How long does this take.....

[DoTheBIM]

The company I work for is reviewing various CAD systems to replace our current one. Of those in the running are obviously Revit and the other is VertexBD. In an effort to persuade our CEO that AutoCAD is no better than what we got now... We have to quantify in terms of money (at least I think we have to) what benefit these other programs will have over AutoCAD. Which then brings me to my question...

Would someone be willing to estimate the time it takes to create our current drawing set for the house I've attached? If you like to give a comparison number to other systems you've used too... that would be all the more beneficial. Keep in mind that a user would be starting from scratch and not have anything else besides a magazine clipping to work from or at best a floor plan with minimal dimensions. So they would have to visualize all this and figure out how it all fits together, calc any needed beams, headers, or joist sizes.

[aggockel50321]

I'd suggest you download a copy of Revit, & take advantage of the 30 day license to give it a try.

Work through the tutorials (couple of days) and then try a sample.

IMHO, you'll then understand the benefits of Revit over other software.

[DoTheBIM]

You sound like our sales rep for Autodesk. I present him with a specific problem of whether we can do something in Revit.... and he tells me here you try it... This mentality baffled me as I had little experience with the program and it was clearly an advanced problem.... yet I was expected to take who knows how much time to try to figure out that it can't do it. At least that's the result I came up with anyway.

Anyway, as much as I appreciate the suggestion... The problem is not that I need to understand it (Believe me I understand how much benefit this program could have.... huge from my point of view) The problem is that I need to make our CEO understand that it is worth the risk to go with something other than AutoCAD ("industry standard" is his word). So I need to get some numbers together to put it in business terms for him to understand. And he's got an architect contact that owns a company of 200 employees that uses AutoCAD to design fair sized commercial projects... telling him that Revit won't survive, it's not a viable product, yada yada, yada. This architect also thinks Revit is not good for much more than pretty pictures. I heard him say that personally, so that is the mentality that I'm up against.

Plus I have downloaded it and love it but it's hard teaching old dogs new tricks. They say it can't be done but I'm going to try anyway.

Really I'm just looking for guesses. I wouldn't expect anyone to sit down and draw the thing.

[sbrown]

It is next to impossible to tell you how long something would take. It may take me and my method of working one period of time, your specific way of working(encorporating company standards, setting up workflow, re-organizing your companies structure, all these things go into making the switch to revit.

After setting up all your company standards, that would take me roughly 2 weeks, not including actuall engineering time. If I was to just "draft/build" those sheets, maybe less.

As your first project much of it will go very quickly some of it will go slow because you need to "re-learn" the process you are used to.

[patricks]

Well, I just put together a whole set of construction documents for an office that is basically a small house. It's about 1000 sq. ft. of conventional wood framing with conventional foundation, etc. The building is actually going to be a replica of another building, only longer. The existing building has lots of historic details, like decorative wood brackets, suspended canopy, custom (very tall) wood windows and doors, moldings, etc. All I had to go off of was some detailed photos I took of the exterior, and a single interior pic taken through the back door's glass.

The documents I did included a floor and roof plan, foundation and ceiling framing plans, electrical plan, RCP, exterior elevations, building sections, several wall sections and details, interior details and elevations, schedules, etc. It took me right at a week to get the whole thing done, and I did not have any help. And it only took me a week because I was trying to figure out how some of the things on the building would be detailed, like the suspended canopy, and also figuring out some of the wood framing details. Someone more experienced in wood framing, who also had my experience in Revit, could have probably got it done in less than a week.

Now of course I have very little AutoCAD experience, so I don't know how long it would have taken in AutoCAD, but I would guess it would have taken longer, since things you do in AutoCAD don't change globally in the project like they do in Revit.

Keep in mind, though, I've been using Revit since May and consider myself to be fairly good at it. I did use AutoCAD for my 5th year Thesis project during my final semester of school last spring, but I kind of trudged through that. I'm still pretty slow in AutoCAD.

[Scott D Davis]

And he's got an architect contact that owns a company of 200 employees that uses AutoCAD to design fair sized commercial projects... telling him that Revit won't survive, it's not a viable product, yada yada, yada. This architect also thinks Revit is not good for much more than pretty pictures. I heard him say that personally, so that is the mentality that I'm up against.Thats too bad. So many people are really misinformed by people like this. He's probably also the one that said "Drawing for Architecture on a computer will never last...it's not viable, because it can't produce pretty pictures."

What if you give him some examples of large firms using Revit - SOM for example - (it's gonna take more than pretty pictures to build the Freedom Tower). Or some of the other examples people have discussed here, such as productivity gains of 50 to 200 percent! Some have said, "
Projects that used to take 4 people, now require two, so now we can double our work load." More projects equals (usually!) more money.

I would have a hard time estimating time for your house project, because we don't do residential, but I can tell you that once you have your Revit template set up and configured for the way you work, you will be flying! From the moment you draw that first wall in plan, you can be producing all the other sheets and views and schedules automatically. It will take you some effort to get to that point, but once you do, you will be amazed at how fast you can crank out plans.

In fact, many have said that with Revit's coordination, they can spend considerable more time in the design phase than in Construction Documents, because once you are ready to produce CD's, much of the work is completed for you!

HTH!

[DoTheBIM]

After setting up all your company standards, that would take me roughly 2 weeks, not including actuall engineering time. If I was to just "draft/build" those sheets, maybe less.

This is what I'm looking for. I don't want any times to do with setting up workflow, standard and what not. Those issues are a wash basically becuase we have to do it with whatever decision we make.

After I get a few numbers to work with I will let the secret out about how long it takes us to currently do this particular house.


The documents I did included a floor and roof plan, foundation and ceiling framing plans, electrical plan, RCP, exterior elevations, building sections, several wall sections and details, interior details and elevations, schedules, etc. It took me right at a week to get the whole thing done, and I did not have any help. And it only took me a week because I was trying to figure out how some of the things on the building would be detailed, like the suspended canopy, and also figuring out some of the wood framing details. Someone more experienced in wood framing, who also had my experience in Revit, could have probably got it done in less than a week.

Thank you patricks... Sounds like you had a bit of detail to work out on that one. Just as a comparison.... something custom that we do residential about the same size would might take 2-3 days of the same size but we wouldn't be doing ceiling framing, building or wall sections, interior details and elevations, and I doubt RCP either but I don't know what it is.

Also thank you Scott for your comments... I might mention SOM to them (as I have a meeting with this particular firm next Wednesday to see how they do things). I'll see if they are familiar and see what they say.

[BillyGrey]

jt:

I just completed a house this week, post SD (I met with the client num. times and had the walls/facilities lined out), 2700 sq. ft. single story, typ. details, 3 days, prepped for engineering, then submittal to county B&S. All by myself.

It is modeled 100% down to the nuts on the toilet. At this point, if I want, I can render any view I want, cut additional sections/details, anything, and it's done literally in minutes now.
And revisions, I can revise anything I want at this point with no big drain. All roofs, walls, floor slabs, and footings are working together, so if I need to change something, move a wall for instance, the foundation plan and roof reflect that change automatically. Of course, I verify the program interpreted my change correctly, and most of the time, it does, and then minor details might need adjusting.
Also, all views, and sheet views update automatically.

It's to bad your focus is on pure speed. There is so, so much more this product offers besides
drafting. Visualization and presentation, particularly live presentations (for me anyway), knock prospective client's socks off. All the documentation and scheduling features, and the cd's are unsurpassed IMO.

Tell your boss to come view this thread, show him how active and vibrant this community is, and remind him that the same folks that develop Autocad, develop Revit.
It's a keeper.

[aggockel50321]

Would someone be willing to estimate the time it takes to create our current drawing set for the house I've attached? If you like to give a comparison number to other systems you've used too... that would be all the more beneficial.
Missed this in my earlier post, but looking at your pdf, I think I could do all 85 sheets in 5 days or less, plus give you a 3d model of the stucture, rendered views of any view (I'd let these run while I sleep), schedules & quanities of everything in the project, and all that with no layers!

You'll probably find, that once you switch, that pdf you posted here would be totally different in the information presented, because of the ease of creating better views that show your intent, and would be at least 150% better and more understandable, and probably only 40 sheets.

If I had to do it in acad, add at least 3 days (just to get the views to print properly, & organize the 85 sheets properly).

And.... I'm not biased, just ask anyone here, or read all my posts here.... You'll never get me to switch back...

[Joef]

I would love to be able to produce these documents in a week, but I think I would get seriously hung up on the framing drawings. These appear to be generated automatically and in Revit you would have to do them manually. That is a lot of dimensioning. Coordinating the framing drawings would also be a challenge. Any clues on how this would be done in Revit? Or are these trade secrets? :-)

[DoTheBIM]

Thank you andrewg and joef. This is great. You guys (or girls... I can't tell) are hitting a home run. I'd be amazed if someone could design that house in AutoCAD in eight days though, But be that as it may... I take it into consideration. I have no doubt the drawing set would look much different, but the number of sheets will stay about the same. You see... our plant needs all those walls, rafters, and gable rakes on different sheets so they can pre build them before we ship them off to the site. If we place multiple items on one page they complain it is to small. to see or read.

Joef... coordinating drawings like this isn't too bad the way we do business now. A designer may pick up a house and create elevations, floorplans, and a foundation drawing and send it out. Then when it comes back a different designer may pick that house up and do the rest of the drawings. This way the designer always knows "everything" that is goin on. I suspect the framing would get done intially like we do now.... objects for the floor, and lines, text, rectagles, and dimensions for the roof. I suppose one could creat some smart rafters in families with Revit that would make it a little less painful to detail them out.

[Joef]

The coordination I am talking about is tying the framing details to the model. Unless they are going to be dumb details which are not parametrically tied to the building, I have a hard time visualizing how you can make sure that rafter "J" updates when you change the roof. Also how to make sure that the detail you call "J" is actually the detail referenced on the framing plan. In Revit we are used to a high degree of coordination between the information (sections, callouts, etc.) on the plan and the details. I'm not saying this isn't possible, I just have not seen this type of drawing set produced in Revit before. Has anyone out there produced a roof sheathing layout in Revit?

Joe

[PeterJ]

I think you could produce the roof sheathing layout as a series of structural beam systems and using that tool for floors and roof elements would make Revit fly for Mr Martin. He could even consider hiding a structural beam system in the thickness of the wall and get pretty much instant framing elevations, if I'm not wrong - though I haven't tried this last trick.

After that the concept to use would be the use of instance based linear families that are just a line that you place on plan and stretch but have standard detail components associated with them which show when cut. This is a technique that Martin Patience pioneered a couple of years back now and then set aside becasue he was doing other things, but the idea was that you place your line, which barely shows or simply doesn't show on plan but any section through that line will be predetailed with all the relevant floor edge beams, head and sole plates, cavity closers, clading ties etc. This would work for ground floor details, upper floor details and eaves details etc, but taking it a step further you could make the nested detail components parametric and by entering roof pitch, span, birsdsmouth size etc, you could prettty much automate the drafting of all those components and then set up preformed standard views that omitted the model elements but retained the detail components.

It would take time and expertise to set up but once complete I would see that 80 sheet set taking three days or so to produce and probably including more scvheduled information than gets pumped out right now.

[DoTheBIM]

I see what you mean Joe. Yes, I'd have to agree that it would take a bit of thinking to set it up. Right now everything is dumb as we use microstation (old version). Once you place a door or cabinet it stays there unless you include it in something to edit. But a door opening in a wall framing detail would then have to be updated seperately. I suspect intially we'd continue to do it the dumb way in Revit until I got more proficient and got a chance to set something up.

Pete and Joe: What you guys are talking about is a dream come true that all associated items rafters, floor framing, and the likes of anything else that we could dream up would update with every little change you made to the model. Right now I think that is a long way off. Even VertexBD with all their glorious framing tools (which claims its parametric) won't do that. You have to "rebuild" the framing if you change the roof pitch, or change the dimensions of the house footprint. Trivial with their automated tools, but nonetheless I have a problem with them calling it parametric. Heck you even have to "rebuild" the 2D drawings for elevations. Once they are created they are a seperate file. Once again the tools they provide to do so would help, but the user would have to *remember* to "update" a particular drawing at some point. Where Revit has been falling behind for what "we" need is the BOM. We can't get the level of detail on a BOM that we need through Revit. Right now the way I see it... We'd have to custom build a program to attach, manage and edit items related to the Revit objects... through ODBC. And that is a daunting task for 1 maybe 2 people IMO. And I bet a fair bit of it would be trial and error and take years to work out.

Oh and forgot to mention thank you Pete for that estimation if our dreams would come true. 3 days indeed....*dreaming, dreaming...* That would be great. I haven't shown the scheduling information that we output to our plant. It's minimal, but we couldn't operate without it. It use to add about 3+ hours to a house like that and was done all by hand writing. I created a program that gets most of the info we need into an Access database for easier editing and time savings and now it takes about 1 hour for that house. Those times vary a lot depending on how much stuff is not "our" standard line of things.

[Wes Macaulay]

The company I work for is reviewing various CAD systems to replace our current one. Of those in the running are obviously Revit and the other is VertexBD.VertexBD and Revit are solving two different problems. If all you do is houses, and you want panel diagrams and stud lengths and be able to estimate every batt of insulation you'll need, use Vertex. Revit is more for capital A architecture and meant for large buildings where modelling each stud would be a bad idea.

Revit will be much better if your projects are anything larger than houses. Vertex can handle very small commercial structures - less then 3 storeys; otherwise you just end up with too much data. Revit can handle larger projects, like World Trade Centers :mrgreen:

Vertex I believe is meant to connect to CNC machines that build up wall panels, so if you're that kind of company - building prefab, or heavily tied to quantities, then Vertex is your choice.

[DoTheBIM]

Yes exactly. I've realized this 2 years ago when I started looking at systems. From a designers point of view I'd much rather use Revit, but from our company point of view the best fit is Vertex hands down. But those arent't the only points of view looking at this dilema. There are some higher up points of view that are looking at things such as liability and connectivity to other data systems. So on goes the show. If you don't mind I would like to print your comments and attach them to my memo for reference.

[Scott D Davis]

Looking at some of your panel details, I'm surprised by the level of dimensioning. Every single piece is dimensioned! Which is I guess what you need for the shop to build the pieces. Some of it seems like overkill to me (not to say that its not the way that you guys should work) but for instance, I may take one of the frames, dimension the outside dimensions of the piece, and then dimension the infill studs with one dim that says 16" OC TYP, and thats it. You show every single piece with 1'-4", and then dimension each individual stud to its exact length, to the fraction of an inch. I guess this is so the shop guys really dont have to measure much, they just cut to the plan dimensions, and assemble it! Very interesting to see how others put these types of projects together where much is built in the shop...thanks for sharing!

[patricks]

wow that is alot of detail there, almost looks like shop drawing detail. Are you guys a design-build firm by any chance? I can understand that level of detail if your same operation actually builds the very things you're drawing.

[DoTheBIM]

Looking at some of your panel details, I'm surprised by the level of dimensioning. Every single piece is dimensioned! Which is I guess what you need for the shop to build the pieces. Some of it seems like overkill to me (not to say that its not the way that you guys should work) but for instance, I may take one of the frames, dimension the outside dimensions of the piece, and then dimension the infill studs with one dim that says 16" OC TYP, and thats it. You show every single piece with 1'-4", and then dimension each individual stud to its exact length, to the fraction of an inch. I guess this is so the shop guys really dont have to measure much, they just cut to the plan dimensions, and assemble it! Very interesting to see how others put these types of projects together where much is built in the shop...thanks for sharing!

No problem. Yes the way we work... too much information is still not enough. If you have to ask someone to think about something to build it... your asking too much. ;) Even at that much info they still want us to flip the the wall details that say "sheet opp side" so they don't have to remember to build it opposite of what it's shown so they can just sheet it and send it out. Right now if they are not paying attention they'll build it as shown then have to flip the wall and then sheet it and send it out. One extra operation but it all adds up. Though if they aren't required to think when building walls, that adds extra drain on us to flip all their details so they don't have to think. oh well... depends on who's yelling loudest to see that something gets changed.


wow that is alot of detail there, almost looks like shop drawing detail. Are you guys a design-build firm by any chance? I can understand that level of detail if your same operation actually builds the very things you're drawing.

yes we design (or attempt to ;))and the shop builds. We are a panelization company that provides a "whole" house package. What that means is we provide in addition to wall panels set in place, trusses, precut rafters, floor framing, preassemble window trims, and all needed material to finish the house with the exception of drywall, paint and some other misc things. which brings me back to the level of detail we need in a BOM. Just spoke with and Autodesk rep today and again they feel it can be done, but I'm going to have to see it as an example before I believe it. I find it hard to just trust everything a salesman tells me. Am I paranoid? Couldn't be experience could it? Ah well, we're trying to get something set up to show us how to get us over this BOM hump.

[Steve_Stafford]

Just read in the cgarchitect forum that a fella paid 14K for Vertex with the options and framing modules. Pretty serious money.

[Joef]

I was wondering how much it cost. Thanks for the info. Seems to be in the same league as programs like Xsteel and the like. The kind of program that fills a very specific need very well.

[DoTheBIM]

Well here's the skinny on what it takes us to get a set like this done. It took a fairly green coworker 3 1/2 weeks to complete everything except the needed wall framing details, elevations, foundation and floorplans. It took me another day to day and a half to create all the wall details for him. With floor plans and elevations... I'm sure it would have taken him over 4 weeks if he had to do the rest of it. He has 6 months of experience with practically no prior experience in residential design besides remodeling that he does on his own. I think myself or another experienced coworker might be able to push this out in 2 1/2 weeks. 2 weeks if things went well, but you know how that goes.

Our initial quote on VertexBD was slightly lower per seat but had a lot more than one lone license on it.

[aggockel50321]

How much of the project did you end up modelling, using the model to create the views, & how much was just 2d drafting?

What did you think of Revit for this type of work?

[DoTheBIM]

Well I love Revit and I haven't even used it yet. One of the problems we are having with Revit is that it won't do "detailed" BOMs. We are still evaluating both Revit and VertexBD. We have a tentative date set up with Revit support in the next couple of weeks to address the BOM issues that we seem to keep running into. Another issue is that we can't make the CEO understand that we still have to redraw any CAD drawing using our libraries to create any kind of information that we do now.

I'd say 15% of the work to create the drawings is modeled 3D... walls, windows, doors, fixtures, cabinets, etc... The rest is 2d wether it be cells/blocks or lines and dimensions. It is all dumb entities though? Ours is all done in Microstation with and ad on called DACIS. The power in our system comes in the ability to create a detailed BOM based off of the cells/blocks that we insert. With some applied rules we can generate output of the electrical outlet we insert plus a coverplate, rough in box, a couple of wire nuts, and so many feet of wire. Then it totals all that stuff automactically in seperate lines to pack in a truck to ship off. It also extends to the example of having a couple (say 5) of 6'9" long floor joist, it says I have 2 - 7' pieces that can be cut from one 14', so I need 2 14' joist and one 8' (or just 3 14' ones) and says that for every foot of joist I need so much of a tube of adhesive... totals that into tubes of adhesive. There's so much more to it, but that gives a quick example of what we are currently doing.

The only other alternative that I can think of is significant change in workflow and using a seperate program for BOM generation based on another users input rather than the CAD model. I haven't even suggested this yet as I don't think the timing is right.

[MikeJarosz]

What if you give him some examples of large firms using Revit - SOM for example - (it's gonna take more than pretty pictures to build the Freedom Tower

We had a Revit team meeting last Friday. James Vandezande had a CD slide show of Revit renderings and images ("pretty pictures") running. I made the point to the team that Revit has this ability, and we should make more use of it.

The fact is on the Freedom Tower we are not really using Revit's rendering capabilities all that much. We are mostly using it to document the design in 3D. So when someone calls Revit a "rendering" machine, they are diminishing the very reason we selected it for this mega project! That is, it's ability to coordinate complex geometry in three dimensional space.

Although outsiders are focused on the design of the tower, we are right now furiously at work on four basement levels, each over 16 acres in area. I suppose we could be rendering switchgear rooms or water tanks, but it is the visualization and documentation of complex building systems that occupies most of our time in Revit. I think any of the skeptics would change their tune if they could only sit beside one of us as we work through the unglamorous underground portion of this project.

This project will be on the boards (screens?) for years to come. Revit fans and critics will have lots of time to see this effort evolve. Hopefully, their opinions will evolve with it.

[jcoe]

I have been an AutoCAD user since Release 11. It was a difficult decision to get our office to convert to Revit, but what swaded our decision to convert was the overwhelming coordination within the program. We have only been using Revit fully for the past year, but have had in the office for two years. At first, I found that it took more time to draw things in plan than I could in AutoCAD, but once I started generating sections and elevations, the time saved became quite apparent. I have become more productive with Revit and so far our drawings have not had any coordination issues that we have seen. We have not completed a Revit project as yet for bidding, that will be the real test of the coordination capabilities. So far I am thoroughly impressed.

Also to touch on some of the other comments posted, it is critical to be afforded the time in the beginning, probably two weeks to a month, to get your office standards converted - title blocks, annotations, etc. Setting your template up in advance with all your office standard information will be time well spent.

[aggockel50321]

The power in our system comes in the ability to create a detailed BOM based off of the cells/blocks that we insert. With some applied rules we can generate output of the electrical outlet we insert plus a coverplate, rough in box, a couple of wire nuts, and so many feet of wire. Then it totals all that stuff automactically in seperate lines to pack in a truck to ship off.
You can probably do the same in Revit with schedules, once you set up your framing families & other components you use. You can add calculated fields in your schedule to generate these items, similar to what your doing above.

[DoTheBIM]

You can probably do the same in Revit with schedules, once you set up your framing families & other components you use. You can add calculated fields in your schedule to generate these items, similar to what your doing above.

Aside from the fact that this would be a very time consuming thing to set up from my limited experience...I've been told this many times, by salesman, but have yet to see an example of extensive calculations needed to do this, let alone have the newly calculated items show up as new "line" items rather than columns that I'm getting now. Heck, I can't even get the nested family objects to show as new lines. And I would hope that this would only need done once and set as a template. So it is automatically making new schedules when creating new projects.

If you have any ideas please do share and I'd be glad to try them. Otherwise I'll have to wait to see what the guys from Revit have to say.