Revit Goes to University...

University of Southern California School of Architecture Earns Autodesk Revit BIM Experience Award

School Honored for Integrating Revit Architecture Software for Building Information Modeling into Curriculum and Encouraging Sustainable Design Skills

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., August 4, 2008—Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), announced that it has presented the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture with a Revit BIM Experience Award. The award honors the school for teaching building information modeling (BIM) to graduate and undergraduate students to give them the skills highly sought after by leading architectural firms. The award also recognizes the school’s ongoing efforts to promote BIM, including the recent BIM BOP 2008 symposium, which brought together practicing architects, students and faculty to discuss BIM, sustainable design and other key trends in the building industry.

“BIM, and its ability to facilitate integrated project delivery and sustainable design, are transforming the architecture and construction professions,” said Karen Kensek, associate professor of the practice of architecture for USC's School of Architecture. “Offering our students experience with BIM helps them think in 3D so they can fully understand the entire building and start to come to terms with issues of constructability. We also know from our annual architecture career fair that experience using Revit Architecture for BIM makes our students very attractive job candidates.”

BIM is an integrated process built on coordinated, reliable information about a project from design through construction and into operations. By adopting BIM, architects, engineers, contractors and owners can easily create coordinated, digital design information and documentation; use that information to more accurately visualize, simulate and analyze performance, appearance and cost; and reliably deliver the project faster, more economically and with reduced environmental impact.

BIM Courses at USC School of Architecture
USC’s School of Architecture teaches Revit Architecture software to introduce students to the principles of BIM and 3D design. The school also uses the Autodesk Sustainable Design Curriculum to instruct students in the use of BIM for sustainable design. Students can export their Revit models to a wide variety of energy-performance analysis software tools, such as Autodesk Ecotect, Autodesk Green Building Studio and IES Virtual Environment, to conduct daylight and shading studies. The architecture students also learn how to create stunning, photo-real animations and renderings of their projects using Autodesk 3ds Max Design software.

“We applaud USC’s efforts to provide students with highly marketable, real-world skills based on a curriculum that includes Revit Architecture for BIM and sustainable design tools,” said Jay Bhatt, senior vice president, Autodesk AEC Solutions. “We hope that as they enter the workforce they will evangelize BIM and sustainable design practices.”

About the Revit BIM Experience Award
The Revit BIM Experience Award celebrates building industry professionals and educators around the world who are helping to transform the building industry through building information modeling. Autodesk honors organizations with this award for innovation and excellence in implementing the Revit platform (including Revit Architecture, Revit Structure and Revit MEP software applications) for building information modeling on one or more projects.