Back from not-so-sunny Anaheim, the conference had it's good and bad points. There was a bit too much focus on interoperability, IFC's, Lifecycle, etc. The IAI had a bit too much involvement. Don't get me wrong they have a great vision of how a BIM is going to work in the future and the lifecycle of the building is really where the value is going to lie in the future.
For now though the real money is in 4D/5D for us and this was barely touched on.
I did come away with some new software that will help us in early design where a Revit model may not make sense because it is too complex to change quickly and easily early on.
One is
DProfiler developed by the Beck Group, we will be using this in very early design to help the owner figure out if they can afford to build the project. It can export to Revit and next month it will link to Timberline so we can use our existing database for estimating.
Another is
Onuma which is a very interesting product for preliminary design/programming. It is all web based which makes for very easy collaboration. It is very quick at laying out bubble diagrams, and as they're created there is 3d geometry being created too, along with all the square footage, counts, etc f or programming analysis.