The basic tenets of building information modeling (BIM) and parametric building modeling have been discussed for 30 years. So why did it take so long for the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry to get there? I believe the software and AEC industries were uniquely aligned over the past 10 years and, in the context of macroeconomic conditions like booms and recessions, helped catalyze the changes we see today. Over that time, conditions were right for the inception, formation, and strengthening of the ideas and technologies inside Revit and for the development of the larger concept of BIM.

There were significant reasons why the AEC industry should have been primed for change in the late 1990s. The United States had come out of the recession that plagued it earlier in the decade. The construction industry was thriving, as were information technology and the Internet. There had been dramatic increases in computational power and networking. Adoption of CAD was increasing dramatically in architectural firms, and other solutions on the market also offered 3D modeling and building-specific modeling capabilities. Despite these innovations, the typical construction documentation process was tedious and error-prone. The typical design-bid-build construction process was inefficient and costly. Was that enough to cause the architectural design industry to change? No. The industry was simply not ready for dramatic process and technical change from a business, design process, or technology adoption standpoint. (The AEC industry is not known for moving quickly.)

The factors I've listed did not change the AEC industry overnight, but they did start to sow the seeds. A contributing factor in the evolution toward what we now understand as BIM can be found in the early history of Revit, which tells a story of how small teams, a clear vision, a little bit of venture capital money and a large amount of luck can contribute toward building an innovative software product.

In 1999 I was happily working as a design architect who also happened to be interested in technology. Over time, I started reading WIRED and FastCompany more than Architectural Record. In Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area, venture capital money was flowing. A change was also happening on the East Coast: friends of mine had started to take jobs at software startups. I noticed they seemed to spend a good deal of time playing foosball.

I joined a small startup software company called Charles River Software in October of 1999 and was one of the first architects hired to work on a new parametric building modeler, codenamed Perspective. At that point the software could do little more than draw walls and place windows. The roof tool was still a rough sketch on a whiteboard and the column tool had just come online. It crashed when you clicked the button. There were a lot of crashes in those days. We had no shipping product, no customers, and did not even have a name for the company or the product. (The name Revit came later.) My expectations of playing foosball in a fun startup environment had vanished. There was a lot of work to do.

In retrospect, the most important things we had were a product vision and a small group of people who knew how to get things done. The software development team was literally a group of physicists and rocket scientists. They had experience building parametric modeling applications and maintaining a high level of bidirectional associativity, and they were comfortable solving hard math and logic problems. The marketing team proved to be quite adept as well. The quality assurance, product design, and technical support teams were from the AEC industry. The management team believed in the power of small teams and in accountability. They also knew how to ruthlessly prioritize and force a level of critical thinking. The team learned how to get things done and deliver results because it had to. Our survival depended on it.

As an impressionable novice in the realm of software development, I learned a great deal from the early Revit management team. Two books that informed their thinking were Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore (HarperBusiness, 1999) and Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki (Collins, 1999). They were popular in the late 1990s and are still good entry points into the field today. I dug them out of my basement to help write this foreword.

In April 2000, I helped ship a crappy product (to paraphrase Guy Kawasaki). Revit 1.0 was launched at the AIA Convention in Philadelphia. It could only draw walls, roofs, floors and ceilings. There were only 14 creation commands and they all fit on the screen at one time. It was insanely hard to build your own windows and doors. Performance was horrible. Our baby was not perfect, far from it, but the fundamental concepts of the parametric building model were all there. The hardest part was convincing ourselves we were ready to ship. We had to learn it was okay not to be perfect.

Geoffrey Moore's book Crossing the Chasm is one of the must-reads for anyone attempting to deliver innovative products and services to a market. He introduces the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, which divides customers into segments like Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, and Late Majority, following a traditional bell curve.

The first thing any new product needs to do is identify and work with the Innovators and Early Adopters in the industry. Accordingly, we spent the next 2 years (2000–2002) iterating and revising, designing, and developing the first few versions of Revit. The things we had during that time were a vision, and, most important, a small set of customers who definitely fit the mold of Innovators and Early Adopters. These customers believed in the vision and were not afraid to stick their necks out and try our software, and they were vocal in telling us what did and did not work. Ideas were tried and rapidly improved or discarded.

By fall 2001, we still did not have very many customers and the economy was not doing well. The Internet boom was over and the United States was in another recession. Companies that sold pet food online had started to fail. Quite frankly, times were tough. Money was tight and it was not clear what the future would bring. We dug in and continued to listen and work with our customers and produce more versions. There was a remarkable sense of creativity and camaraderie in our second-rate office building in Boston as we designed, built, tested and supported a young product.

Between 2000 and 2002, the team built the main features of Revit as a parametric building modeler and created the seeds of a discontinuous innovation and a disruptive technology, as defined by Clay Christensen in his book The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Harvard Business School Press, 1997):

It was not apparent to us at that time, but the core features of Revit that are the most disruptive and technologically innovative were developed during this time frame. Perhaps there is some correlation between the squeeze of the tech bust in the early 2000s and the activities of a small team of software engineers and architects hunkered down in an ugly office building outside of Boston. Interestingly, there are now publications that discuss how major innovations are more likely to happen in recessions. It's probably a good thing we did not spend those years playing foosball.

The business environment continued to prove challenging in the early 2000s. Revit needed a sales channel and customers. The saving grace came on April 1, 2002, when Revit Technology Corporation was acquired by Autodesk, Inc. There were now opportunities to continue nurturing a young technology and start utilizing the global reach of the Autodesk organization.

The seven years after the acquisition were spent nurturing and developing the product and the underlying platform. An investment was made by forward-looking industry executives inside Autodesk, not just in the acquisition of a small startup, but in the development of a new platform for the AEC industry. During that time, the expanded Revit product development team, also known as the "The Factory," continued to develop software. Customers were listened to; features were added and refined; support, sales, and marketing organizations were exposed to the newly acquired product.

It is difficult to prove exactly when, but at some point along the way Revit Architecture "crossed the chasm" and started to be deployed in the larger market of Early Majority customers. Many products and services fail to make the treacherous crossing.

There were still large challenges to overcome. The product needed to be turned into a platform. Teams started to work on what are now Revit Structure and Revit MEP. Large customers needed to be supported. A large number of creative and passionate people started working on Revit. Forward-looking executives started to articulate the ideas we now know as building information modeling.

I feel extremely fortunate and honored to work with many creative, passionate people in the Autodesk organization, as well as many leading architectural and engineering firms.

So what does the world look like in April 2009? BIM is decidedly the present. We are now living in a BIM-enabled world, where technologies like Revit have helped enable larger process and business-related changes. The small experimental software project from 10 years ago has been nurtured and supported. It has matured over time into the current Revit Architecture 2010. The number of new firms and individuals starting to use Revit is increasing rapidly.

Concepts like BIM are larger than any technology and, when combined with other trends like integrated project delivery (IPD), are helping the AEC industry to change very quickly, more quickly than any time in the last 10–15 years. It is important to understand that BIM is larger than just Revit. An old friend and colleague of mine sums this up:

So how can we help more professionals in the industry understand the implications, complications, and context of their design decisions as early as possible? Revit Architecture 2010 can help. In this new release, the talented team of product managers, interaction designers, and software developers in the Factory have built a new user interface, added new conceptual modeling tools, and extended the underlying platform.

The process used to design, develop, and test this release has been thoughtful and rigorous. The teams working on these problems are professional and have worked closely with users. If you are interested in learning more about this process, I recommend you visit the "Inside the Factory" blog (http://insidethefactory.typepad.com). I am confident that our talented team of software designers and developers will continue to work with users in the field and, collectively, we can create better tools for the industry.

In this new release, we have added new conceptual modeling features to the Revit platform. We have built a set of tools in Revit that make it easier to create and manipulate geometric form, and then turn it into a building in Revit, something that historically has been quite difficult to do and often required additional software tools. We have worked with an exceptionally talented group of customers, product designers, software developers, quality assurance architects, user assistance professionals, marketing managers, and product managers. I feel extremely fortunate and honored to have been able to lead this effort and work closely with my colleagues (Lira Nikolovska, Greg Demchak, Nathan Lockwood, Laura Gutwillig, Heather Lech, Zach Kron, Scott Latch, and Jason Winstanley).

Revit is being implemented in mainstream architecture and engineering firms worldwide, and books like Mastering Revit Architecture 2010 are instrumental in helping people make the transition from CAD to BIM. I applaud Greg, Tatjana, and Eddy for the dedication, time, and effort they have contributed to every edition of this book.

Ten years ago, the environment was right for a few software visionaries to see the market opportunity in the AEC industry. Eight years ago, the challenging times of the last recession influenced the critical formation of a new technology. Five years ago, the environment was right for a strengthened technology to be piloted by more firms and used on significant projects like Skidmore Owens and Merrill's Freedom Tower. During these years, the larger concept of BIM was formed and is now generally recognized as where the industry is headed.

So what's next? What pressures, market conditions, and opportunities do we see in the current day? Here are two pressures affecting both the AEC and high-tech industry.