Revit Series - Any downsides?

[Chad Smith]

I'm just in the process of cross-grading some more of our AutoCAD users to Revit, and was thinking about Revit Series.

Are there any downsides to Revit Series that aren't advertised? I've noticed that there is a different download on the Autodesk website, does this have any affect on the program?

The obvious advantage I can see is having an AutoCAD license which is on subscription, so both programs are always up to date.

[Joef]

I have been using Revit Series a couple years now and have zero complaints. Having AutoCAD around can be handy, though less so as time goes on.

[cblackford]

Upgrading to the "Series" Is usually more cost effective, and at this point in the game not having AutoCAD on our Revit workstations is just not an option. We get AutoCAD files in all of the time, most of our consultants are still on AutoCAD, and if a client has an AutoCAD standard that they want final deliverables in, we still have to do a lot of post processing to Revit dwg exports.

All of that said, and to specifically answer your question: There has been very little downside in terms of the delivered installs. The only time it has ever been a problem was when Autodesk 1st released version 9. Specifically, you could not run Revit 9 unless you upgraded to AutoCAD 2007 on those workstations, which opened a whole endless can of worms because of the file format change and needing to keep 2006 running and a required FLEX LM upgrade and yada yada yada... All of that said, this was just an over-site on AutoDesk's part and they issued a fix in a completely reasonable amount of time. It's been the only time that I have regretted being on the "series" license structure and it was resolved pretty quickly.

[neb1998]

I see no negatives...acad will likely be used be used for quite a few years if not forever....autodesk has no reason to phase it out since its used for so many other fields other than arch...so your sure to run into a user someday.

And acad has its uses, its not worthless, i find (few) but usefull reasons for it on each project

[BWG]

We went with series to be on the safe side. Really can't go wrong, it was only $450 extra with 2 yeas subscription. It does come in handy from time to time. We had some ADA text sheets that were saved in Autocad shape files and could not get them to print right in Revit, so we took them into ACAD and turned the font into TTF and whola! it is now printing just fine. Autocad has paid for itself the times we have used it. However, I only open it about 1 or twice a month. I think the only difference is the license management since they share the serial number. I did read somewhere about base autocad being different than the other versions of autocad being offered in the series packages with all the different programs. But other than licensing, I don't know that there is a difference.

[Chad Smith]

That's for all the comments.

[gibson.tim91884]

We're all Revit Series, and it's Good. However, if you're using network licensing and have both Revit and Revit Series, you might want to investigate how the licenses get doled out.

[Andre Baros]

Downsides:
1. Acad 2007, Since I'm in Revit 95% of the time and haven't updated since 2004, Acad 2007 is traumatic. Your cursor isn't yours anymore.
2. Network licenses. We have all network licenses, 5 Revit and 2 series. The system hands our Revit licenses first and series second so sometimes if you grab a Revit license early and then open Acad for some odd reason you block that series license from going to Revit. It doesn't happen often because we don't open Acad often, but it is something to be aware of.

Everything else works the same, even though there are two downloads. I've installed everything from the Revit Download, not the series download and it all works fine.

[Steve_Stafford]

Everything else works the same, even though there are two downloads. I've installed everything from the Revit Download, not the series download and it all works fine.This may be true for network licensing but I don't think it is for standalone. I have Revit Series and can't authorize it if I install from the Revit Building exe.

[DaveP]

The Licensing Is a different, but the application is identical.

Not sure if this is the same in 9, but I once did a folder comparison between 8.1 and 8.1 Series.
The only difference was in the LicPath.LIC file. Even that was one character different. Once said REVIT and the other said REVITS.

BTW, I highly recommend Beyond Compare from www.scootersoftware.com (http://www.scootersoftware.com/). It's a fantastic folder compare utility. We use it to keep AutoCAD files in sync between offices. That's not a problem with Revit, of course! ;)
Seriously, though, we do use Beyond Compare to keep our Family libraries in sync.