Opinion: Revit from a Civil Engineer/Constructor point_view

[H_2421]

Hi

I have been reading about BIM and its impact on the construction area, especially from an architech? point of view.....But here is my question what benefits does REVIT or ARCHICAD pose to a Civil Engineer in the planification/desing/cosntruction department....

Would it help me in the structural, sanitary or electrical area....OR in any other area in consideration?

I dont want to be harsh here but Autodesk has a Civil Series and i wonder how REvit (or archicad, for that matter) integrate (i dont mean like a plugin or so, i mean as a building cicle or as Autodesk calls it Civil ...Solutions) Not only with those products but with others in the construction arena (SAP Etabs, etc) and in the common challenges in civil engineering and construction....


PS:Yes i know revit is an architect software (and so is AC, but AC has a "plug in" or so called AxisVM, for the structural area) , and im not talking here about revit limitations i only want to know how would REVIT benefit ME (or any other civil engineer/constructor) in order to fork out some cash and make some time to take a revit /archicad book and read it.....

Escuse me for my english. Its not my native language

[sbrown]

I wouldn't say revit would help you produce civil documents, it would help civil engineers " understand the site" and buildings on the site. The ability to quickly create a topo surface and then add building pads at diff. elevations to decide what the optimum finish floor should be is really easy with revit on a complex campus site. Then the ability to cut site sections where ever you want is awesome.

[gregcashen]

I think that you will find that Revit will begin to offer more and more to the engineering side of the building process in the next release (7.0, not 6.1) The structural enhancements that were anticipated for Revit 6.0 did not come, and I think it is safe to say that it is not because they stopped working on it. Rather, I think that they probably set the bar higher for themselves than even the users have. As such, they have their work cut out for them.

Keep in mind, ADT (Architectural Desktop) and Building Solutions have a lot of the kind of functionality that you are talking about and Autodesk is not going to sit around and wait for people to tell them what to do. I am sure the Revit team is already hard at work trying to figure out how to put that same level of functionality into Revit.

I would not be surprised to see Mechanical, Plumbing, Electrical and Structural solutions integrated with Revit within the next 18 months or so...or at least some of those things...only time will tell. ;)

Interestingly, I have posted on the Civil3D newsgroup about ways that Civil3D and Revit could take some hints from one another on the usability front. I think Revit has the basis for a VERY powerful civil program with it's site tools, and it would be VERY nice to see them built upon, either in C3D or Revit or both!

[Wes Macaulay]

Arrggh. The issue of multidisciplinary interoperability hasn't been well addressed by anyone to date. Revit is great for architects and structural engineers who want to model a building or site and have a 3D model that tracks quantities and keeps the documentation coordinated. I mean, it's really great for this.

I have been told by the higher ups in Autodesk that mechanical electrical and plumbing version of Revit is in the works. And that will be really great when it gets to the people.

But get into the realm of the civil engineer who's building roads and it is a mess. What if you want to plop your Revit model into the Autodesk Civil3D site? You can't do it with any intelligence yet.

It took awhile for 2D file transfer to happen, and it's going to take a while before 3D transfer is going to work.

In reference to your query about what's in Revit for the civil people, well, "what Greg said". There are good solutions for each discipline out there (increasingly the Autodesk versions are becoming the best ones -- Bentley has lost their collective mind), but the different products aren't talking to each other at all. Someday they sure should.

[cphubb]

This may be a little off topic but in a recent seminar a large contractor who was using Revit 4.5 at that time. Stated that it was approximately equal to draw the building in Revit as it was to do takeoffs using a wheel/scale. The database yielded by Revit enabled them to directly plug assmeblies into their database. There was no measurable time savings initially, but any revisions were almost immidiate. Sounds like the CAD people 15 years ago when talking about switching from paper to CAD.

It seems to me that programs are evolving past the point where people will argue about 2D vs. 3d and BIm vs CAD. Just like we were debating 15 years ago about paper/CAD. The civil stuff will get there soon I think. My only hope is that there is a GOOD (hear that Autodesk) program that integrates all of those disiplines involved in building design construction so that the contunious conversions that currently go on will end or be minimized.

Chris