2016 in Review – 2017 Preview

I try to spend some time at the end of each year reflecting on what we’ve accomplished but more importantly thinking about what we should be working on moving forward. 2016 was an eventful year for ArchVision. We celebrated our 25th year in business in August. No small feat as those of you that run your own businesses can attest. It was probably equal doses of foresight, naivety, stubbornness and love of the industry that carried us this far.

If you followed ArchVision over the years you probably witnessed us going through numerous transition periods with our products. 2015 and ’16 were years where you may not have perceived a lot of activity with our existing products but behind the scenes it was just the opposite. We introduced a new product in September called AVAIL, a new approach to enterprise content management that is sweeping across the AEC industry. Released commercially in late August, AVAIL has been in development for more than 3 years and has it’s origins in the ArchVision Dashboard product. In late 2015 we introduced a new content product called Detail Warehouse that is destined to change the way the AEC industry thinks about BIM content. Throughout the past year we augmented the RPC subscription content collection with hundreds of new RPC Automobiles and we have been laying some groundwork to dramatically increase the volume, quality and variety of RPC formatted content, ready to drag & drop into your next project.

I’m not sure if AVAIL is a result of that foresight or naivety I mentioned but we seem to have struck a chord. Thanks to everyone who helped during the beta period as we couldn’t have done it without you. AVAIL is solving what we now refer to as that 40 year old Windows file folder problem we’ve all become numb to. If you haven’t seen AVAIL in action check out the AVAIL YouTube channel. There are a couple of overview videos for managing visualization assets or specifically how AVAIL can be used to manage Revit content. You can try AVAIL for yourself (I suggest watching the video(s) first so you have an idea of what it is designed to do) by visiting getavail.com and downloading a fully functioning install. The only limit is how many Channels you can create and how much content you can index. It’s designed to let you get your feet wet with your own content. AVAIL comes alive once you see and start organizing your own assets.

Detail Warehouse is the world’s largest commercial repository of native-built Revit drafting views encompassing 50 sub-categories of door, roof, window and foundation details. Designed to be a starting point for building your own internal detail library, what you currently see in Detail Warehouse is just the beginning. In 2016 we continued to augment the subscription with additional detail components such as Wood Screws and Sleeve Anchors as well as new AISC Steel Shapes. 2017 promises to bring new categories of not only details but oft-used families and components. We’re also working to more tightly integrate the delivery and management of Detail Warehouse with AVAIL so watch for updates early in 2017.

Last but certainly not least is the RPC platform. We introduced a new partnership with AXYZ Design for photorealistic people content delivered as 3D+ RPCs. If you haven’t previewed and sampled these collections you owe it to yourself to take a look as they’re a spectacular way to liven up your renderings. In the past couple of months we were also pleased to announce the addition of 3 new rendering and visualization applications to the RPC family. It has been the year-of-Revit as Enscape, Revizto and V-Ray for Revit all have released RPC support in their latest releases.

While we’re continuing to augment and deliver the world’s most comprehensive collection of architectural entourage we’ve also been busy laying the groundwork for some exciting new ways you’ll be able to leverage the RPC platform. The current RPC Creator tool in Dashboard lets you convert any 2D TIFF or PNG image into an RPC, ready to use in your preferred modeling and and visualization applications. Get ready, we’re about to open up the ability to create your own 3D+ RPCs! We’re working to broaden your ability to create your own RPCs from existing models. Without getting into too much detail you’ll be able to convert most any 3d model into an RPC.

As an example consider the airplane in the image below. It started as a SketchUp model on 3D Warehouse, textures were “baked” in 3dsMax, exported along with the geometry and converted to RPC. The resulting RPC was then placed in Revit and rendered using Enscape. All within minutes! We’ll be launching the new RPC Creator capability as a web service accessible at labs.archvision.com soon so watch your inbox for details.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support. We couldn’t work on such fun projects without you! Looking forward to helping each of you in 2017.

Randall