Revit Bashing! (Looking for input on Revit)

[H-Angus]

Only joking but that got your attention didn't it? Apologies in advance if I've posted this in the wrong place, any moderators feel free to move it (I don't generally get to post on this side of the divide).

I currently use ADT and have done since it first came out (in fact we even used AEC 5 before that). Whilst there are countless threads pitting Revit against ADT all over the AUGI forums, they mostly (not all) seem to emulate a playground squabble with ADT and Revit users diligently defending their current program whilst throwing putdowns, insults and occasionally down right abuse back at their opposed program.
From various comments made and articles that I have read, it does seem that the consensus that Revit is possibly (or probably) the future of Architectural design programs (from Autodesk at least), although ADT has and is serving us well. There is a lot I can complain about ADT but having used it for so long, sitting up till the early hours of the morning depleting the worlds coffee reserves I have figred out or obtained work arounds for pretty much everything I need to use. Although I still haven't bothered with VIZ yet.

Having said all that we as a company are looking at other programs, Revit in particular, not to necessarliy change but to choose the correct product for our needs as a company. We now have ADT2007 so wouldn't be interested in changing until the next release, mainly due to financial reasons, weve just paid for ADT for a year so were not about to pay for something else at the same time. We have basically been in a rut simply upgrading the same program for more years than I care to remember.

Using ADT we tend to make the model ensuring it looks correct in plan form, then take sections and elevations from it - which are nothing more than a starting point, they then need to be butchered using Acad lines, dims and notes added manually and whilst this doesn't bother me as thats all I've known, as soon as we need to change the drawings it then does bother me. As far as elevations go I still tend to do a lot by hand, more for presentation reasons than anything else, the CAD produced elevations need quite a bit of work doing to them to make them look presentable ie. shading, hatching, misc backgrounds etc, see attached elevations to see the effort I went to to make a CAD drawing look a bit sketchy, the CAD file weighs in at nearly 5mb (I know about napkin sketch, but thats just one step).

I guess you can now see why we are looking at alternatives.

My main reason for posting this thread is to hear any comments (horror or success stories) of implementing Revit, we are quite a small company (only six of us at the moment). I've repeatedly asked our resellar to send us a 30 day trial CD but they don't seem to interested in pushing Revit and insist ADT is more suitable for us for whatever reason (either way it may or may not be, but I think I'll make my own mind up on that score). In any event I probably won't learn much from the 30day trial having never used it before.

Right, I think I've babbled on quite long enough so Ill leave it there.

:cheers:

[Wes Macaulay]

Your resellers should be ground up and fed to the Queen's corgis :twisted:

There is not one reason why your firm shouldn't switch to Revit. The only problem with Revit for you is that you don't know how to use it. Take a room full of competent ADT users versus a room full of competent Revit users and the Revit users will eat the ADT users' breakfast. There is no comparison.

Going back to the knowledge problem: the mental overlap between ADT and Revit is rather small. But if your crew is motivated and fast learners, then you should start the switch immediately. Migrate one seat over to Revit and start getting familiar with it; take a small project that isn't in a flaming rush and work your way through it. You will never want to go back.

You'll only be paying your reseller for Subscriptions renewals after this... and you should probably switch resellers while you're at it.

[Steve_Stafford]

First...I added a little more to the title...just to avoid the playground thing you mentioned :smile:

Second, welcome!

Naturally Revit users are passionate about the software so you'll find no shortage of that here (passion).

As for waiting for the reseller, don't. Just download the software from the web (if possible for you) then you'll have 30 days to play, just follow the information on the download page to register it. Then ask questions here and kick the tires for a while. There is a lot to like about Revit and yes there are things that even the most ardent Revit user wishes it did or did better (just read the recent discussions about Release 9).

If Revit hasn't hooked you or at least got your attention after the first few hours I'll be surprised. If it doesn't just give it a bit more time... there was this old cigar commercial on TV years ago, the tag line went something like, "Sooner or later...we're gonna getchya"! I think it was Benson & Hedges? :smile:

[H-Angus]

Your resellers should be ground up and fed to the Queen's corgis :twisted:

There is not one reason why your firm shouldn't switch to Revit. The only problem with Revit for you is that you don't know how to use it. Take a room full of competent ADT users versus a room full of competent Revit users and the Revit users will eat the ADT users' breakfast. There is no comparison.

Going back to the knowledge problem: the mental overlap between ADT and Revit is rather small. But if your crew is motivated and fast learners, then you should start the switch immediately. Migrate one seat over to Revit and start getting familiar with it; take a small project that isn't in a flaming rush and work your way through it. You will never want to go back.

You'll only be paying your reseller for Subscriptions renewals after this... and you should probably switch resellers while you're at it.

Thanks for your input. Whilst I realise that there will undoubtably be a learning curve, currently theres only myself who uses ADT to a certain level, so to educate 5 people at ADT or 6 at Revit shouldn't be too much difference (to my knowledge anyway).

Just testing the water really, whilst we could carry on with ADT I think it would and has been naive of us not to keep a lookout for alternatives. But Revit certainly does intrigue me.

[Lashers]

Steve,
I am no KING of Revit user! But I am not far from Watford in the UK, I would be happy to help you where I could!
I set up my business on the basis of the ease of use of Revit! I found the transfer over from OtherCAD pretty straightforward . .
Give me a shout! Oh, and give the reseller the boot . . or go up the food chain in their business.

Andrew Lashley

[cadclips81126]

REVIT ROCKS ! It's new, it's fun and it works.
ADT....used to be Auto-Architect.

I draw and train people on ADT and REVIT six days a week.

ADT continues to improve but is still a faaaar cry away from REVIT with the ADT 'project navigator' (double yikes!) and the quasi automated 2D elevation / section tools (yikes). Coordinating the callouts and sheets in ADT is Brutal at the very best. (haven't tested 2007).

REVIT just works out of the box. I think that is the bottom line.

Like Wes said, the showdown would be a blowout.

The REVIT learning curve and setup is also minimal compared to ADT.

I have been noticing more and more that some resellers are not qualified to implement or teach REVIT but that should not influence your business approach at all. Go elsewhere.

Geographical location means nothing anymore, I provide 'Live Interactive Online Training' for both REVIT and ADT. We have one free session each week for people wanting to test drive this new cool learning system out. Sign up.

More info here > http://www.dgcad.com

Daryl

[H-Angus]

Thanks guys, for all your advice.

I've finally got the Revit 9 trial, it arrived in the post a day after I dowloaded it (typical).
So I'll have a play with it and will likely back with several questions, which I'm sure you won't mind.

:cheers:

[Brian Myers]

It's pretty widely known I've been an ADT supporter for a very long time. But one of the advantages I've had in taking a job recently for a reseller is the chance to actually get PAID to learn Revit. Its amazing how much getting paid to learn a product can motivate you to do more than sit and play with it. ;)

Anyway, in my job I'm to support and teach both products, currently still concentrating on ADT (I teach it in my first class next month) so I hope to be fairly non-biased. ADT does have some advantages depending on what you want to get out of the program and you seem to be using it for pretty much one of its intended uses. Easy drafting. That's why its being billed as AutoCAD for Architects, its the "drafting" program of choice for Autodesk. That's not to say it can't be used for its BIM information, its just not as developed (and likely never will be) as Revit in that regard.

But you might think "I may never use BIM to the extent its hyped in my practice". Well I won't argue either way there, its always your option how your firm decides to handle business. Also, if you want all the elevations generated by Revit to look like your napkin sketches... you can likely present some nice results with Revit, but my experience is that most people that find sketching easier/faster are hard converts to a Model elevation regardless of how nice the product may be.

Ultimately I've recently decided that the difference between an ADT and Revit in practice may be all in the way you think. ADT I believe forces you to think like an Engineer. What I mean by this is that when you design, do you think of your building as an adapting whole when you execute your ideas or is it a jigsaw puzzle of important parts that can be juggled in and out of the structure? In ADT you think in terms of constructs, this piece sitting next to this piece tied into this other piece inside a shell. In Revit its more along the lines of a dynamic whole that retains its information regardless of how you look at it. Its an important disctinction. Today I find that I'm still much faster in ADT because I used it for so long, but I can't see that as always being the case. Revit is more intuitive to the way I think and design and I believe it will be for most people that take the time to crank out a project or two with it. I'm still not 100% happy with its design capabilities, but I do feel more comfortable in that stage using Revit than ADT. Of course, ADT now has easy to adjust massing elements, but those are likely a long way away from really aiding the design process in ADT and mostly just make the 3D modeling easier (in locations where a standard ADT object just doesn't exist).

If I were starting today I'd use Revit unless I used computers for the bare minimum of their ability (to produce low-detail construction drawings with pre-created details). But 10 years from now expect the majority (perhaps 90%+) of larger projects to be completed in a information packed environment. This being the case, I'd switch over to Revit now and see the early rewards before its adopted in a wide spread environment.

Hope this helps a litlle...

[gbrowne]

Best o' luck with that mate, you will love it. Give us a heads up to let us know how you are doing!

[christo4robin]

Used ADT 2.0-3.3, did a 17,000 sf project steel, brick, stucco, in it. I actually slept less during those months than I did in architecture school. Tore my hair out, and generally took years off of my life because I believed so much in BIM and yet was stuck with an inadequate tool. I know that ADT has come a long way in the meantime, but I switched to Revit right after that project (when I opened my own office). Revit has shortcomings, but they are minor at best. I think that the Acad legacy that ADT sits on makes it something like a sports car body on a 1960's VW Bug chassis. While Revit is more like a carbon fiber monoframe/body car that is ready to roll.

As for training in a 6 person office, check the recent AUGI magazine articles by Jim Balding on training. Here in our small office, we ran through the tutorials in help for 3-4 days and were ready to go. Starting into a real project after the tutorials is the way to go IMHO. You will face real needs and come up with real questions at which point you will search this NG and find your answer.

never look back!

[john.s.algeo]

Well here is the deal. I took ADT folks who had just completed a very complicated project, requiring lots of nights up to 2 am and put them on a Revit project. The repeated comments of "Oh my God, Revit does that" and "This is so easy" etc.

Not only did we go home on time, we gave back 300 hours to the project.

[tc3dcad60731]

Everyone has already mentioned most of this but I will add my two cents anyway. :)

We moved to Revit last year and went throught the tutorial that came with the cd and spent about a week going thru all of the tutorials in the help file and did a couple of small jobs by the first of the next week with no problems.

Do look for all information posted from Jim Balding here and Mr. Spot on the Revit City sight. You will learn so much more FAST!!!

PS - Never been to England and would love to go across the pond. I will train for a plane ticket! :mrgreen: