Revit is gaining momentum

[Scott D Davis]

Found this post over on the pn.cadmanager NG on autodesk's server. Stories like this just reinforce what we all have known for some time. It's good to hear that people in other offices have heard of Revit, and seen enough of it that they are eager to use it! I've clipped out and pasted the part of the post that applies to Revit, but this author did state that he is part of a 160 CAD station firm.


The back-to-back training on Revit and ADT 4 was really interesting. ADT 4.0 was greatly improved over previous versions, obviously emulating some of the Revit interface technologies (such as the greatly simplified "coarse, medium, fine" display representation granularity). But it still had infuriating arcane things about it, and when it came to curtainwalls, I felt like I had to be some sort of egyptian cryptologist to figure it out. The Revit software, was the first piece of software that I've actually became excited about in a long time... it was fun to use, and intuitive enough that I could easily envision our CAD users picking it up. I though I had finally made my decision... then...

...yesterday I attended the Autodesk Go Further Tour, the first of which was held in Boston. AutoCAD 2005 looks awesome... they've added some truly productive enhancements... I'd like to move to it just so that I can trim hatches! But ADT 2005 looks very robust, and might be the release I need to look at. Of course they showed Revit 6.1, which brought back my joy and longing for this well-emplemented software. So now I must revisit the comparison, to see which one we're moving with in a pilot trial program. Most of our CAD users that I hear from, are clamoring for Revit.

[Taylor A]

I agree....I have had 2 ArchiCAD users start in my office and they love the Revit software. I had to go back and use AutoCAD the other day.....it was ugly.

[aaronrumple]

...I have complete faith in AutoCAD/ADT users to beat themselves to death for decades to come.

[Kroke]

I agree....I have had 2 ArchiCAD users start in my office and they love the Revit software. I had to go back and use AutoCAD the other day.....it was ugly.

Argh!! I know exactly what you mean...I'm doing a model based off of acad dwgs. My roomate and I are modelling the entire thing with Rhino and straight old AutoCAD. I suck at solid modelling in AutoCAD. The tools are so cumbersome. I don't know how I ever did anything in 3d back then. I would have tried to do it in Revit but the exporting hooplah into MAX for final renderings/animations is just too much. The building is quite cut up and very large, this is a fun and exciting project, but now after using Revit so long, even simple drawing is such a pain. Arrgh it's a fun challenge: http://www.themeridian.biz/.

(Missing Revit on this project) :cry:

[Marek Brandstatter]

I have had 2 ArchiCAD users start in my office and they love the Revit software.
Our progress with Revit over the last 18 months has been closely monitored by one of the top ArchiCAD users in South Africa. This guy asked to visit us for a 'Revit vs ArchiCAD' session 3 weeks ago. We were happy to oblige. It lasted 90 minutes and was fascinating - The guy was completely bowled over - His words were "Its no contest - you win". He also mentioned that he hoped that ArchiCAD 9 (expected towards the end of the year) will address all the problems and deficiencies - otherwise... he might switch.

He then went along and booked himself on our next Revit Training Course.

I admired his initiative - offered him a job - he accepted.

Welcome aboard Neels :)

[Richard McCarthy]

I would have tried to do it in Revit but the exporting hooplah into MAX for final renderings/animations is just too much.


Exporting Hoopla? I didn't seem to encounter much problem when exporting Revit 3D models to MAX for some rendering.... As long as you follow the Revit to VIZ/MAX white paper, and make some changes to the export dope sheet, your exported model should be good enough for some error free rendering. (That is, after you have texture them in MAX/VIZ)

[Kroke]

Too much of a pain to texture things imo. Besides I can model very complex detailed stuff in rhino that I can't do in revit. Not to knock revit. It's not meant for a modeller, but still... We just figured it would go quicker this way since my roomate is an autocad modelling god. I might do more research on the export options to max sometime later when we have more time (next project?)...

[beth.powell61342]

If you were going to approach someone that has been using non-ACAD software about going to either Revit or ADT, what would you say or show them to convince them to switch to Revit over ADT?

I love Revit! It's exciting, fun, and easy to use. For me, ADT is just plain cumbersome.

Just wondered what the "real world" Revit users thought though.

Beth

[cliff collins]

Beth,

One phrase should do it: "Fully Parametric" !!!! :D

Cliff Collins

[Marek Brandstatter]

Beth - I love this "ugly sister" quote from the "ADT or Revit, which will prevail?" forum at Cadstoreonline.com by Scott Hopkins. It kinda says it all...


I just switched over to Revit from ADT and have absolutely no regrets. I had used AutoCAD for 8 years so when moving to a 3D CAD program ADT seemed like the logical choice. Despite the fact that I am essentially an expert AutoCAD user, (I have written more lines of LISP code then I care to reveal) ADT took me a grueling 3 months of intensive study and practice to really get up to speed – It has taken me about 2 weeks on Revit to get to the same level of proficiency. The main problem with ADT is that it is just too f****** complicated to use straight out of the box. So many things in ADT are counter-intuitive and just down-right difficult to use. Take Wall Endcap styles or Multi-view blocks – what the hell was the ADT design team thinking? These are ridiculously complex! Revit handles all these complexities easily and intuitively. I am a one-man office and don’t have a dedicated IT guy to handle all that stuff for me. I was spending all my time tweaking and fussing with ADT instead of doing architecture. Now that I am using Revit, just thinking about all those styles, display sets and all that other **** just makes me break out in a cold sweat. Everything in Revit is already setup for you so that your drawings automatically print beautifully (yes you can tweak just about anything in Revit too, but the point is you don’t have to!) I love the fact that Revit writes to PDF files instead of unreadable plt files. So many things about Revit are better than ADT. Yes ADT is powerful and has the framework to do a lot of different things but Revit is just so much easier, faster and enjoyable to use. ADT is truly the ugly sister to Revit. Essentially the Revit Team has done just about everything right. Only now after using Revit for a bit do I realize how much time and aggravation I was putting into ADT. I think it was Confucius who said that it is better to pour out your cold tea before pouring any hot tea into your cup. I think that AutoDesk now realizes that the strategy of building ADT on top of AutoCAD was flawed from the beginning. AutoDesk has said that “Revit is the future”. I am not going to go into every detail of why Revit is better here, just get the demo disk and see for your self. No, I am not an employee of Revit or AutoDesk, just a guy trying to get work done efficiently.

Read the entire thread at http://www.cadstoreonline.com/Forum/read.php?f=6&i=3&t=2

[aaronrumple]

A software that inspires quotes from Confucius...

[Scott Hopkins]

Wow, you must have had to dig deep to find that old rant! :oops:

[Marek Brandstatter]

Hell I've basically memorized it :P

And what doesn't still apply?

[Scott Hopkins]

Don't know if it is still true for ADT 4 but it was definitely true for ADT 3.3.

[Marek Brandstatter]

Where's Scott? What have they done to Scott? Damn aliens.

[neels]

What Aliens?

[Andrew Dobson]

...I have complete faith in AutoCAD/ADT users to beat themselves to death for decades to come.

I think you have really hit the nail on the head there