i thought x.1 versions didn't upgrade legacy files?

[Justin Marchiel]

I thought that you only needed to upgrade your files when a new version of REVIT came out (ie 10.0) and not when a subrealease (9.1) came out. did it miss something?

What is the logic? Is the database significantly changed? Does that mean i can't have a 9.0 and 9.1 working on the same project (not that i would).

Thanks

Justin

[luigi]

Yup, that is the case...




I thought that you only needed to upgrade your files when a new version of REVIT came out (ie 10.0) and not when a subrealease (9.1) came out. did it miss something?

What is the logic? Is the database significantly changed? Does that mean i can't have a 9.0 and 9.1 working on the same project (not that i would).

Thanks

Justin

[Steve_Stafford]

Point releases ARE an upgrade. New builds of the same release are NOT an upgrade.

[Firmso]

Point releases ARE an upgrade. New builds of the same release are NOT an upgrade.
We stopped our subscription when we upgraded to V9.0. Can we still upgrade to V9.1?

[dhurtubise]

Nope, you will need to pay the upgrade. And this time get the subscription. :-)

[BWG]

I believe it is fiscal annihilation if you stop subscription and then try to come back into the BM.

[Firmso]

I believe it is fiscal annihilation if you stop subscription and then try to come back into the BM.
I didn't have any say in it. Wasn't my call. I was surprised myself when I learned we had stopped our subscription. We'll probably won't upgrade till Revit V12.1.

[Steve_Stafford]

I didn't have any say in it. Wasn't my call. I was surprised myself when I learned we had stopped our subscription. We'll probably won't upgrade till Revit V12.1.Have no idea what the terms are in your country but if the past is any indication regarding upgrading Autodesk products it will cost your firm the least money to upgrade now as opposed to later. Later it will end up costing you very nearly the original price you paid for the version you have now. You might encourage the folks who make these decisions to revisit the decision.

[Martin P]

I didn't have any say in it. Wasn't my call. I was surprised myself when I learned we had stopped our subscription. We'll probably won't upgrade till Revit V12.1.

I would not pay to upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1...... Infact we probably wouldnt have bothered past Revit 8.0 yet.

Release 10.0 Of Revit will be make or break for my office as far as subscritions go. We have have not been all that impressed by the upgrades since 8.0, and probably would not have paid to upgrade yet - so subscription may not be for us.

[dhurtubise]

Wow, you couldnt find a single tool that was worth it ?

[Martin P]

Given that we have 6 licenses, all of which must be upgraded - even a single tool is costing us £3000 a year...... cant think of any that have been all that amazing and increased our productivity by that much.

Obviously I like in place editing of families and so on, but my boss has not really seen much that we are using for his £3000 a year in the last couple of releases.

The linked file improvements, and the 2 pick families were about all we were interested in for 9.0 - and 9.1 to be honest has nothing really to interest to us........ We would not have paid the £3000 to upgrade for these 2 tools though.

Subscrition means we pay anyway - whether we want or need what is released. It is also a pain upgrading all of our projects every 6 months! We are considering going back to upgrading every couple of years as we always did with Autocad, it never really concerned us then..

[rhys]

Now this seem like the begining of an interesting debate. I have to agree with Martin that, understandably, because much of the development cycle seems to has concentrated on the development of Revit Stucture and Services, we have not seen the dramatic changes to Revit Building that took place in the heady days of 4 to 5 to 6 to 7, when may of us were encouraged to move from monthy to yearly subscriptions, when Autodesk aquired Revit.
The issue is not really the principle of the subsciption model but the percieved value at £450 annual charged per seat. Given that it is impossible to save back to earlier versions, however, we will probably bear it for the next year or so before reviewing our whole approach. This will be determined largly by what we see in v10, and what develops in the BIM world more widely. We took a giant leap of faith to abandon Autocad and go with Revit v3 we could in theory do it again.

[aaronrumple]

...as I've argued in the past, if Autodesk abandons the rapid release cycle that Revit started - subscriptions will fall and it will become more economical for firm to upgrade only now and then. It is also forcing the issue of saving back to past releases which will be even a bigger headache for Autodesk. The smart thing would be to go back to 4 releases a year and keep people on subscription.

[Martin P]

Hi Aaron, I agree that the Rapid Release was in part what has made the subscription worthwhile. but its the actual upgrades that are important to us now.

We have really started to feel recently though that for the effort (and time) of upgrading all our projects, families, re-registering etc - weighed against the actual benefits to us, have seemed pretty minimal - then you have the new builds coming out to keep an eye on after that. We cant help but think there could be some actual advantages to us in leaving subscription behind - sticking with a good, strong stable release for a couple of years then upgrading - as was always the way with Autocad. And it was Never a problem for us in the past.

for us to keep upgrading, regularly there has to something to make us want to open the boxes that are delivered. At the moment I really can see no point at all in us installing 9.1. As far as I can see at the moment installing 9.1 would result in no benefits - infact almost the opposite it will just mean just losing time upgrading projects so they are 9.1 RVT files. Apart from that nothing will be any different to the Users of revit in this office. We are more than likely just not going to install it. - If there 4 releases a year we would only be installing any that had an upgrade we wanted, I imagine this would very quickly become the trend and you would find everybody was using different versions.

I am not trying to be negative and put Revit Down, nor the efforts of the factory, I am just describing the honest truth - there just appears to be nothing we would find of great benefit in installing 9.1 at the moment. and 9.0 did not feel all that different for us - I am not saying that there were not a great deal of improvements in 9.0 - just none that really seemed of any real use to my firm, others may of course see that differently.

Although Revit is not Backward compatible, which would present problems if we collaborate with others - I think for my firm at least we are a quite a long way away from ever worrying about working with any one else using Revit, so that for us in not really an issue. Though Revit Structures and Systems may well take off, It will be a long time before there any many firms in this area that would use them - or all that many projects we would be doing that would really even warrant them.

[Melarch]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I think the rapid release cycle in Revit's case is important and these are some of the reasons why we should be willing to support Autodesk Revit's program development.

First, in order for Revit to become and stay a major competitor with other BIM suggested solutions Autodesk must complete the triad of products (ie. Revit Structure and Systems). Although many of us are not multi-discipline engineering groups, some of us are and hopefully the same wave that caused us to embrace Revit will permeate through the rest of the AEC (Engineering) community, whom many of us use. Still Autodesk needs to develop the multiple discipline versions, which require the other two to be updated along with each others advancement and enhancements.
The fluid interaction and the features for integrating all of the engineering for developing clearer design representations that include all building infrastructure, interference and element monitoring will help to re-establish the architectural/engineering value of our services to the client and ultimately change the decades of growing adversarial relationship with contractors, and help us professional enter relationships with client and contractor where the risk and responsibilities are shared more equitably. Thus, enhancing our worth in the project process, increasing our fees and extending our data stream value beyond our current role of design and documentation.
BIM gives us the tools to enable the architectural community to determine design risks and reduce costly errors before the drawings leave our offices and offer the client services beyond design-engineering and project management by virtue of the BIM database and model to be represented and utilize during the buildings life-cycle.

Second, consider Autodesk as a for profit company with management and employees who all receive salaries, benefits and bonuses, along with the tens or hundreds of thousand investors whose expectations of higher stock values and dividends need to be supported by a revenue stream.

Third, can Autodesk afford to provide the enormous development effort if there is limited annual revenue stream? I think all of us would agree its great to have a company with vast resources and deep pockets, but how long could your firm exist without steady income. I remember so many players in the CAD arena over the past 22 years who no longer exist, because they were bought out or up by the bigger fish or simply ceased to exist for lack of market share, revenue and investor confidence. Some big companies during their time. Autodesk, like several other CAD ventures have existed for over twenty years and we as users and investors could and can rely on their development and support of the products that have driven the improvements in our documenting process, productivity and ease of editing our plans and specifications over manual drafting and the value clients have placed on CAD technology. Could you imagine having to compete in the current design market-place doing all of your documentation manually, no CAD, word processing, spreadsheets or other graphic software. I am sure that their are still a few vestiges working on vellum with t-squares or parallel rules or drafting machines, with angles (30-60 or 45), French or flexible curves, with mechanical pencils or ruling nibs and pens, with Leroy and Letraset or with Ames lettering guide, and with no end of tools required and used to develop documents manually.
Fourth, last but not least, because Revit is not a backward compatible product, what happens when one or more of the model is not the same release. We all know the answer to that question, but for those reading this thread and my post let me spell it out. If any one user is working with an older release then they will be excluded from working on the team. This was not Autodesk's rule, as is evident from the AutoCAD product software and all the vertical applications built up the core DWG format. It was the original Charles River Company development of the Revit BIM solution software. Autodesk inherited this "No Passing Down" data. I am sure the complexity of a BIM solution makes it extremely difficult to insure software quality and compatibility with other CAD software, without having to provide building elements and components backward translation as new features and rules are embodied into them.
Since we can't go back, what is left, stay with the present release like some AutoCAD users who refuse to upgrade from release 12 or 14, or advance with the product development and embrace a richer BIM environment and the potential for greater understanding of the design model and productivity in document development, coordination and detailing.

In conclusion I would like to say that not everyone needs to upgrade the product every year, but most of us who work in teams, with others using Revit or with professional consultants who are first getting involved with Revit Structure and Systems, it is an imperative we all remain on the same page, same release. For those few who work in relative isolation from having to coordinate with other Revit users, Building, Structure or System, I would say the only benefit of not upgrading or being on subscription is the delayed cash flow for the new releases. But at what price do you forestall the subscription cost, at no benefit, because to upgrade from several releases back cost you the same as if you did it annually, plus an additional charge is my understanding from the reseller network.

[Martin P]

Hi Mel, your post does make a lot of sense and I hear what you are saying. Subscription is the best way to ensure Revit (and Autodesk) stays safe and is developed, and also to Make Autodesk more profitable long term as well. I agree with you. I also like the fact that Autodesk have Revit, it is becoming more widely used because of it, and lots of people have started to take note. I suspect that Revit has really benefitted in user numbers simply by being taken on as an Autodesk product, people feel it is a safer bet.

But The recent releases have however started to have a nagging feeling of a slowly dripping tap compared to the real flow there was before with releases (even point releases) with Revit. I suppose the best analogy to describe the way we are thinking here is that we would just rather leave a cup under the dripping tap - go away, forget about it for a while, and come back and have a big drink now and again - as opposed to sitting and catching each of the drops. It just seems less hassle even if the end result is really the same.

I just cant help having the nagging feeling that long term profit, subscription, and slow drip feeding are all very closely related though. I mean lets be honest - If our clients all paid by subscription, and never told you were they unhappy, and that your progress was not important - you wouldnt ever rush at getting anything done! - and would maybe go back to "working on vellum with t-squares or parallel rules or drafting machines, with angles........" ;) LOL (definitely not!) Until, that is some of the clients give you a little poke and ask you to "shake a leg" or they will go back to the original way of making you wait till the very last minute before they settle their bills....

My firm is not a big client of Autodesks, so my post may just be a tiny little poke - but with my post I suppose I am asking them to shake a leg with the subscrition / upgrades cycle... Whether anyone else thinks I am justified in that or not depends on what use they are getting out of the recent upgrades I suppose?

[Steve_Stafford]

Fwiw, if I were a small firm, and not excited about 9.1, I'd still be compelled to upgrade just for the additional control of elevation symbols via "Hide at Scales Coarser Than".

[Andre Baros]

We're going to get around to upgrading just for compatibility... the fact that the new features guide is for 9.0/9.1 says it all. If it wasn't for our engineers switching to Revit, we wouldn't bother either, which is really disappointing.

[jrichardson]

Coming from the structural side of things I have to pipe in. We can not get on the new release of structure fast enough. So many new things are being added dealing with the many different structural systems and not to mention the little platform changes that building users have been wishing for each release. I would imagine somewhat like the way it was with building in the earlier releases.

Multiple discipline collaboration is what we all have been waiting for and should be our ultimate goal. As said above, if we all do not stay up on the latest release it does none of us any good in the collaboration efforts. This is why most of us are using Revit. Right?

We have some cases where the arch does not want to upgrade to the current release. Makes the collaboration effort senseless. Understood that you normally would not upgrade in mid project, but the new release is so beneficial to us that it will be much less painful and more efficient for us to upgrade. Something that everyone using the Revit product need to understand. A few years down the road we should be somewhat on the same playing field and on the same release number.

I think that subscription and the latest upgrade is the way to go. I just got our company convinced to move to subscription. It is easier to budget your annual cost for the software and if you do the math it will be cheaper for you in the long run.

jamie

[Martin P]

Hi Jamie, While I agree with you about everbody being on the same version and collaboration being important etc, I suppose all I am saying is that for those of us who are not collaborating and not likely to any time soon - the latest upgrades of building seem to have had little to offer other than keeping up to date with those who are. (which I cant see a benefit in for us really?)

Collaboration with people using Revit structures and Revit Systems is a very big upgrade issue for those who are actually doing it, and I am sure in the future we will maybe end up doing this, but it will be several years away. For us at the moment it not an option therefor not an issue and most importantly it is of no value to us (yet) whatsoever. When collaboration is all off in the future we are wondering why we are paying for it all now, (as well as we will be then) and going through the hassle of upgrading Revit more or less to keep in line with other people - who we arent collaborating with, infact arent even likely in the same country as. At the moment Upgrading Revit would cause us some hassle and save us none at all, there is nothing in 9.1 that I need and there was very little in 9.0. Upgrading projects and families takes time and causes some problems on occasion with families etc - I have no reasons to want to upgrade at the moment, as the benefits of upgrading (none that I can see) are outweighed by the problems.

If indeed the money side of things works out the same we will probably just have to stay on subscription, but we will not be happy customers if we keep receiving and paying for upgrades that we have no use for.



"We can not get on the new release of structure fast enough. So many new things are being added dealing with the many different structural systems......"

Jamie, that really about sums up my discontent with subscribing to Revit Building at the moment - as there are not many new things being added to building at all. Its seems clear that structures and systems are being developed and building is being pushed aside in terms of development - albeit temporarily ( I hope) - which really means at the moment we are paying to develop another piece of software. I realise the big picture is that in the future it may all be of some use to us - but Autodesk is not asking us for our donation "to help the cause" like some sort of open source organisation. They are making me pay to develop something that I dont use, whilst not actually bothering to do very much to the thing that I am paying for and using - right now! - it simply does not feel right or very fair. Seems a bit like putting you car to the garage, paying up front - then being told you have wait another week to get it back as they used the money to fix somebody elses car first, but - it was a new type of car that really deserved to be on the road before yours as it will help the cause of motoring, eventually.

but then I am maybe just being cynical and pessimistic and have it all wrong! Maybe great things will happen with 10.0??

[david_spehar]

I'm going to really dumb down this philosophical discussion and ask a pretty basic question. Can anyone summarize the biggest changes from 9 to 9.1? After that, please continue the discussion, it's really interesting - thanks.

[Joef]

Briefly,

Elevation tags can hide at scales coarser than..
Sections can snap to non orthagonal
Export DWG to mm or m or whatever
Revision tags and clouds can display seperately
You can tell columns to be room bounding before placing
filled regions display area in their properties

You can decide for yourself which is the biggest change.

Joe

Forgot to mention this is for Revit Building

[david_spehar]

Thanks Joe. This will be very helpful for my discussion with our IT guy.

[Martin P]

Briefly,

Elevation tags can hide at scales coarser than..
Sections can snap to non orthagonal
Export DWG to mm or m or whatever
Revision tags and clouds can display seperately
You can tell columns to be room bounding before placing
filled regions display area in their properties


:(

Am going to have to stay away from Augi a while - I am getting too bitter, and I really shouldnt care, its not even my money!

[Andre Baros]

While I'm also a bit disappointed with the list for 9.1, I said when 9.0 came out that I would be happy with a release which just fixed bugs... and maybe this is it. As has been pointed out in other threads, there are small undocumented improvements in 9.0 which simply fix the small annoying things, ie elevation tags. Looking back at my recent wishes, there are very few which are new features vs adjusting existing features.

But I agree that the bitter part is that we're paying and upgrading just to stay compatible with Systems and Structure, which are getting features which we could use and have asked for even before they existed.

[Martin P]

Fwiw, if I were a small firm, and not excited about 9.1, I'd still be compelled to upgrade just for the additional control of elevation symbols via "Hide at Scales Coarser Than".

I just use the hide category tool and apply view templates as required to be honest!, not nearly enough to convince me to open the cellophane I am afraid....


I would be happy with a release which just fixed bugs... and maybe this is it. As has been pointed out in other threads, there are small undocumented improvements in 9.0 which simply fix the small annoying things, ie elevation tags.

I am with you 100% on that Andre, I dont particularly want a single new feature or tool. just improve whats already there. there are some things to be fixed I can think of that should have even been done in 9.1, - for example solar studies still cannot be done inside a building with curtain walls (shadows dont work) - thats a huge bug as far as I am concerned - it was one of the major upgrades advertised for building - and it doesnt work properly! That should have been an urgent issue to be fixed. I can easily work around ANY of the upgrades to 9.1 - I cannot work around this. The UI is my particular issue though, an few fixes in the UI would even be applicable to all platforms - which would be nice :)

I am getting to involved in this thread anyway, I am starting to care too much about something I cannot alter. I Am off to find somewhere I find more peaceful on the net to lurk for my luch break ;)

[david.kingham]

When I first saw the beta of 9.1 i wasn't thrilled but I just happened to need the new features of the beam systems last week, a warped roof that I modeled in 9 took almost 2 days, I just re-did it in 9.1 and it took 2 hours. Needless to say I'm very happy with 9.1....a big thank you to the factory and I'm sorry I ever doubted you lol :D

[david_spehar]

Interesting, good to know. Does this feature also existing in RS 3 or does it require and upgrade there too?

[david.kingham]

You would need to upgrade to RS4