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.