Revit Races Ahead.

[beegee]

A recent posting in the Autodesk Revit NG looked at comparing post numbers in the ng forums to get a handle on market share. ( !? )


If you want some more accurate figures, this article (http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/PR/AUTODESK/revit/010605_increase.htm), discusses the rapid increase in Revit’s commercial and educational uptake. It also profiles some major firms switching to Revit.




commercial adoption of the Autodesk Revit software platform for building information modelling quadrupled during the 12 months ended third quarter fiscal 2005.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I think the more important, and significant, point is this

Simultaneously, Revit adoption in education doubled every month, driven by the demands of architectural educators to equip their students with the best possible software for thinking about building design.

Once Revit gets the foothold in educational/training institutions then it will really take off. One of the things holding back firms I'm working with is their reluctance to use a software package that doesn't allow them to find people trained "out of the box".
As much as we know that training someone to be productive in Revit is a far easier task than ACAD or similar packages, try convincing the person who signs the cheques.

[Steve_Stafford]

The thread there also argued that quadrupling isn't very meaningfull...as in went from 1 to 4. :???:

[beegee]

I recently had discussions with a local reseller about revit's push into the educational market and it is certainly gaining strength and acceptance there.

They made the point though that this is a very long term gain. They don't expect to reap much benefit in under 5 to 10 years, given that architecture course here are 5 or 6 years duration.

Still, it's good to see it happening.



I think the more important, and significant, point is this

Simultaneously, Revit adoption in education doubled every month, driven by the demands of architectural educators to equip their students with the best possible software for thinking about building design.

Once Revit gets the foothold in educational/training institutions then it will really take off. One of the things holding back firms I'm working with is their reluctance to use a software package that doesn't allow them to find people trained "out of the box".
As much as we know that training someone to be productive in Revit is a far easier task than ACAD or similar packages, try convincing the person who signs the cheques.

[Joef]

The thread there also argued that quadrupling isn't very meaningfull...as in went from 1 to 4. :???:
I agree it isn't a very meaningful statistic. If these are all seats moving from ADT I would see it as an even less meaningful stat in terms of the bottom line for Autodesk. A more interesting number would be a total seat number of the various architectural CAD programs. Even an unofficial figure would be interesting.

[Les Therrien]

I contacted an old college teacher of mine to see if they were using Revit so I could pick up some good student to work at my firm. Needless to say, they still had it in the box and had no plans of using it. I told him how great it was and that it blows ADT away.
Next thing you know, I received an excited email from Autodesk University stating "you 're right! Guess what I'll be teaching next year!!!"

[adegnan]

Our local HS is now teaching revit this semester. I've met the instructor and talked through curriculum with him a bit. I'm looking forward to finding some student help for my small office!

Also our local tech college has someone attending the revit LUG but I'm not sure how much they are teaching yet.

Good news all the same.

[narlee]

At any rate, Autodesk is sitting in the catbird seat - it has the present product and it has the future product.

Geof Narlee

[Richard McCarthy]

There are still nobody at my school who could teach Revit. It is installed in every computer, but there is so far just me using it. I finally saw someone using it last semester and it's just me and him out of 500 of us. I think the problem is that ArchiCAD still have too much of a foot hold over here, and most educational institution still gets archiCAD almost free while they have to PAY for Revit.
(Sort of like the Adobe vs Corel in educational market...Corel is very smart in this area and is making educational license so damn cheap, I hardly seen any Adobe package anywhere in my school or workplace)

[Scott D Davis]

They don't have to pay for Revit! Anyone who buys five or more licenses can grant 25 free seats of Revit to the school of their choice! But I would say it's time to start giving these away without having to 'grant' them!

[ajayholland]

While at AU I heard that South Africa is actually leading in the rate of Revit sales, but Australia can’t be far behind.

I accidentally surfed across this CADalyst article published last October,
Building Information Modeling Takes Hold Down Under (http://management.cadalyst.com/cadman/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=128452), that profiles Revit use in four Australian firms including AUGI contributor Benn Design.

~AJH

[Prodev75]

They don't have to pay for Revit! Anyone who buys five or more licenses can grant 25 free seats of Revit to the school of their choice! But I would say it's time to start giving these away without having to 'grant' them!


Ok someone in this building neglected to send me that information.
I really didn't know that.

But it sounds like what we are saying here is.....Revit is too expensive for schools to purchase. That firms that donate are helping train people that might not be apart of their team in the near future.

[k.armstrong]

...
They made the point though that this is a very long term gain. They don't expect to reap much benefit in under 5 to 10 years, given that architecture course here are 5 or 6 years duration.

Still, it's good to see it happening.

Beegee,

But have they considered that a lot of "architectural drafting" is done by the students that architectural firms employ, so if Revit is being learned at UNI in say 3rd & 4th year then at work these dudes can be productive, so i'd say the uptake may be shorter than 5-10 yrs.

Also, most students will happily sit on a computer for a couple of hours extra after work to learn a new programme, and i'm sure they'd pick it up quickly too

Ken

[beegee]

Sure, but I think they were talking " critical mass".




Beegee,

But have they considered that a lot of "architectural drafting" is done by the students that architectural firms employ, so if Revit is being learned at UNI in say 3rd & 4th year then at work these dudes can be productive, so i'd say the uptake may be shorter than 5-10 yrs.

Also, most students will happily sit on a computer for a couple of hours extra after work to learn a new programme, and i'm sure they'd pick it up quickly too

Ken

[ppelegrin]

Hi everyone,

Thought I might add some "unofficial" and rough stats for the Australian market.

Approx 85% of all new business (excluding Subscription and upgrades) is made up of Revit licences (Revit Series included), that leaves 15% to ADT, which is predominately from existing ADT sites.

A couple of points of interest: First, existing ADT and AutoCAD sites are making the transition to Revit faster than would have been imagined 18 months ago and more importantly, Revit is gaining momentum in the sites that traditionally look to ArchiCAD - including the 'refuse to use AutoCAD' types.

And to ajholland: I thought Australia might be ahead of S.A. but if this not the case, I might want to turn the discussion to Cricket or Rugby instead.


Regards
Paul Pelegrin

[Steve_Stafford]

Thanks for sharing some statistics. Will you forgive my impertinence if I ask how is it that you can write so assuredly?

[ppelegrin]

Hmmm, Ok Steve

I honestly asked myself when posting this statement whether I should have qualified my position. So here it goes now:

I work for an Autodesk Reseller in Australia, and have been in the dealer channel for 14 years. We are very active in promoting Revit (and have been since the day Autodesk made it available). So I report that this statement is based on: 1) Information relayed to us from the Vendor, and 2) Just as importantly, what we read from our own data. This second item is practical because we do supply, by far, the highest numbers of Revit seats in Australia (qualified by winning every award by Autodesk for "highest sales in...")


And so if I may, my Revit flag waving exercise and surely a safe place to do it?

We were excited with Revit from day one (notwithstanding the business returns). We also recognised very early on that this represented Autodesk's future (in the construction industry) - so why wait until it overtook us and get on board early. The other thing was once our technical team was fully exposed to Revit, there was no way to dampen that enthusiasm.

So I make this point in case there are a few ADT/AutoCAD people reading this: We certainly continue to support all clients that still use these other products, train them, help them with their current platform as we did before Revit came along, but make no bones, Autodesk is putting their money with Revit and now refer to Revit as a 'platform' product. This year, as many know, there will be additional applications specifically for Revit, for some of the other disciplines within the construction industry and I am sure there will be more to come.

No apologies - Revit is far better than ADT. Revit is the future and people are voting with their feet. And really, do we expect Autodesk to come out and say "that product you are using, well sorry we didn't warn you..... I'm afraid its dead now, so thanks for your money - Oh and by the way, here's Revit, I hope you like it". No, the writing is being written on wall, slowly but surely.

There are many people that previously used AutoCAD and ADT that now use Revit, there is no such person that properly implemented Revit and then asked to go back to AutoCAD or ADT. In fact the 'failure rate' with Revit is hardly measurable and only causes grief when there is no genuine attempt to learn a new system (and change old habits).

I believe Revit is important for Autodesk's future, everyone has there day and its no guarantee that Autodesk would keep its position, especially with old electronic drawing board technology.

And for those still reading: Wow what a nice change, the last 10 years has been: "They don't care about us, look how big they are - not another upgrade - heh, screw us for another dollar - when will it end - no I don't want to upgrade, this version does everything I need". Revit users are like kids in a lolly shop, we don't chase them to upgrade their software, they chase us, everyone is excited, these people don't talk about the evil empire anymore and its such a joy.

Regards,
Paul Pelegrin

[Steve_Stafford]

Paul,

Thanks for indulging me. It does help to know a little bit about you and how you are able to provide some insight into just how successful Revit is becoming in your market. Thanks again for sharing!

[Arnel Aguel]

Very well said. BTW thanks for the statistics.

[Wes Macaulay]

Here in Vancouver, BC, Phil Berstein gave an excellent presentation last week that attendees thoroughly enjoyed. He didn't talk about Revit much, since the presentation focused more on the problems facing the architecture profession as a whole. A principal of a firm from a neighbouring province presented his firm's experience with Revit, and how they're using it to unseat their much larger competitors :twisted:

We have put more copies of Revit into people's hands this week than we do in several months.

The adoption of Revit here in BC has reached critical mass; the only obstacle is getting people with enough experience on the job. We can't train people fast enough; and when Revit Structure hits this spring and MEP next year, all hell may break loose. Hopefully all hell will break loose at a reasonable rate.

The software is changing people's attitudes towards Autodesk -- Phil's presentation showed the company has heart, even if they do have shareholders!

[Scott D Davis]

Wes,

Was this Phil's "Vision Tour"? If so, I saw it here in So Cal awhile back. (WATG was one on the 'locals' to present). It was a very good presentation, talking about the future of the profession, and very enlightening about the direction we seem to be haeding. It's a very exciting time to be in our profession!

Upon reading your message, I keep picturing Phil as Roman Gladiator, with a motley group of Revit users standing with him..."On my mark.....unleash Hell." (I hope anyone who reads this has seen Gladiator the movie, or this is going to sound really strange!)

[Dimitri Harvalias]

It was the vision tour and I think the heart Wes is speaking about comes with a large dose of 'reality check'. I don't doubt that Autodesk has changed their corporate stripes lately in terms of treating users more as the customer they are serving rather than the revenue stream. The reality comes in the form of realizing the direction that CAD and BIM were/are going. They saw Revit, realized that it was the approach to the solution they were seeking with ADT and had the good sense to buy in.

Dean Kamen spoke at AU about how innovation rarely occurs if you just refine an existing solution. It often requires you to take a step back and ask yourself 'is this the right solution?' . Then to have the sense to start over rather than build on a faulty assumption.

What struck a chord at the presentation was the re-thinking of how the profession should be more of a collaborative, open effort. Each party, owner, architect, consultant, taking a share of the responsibility and risk without concern about finger pointing if things go awry. Data present in the building model should be made more accessible by all involved to promote a consistency of the information presented. We were reminded that the built project is the end product, not the drawings and specs required to produce that building.

Allan Partridge's closing comment that, software like Revit will allow us to bring back some of the nobility to the profession are powerful words indeed. I've never heard anyone talk about software like that.

[Andre Baros]

You know Revit is reaching a wider audience when your calls to tech support no longer get through. The day's of being special (and soon the days of competitive advantage) are over. Sigh.

[Scott D Davis]

You have a competitive advantage...you already know Revit. Keep pushing the limits of the software, and you will remain ahead of many. Convince consultants to use the new Structures and MEP when they come out, and now your 'team' will have an advantage.

[noah]

OK, with all this discussion of finding good Revit users and training students I feel like I shouldn't miss my opportunity to speak up.

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to do this but I'm currently seeking an Architectural Designer position with a firm that uses Revit. I have over 10 years of experience with AutoCAD and ADT but have recently picked up Revit and my firm has made the switch. But now I'm looking to make a career move to a slightly larger firm (currently just 3) who has a strong commitment to sustainable design (e.g. LEED projects). Preferably on the U.S. East coast but my family is willing to relocate just about anywhere!

If anybody is looking to hire a mid-level person who already knows Revit please let me know. You can find my resume and portfolio at http://www.deviron.com/noah (Revit examples haven't been posted yet but will soon).

Thanks!