BSD for Revit?

[Clyne Curtis]

Read this in my AEC Tech news from Cadalyst this morning...

"We've had a number of inquiries recently about the future availability of a set of applications for Revit that will be comparable to the Autodesk Building Systems part of the Autodesk Architectural Desktop software line.
In the past, the Revit folks have consistently said they plan to develop such a building services engineering product for Revit. But they've been pretty quiet about it recently, and such a forthcoming development is no longer mentioned in Revit's marketing literature or on the Revit part of Autodesk's Web site.

This has caused me to be dubious in responding to the casual questions I've been asked on this subject. I doubt that such a product will be forthcoming any time soon. Autodesk has continued to develop and enhance the Building Systems product, creating quite a useful and usable application for building services engineers. Autodesk must be pretty heavily invested in the Building Systems product by now, with many years of development time and effort going back more than 10 years when you include the Softdesk applications that were the predecessors to Autodesk Building Systems. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for Autodesk to embark on the major effort and dollars it would take to develop an entirely new product for the Revit platform, given the limited market.
However, I also believe that the lack of tools for MEP engineering and modeling is a big hole in the use of Revit as a complete building information modeling system. Integrating HVAC equipment and ductwork, electrical systems, and plumbing and fire protection systems seems crucial to achieving a complete building information model. Being able to coordinate and check the location and arrangement of these systems in relation to the architectural elements of the building is a major advantage of using a complete 3D BIM system. And the MEP systems probably require more attention in the long-term use and occupancy of a building than even architectural systems. The lack of this type of information in the building information model limits its ongoing usefulness.

Autodesk has improved the workflow involved in using Revit interactively with other CAD systems by incorporating direct import and export of DWG files and by letting you link DWG reference files into the Revit design file. But this is by nature only a one-way link that requires a separate data export step. It's a long way from a true interactive and interoperable setup for working across multiple disciplines. And it doesn't support the Autodesk runtime extensions required to directly use data from Autodesk Building Systems or Architectural Desktop in Revit. So if your consulting engineers are using Autodesk Building Systems for their systems engineering and modeling, they have to save their drawings as simple CAD files for use with Revit without the intelligent object modeling that they normally use. Conversely, providing them with background files created with Revit requires the Revit user to convert the intelligent building model into a simple CAD file for use with Building Systems. Hardly a true two-way interoperable solution in my mind, but it's probably adequate for many non-BIM situations with only a few extra steps required for data exchange.
But Autodesk maintains that a wholly Revit solution for building systems engineering and modeling is still in the works, and development of Revit functionality for MEP is ongoing "in the background." I don't know what "in the background" means, except that it's unlikely that anything is imminent. Autodesk policy is not to discuss unannounced future products, so no information about a possible Revit solution for building services engineering or when it could be released is available. Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it as an actual product ready to ship and be used by customers, but Autodesk has surprised me in the past and an actual product may be closer than I think it is.

I have no real reason to doubt what Autodesk currently says about a Revit building engineering product except the speculation outlined above and the usual skepticism about anything related to nonexistent future software products. If I really needed a truly interoperable multidiscipline solution now, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Revit product."


Clyne

[Steve_Stafford]

Sounds like "banging on the door" in an effort to "force" a reply to counter the opinion.

Myself, I have no such doubt ;-)

[aaronrumple]

Adsk didn't even comment on BSD before it relased. I know which basket my eggs are in.

[christopher.zoog51272]

my magic eight ball says it's under heavy development....

[hand471037]

I'm sorry, but this article is rubbish, for it assumes that the ABS + ADT = BIM solution is workable in the first place. I have yet to see firms working in this way, and a large part of the reason I beleve is the overbearing complexity of the tools. It's also very short-sighted and lost in the 'ADT vs. Revit' business. It's over. Serously. Revit won. Really, it did. No amount of backpedaling or storytelling is going to change that fact. Firms are migrating, Autodesk is pouring more money into developement, and Revit really is the future, even if ADT is currently the present for many people. ;-)

[bh]

I read your message, Clyne, with great interest, and although I agree with JM's sentiment, I don't think the answer is so simple as "what truly is BIM" or "which product is better", etc. There is little question, especially on these pages, which is the better product and which should win. But the numbers do not bear this out and that is what it is all about. Judging from the performance of Autodesk's stock over the last year or so, it is not Revit's [relatively] tiny numbers that are driving it, but the robust numbers everywhere else, including ADT!

The real question is not whether a consulting engineering solution for Revit is on its way, but whether engineers will buy into it? It is somewhat questionable given the reluctance of architects to spend the money to up/cross-grade, retrain, etc. when Revit is clearly a better solution for them. I personally have even more difficulty seeing engineers buy into the Revit solution unless this phantom MEP offering has a look that is somewhat different than Revit's. This is also doubtful considering how much a part of Revit its interface is.

ADT, though supposedly designed for architects has never been accepted as an architectural solution. The pockets of people that have been successful (there are some amongst those 300,000 or so supposed users) with ADT don't tend to be architects, but members of an architectural team. This is not a criticism of ADT or AutoCAD - just a reality. AutoCAD, and by extension, ABS are far more comfortable tools for consulting engineers.

The dilemma is this. As CC so rightly states "Autodesk has continued to develop and enhance the Building Systems product, creating quite a useful and usable application for building services engineers" and the HVAC and to a lesser extent electrical consultants are finally starting to buy in after 3 years. Will they now be willing to switch horses to an architecture-centric alternative?

I believe the answer must lie with the architects. They must use this as an opportunity to take back some control over the building model and get firmly behind a truly revolutionary solution. In order to do this they must be encouraged to do so in every way. Thos who know me at Autodesk, know what I am referring to and I believe there are far better ways of getting Revit into the hands of those who need to be successful with it and still grow their (Autodesk's) business. Architects are well aware of the costs inherent in such a change and they need to have resources available to pay people like us to get over the initial implementation pain and start reaping the available benefits.

Once architects have embraced the Revit BIM solution, it will be a lot easier to convince their consultants to leverage it. It is at this time that Autodesk needs to have an MEP Revit solution waiting in the wings to be released for those hordes of engineers receiveing Revit models from their architects.

It's taken 2 years (for us in the Autodesk world) to get this far. I am not holding my breath, but I believe we are closer to a real BIM solution than we have ever been and it is incumbent on the Revit community to somewhow be supportive of those who have just not yet realized it.

[aaronrumple]

I would dare say that Autodesk stock numbers are more based on AutoCAD and Inventor than ADT. Yes "on paper" ADT numbers look great. However, much of the ADT upgrade is based on users wanting an AutoCAD upgrade and getting ADT because it becomes cheaper to get ADT than AutoCAD. ADT then goes unused - however the ADT team get's funding based on these sales.

[hand471037]

The dilemma is this. As CC so rightly states "Autodesk has continued to develop and enhance the Building Systems product, creating quite a useful and usable application for building services engineers" and the HVAC and to a lesser extent electrical consultants are finally starting to buy in after 3 years. Will they now be willing to switch horses to an architecture-centric alternative?

This is my fundamental problem with this article. I beleve this assumption, that ABS is both 'Useful and Usable', to be false at the current time. In my experance, it's a very disjointed product, that doesn't really offer total collabiration with the Architects using ADT (one of many examples: If I place light fixtures in ADT, those light fixtures won't work in ABS, and will simply have to be redrawn within ABS, because ABS uses different Objects for light fixtures (why? who knows!). When we pointed out that this is silly, Autodesk told us that an Architect wouldn't be placing the light fixtures anyways (!) so that this wouldn't be that big of a issue!). Add to the fact that, in order to really use ABS, you have to already understand how to use ADT, which is something that even it's target market (the Architects and Construction Industry) haven't really gotten a full grasp of after many years of use- so now we're going to expect HVAC and Plumbing guys, who in my experance work in 2D over AutoCAD (or even Sharpie over AutoCAD sometimes) to be able to use ABS?

So, while I agree with the article that Revit & BIM won't really take off until there is a MEP and a Structural module, and I would really love to see ADT/ABS content show up in Revit correctly, I don't really see ADT & ABS as viable alternitives at this time, and I certainly don't see them 'taking off' to the point that they will detur developement of a Revit MEP & Structural Package. We sell ABS here at my company, and it's not like we've got people knocking on the door for it. However we've got lots of people very interested in Revit, even firms with heavy investments into ADT who I didn't think Revit would be a good match for because of the cost it will take them to move over.

So, again, I feel like a lot of these CAD journalists are kinda out of touch with the real market, and what's really going on 'out on the street' so to speak. To them, there is no reason that ADT + ABS couldn't work, to me, there is not a lot of reason to see that it would, cept for very savvy firms that already know how to use both tools fully.