Architosh will be covering the AIA this year in DC and we have a pretty good list of visits with software developers serving the AEC industry. As typical, the usual suspects will be in full attendance–that means larger-sized booths–and there is a small gathering of smaller booths filled with various tech companies.
Bentley, Autodesk, Graphisoft and Nemetschek (all four AEC-BIM players) will have larger booths at the show. We have formal visits planned with three of these companies and one of them (can’t say just yet) is planning on introducing a new software product that will work in tandem with its main AEC offerings.
ArchiCAD 16 of course was just announced and we are still working on our Product In-Depth feature, which should be out around the time of the event. We look forward to seeing live product demonstrations more fully and that can help us round-out our understanding of this big update for Graphisoft.
While there are some interesting smaller companies at attendance this year we are sad to see that are actually less software companies planning to exhibit than the last time we were at AIA two years ago. Clearly the economy has hit the industry quite hard this year. We don’t see the formZ folks who are regulars and are also nearby. We also do not see the Rhino folks there as well. In a prior show Robert McNeal and Co. had a very larger booth and were showcasing smaller third-party add-on developers for Rhino at the show. Perhaps there will be some last-minute changes?
Luxology’s modo has made great strides in the AEC market and we would appreciate saying modo shown at AIA as well as companies like Abvent and many of the SketchUp rendering add-on developers. Google will be at the show and we are assuming SketchUp will be shown despite it being acquired recently.
We look forward to producing these reports in the new few days and learning about what is new.