Friday 7 March 2008

Impression Update

A big thank you to all those people that sent me example files to forward to Autodesk

These were sent to assist build a case for Revit Structure , Suite and MEP users on subscription to get Impression

Lisa Crounse Product Marketing Manager for Impression emailed me today to inform me that "The team has decided that Impression will be available to Revit Structure customers (both the stand-alone and suite)" She later informed me via email that "Revit MEP is also on board"

She also gave me permission to make this public knowledge

Thanks Lisa and all those at Autodesk that helped make it happen.

Saturday 1 March 2008

Will Revit Structural Suite Users get Impression ?

Autodesk has announced that Impression will be offered as a subscription benefit for customers with AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, AutoCAD MEP and AutoCAD Revit Architecture Suite in March.

I have not seen any mention of Revit Structure Suite, which comes with AutoCAD so do we or don't we get Impression if we have subscription?

My reseller could not tell me, as they did not know

As a result of sending a support request to Autodesk, I have been contacted by Senior Management at Autodesk who initially asked me to build a “use case” for Structural Engineers owning Revit Structure under subscription to get Impression as part of the subscription.

In my reply I explained that Quote:

“I have not seen any mention of Revit Structure Suite, which comes withAutoCAD so do we or don't we get Impression if we have subscription?

AutoCAD is part of Structure Suite so we should but it's not mentionedin the resellers newsletter sent by email

Reading your (Autodesks) own literature

We would use it to "impress our colleagues and clients with compelling presentation-ready graphics created directly from DWG and DWF Files".

Structural Engineers in the UK do a lot of smaller schemes without the assistance of an Architect, as our drawings are sufficiently detailed for there not to be the need for an Architect. We (Structural Engineers) also undertake Civil Engineering. In the UK we take an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering and usually take the final year options of Advanced Structural design.

A picture is worth a 1000 words and the better the picture the better the understanding.

This package would be useful for civil engineering schemes which include landscaping.

I hope this helps you understand the use cases, Bottom line has to be if you are making this available to people that own AutoCAD then Revit Structural Suite owners should get it.... I just wanted it confirmed and if not lobby for it to be made available to us”

There have been further exchanges of emails and I have been requested to send some example drawings to assist in building the case.

Unfortunately I recently had my backup hard disk die on me so I am having to scour through piles of CD’s to find some good examples.

If Structural Engineers could send me some example dwg or pdf files to my work email at alan.wooldridge@byl.co.uk then I can collate them and send them back to Autodesk I would greatly appreciate it.

And then we Revit Structure Users may end up with a very useful additional tool.

To read or joint the AUGI thread on this subject http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?p=817614#post817614

To find out more about what Impression is and what it could do for you see
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=9246650&siteID=123112
There is a nice short video on this page.