capability and a substantial improvement in printing compared to the previous version. The new version of Autodesk DWF Composer supports measuring and integrated markup of 3D DWF files published by ADT and Revit, and features a new snapshot tool that enables users to capture any onscreen information and bring it into the DWF file.

Autodesk's strong emphasis on DWF at the show was further highlighted by the presence of competitor Adobe in a neighboring booth, who was exhibiting at the AIA show for the first time. Adobe focused on showing the new 3D capabilities of PDF in Acrobat 7.0 Professional (see the review in AECbytes), and the new release of its imaging solution, Photoshop CS2, which was also recently reviewed in AECbytes.

Bentley showed the capabilities of its upcoming release of the V8 XM Edition of its MicroStation product family, which were described in my recent newsletter on Bentley's BE conference, and client projects done using its solutions. Bentley also took a nice break from its conservative image with a very unconventionally designed booth that resembled a rock and had a catchy logo of "forty 26," which turned out to be nothing else but its booth number. It attracted a lot of attendees, intrigued both by the booth as well as the offer of free coffee inside it—all in all, a well-done marketing effort!

While Graphisoft did not have a new version of ArchiCAD to showcase (see my review of the last release, ArchiCAD 9), it focused on customer success stories and partnerships with third party vendors such as @Last Software (developer of SketchUp) and Trelligence, which expand the capabilities of its solution to include conceptual design and space planning respectively. The biggest crowd-puller at their booth, undoubtedly, was the story of how ArchiCAD was used to bring to life an original Frank Lloyd Wright design of a home on a remote, private island in New York. Wright had designed the building more than 50 years ago, but the project did not go through. It is now being revived, and based on five sketches by Wright, the new architect Thomas A. Heinz modeled and documented the building in ArchiCAD (see Figure 1). During his presentation at the show, the architect emphasized that he could not have done this project without the software. This project is currently under construction.

Rounding up the BIM offerings at the show was VectorWorks ARCHITECT, currently in release 11.5, the highlight of which is a new hand-drawn sketch effect that gives precision 2D drawings an unconstrained, sketched appearance. It also includes many improvements in overall functionality and stability. The developer of the VectorWorks family, Nemetschek North America, has been a little slow to jump on the BIM bandwagon. It is pitching VectorWorks ARCHITECT as "CAD for the Smart-Sized Firm" but at the same time, calling it "A BIM Application Tuned for Architectural Design." It is this ambivalence that has thus far prevented VectorWorks ARCHITECT from being widely acknowledged as a BIM solution, and it will be interesting to see what the future strategy of this company is going to be vis-à-vis its CAD versus BIM positioning.

@Last Software unveiled the new release of SketchUp, version 5, at the AIA show, which features new terrain modeling tools that work in the same intuitive way as the other SketchUp tools, the ability to add depth to drawings, improved ability to organize and manage component models, enhanced 3D export and new import formats such as DEM and 3DS, and other improvements. Judging from the size of its booth this year, which was comparable to that of the more established vendors, SketchUp seems to be doing phenomenally well for a company that is only about 5 years old. But one thing has been lost forever—the amazing sight of dozens of attendees crowding around the miniscule SketchUp booth in past AIA conventions to get a demo of this intriguing product. The SketchUp booth was now large enough to accommodate all those interested in checking it out. I can't wait to see the next breakthrough product from a startup company that affords the same sight as the SketchUp booth used to in its early years.

auto•des•sys, Inc., the developer of another established 3D modeling application popular in the architectural field, form•Z, is rapidly moving forward following the release of version 5.0 earlier this year (see the review of form•Z 5.0 in AECbytes). form•Z 5.5 is expected to be released in June and features a new Bend Along Curve tool for easily creating complex deformed shapes, a new DWG/DXF translator, support for Lightworks 7.5, more efficient network rendering, and a Helper application for writing scripts. form•Z 6.0 will soon follow, which will add a fully integrated animation environment where objects, lights, and cameras can be animated and transformed over time. It is intended to support not only the production of animated visualizations but dynamic modeling and form creation as well. A big coup for form•Z at the show was a chance to see the real world implementation of the application, the award winning design of the Fornarina Store by Giorgio Borruso, located at the Mandalay Bay where the convention was held (see Figure 2). It is a great demonstration of form•Z's ability to support innovative design explorations.

Several products were also making their AIA Expo debut at this year's convention or returning to it after a gap of several years. There was Chief Architect, an architectural design and visualization software customized for residential design that is based on the use of "smart" 3D objects. A similar application on display was VisionREZ, which is also customized for residential design and is available as a plug-in for ADT or as a stand alone product. Both these applications feature drawing extraction, automatic framing, built-in cost estimation, and other smarts specific to residential design, and are an excellent example of one of the likely future technological trends in AEC: BIM applications customized for specific building types. A new exhibitor at the show was Tectonic Network, which is attempting to tackle one of the critical missing links in BIM as discussed at the AIA TAP conference—the lack of object BIM models supplied by product manufacturers. In the PDF/DWF battle, CADzation is happy to stand on middle ground and showed the next release of its AcroPlot Pro application, featuring batch processing of files into both PDF or DWF. And in a slightly different realm, there was GiveMePower Corporation, who unveiled its new PowerCAD SiteMaster 2 mobile and wireless building surveying solution, which works with a Leica DISTO Plus wireless Bluetooth laser and speeds the production of precise, AutoCAD-compatible building surveys, area estimates and inspection drawings by up to 10 times over traditional measuring tape and paper methods.

This wraps up my overview of the 2005 AIA National Convention and Expo. I am looking forward to the next Convention, scheduled for June 8-10 2006 in Los Angeles. It will be interesting to see how effective the push for BIM implementation by the AIA has been by then.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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