Q: What is the user-profile Revit is being positioned for?

Alex: We think Revit is the tool and the software system around which everyone in the firm can collaborate. One of the basic values of a parametric building modeler is its capacity to create a single, integrated digital model of a building. We believe that the building database serves as an extraordinarily useful and common digital representation of the work processes within a firm. So we think that everyone from the designers, to the specifiers, to the principals can and will use Revit where no other tool has served. Our positioning there is sort of the antithesis of the multiproduct, task-specific, "stovepipe" view of the world. Our view is that people are very flexible in their work and need a tool that flexes around what they do rather than a vendor's predetermination of what a specific task takes.

We have had great success with principals who have spent so much on technology they can't use themselves, or who have a desire to use technology, but can't. The anecdote that comes to mind is of an architect in Connecticut who never managed to master CAD before but got so enamored with Revit that he found time to design a pro-bono skate park for the town. So that sort of sums up the point to me. If you make it easy enough to use, they will come. And once they come they find they are able to use the software as a tool of expression rather than strictly as a tool of documentation.

Q: What is Revit's AEC market share?

We're a privately held company, so we don't give out our market share. Quantitatively, we are making our plan and are growing at precisely the rate we need to grow at in order to succeed. That metric points to the universal awareness and adoption of Revit.