New Poll: Revit and Cdoc's

[christopher.zoog51272]

In a recent news article, Phil Bernstein was quoted as saying:


Most architecture firms use Revit for the initial stages of the design process........eventually shifting data to AutoCAD to produce the blueprints most contractors and clients still demand. .....Ninety-nine percent of the world is trained in AutoCAD, so it's sort of a failsafe option for output..... But we do have customers that have abandoned AutoCAD altogether; they're pure Revit.

we thought it might be interesting to see how our members are documenting new jobs that come into the office.

So, we ask the following question in regard to your current office environment:

"What % of new projects in your office are exclusively documented with Revit?"

Feel free to explain your answer below

[cphubb]

90%+

We have switched almost entirely to Revit for new projects. We still use a few old Autocad details but they are slowly being redrawn. We still must use consultants files imported from AutoCad but architecture is 100% Revit

[dredhead1832]

Reply in. 10%.

We have 2 pilot projects and they make up 6-8% of this year's billables. It'll be a long, arduous road to train people and get them 100% up to speed. The real problem is getting people to be a little more "self-reliant" so I am moving it slow.

As for those projects, like Phil said, we'll be using Revit for most of teh work. But one project is a prototype with typical details already in AutoCAD and the other one will be leaning on our AutoCAD detail library.

I'd say we pushed Revit 100% and we're using it for about 75% of the labor in the projects.

My 2 cents...

[jbalding48677]

I think this is going to take some time. People need to get comfortable and keep in mind a lot of projects are many months if not years long. I am seeing several firms on the brink of going full Revit.

[christopher.zoog51272]

I think this is going to take some time. People need to get comfortable and keep in mind a lot of projects are many months if not years long. I am seeing several firms on the brink of going full Revit.

Good point JB, the purpose of this pole is to take the pulse right now, and we'll do it again in 6 monthes, 1 year, 3 years, etc to see where we are.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

100% Revit, 100% of the time.
It is certainly easier for me, being a one man band, but I still do contract work for architects and in recent months I have actually turned down work because they wanted me to do it in AutoCAD or some other software.
I do a little show and tell at the beginning of a project and after some oooh's and ahhh's I bring them on board and work through them using Revit.

[David Kim]

100% Revit for me as well.
I'm an architect working for a design build contractor so I'm also working solo. As of right now, my scope of work has been tenant improvement projects. Definately nothing sexy to show off but I've got a couple of designs I hope to show off soon...

David Kim, AIA

[gregcashen]

I put 20%, but I am afraid that this poll does not address the question raised by Mr. Bernstein's comment. That is, he states that for those projects that are being done in Revit, many are getting exported out to Autocad...implying that Revit can't handle the load. This poll would count a project done entirely in Autocad as contributing to this impression, even though Revit is not in play at all.

My firm, for example, does architecture, civil engineering, structural engineering and planning. The only stuff that gets done in Revit is the stuff I am assigned or request. That stuff gets done 100% in Revit. The other stuff gets done 100% in Autocad or Eagle Point (civil).

The question needs to be posed as follows:

"Of the projects that you start in Revit, what percentage of them are finished in Revit?"

On top of that, let's be clear that we may all have a need to use Autocad at some point in order to link a pre-existing site plan or details from our library of legacy CAD details. This is a valid use of Revit and in no way implies that Revit is not being used 100%. In fact, you are using Revit's linking feature to do it. If, on the other hand, you are actually going out to Autocad to draw details mid-project because it is easier/faster/better for you, then you are not using Revit 100%...maybe 75%.

I think this poll needs to be reposted to accurately reflect this. :roll:

[Phil Bernstein]

Just to jump in here - I think this reporter may have misunderstood my point during this interview. I was trying to explain the various modes that we expect customers to use the AutoCAD Revit Series, and this was one approach--but certainly not the one that I felt was most popular. Otherwise, I thought he did a pretty good job.

Looking forward to seeing the results of this poll!

Phil

[Steve_Stafford]

As an AEC firm, the question is murky...I agree with Greg...

Of those projects we start in Revit, we WILL complete 40-50% in Revit with the following break down:

80-100% Architecture using Revit
100% Engineering using Microstation and Revit based background data

My long term goal here is to use Revit for all projects that our clients don't dictate a need otherwise. With the added goal to use Revit for all aspects of design (A/E) with the trade specific tools that have yet to be created/revealed (hoping soon) with the exception of civil/site/landscape unless tools are expanded to permit true site design work for this as well.

Thanks for looking in Phil!

[funkman]

I put it at 40%. After using Revit fairly "unilaterally" (can we use that word now non-militarily?) for the last 2-3 months on a couple of time consuming projects, I have now turned my attention to my autocad drawings that were made PR (pre-revit) to make CD's after being given consent from Council on other projects.

Oh how I wish I could have started these projects in Revit. I am already working on electrical plans and reflected ceiling layouts, detail plan layouts, kitchen and bathroom details and to be honest, I am thinking it would be much easier and quicker in revit to churn out these types of drawings. The viewports are just sooo stooopid compared to the drag and drop in revit.

Yep, give me Revit now anyday.

[gregcashen]

Thank you for the clarification, Phil. I have heard some of the rhetoric that is going around since the announcement of the Revit Series, and a lot of Revit's competitors are looking at it as though it undermines Revit's ability to handle the building documntation lifecycle. As an ardent supporter and requester (is that a word?) of something like the Revit Series, I am glad to hear that it was done for the right reasons, and not as a way to let people fall back on it...but rather to move forward from it. I see great things in the future of my career and in the AEC community in general because of Revit.

Greg

[hj]

about 20% for us right now...but that is about to change. We're going to be switching almost everything over to Revit soon. Thanks to Ron!

[Wes Macaulay]

Phil B - great to see you here! I hope you have time to read about some of the obstacles that people are facing in getting Revit implemented in their firms. Price is one - particularly for the perpetually broke Canadian firms with whom we work. And of course people are struggling to find the time to learn while trying to stay billable.

It's encouraging to see how many Autodesk people are here! I'm hoping to have a BIM/CAD shootout hosted by the provincial architectural association (www.aibc.ca) and I will keep everyone posted on when that will happen.

It's our goal to make the locals who have bought into Revit successful... and to demonstrate that if you want to get into BIMming, Revit is the most logical choice. I would estimate that of the firms around here who have embraced Revit with any great seriousness, about 75% of them are or are planning to take Revit thru to CD's. Revit has only been on the radar since the beginning of 2003 here in Western Canada, so it's going to take some time. Whatever the obstacles, I am still thoroughly enthused.

[blads]

Why bother with inferior technology like autocad - it is far easier just staying with Revit, and all your documentation is brilliantly handled.

just my 2c worth...

:D cheers bladams

[Les Therrien]

I am still working on building up a good template and getting familiar with Revit. Right now my use is about 50-50. In a month or two I plan to use Revit 98% :mrgreen: . I would say 100% but I know that some clients will refer back to old files for editing at which I will be dragged to using ADT. :banghead:

[beegee]

. I would say 100% but I know that some clients will refer back to old files for editing at which I will be dragged to using ADT. :banghead:


"What % of new projects in your office are exclusively documented with Revit?"

[Les Therrien]

Sorry. Let me clarify. If a client uses an old completed project, then modifies it as something new, then I consider the modified project a new project. In this case I would use the old file in ADT. But if however the modifications would be extensive, then I would simply redo the project in Revit

Otherwise anything that is started from scratch will be 100% Revit.

Sorry for the confusion!

Cheers!

Les

[Nelson V]

We do about 20% of the projects that are done in revit. All architectural protion done in revit is 100% and export backgrounds to our engineers (civil, struct, mech, elec) in autocad.

[Wesley]

Okay, here the number is 98%+
There is one long term ongoing job (that I _had_ hoped would finally be gone by this Christmas) that is in Vectorworks:(, otherwise everything is in Revit.

Of the jobs started in Revit, 100% are carried right through in Revit.

5 person office, doing single houses through to multi-storey medium-density residential.

Cheers,
Wes

[jwilhelm]

All the proects in my office are done exclusively in Revit, I have no need for autocad. However, some small projects that are not appropriate for 3D could be done easier in revit if drafting mode had better drawing tools
as far as im concerned atocad was a necessary evil, better left in the past.

[Martin P]

I do mix between Autocad and Revit for certain things, mostly site drawings in Autocad - sometimes the "measure" tool in autcad is handy to for example place studs on an curve etc, the site stuff is mostly because I like to have the UCS more "visible" than it is in Revit, and site drawings are almost always pure 2D - so Autocad is the choice (with Revit exports of roof/floor plans)

I am going to put 80% as my vote, but if I answer it correctly it would actually be 0% as I always do sites with Autocad, ie because of this I never actually produce 100% of my documents with Revit.........

[designer56644]

100% here.

The only time I regress to CAD is when I "reuse" an old
CD that I once designed for a contractor/client, that I can't justify
re-modelling in Revit.

I can't see using 2 tools for the same job, esp. to revert back to one that is inferior.

And the bonus is the ease and beauty with which Revit handles document output. :)

[ihammerhands]

A better question might be:
What percentage is Revit involved with on new projects?

I use Revit for all CD's except foundation plans. There seems to be too much clean-up of my AutoCAD details to use Revit. There are other reasons as well that I think my be addressed in 6.0

[J-G]

This question can't be answered directly, because I haven't used Revit solely for any projects, but it generates a good 90% of the actual documents. There are two problems. The first is that we have a beautiful system for doing details in Acad (and a large custom library) that can't at this time be replaced by Revit. I was tempted at first, but the conversion of details is sloppy, and selecting them isn't as slick in Revit. Right now we have them categorized and simply drag them from a viewer and drop them onto a sheet. If an old detail is modified or a new one is created I "harvest" them out of the project when it is finished and add it to the library. I think for most firms Revit needs to develop a specific type of family for details.

The second problem is that Acad is still good for something things. Its scale and align tools work better with large raster images, and for some things (like electrical plans) I feel much faster and comfortable with Acad.

With that said I don't think that Revit has a handicap of some kind. It works well with Acad and the meat of the documents for a project are created beautifully and almost automatically.

[PeterJ]

Jon

To get around this problem you can export a finished Revit detail from a drafting view as a group and then bring it in project by project if needed. I can't recall whether groups preview or not but aside from that it would work

[Kelvin]

Probally a similar % in the 1980's that were using drawing boards as well as cad, whatever that was it was constantly diminishing to the point that the drawing board has become a dinosaur.
Anybody want to buy a 'Kuhlmann' AO drawing board? mint condition, hardly used. You see its the same thing, or a really old autocad 14.
Its not if but when,
Kelvin

[mattbachardy1868]

I use Revit for 95% of my CD documentation and use Autocad14 / Softdesk AutoArchitect 8 for some site plannig, electrical plans and details only. It would be a real drag to have to go back to strictly 2D CD's!

Matt

[Capt Steve]

Hi there revit fans

Nice interface.

Have been seriously on Revit for 18 month. Struggling to kick my Acad habit, easier giving up drugs than kicking that monkey off my back.

Am 90% there on Revit. Been on Autocad for 14 years. I hate Acad!

What I love about Revit. Ease of designing and presenting in. I presently design for Blockbuster Video New Zealand as one of my clients, they love it!

Nice to be here.
Steve

[Archman]

My answer of nil is a little decieving, because we are a very large A/E firm doing hundreds of projects a year. We have recently taken the initiative to do two projects in Revit to test the waters to make sure Revit can do what we need it to do before we migrate from ACAD. That said, the two projects we are doing in Revit are 99% Revit for architecture. Exported dwg files are used by our consultants, so I would say that at the moment 50% of these two projects are being done in Revit.

[Exar Kun]

We currently use Revit exclusively for design & visualisation purposes before moving onto ACAD LT for documentation. Quite simply, we cannot afford more than one licence of Revit and so, where we want two or three people working on the documentation of a project we go back to our old LT licences. Finding the time to train up on Revit is also very difficult as we are spread very thin across the projects we have.

[rhys]

Sounds like a case for RevitLT a 2D drafting package using the Revit drafting and linework tools.

[PeterJ]

We currently use Revit exclusively for design & visualisation purposes before moving onto ACAD LT for documentation. Quite simply, we cannot afford more than one licence of Revit and so, where we want two or three people working on the documentation of a project we go back to our old LT licences. Finding the time to train up on Revit is also very difficult as we are spread very thin across the projects we have.
I'm intrigued by this. There's no wrong and right way for doing things but why not train up someone to take a project from start to completion in Revit and then, as you will be getting significantly more productivity from that person, you should undo some of the problem of being so thinly spread. It won't change the financial situation too much but you will get a better ROI from using Revit to its fullest potential than yopu are at present.

[GuyR]

Quite simply, we cannot afford more than one licence of Revit

I'm sure there are far more thorough ways of working this out but should give you the idea anyway.

Paying a draughtsman $40,000 /year. 4 weeks holidays, 5 days sick and 10 stats. 260 days - 35 = 225 working days. ~$180 per day.
Revit costs say ~$7000 + ~$1000/annum so over 3 years = ~$10,000. So over 3 years the CAD jockey needs to be $10,000/$180 days more productive = 56 days or 56/(225*3)% = 8.3% more efficient every week.

And I think most Revit users would agree this is achievable.

Guy

[Exar Kun]

I agree with what you say but without getting into things too much, as business we have csah flow problems - more other people not paying us on time than anything else and so the money just isn't there upfront to buy multiple Revit licenses.

Also, architectural design work is only a 3rd of what our office does. The other two aspects being conservation/heritage and disabled access. For these we tend to use existing AutoCAD plans sent to us by the client or consultants and mark them up with simple 2D symbols indicating required areas of work etc. Revit offers no significant advantage when it comes to this work and indeed, AutoCAD is actually quicker and easier.

As for having one person doing the entire job - it would be nice if that were possible but time constraints go against that. The inability of anyone else in the office being able to open up something documented in Revit to change a few things or even print out some drawings is a problem.

In a perfect world we would have 3 Revit licenses and 3 LT licenses but it just isn't possible at the moment. Hopefully in the future, but not right now (if Revit's dwg export worked better it would make life easier too ;) )

Thanks for the replies and suggestions, by the way. :)

[beegee]

Sounds like you guys could take advantage of the Revit Series licence.

Have you looked into that ?

I would have though Revit would be very useful for your heritage work also.
Thinking phases and 3D views rotating to describe existing, removed and new work as one example.

[Exar Kun]

No, I haven't looked into the Revit series license - what's it about?

The heritage work is more along the lines of simple codes to indicate an area that may need repainting, repairing etc. rather than showing much in the way of new work. And besides - it would be very difficult at the best of times to obtain enough quality drawings to do a decent model of a heritage building! :p

[beegee]

Heres a topic on Revit Series (www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2484&highlight=revit+series)

Best to contact your friendly reseller to get the detail.

[Exar Kun]

Thanks, that is interesting and could be just what we are looking for.

:)

[ita]

Exar, it seems to me that you could use some plain simple practice management. I have the feeling (from what you have said) that it is not the cost of the Revit Licence but more that the practice is not being run as a business. The fact that you have cash flow difficulties suggests that you have not spelled out the rules of the game to your clients.

[PeterJ]

Ouch

[MartyC]

The fact that you have cash flow difficulties suggests that you have not spelled out the rules of the game to your clients.

Tough but true!

I dont do anything significant for a client until they sign our professional engagement agreement, which spells out the payment requirements. I make a profit these days, and I get paid.

My bank manager reminded me once many years ago, a business exists to make a profit, nothing more, nothing less. If a client doesnt want to commit to paying on time by way of a contract, get rid of them and tell them to go to some other schmuck that will let them off.

Value yourself first, and then, and only then, others will also.

Cheers M

[Exar Kun]

Exar, it seems to me that you could use some plain simple practice management. I have the feeling (from what you have said) that it is not the cost of the Revit Licence but more that the practice is not being run as a business. The fact that you have cash flow difficulties suggests that you have not spelled out the rules of the game to your clients.

That could very well be the case but I am mearly a lowly CAD operator and not one of the directors. There's not too much I can really do about it but make the best of situation. I am only 25 and just 2 years out of TAFE so I don't exactly have a foot to stand on with regards to telling my bosses how to run their business. :)