Vasari

In the department of controversial, head on over to the Inside the Factory blog and take a look at Project Vasari. Basically, this is the Revit conceptual massing environment pulled out of Revit as a stand alone modeling tool.

So, why is this controversial? Well, read the comments...

There is a lot of criticism (as there always is) about the factory spending time & money on this project when some other tools (text editing, stairs, site tools, etc...) languish in the dark despite the fact the they would see much wider use than a Revit Lite for conceptual design. But, I had to respond on one front - there were people on the boards saying that Autodesk was focusing on this because Revit isn't good enough for some of the more adventurous buildings like those for the Olympics in London. Well, this isn't a bird's nest but it isn't a strip mall either...

This project was primarily designed, produced, and some of it rendered all in Revit. This is what conceptual modeling is for. I'd post something in rebuttal on the Inside The Factory blog, but the problem is I half agree with the negative comments... But, the other half of me is glad to see Autodesk working to counter those people out there that think Sketchup is a faster conceptual modeler than Revit. A free tool to get people hooked on conceptual modeling in Revit will hopefully help to bust that perception.