Learning curve from ADT to Revit

[.chad]

What kind of learning curve and adjustment time is there when making the switch to Revit from ADT? In office we are currently running ADT 2006 and everyone using it is fairly proficient with it, or right out of school (they learn faster anyways.) Myself and a few others here think we should make the transition, but I dont know enough about what it will take to do to present anything to my boss with a time frame, training costs etc to get us up to a production level with our work without having to fall back to ADT as a crutch.

thanks

[jthompson.70974]

Chad-

As you noted, those fresh out of school are much faster with software--this goes especially for Revit beginners. I've now been at two firms attempting to make the shift. In my opinion, it doesn't take very long to train most people with the basics, but it works best to have at least one full-time staff member with a good grasp on Revit. This person isn't just there for answering Revit questions, but mostly for moral support. Because it's all too easy to fall back on ADT as a crutch, it's best to have someone there for people to turn to (although this forum works well, too).

As for the mentees, anyone who is willing to make the shift can be helpful very quickly. They may not be able to construct parametric families or manage production documents in Revit right off, but the important thing is that they're willing, able, and patient enough to learn. With a good mentor, almost anyone could be fairly Revit-proficient in a matter of weeks. The learning curve is mainly a variable of age, 3D experience, and enthusiasm.

[Justin Marchiel]

my experience (coming from adt) is that it is easier to get someone that does not know how to use adt to get them profecient in REVIT. The problem occurs when you want to do something in revit that is similar to adt, but the steps are completly different. SO the question should be how long does it take to unlearn ADT and the start working in REVIT......

Personally i found that i could take an ADT user and get them to do basic stuff in less then a day. I found that working with REVIT i am constatntly evolving and learning, so it would be really hard to determine when you have a real poweruser. Like i said it is easier to get newbies to the drafting world to catch onto revit then a veteran adt user.

Justin

[Firmso]

What kind of learning curve and adjustment time is there when making the switch to Revit from ADT? In office we are currently running ADT 2006 and everyone using it is fairly proficient with it, or right out of school (they learn faster anyways.) Myself and a few others here think we should make the transition, but I dont know enough about what it will take to do to present anything to my boss with a time frame, training costs etc to get us up to a production level with our work without having to fall back to ADT as a crutch.

thanks

The most important thing to remember once on Revit is to clear your mind of any ADT/ACAD thinking and way doing things. Revit is a totally different BIM tool.
I am mostly a self taught Revit user who switched from acad (with a few adt know-how) with no formal Revit training. Thanks to this Forum, some tutorial cd's and books I was able to survive the pressure to really get myself on a production level and Managed to pull it off in 3+ weeks (with some bumps along the way). I got good at it just enough to impress the guy upstairs.
I guess my point is, if you can learn ADT and be good at it, Learning revit is candy. IMHO, a switch is a wise decision because Revit is a much better BIM tool than ADT.

[greg.mcdowell]

My sense of it is that "object-based" cad is conceptually the same in any program. If you "get" ADT (and by that I don't just mean you know what the commands are) then I think you will already have a head start with Revit (or Archicad, or whatever). But, if you have more of a "black-box" mentality (i.e., just wanting to know what buttons to push when) then you may tend to get caught up in the "in ADT I would do it like this" mode of thinking...

[Brian Myers]

I have a unique situation that I believe ultimately applies to your question. I was hired by an area reseller 4 months ago to do training and support on the Autodesk architectural product line. I've used AutoCAD for 17 years+ and ADT since it came out. Now I'm learning Revit. The first week of learning Revit was honestly... fairly brutal. After using AutoCAD for 17 years I had certain "do this command NOW" keystrokes entrenched in my head and I instinctively kept typing them. It wasn't that the program was hard to grasp the basics of (its not, its fairly easy) it was the fact I had to break myself of my old habits that was hard. By week 2 things were easier, yet kind of difficult too. Why? Because I was bouncing between ADT and Revit doing training and learning. Not breaking that ADT connection I believe slowed down to an extent my learning of Revit and really made using ADT very unenjoyable. By week 3 I was fairly comfortable with Revit (good enough to do projects in without having my hand held) yet I still missed certain aspects of ADT.

Today... I'll call this my 4th full week into using Revit... I could be very productive in an office using it. I'm still running into certain issues that make me scratch my head, some of them very easy and some not so much, yet finding the answers to my questions is getting intuitive. I'm getting used to issues created with visabilities, when to go to properties and where I need to look when elements need to be loaded or modified. I may not always know a command, but I know under which area to look for it.

I do agree that someone should be the office expert in it before the process starts. They don't need to be a real expert, just comfortable with the program and have enough time to answer/research some questions. In the long run you'll be glad to make the switch, for me its a much easier program than ADT with much more potential. But there is a certain level of planning and thought that needs to go into converting over to it. Its very likely your CD's may look a bit different (linework/fonts/symbols/etc) than they did with ADT at first. That doesn't mean they can't look the same with careful planning, just that there might be some subtle differences. The "office expert" should be familiar enough with the program to catch many of these subtle differences upfront and let the staff know about them during training... its a matter of trust and setting a level of expectations. Most people will find something to go WOW about in Revit fairly quickly, so while you'll have people resistant to the change at first, I'd wager most will be glad for it a few days/weeks/months down the road.

[.chad]

Thanks for the responses so far. How does Revit handle site work and site planning? We do a decent amount of schematic site work for developers, and I can generally fly through those in ADT, what Ive seen in Revit didnt cover things like pavement striping and curbs, but I have only barely started working with it.

I think in terms of mentality, the switch wouldnt be an issue, its more a matter of getting to production level quickly. I'm sure we could deal with CD's not looking the same, my boss and I have discussed changing what we currently use and going with OOTB ADT objects, in large part to move towards scheduling, but again - its a matter of time to learn how to do it and unfortunately, we stay busy and finding time to learn it and be efficient at it doesnt show up often.

here's hoping we can make the switch
chad

[david_peterson]

From the little experience I have in both, Revit is a great modeling tool. Having said that I find it lacking in the detail field. Before you switch, look at the detailing capibilities of Revit. ADT I personally found to be much better in that catagory. Since the money's in the details.....

[Justin Marchiel]

From the little experience I have in both, Revit is a great modeling tool. Having said that I find it lacking in the detail field. Before you switch, look at the detailing capibilities of Revit. ADT I personally found to be much better in that catagory. Since the money's in the details.....


I think that it comes down to the fact that ADT is thll based on a drafting software and REVIT is modeling software. ADT can handle drafting tasks very effeciently but modeling with more headaches. REVIT the opposite. money is in the details, but revit can spit out a wall section from the model with much more effeciency that adt. since there are ususally more plan, sections, elevations, schedules, and wall section that detail wall sections, so i find revit to be more powerful for 95% of the work. I would accept a 5% slow down to gain effeciency everywhere else. and it is not that revit is tottaly stupid in doing detail. it does have detail componants and you can draft details. you just don't have as much control in editting them as in adt.

Like i said before, the biggest challenge is to unlearn what you already know. once you do that, revit goes much faster.

Justin

[david_peterson]

I think that it comes down to the fact that ADT is thll based on a drafting software and REVIT is modeling software. ADT can handle drafting tasks very effeciently but modeling with more headaches. REVIT the opposite. money is in the details, but revit can spit out a wall section from the model with much more effeciency that adt. since there are ususally more plan, sections, elevations, schedules, and wall section that detail wall sections, so i find revit to be more powerful for 95% of the work. I would accept a 5% slow down to gain effeciency everywhere else. and it is not that revit is tottaly stupid in doing detail. it does have detail componants and you can draft details. you just don't have as much control in editting them as in adt.

Like i said before, the biggest challenge is to unlearn what you already know. once you do that, revit goes much faster.

JustinWell I guess it all depends on the type of work you do. I can't ge a wall section in RS to show anything but the outline correctly. So in my case, I have to add a bunch of things to the detail in order to get it to look correct. I can draw an entire steel detail with connection and cope in about 7 min in Cad or ADT, I've spent about 2 hrs today trying to a basic beam to beam conn to look correct. Again, I think the model in revit dose a good job, I don't know that for me it was that much faster than ADT, but what do I know.

[Scott D Davis]

Well I've spent about 2 hrs today trying to a basic beam to beam conn to look correct.
In some cases, when in comes to detailing, use the model only as a guide. Draft, as you typically would in ACAD, over the top of the model in a callout view to produce the detail and make it look right. Then in visibility, turn off the model. It's not worth fussing for hours to get a 3D element to be "perfect" when you CAN simply draft it in 7 minutes. It's that fine line between what to model and what not to model in Revit that counts.

[david_peterson]

In some cases, when in comes to detailing, use the model only as a guide. Draft, as you typically would in ACAD, over the top of the model in a callout view to produce the detail and make it look right. Then in visibility, turn off the model. It's not worth fussing for hours to get a 3D element to be "perfect" when you CAN simply draft it in 7 minutes. It's that fine line between what to model and what not to model in Revit that counts.I understand your point Scott and thanks for the tip. I was using the detail components in RS to create the detail, I wasn't trying to model connections.

[philipmlazarus]

In some cases, when in comes to detailing, use the model only as a guide. Draft, as you typically would in ACAD, over the top of the model in a callout view to produce the detail and make it look right. Then in visibility, turn off the model. It's not worth fussing for hours to get a 3D element to be "perfect" when you CAN simply draft it in 7 minutes. It's that fine line between what to model and what not to model in Revit that counts.

Is there a way to link REVIT to a standing library of ACAD details so the information can be demand loaded on to a sheet?

[dhurtubise]

Since R9 can save view, i suggest you create one file with all those details in differnet view and then use the save view command to insert in new project.
As for the Acad detail, import them into Revit then transform in Revit object.

[david_peterson]

Be aware that plines with width created in acad come in only as a line with no width. Also I've found that many of the standard acad hatchs don't always come in correctly.

[Scott D Davis]

Is there a way to link REVIT to a standing library of ACAD details so the information can be demand loaded on to a sheet?
You can Link ACAD details into a Revit project. This is similar to Xref'ing details in AutoCAD. Updates made to these DWGs in AutoCAD will update in the Revit project by "reloading" or every time the project is re-opened.

[jpolding]

My experience was ADT previous to Revit. I think it helped me because I had a basic concept of modelling and BIM going into Revit. The experience also helped me to realize just how awesome Revit is. Revit can do all of what ADT promises and without weekends of setup. Whenever I would assume 'this is going to be painful' it usually wasn't.