Revit's Architect Friendliness Goal?

[Archimac]

I remember about four years ago when I first heard about Revit that there was a white paper on the the Revit Tech website that talked about Architect friendly cad software. I think the AIA had even written the desired features.

It seemed that Revit responded to each of these points and how it was fulfilling them. I am wondering what happend to this focus. I think Autodesk was trying to promote Architectural Studio at the time as well with it's unique metaphoric interface. It seems that even Autodesk itself warns that the Revit transition will be a complex and complete 'paradigm' shift. Meanwhile it appears that Arch Studio has been phased out.

I think it would be neat if Revit adopted a warm and fuzzy Architect friendly interface like Arch Studio, but with all the power of Revit

It will be called: Autodesk Revit Architectural Studio :)

[Wes Macaulay]

Cad for Principals. It smacked slightly of being paid for by Revit (since there were some people who were members of both orgnanisations if I recall).

I think about this a lot, too... how easy is it to learn Revit? Easier than AutoCAD, I suppose, and there is a logic to everything (except families, perhaps, which remains something of an art for many people).

Arch Studio is great -- I love it. Not anywhere near as good as SketchUp in the 3D department, but the fact that you can 2D sketch using it is invaluable. I actually would prefer Arch Studio over SketchUp since I really value having a digital 2D sketch tool. I know people really like SketchUp around here, but it's my opinion that if I'm doing ANY 3D work, it's going to be in Revit... I don't want to rebuild anything.

[Andre Baros]

Arch studio tried to replace yellow trace... and apart from the "cool" factor it had no uselful advantage. Sketchup adds unique 3d features in an interface that's almost as easy as yellow trace.

As far as ease goes in producing drawings... there are many options available, pencil on paper, ink on mylar, VectorWorks, AutoCAD, ArchiCAD, Revit, and for each level of inteligent advantage there are added levels of learning required. For all it's complexity, Revit is the first step forward in a long time which makes it easier not harder to achieve higher levels of flexibility and production power.

[Archimac]

I have found Revit to be great in sketching because of the dimension strings that appear while you are sketching. I use sketchup to take the Revit model into for the materials and sketchy appearance, but prefer to model in Revit.

I was just thinking that the metaphor of the architects desk and traditional tool in Arch Studio could somehow be incorporated into Revit to attract 'design' architects. Just speculation for discussion.