Revit for Interior Designers?

[terrysouthern]

Hello,
I seldom posts, but do lurk somewhat.
I did a search for "interior design" but didn't really find what I was looking for, little of it but not a lot, so if people feel like this topic has been beaten to death previously, I do apologize- if you could point me to a thread I would be glad to look at it.
Question is basically this:
Would an interior design firm using 2d cad on simple, small office lease things (3,000-10,000sf- simple business type offices) benefit by going Revit. Generally projects last about 3 weeks, total, out the door, with few revisions, few sheets. We slap out a plan, throw up some interior elevations, do some mill-work and cash a check. Its not "high Design" but a quick and "dirty" living. Sometimes we get a cad plan to start with, and we just run from there, flip some lines to a demo layer, slip some notes on the sheet, tag the doors directly to a door type view, no door schedule, and run it. Maybe 3-5 "design" jobs- bank, restaurant or store, and I can see the benefit on these jobs, but for a leasing company looking to expand their area on an existing floor plate by 25%, we might have 40 hours budgeted for the whole entire job, would Revit be more trouble than it worth in this "bread and butter" case?
Seems like it wouldn't be, I mean 6 month out we could reasonably see a return to cad levels, great, then let's say year later two of my Revit gurus jump ship, then I have to start the 6 month process all over?
If anybody knows a previous thread I can look up, please let me know, but I think I may be in a unique position here where Revit would be foolish.
I want to thank you for your time up front, and I would appreciate any input.

[AP23]

Maybe this might help

http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/....jsp?id=258241
http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/....jsp?id=282363

[terrysouthern]

That's what more like what I am looking for.

I will keep an eye on the series over the next few months. I am seeing this as a means to "upgrading" not only our work flow but also as a means to expand the "fishing hole" so to speak.
Thank you for the links!

Edit update- Like I thought, Revit looks great for "higher" end interior design, but not "quick and dirty" jobs with a lot of design/build elements, but not any clear advantages for the majority of my work. I might do 1 or 2 renderings a year, nothing fancy, open office over here, private offices over there, this is reception and there goes a conference room, material sample board, boom off and running, no modeling, no scheduling, permit comes through, bid set goes out, two weeks later a check comes in the mail. So would the consensus be that Revit is more than I need? Has anybody else gone through this kind of cost/ benefit scenario? If so where did you end up?

[David Haynes]

There are firms who are doing interior design work in Revit for large and small work. Here are their noted advantages.

1. The ability to do schedules accurately and concurrently.
2. The ability to use the ACAD floorplate as an underlay and then model directly on top.
3. If additional elevations, sections, etc are required, the drawing set is accurate and coordinated.
4. If rendering is needed, it can be done quickly.
5. Reflected ceiling plans are easy to learn and easy to do well in Revit.

Actually, I have implemented several interior design groups, and they have a very low learning curve (meaning they get it quickly and get productive quickly).

Hope this helps.

[DanielleAnderson]

To add to the list: The fact that Revit takes care of all the coordination work (door tags, section heads, elevation tags, etc.) makes it worthwhile right there. You don't have to build fancy content, either, to get your point across if it is design build work. Throw dumb blocks in for cabinets, furniture, etc. and you are off and running.

[phyllisr]

Would an interior design firm using 2d cad on simple, small office lease things (3,000-10,000sf- simple business type offices) benefit by going Revit. Generally projects last about 3 weeks, total, out the door, with few revisions, few sheets. We slap out a plan, throw up some interior elevations, do some mill-work and cash a check. Its not "high Design" but a quick and "dirty" living.

Before taking the DA Manager position at my firm, I was a Senior Interior Designer and used ADT for all tenant improvement projects (essentially the scope you are describing), furniture bid packages, finish-only projects and more. My ID staff was my strongest advocate first for ADT and now for Revit. Interior designers immediately understand how intelligent objects and automatic schedules save time. They learned custom schedules in ADT before any architects and have already become the "go to" users with Revit schedule questions. I made certain I had an interior designer as part of our pilot team. I also made certain that one member of my Design Applications Leadership Team was an interior designer.

I could write a book about an information model and how great it is for interior designers, not just for traditional architectural plans but for budgeting furniture, evaluating bids for furniture packages, tracking materials for counters, creating finish plans and more.

My only caveat is that if you interface with furniture vendors, this gets no easier with Revit. Just be aware that most vendor programs read AutoCAD so you will likely have to export a bunch of views for them. However, our vendors never liked ADT either so it's actually a bit easier to provide 2D drawings from Revit.

For the architects reading this post, find a skilled, tech-savvy interior designer in your firm to put on a few Revit projects and you will have a new best friend and a powerful advocate for Revit and Building Information Modeling.

[singhjatin775749425]

I think this link may be help you