revit building 9

[natete]

anyone had any issues or problems with switching from 8.1 to 9.0?
we have started the project in 8.1 and would like to upgrade the revit to 9.0
we see the coordination as a potential problem (contractor's using 8.1)
any thought on this?.

thanks

[DanielleAnderson]

If your contractor is using 8.1 and you upgrade to 9.0, you won't be able to talk to each other. There is no way to save a Revit model "down". That's probably the biggest thing.
As for issues upgrading a model. I had a fairly complex model that I upgraded from 8.1 to 9.0 and had no problems at all. Everything worked fine, nothing unusual to report.

[Brian Myers]

I had a fairly complex model that I upgraded from 8.1 to 9.0 and had no problems at all. Everything worked fine, nothing unusual to report.

Which leads to the question...does the contractor need a Revit model to do his job? It's possible to import a 2D AutoCAD drawing into Revit as well as to export a Revit model into AutoCAD. What I mean is if he can do his job without using a full Revit model then yes, he might be able to make it work as long as the "clean-up" of bringing his model into the main 9.0 model was feasible.

[pdavis]

I do not know about the contractor in this particular case, but I can tell you that they several of the major contractors we work with are getting closer to requiring the model. They are using the model (in conjunction with other software) to assist in estimating, phasing, etc. I would bet in less than a year they will require it on Design Build projects and will ask for it on other projects. I say a year, because I think that is how long it is going to take for contracts to be adjusted. That being said, I believe that they way we are doing things, the Architect will still "own" he model.

[mccurdyks]

What "other software" are they using for estimating off the Revit model? This is an area that doesn't get much attention that I would like to start pushing over here. Is there any software in particular that's better than another for manipulating Revit data in particular? Thanks.