R6 Disappointment

[bobo]

Is anyone else rather disappointed at the seemingly limited improvments in this release. Why does it appear light on and rushed... The rendering interface additions seems thrown together and amatuerish and we still have accurender! The documentation tools are still light on and in need of attention..No more RPC people and an overinflated hype on the design options facility. I know there will always be some positive spins like the baluster revisions etc. and I love the program, but is this the quantum leap we had all been awaiting to once and for all lay to rest the whole Archicad thing, is it?

Sorry guys, had to speak my mind... still a fan, just a little disappointed

[beegee]

Sorry Rietveld, but I disagree.

The design options alone are a huge improvement and one that many firms needed and will use majorly.

Just about all the main wishlist items from this forum have been included in 6.0.

Steve Burri announced quite some time ago that we would not be seeing Viz in Revit with this release.

You can always purchase RPC if you need more of them. In the scheme of things, they aren't that expensive.

I think the documentation tools have improved. What others are you after ?

No one said this was going to be a quantum leap, whatever that means.

Personally, the Archicad thing was laid to rest for me quite a long time ago. ( I'm an ex archicad user )

Sorry if all this sounds harsh, ... its not meant to, but I really think this release provides great value.

[MartyC]

Hmmm, personally, I'm finding the subtle but obvious improvements and enhancements quite terriffic.

Havent explored the design options at all yet, but what I do see is most areas of the interface and methodology improved and enhanced in a manner that seems to fall at hand in a logical way.

More free RPC's? with the standard and the couple of additional ones available from Archivision, its a good starter, and for the big jobs the budget should extend to buying a few.

Being a render junkie, I'm finding the enhanements to the render interface excellent, and personally I find Accurender waaay more than edequate, and in the right hands is a spectacularly good renderer. Remember that AR4 is, I believe, nearing completion, and why would that be less than Viz? I want more Accurender, why? cos its there!

I bet also that if Viz was included, there would be just the same complaints over and over.

The documentation tools need work? I dunno, my working drawings look bloody beautiful as far as I am concerned, and way better than they did with ACad, and I can knock up a finished, fully detailed and annotated sheet in a couple of hours. I'm happy with that.....(lucky the clients dont know :shock: )

I'm just speaking for myself here ok, but as far as I am concerned Revit just keeps getting better and better.

I suggest that there are very few that are really utilising and exploiting every part of this software. The more I explore and learn, the more tricks I find that simply propel this package way beyond the alternatives, and that is at its current level of resolve. Ya just gotta learn the software and forget about the 'old days'.

And just as an afterthought, I reckon that Revit is also the best VR game around :)

Cheers M

[J-G]

I have to say I am a little disappointed as well. The program is great, but I was really really hoping to get enhanced structural tools, and more advanced roof modeling options would be nice as well. I suppose that we just have to wait until next time.

[christopher.zoog51272]

I'll guess I'll throw my 2c as well.

I and several others who followed the newsgroups knew that r6 was not going to be a release full of brand new features, but rather it would include a few new features and make the existing features we already have work 10 times better.

Revit did exactly what I wanted them to do: make the tools that I used day and day out work better. There were tons of improvements that help those of us who are using revit to design and document buildings 100% in the program. The workset and schedule improvement alone were a godsend. And design options has opened up a whole project type in our office to be done in revit: developer housing. Power users will also appreciate the major improvement to families, and not to mention the OBDC export stuff!!! Not to mention, the little enhancements here and there that make it easier to do my job........just too numerous to list.

About viz, I would not expect to ever get viz in revit and I don't think we'll see viz-render any sooner than a few years maybe revit 8.0 or so? I think we will see AR4 in a revit release immediately following the ar4 release.

Now, perhaps the best new rendering feature in 6.0 is the one you can't use..... yet. I am referring to the Xdata that revit attaches to it's objects during dwg export. From what I've heard, The data includes, among many other things, material definitions and UVW mapping info (I think), that a future release of viz will be able to read. I think xdata will be huge for reviteers who use viz. If it does work I may go the viz route myself.

I'll have to disagree about the new render/materials interface, I love it!
Not sure what you mean about the documentation tools, but they certainly work for us here in the US market.

more free RPC's? well Revit Technology Corp paid a fortune for those 5 people for release 4.0, and if you ask me it was a waste of money. It you are all serious about rendering you can certainly spend $300 for a new set of people, trees, plants.... whatever.

The only ting I am a little disappointed about is the seeming lack of group improvements. I really hope we see improvements in that area soon.

Now, that’s my two cents, but remember, if you are disappointed and would like to see something different in revit: TELL THEM!!!!!!!! I don’t just mean posting here! Send them an email, let them know what is disappointing to you and what you want to do with the software that you can’t do in it’s current state. The revit team listens, we just have to talk to them.
:D

[PeterJ]

I can see I am going to have to find some time to do some work in 6 in order to join the debate.

[sbrown]

If you are new to revit you may think there isn't much new because you don't know how hard it was to work in worksets. This new release went a huge step in the multi user interface to make it much less painful to do simple things like pick up redlines. If you have used revit for a long time you may also think its not a major release because we have witnessed revit go from doing very few things very well to adding Site tools, then adding worksets, then adding RPC and render improvements, etc. etc.

What I asked and many other long time users asked was to make the current toolsets work better, I think thats exactly what revit did for us. I too expected structural in this release, but hey next time maybe. I'm kind of tired of hearing how poor accurender is, I've seen incredible renderings from accurender, take a look at the accurender newsgroup. Remember revit doesn't sell itself as a high end render package, thats not what the rendering capabilities with in revit are for, they are there to help the designer, design quicker and better, if a client is going to pay for a rendering, hire someone to do a proffessional rendering, if you wnat to compare what your design will look like with brick vs stone, you've got the tool you need.

So I think the thinking is revit will give you more ways to export to existing rendering software and leave accurender in for us to use.

I am still dissappointed with groups, but I've seen what the developers can do and I know they will come thru for us soon.

[jwilhelm]

I will say I was expecting perhaps a larger number of enhancements similar to what was provided with Revit 5, maybe we are just used to the hundreds of enhancements that came out at every Autocad release in the past, of course that program could never get enough enhancements. The fact is that Revit is a "relatively" complete design and documentation system already and doesnt really need that much enhancement. I am so glad they finally resloved the split level issue I could kiss someone, tha t has been a major hastle on every project I have done on Revit. I will reserve my criticism until I have used it a bit more. Revit is still the best thing around, and believe me, archicad aint even close, I use archicad every day at my day job, and while the user interface is nice in some ways, the program aint no revit and never will be. Archicad users are all excited about some of the things release 8 can do, most of which Revit was doing 2 years ago.

[Chad Smith]

It's good to see that I wasn't the only one disappointed with r6.0.
http://www.zoogdesign.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1893&highlight=

And if what Chris was saying about VIZ might not be implemented for a few years yet, and since a VIZ implementation is THE NUMBER 1.0 item on my wishlist, then I guess I'm going to be very disappointed for a few more years. But the XData feature does sound interesting.

[beegee]

Hi Rietveld,

THIS (www.issys.com.au/rpc/starter.htm) may interest you.

The RPC starter pack is A$595, which, while not cheap, is recoverable if you're doing a few paying renders.

The great part is that you can get their other content packs for as low as A$75 ( discount for future purchases ) when you buy the starter. Sounds good to me, anyway. I'll start counting my pennies right away.

[bobo]

well, there is one big plus for Revit that will never go unrecognised.... the incredible support and input received from all the members here! I hope I didn't sound too overly pesimistic regarding this release, I am truly still Revit's biggest fan. Well, I guess, till next year (or maybe sooner?) we can get back to exploiting this wonderful tool to its fullest potential.... thanks for the comments all.... sorry if I upset any die hards...

[beegee]

sorry if I upset any die hards...

No, not even Bruce Willis is upset. Honest discussion is what this forum is all about.

As ChrisZ wrote above, its a good idea to communicate with Revit on a positive basis, let know what you want and why and how.

[hand471037]

Autocad release in the past, of course that program could never get enough enhancements.

What are you talking about? AutoCAD 2004 isn't any different from AutoCAD 2000, 'cept that now you've got more colors and they *finally* fixed the draw-order-in-xrefs bug. You still can't use Truetype text natively, but it is a little better than before. :P

Even most die-hard AutoCAD people thought that 2002 wasn't anything more that a 'bug-fix' for 2000. If you mean the jumps from R12 to R14 to 2000+, then I can see your point, but from 2000 on I haven't seen very much improvement on the AutoCAD side of things, other than the Design Center tool...