Origins of Revit

[rayswarts]

Being a newbie to the Revit world, can someone out there give me a quick run down on the origins or Revit and where it all started? I know Autodesk purchased it in 2002, but from where and who?

[Wes Macaulay]

Revit was originally the Revit Technology Corporation, which was originally called Charles River Software. Irwin Jungreis and Leonid Raiz started the company to solve what they thought was an absence of a parametric modelling platform for architecture.

ArchiCAD wasn't quite what they were thinking of: and so the idea for something like Revit was born.

Irwin and Leonid both worked at the Parametric Technology Corporation where if memory serves correct they worked on Pro-Engineer. They both decided around the same time (1998 or so?) to fill this void in the architectural CAD world.

Irwin and Leonid then worked on getting some venture capital together so they could develop the software. They hired architects to help with product design, and I think I recall seeing some ads on a MIT job board for programming positions at Revit! The first lines of code were written in early 2000.

I'm under the impression that Revit had more than one offer to be bought out over the years, and that Autodesk didn't get to buy the company the first time they asked ;)

Revit was and is being developed by crack programmers and product designers, and is being developed by a parent company that supports its goals, and has a rabid following of users who can't wait for what's coming next. Last but not least: you never used to be able to buy Revit - you had to lease it. So if you're keeping Revit, Autodesk has made it a lot cheaper to own now than used to be.

[beegee]

Just to tack on to Wes’s excellent summation , with a couple of points from a rabid follower…




the original company—was founded in 1997.



Pro/Engineer was an MCAD programme using a constraint-based parametric modeling engine. Its products revolutionised the field of mechanical computer aided design.



Revit Version 1 shipped in April 2000.

[GuyR]

They both decided around the same time (1998 or so?) to fill this void in the architectural CAD world.

Didn't they buy Pro-Reflex? from PTC and went from there?

Revit old timers will remember the pro-reflex user (name escapes me) who used to rant and rant about how Revit was just like Pro-Reflex and when was it going to be available for SGI etc? At one stage Zoog even offered to buy him a months license just to shut him up :-) I wonder what he's using now...

Guy

[Roger Evans]

That was Peter Dew working somewhere in the Arab Emirates ~ As matter of fact he was working on some nice projects and doing it very nicely in Pro Reflex ..he sent me a couple of images and I remember being impressed.

[beegee]

Didn't they buy Pro-Reflex? from PTC and went from there?
My understanding is that Pro Reflex had an entirely different interface and working methodology to Revit, as you would expect from a product aimed at the AEC market,… despite the parametric change engine that drives both.



In any case, the corporate answer to that question has always been a definite no.

[adegnan]

Just to tack on to Wes’s excellent summation , with a couple of points from a rabid follower…




the original company—was founded in 1997.



Pro/Engineer was an MCAD programme using a constraint-based parametric modeling engine. Its products revolutionised the field of mechanical computer aided design.



Revit Version 1 shipped in April 2000.

Well that clears up my fuzzy memory! I thought I started using it in August '99 but it is actually August 2000 then. I know I wasn't using a beta version!

So... a little over 4 years have passes. WHAT A GREAT LIFE IT IS WITH REVIT!!!

[christopher.zoog51272]

That was Peter Dew working somewhere in the Arab Emirates ~ As matter of fact he was working on some nice projects and doing it very nicely in Pro Reflex ..he sent me a couple of images and I remember being impressed.
wow, there's a blast from the past! I totally forgot about that guy. :D

I remember 1st getting my hands on Revit in May of 2000, i was instantly hooked and began subscribing at version 1.X .... my career path was forever changed!

[irwin]

Charles River Software was incorporated by Leonid 10/31/97.

I joined on 2/2/98.

First round of venture capital was in 1998.

First lines of code were written in 1998.

First office (not counting Leonid's living room) was in Wellesley, MA, upstairs from Dominoes Pizza. It used to smell quite toasty in the afternoons.

Regarding Reflex, we did do an evaluation to determine if we should base Revit on Reflex and the conclusion was no. None of Revit was based on Reflex (though they both were intended to solve the problem of making a practical 3D architectural modeler). By the way, contrary to what someone said earlier in this thread, Reflex does not have a parametric change engine (one of the reasons we rejected it as a starting point for Revit).

[LRaiz]

To expand on Irwin's post I can confirm that we indeed had a non-exclusive development license of Pro/Reflex. PTC maintained their overall ownership and later sold Pro/Reflex to a third party. Rest assured that we did not use a single line of Pro/Reflex code; our approach was entirely different. Almost everything that you see in Revit was developed in-house. The most notable exceptions from this rule are (a) Accurender rendering engine, (b) Pinebush PDF Writer, and (c) Pantone color coding. Pro/Reflex is not on the list, we used it only as a legal insurance policy against PTC.

[tmullins68225]

Wow.

I mean, from how many other major software companies can you get an answer directly from not just one, but both founders of the software! The Revit community has exploded, but we're still able to talk directly to the programmers AND the founders.

God I love this product...

-Tripp

[ariasdelcid]

It will always amaze me how they both pay attention to the smallest details related to their product. Great summation of Revit History! Thank you!

[Scott D Davis]

Leonid and Irwin for President in 2008!!!! Which one is gonna be Pres, and which one VP? Oh, wait, there's that same pesky 'natural citizen' law that is keeping Schwartzenegger out of the White House......

[LRaiz]

No problem. Irwin and I agreed back in 1998 that next time I would report to him.

[beegee]

Oh, wait, there's that same pesky 'natural citizen' law that is keeping Schwartzenegger out out the White House......
Oh, ... is that the only thing keeping him out ?

[ariasdelcid]

Very Interesting!!! What would "The Next Time" be? I can't wait!!

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Revit Version 1 shipped in April 2000.

I'm using software that's only 4-1/2 years old! I started using it in December of 2002 and thought it was fairly mature product back then.
You've come a long way in a very short time. I can hardly wait for my Special 10th Anniversary Edition.

[Wes Macaulay]

First office (not counting Leonid's living room) was in Wellesley, MA, upstairs from Dominoes Pizza. It used to smell quite toasty in the afternoons.Wow! What humble beginnings, huh? It's one of *the* good news stories for start-ups in the last decade. The story of Revit is something of a fairy tale, but it's all true.

[PeterJ]

Ralph Grabowski, writing in Upfront Ezine stated "The CAD social event of the month was the Revit launch, which took place April 5, 2000 in Cambridge MA USA." and then went on to describe the event as follows....
Revit Launch: Four o'clock and time for the Revit event at the Aurthur M Sackler lecture hall. There are 125 invited attendees, but very few media. From what I and others could see, there is no one from CADalyst, Cadence, or Penton Publishing. Revit ceo Dale Lemont hosts the two-hour event, calling this "an important moment in the history of CAD." The parametric architectural software will be sold by monthly subscription. In stark contrast to SolidWorks, Revit will have no resellers -- everything by the Web. Nobody says it for sure, but I finally decide that Revit is short for "revise it."

Update (April 2002): Almost exactly two years after the launch, Revit sold itself to Autodesk for US$133 million. Although the company had managed to create a huge "mindshare" acceptance, Revit sales were described by Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz as "small pilot user base," what she would expect from a "start-up."

Dale refreshingly admits much is missing from Revit, and that the following functions will be added over the next 24 months: massing studies, stacking, canted walls, sloping structures, turn on more AccuRender functions, multi-user enhancements, estimation at all stages, product catalogs, schedules, architectural detailing, Web collaboration, ASP capabilities, landscape, HVAC, plumbing, and electrical.

The product will be available in early May; delivery has slipped by two weeks. A new release is promised every 90 days in first year -- "Tough on us book authors," I note wryly to the Revit employee sitting near me.

http://www.upfrontezine.com/travel/founders.jpg
In the background, ceo David Lemont. In the foreground, founder Leonid Raiz (at left) and Irwin Jungreis.



Revit Dinner: The product launch is followed by dinner in the courtyard of the Fogg Art Museum, located across the street. The museum features a small but broad collection of art: religious, African, modern, and classical. My wife would have enjoyed viewing the paintings by van Gough, Monet, and Renoir.

Each of our nametags have a color. I find out that -- ironically enough -- green indicates you had ordered beef, while red indicates vegetarian; my color was yellow, for salmon.

On one side of me sits a representative from Atlas Ventures, who asked me what I thought of Revit and the launch. How do you answer a man who has sunk millions of dollars into this?

On the other side of sits Brad Holtz (of 'CAD Rating Guide' fame) and next to him, Geoffrey Langdon (of architectural CAD shootout fame). The thought underlying this whole event is "SolidWorks or Numera?" Would Revit rocket into orbit, or burn out at the launch pad? We reminisce over CAD ventures that have burned through their money over the years. Brad declared himself the winner in remembering the worst CAD launch ever: TriumphCAD spent all its money on ads -- no product ever shipped.
http://www.upfrontezine.com/travel/brad.jpg

Brad Holtz and Geoffrey Langdon.


We muse over Revit's business model. "How long does Revit have before investors would want their money back?" The problem with a monthly subscription model is that money trickles in more slowly. Take 60 Revit employees earning an average of US$100,000/yr each. Assume Revit nets $100/mo per subscription. That means they need 5,000 subscriptions just to break even. "The question is," summarizes Brad, "How long will it take to ramp up to 5,000 subscriptions?" As I write this, I also wonder about "subscription churn" where gains from new subscribers are offset by losses from unsubscribers.

Just as we complete our analysis, an earnest young Revit employee comes by our table to introduce himself. "I'm in charge of developing the business model in conjunction with Harvard Business School," he explains. The three of us roar with laughter: "Funny you should mention that...". We give him our analysis -- at no charge.

http://www.upfrontezine.com/travel/dinner.jpg

Dinner in the Fogg Art Museum's courtyard.

[Arnel Aguel]

Wow what a modest start of Revit.

I should keep these pages so that when somebody ask me about Revit history I could easily share the facts coming from the founders itself.

Thanks

[FK]

Oh, ... is that the only thing keeping him out ?
Actually, it is. A rectangle can be perfectly inscribed in an oval, so there's no problem with geometry.

[irwin]

Ralph Grabowski, writing in Upfront Ezine stated "The CAD social event of the month was the Revit launch, which took place April 5, 2000 in Cambridge MA USA." and then went on to describe the event as follows....


Revit ceo Dale Lemont hosts the two-hour event, calling this "an important moment in the history of CAD."

Our CEO's real name was Dave, not Dale. However, after this misprint in Ralph Grabowski's ezine we always called him Dale, and even put that name on his door.

[JamesVan]

Leonid and Irwin for President in 2008!!!! Which one is gonna be Pres, and which one VP? Oh, wait, there's that same pesky 'natural citizen' law that is keeping Schwartzenegger out out the White House......
Ah, but change is afoot...
http://www.amendforarnold.org

[rayswarts]

This is truly amazing, where else can one so un-informed, (and I'm speaking of myself), can ask such a simple question and get responses from not only around the world, but from the Founding Fathers themselves. I am in awe. What a community. I am overwhelmed, ( and not by the software either . . . or at least not yet anyway). Way cool
Thank you so much.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I am overwhelmed, ( and not by the software either . . . or at least not yet anyway).
"You will be... you will be" (Yoda, Star Wars Episode V)

[jwilhelm]

I can't help but notice some concepts that appear to have snuck into Revit from other software for example the "Nudge" feature was a function I first saw in GDS, well they say emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, or perhaps its just a coincidence...

[hand471037]

I can't help but notice some concepts that appear to have snuck into Revit from other software for example the "Nudge" feature was a function I first saw in GDS, well they say emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, or perhaps its just a coincidence...

Which, I do beleve, stole it from Photoshop, which has had the ability to 'nudge' things using the arrow keys since as long as I can remember.... ;)

[mbergin]

This thread is fascinating!

I am a researcher writing a paper on the History of Building Information Modeling and its refreshing to see casual conversation about the origins of Revit. Are there any similar sources of information? I wonder in particular if there were any architects involved with the programming of Revit from an early stage?

Are there any other threads that anyone is aware of that similarly outline the development of the software or place Revit within the timeline of CAD history?

[Jun Austria]

Charles River Software was incorporated by Leonid 10/31/97.

I joined on 2/2/98.

First round of venture capital was in 1998.

First lines of code were written in 1998.

First office (not counting Leonid's living room) was in Wellesley, MA, upstairs from Dominoes Pizza. It used to smell quite toasty in the afternoons.

Irwin, do you have any picture of your office then that we can mount and idolized? :-)

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Try searching for posts by David Conant. (He is the 1st employee/Architect who helped with the interface and very first version. Not to mention, one of "the" smartest and nicest people I have ever met!)
Steve

[SCShell]

I wonder in particular if there were any architects involved with the programming of Revit from an early stage?

Hey there,
See my reply here. Sorry, forgot to quote you so you knew that I was responding to your question.

[jondotdot]

The true answer is they were given Reflex as part of their severance together with 250 hours of each of the main programmers.

The core system is almost identical. I am happy to show the old reflex manuals which show this.

[vango]

Revit was originally the Revit Technology Corporation, which was originally called Charles River Software. Irwin Jungreis and Leonid Raiz started the company to solve what they thought was an absence of a parametric modelling platform for architecture.

ArchiCAD wasn't quite what they were thinking of: and so the idea for something like Revit was born.

Irwin and Leonid both worked at the Parametric Technology Corporation where if memory serves correct they worked on Pro-Engineer. They both decided around the same time (1998 or so?) to fill this void in the architectural CAD world.

Irwin and Leonid then worked on getting some venture capital together so they could develop the software. They hired architects to help with product design, and I think I recall seeing some ads on a MIT job board for programming positions at Revit! The first lines of code were written in early 2000.

I'm under the impression that Revit had more than one offer to be bought out over the years, and that Autodesk didn't get to buy the company the first time they asked ;)

Revit was and is being developed by crack programmers and product designers, and is being developed by a parent company that supports its goals, and has a rabid following of users who can't wait for what's coming next. Last but not least: you never used to be able to buy Revit - you had to lease it. So if you're keeping Revit, Autodesk has made it a lot cheaper to own now than used to be.

you actually still don't own Revit, you lease it. Try to sell it yourself, its illegal to resell an Autodesk Product. you have never owned an Autodesk product and you never will, you lease the license and if you don't subscribe and stay current, it just stops getting supported. I subscribed to Revit before Autodesk - worked on a house, and spent alot of time on the phone with tech support - Revit was really talking smack about Autodesk and "owning them". I wished they had stayed the course and never got in bed with AD. Now Revit users are stuck paying subscriptions to Autodesk as they try to make it AutoCad. Whatever happened to architectural software for architects by architects?

[peterdew]

The true answer is they were given Reflex as part of their severance together with 250 hours of each of the main programmers.

The core system is almost identical. I am happy to show the old reflex manuals which show this.

Thank you, jondotdot;

I have always said the same thing as referenced by others on this thread. In my view, Revit is a developed version of ProReflex making it easier to create drawings, especially re-engineering and automating View Objects backwards from placing Section and Elevation lines, and allowing the outlines of objects to be edited rather than having to start again (including Slabs, Walls, Ceilings, etc) and letting Walls join Slabs and Roofs as well as Doors and Windows. I can also see that the ProReflex idea of Draw>Line>Assemble>Exchange is the basis of Sketching things in Revit, at first sight a key difference between the programmes. In fact, I would say that the key differences between the programmes are in the things that you still can't do in Revit, ProReflex Shells for example, which is surprising 17 years on. How about rendering Plans, Sections and Elevations; is that possible yet in Revit ?

I am not a computer programmer and don't understand how Leonid Raiz could say that Revit and ProReflex don't have a single line of code in common, especially considerring both were written in C++, and that they have a common wall join bug, where multiple wall joins at acute angles to a fixed point leaves a mess, perhaps as it would in reality, you may say.

As for setting up a separate company to develop Revit when they should have been working on ProReflex, perhaps true, but didn't Charles River Ventures also back PTC themselves when they started up, sponsoring another Russian mathematician as Googling the origins of PTC suggests ? Perhaps both PTC and Revit were really Charles River Ventures' companies all along ? :shock:

PS: I should add that I only came across this thread after discussing what I thought had been the origins of BIM with Sonata, subsequently Reflex and ProReflex. I was prompted to investigate a few days later and here I am . . . . a blast from the past indeed.

[peterdew]

That was Peter Dew working somewhere in the Arab Emirates ~ As matter of fact he was working on some nice projects and doing it very nicely in Pro Reflex ..he sent me a couple of images and I remember being impressed.

Thank you, Roger

[irwin]

The true answer is they were given Reflex as part of their severance together with 250 hours of each of the main programmers.

The core system is almost identical. I am happy to show the old reflex manuals which show this.

Actually, neither the concepts nor the code base of Revit were derived from Pro/Reflex. The most recent issue of AECMAGAZINE included my letter revealing the real relationship between Revit and Pro/Reflex. It may be seen here: http://aecmag.com/59-features/1352-celebrating-the-history-of-bim.

[UpNorth]

It is interesting to see this topic come up again. I recently started a blog and did a quick write up on this: https://bimchapters.blogspot.com/2017/08/revit-history-unique-creation.html

[a_meteni]

Here’s another recently published article in AEC Magazine regarding the same subject:
https://aecmag.com/features/exploring-bims-hidden-past-history-of-bim/