[Editor’s Note: We asked Scott Sowers to mingle with the swells at a recent Revit sales event in Washington DC sponsored by Autodesk reseller Microdesk.] By Scott Sowers
Special to AECnews
The Embassy of Finland in Washington DC was the swanky venue for a recent networking and sales event sponsored by Autodesk reseller Microdesk. The setting was sublime, the refreshments arrived via tuxedo-clad servers and the cocktails were flowing.
In case you haven’t taken the drive up Massachusetts Avenue, the Finns inhabit a strikingly modern building famous for the curtain of vegetation that covers the front façade during the growing season. There was free valet parking out front and an art exhibit lining the interior walls of the space that Microdesk chose to pitch the new version of Autodesk Revit, which allows users to meld BIM and sustainable design into one folder.
The presentation was opened by Ben Whitcomb, the Microdesk go-to guy for BIM in the District. “You have one project file containing all of the project data for the designer, the contractor and the owner that provides a graphically outstanding and very well coordinated set of construction documents,” he says.
Whitcomb then handed the ball off to John B. Boehms, a Microdesk consultant based in Chicago. Boehms originally lived in Seattle and came to the event bearing a dose of green savvy and the obligatory Power Point presentation.
In attendance were all the heavyweights in the DC commercial market. Firms represented included Leo A. Daly, HSMM, Gensler, WDG and BBG-BBGM. The designers milled about chatting for about an hour then mostly paid attention during the pitch which also included one HSW learning credit.
Boehms showed cute pictures of his son on a camping trip, referenced books that describe hiking the Appalachian Trail, and cited Patagonia’s efforts to build an office that functions off the grid by designing a parking garage outfitted with PV panels.
There were also screen shots of the software hard at work spitting out data on green-centric stats like day lighting, carbon emissions, water use, even the affect of adding a bike rack to satisfy a LEED credit. Want to see how the design looks on the site and how it works based on local weather patterns? Link up with Google Earth. Yeah, it does that too.
The software gurus at Microdesk are building in all those adjustments you can make with real time feedback on how they will affect the building’s performance. A couple of the pitchees ducked out as the presentation went ten minutes into overtime but most folks were there till the bitter end just after eight o’clock. All and all, pretty painless and well executed. Did they sell anything? You’d have to ask Ben.