Sunday, August 26, 2012

Vasari Update

This information has been sitting in my inbox for a week now. Busy makes blogging even harder at times, but it's a good problem right!?! I've written about this product before as well as the Vasari Talk web sessions that have happened nearly each month. You can check those out HERE.
    Project Vasari has reached a tipping point in its evolution. As you probably know, its been a very popular project on Autodesk Labs. They've seen more than 60,000 downloads over the last 1.5 years and it has dramatically exceeded their expectations. Doing this work via Autodesk Labs has allowed them to quickly test out new ideas as well as respond to user requests.
Attendees of RTC and AU have probably heard Matt Jezyk present sessions (with Zach and David) devoted to Vasari and he wrote, "I'm happy to announce that based on customer demand we are graduating Vasari from Autodesk Labs and are launching a Public Beta on our new site Autodesk Vasari.com!"

Just in case you haven't heard much about Vasari yet, Matt provided the following descriptive summary.
    Autodesk Vasari Beta 1 is a slimmed down version of Revit 2013 focusing on conceptual modeling and early analysis. It is meant for architectural designers and energy analysis who are not necessarily using Revit. The new Beta 1 is file-format compatible with Revit 2013 and also contains all the features from previous versions of Project Vasari. The main new features of Beta 1 are Revit 2013 file-format compatibility, Cloud Rendering and Repeat/Divide features. A less restrictive End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) is also in place to allow firms to further test this pre-release product in their environments. Access to Autodesk 360 Energy Analysis is still available via a free Autodesk ID login. The Beta 1 release will expire on January 31st 2013.
Some firms have been leery of putting their project's design data in software that is in a "lab experiment" state. Put another way, as long as Project Vasari was a lab experiment there was no assurance that it would survive long enough (or ever turn into an actual product) to let a firm finish a project that is relying on the Vasari modelling effort throughout. This experimental nature, while providing a great way to see things develop quickly and early, meant uncertainty about its future. This is a step in the right direction so that those concerns can be assuaged.

You can join their forum site and be part of the ongoing conversation and help get the word out too, here's how: Invite your friends to join you and/or Add Content and finally Tell your Twitter followers.

4 comments:

Alfredo Medina said...

Question, what features of Vasari are NOT already included in Revit? Is there such a list?

Steve said...

I don't recall seeing a detail list of what is not in Vasari that is in Revit but this is on their FAQ:

How is Project Vasari related to Revit?

Project Vasari 2.1 and 2.5 are based on the Revit 2012 code base, but highlights the Conceptual Design environment and various other features. It also encompasses some changes to the user interface. Detailed BIM modeling tools have been removed.

Alfredo Medina said...

Hmm.. that paragraph from the FAQ is not very specific. I have read that in Vasari, one can edit a model in perspective view. That at least is something that is different. But not very substantial to make a Revit user use Vasari. I am just curious to know if there is a reason for a Revit user to say: "let's do this in Vasari".

Steve said...

Finally got it downloaded again myself so maybe I'll get some time to find out for real? It was my understanding that the core analysis stuff that Vasari has been shown to do in videos is embedded there and not in vanilla Revit.

Vasari wasn't created to "prevent" someone who uses Revit already from using it. It is more a bridge for someone who probably wouldn't think Revit first, more like Rhino, FormZ or Sketch Up.

An opportunity to deal with conceptual design without the so called burden of worksets or more formal tools etc.