Late last month, AUGI introduced its first Product Community at www.AUGI.com. The Revit User Group International (RUGI) and participants on the Revit Forums at ZoogDesign.com have a new home at AUGI.com. AUGI is delighted to join forces with this dynamic group.
The Revit Community, accessible from the AUGI home page under "Communities" in the navigation bar, features a wealth of information about Revit and fosters interaction among the product's users.
With the Autodesk acquisition of the Revit product in 2002, it made sense for Revit's vibrant user community to become more closely aligned with other Autodesk product users. Thus, the notion that the two user groups should converge at www.AUGI.com was born.
Spearheading this effort are two individuals with strong Revit community ties. Jim Balding, AIA, will serve as AUGI Revit Community Chairman. Chris Zoog, whose ZoogDesign.com site housed the Revit Forums, will serve as AUGI Revit Forums Manager. These two are joined by several others who will work hard to make the Revit community at AUGI.com thrive.
In addition to content from RUGI.org and ZoogDesign.com, the AUGI Revit Community will house content formerly found at Revitcity and alt.cad.revit. Combining site content in this way gives Revit users the best of all worlds. "The merger of ZoogDesign.com/forums and RUGI.org with AUGI.com is one-stop shopping," says Balding. "Now the functionality of all of those sites is under one roof, at a professional site with the right name."
One immediately apparent benefit is user interface continuity. Balding admits that while all of the aforementioned sites were good, "there was a discontinuation among them in terms of navigation, speed, and content. Having one site will establish standards in a budding industry solution, not to mention the community."
For the Revit faithful, AUGI.com's new Revit Community offers a number of features sure to please. Among them are:
- Revit Exchange: a database for exchanging templates, projects, images, and more.
- Tips and Tricks: a separate area for Tips and Tricks with a full-time manager
- Gallery: a separate page for gallery images
- Links: a separate page for favorite AEC/Revit links, suggestion area, and a full-time manager
- Wishlist: a separate page for wishlist items with a full-time manager
- Other Items: The Revit Community home page, nearing completion, will contain Architectural Trivia, Name that Building, Tip of the Week, Family of the Week, Revit News, and other weekly features. This page will go live soon!
Just like AUGI, the Revit community is all about "users helping users." Balding cites the Revit Forums at ZoogDesign.com as a great example of people working together to solve problems. His hope that the Revit/AUGI alliance will bring this power to a broader audience is echoed by Chris Zoog, architect of the Revit Forums at ZoogDesign.com. "One of the major benefits of merging the Revit Forums at ZoogDesign with the Revit Forums at AUGI is exposure. Previously, the only way to find the forums at ZoogDesign.com was by word of mouth," explains Zoog. "Users who eventually found their way to the site, spread the word. Amazingly, we had more than a thousand members and tens of thousands of posts. By moving to AUGI, the Revit Community—and especially the forums—will connect to a much larger portion of the user base."
AUGI members, too, will benefit greatly by the alliance. "AUGI.com benefits by gaining a massive Revit knowledge base," Zoog comments. "The Revit Forums at ZoogDesign was one of a handful of places to gain insight on how users are leverging Revit in the real world. If you ran into a problem, chances are that someone had a solution for you in the forums."
To current and future Revit users, visit and browse. Tell us what you like and what you'd like to see in the future. Join the community!
