UI - this has been said before and needs to said again.

[barathd]

I can not refrain from saying that I find Revit's UI to be extremely counter productive. One has to jump from modelling to drafting to add a dimension - insane. The fastest method to enter information IMHO is by keyboard. I for want would be elated to see a command line, crosshairs and toolbars. I know this will not be well received by others but nonetheless the existing UI drains the life out of me. Hope changes are in the works???

Regards

Dick Barath

[jbalding48677]

Dick -

You might want to look into modifying your keyboardshortcuts.txt. There is a tool posted here somewhere called keyboard shortcuts superhighway (or something like that) that assists in building and modifying the keyboard shortcuts. We have modified ours extensively and even posted here for all who want to "borrow".

Dimension is D [space]...

HTH -

[JamesVan]

Dick,

You know you can assign keyboard shortcuts to anything in any Revit menu, right? Find Revit's KeyboardShortcuts.txt under the 'Program' folder and customize as you see fit. In my opinion, it is better than Autocad because you can launch most commands/tools without Enter/Space or even exiting the previous command. No more 'Z...

I have built all of my familiar Autocad aliases into the Revit keyboard shortcuts and find it quite comfortable to switch back and forth as required.

As for a return of the command line...I'm still undecided. Perhaps an expanded status bar?

[jwilhelm]

For god sake people, lets go forward not backward, while we may have become used to be and productive with a command line interface lets encourage the REVIT team to explore state of the art interface techniques, lets not try to make REVIT "Like" Autocad. I will agree that the interface could be improved but ease has been a priority from the beginning, the idea is to make it usable by all, not just the cad jockeys, a goal that autocad will never reach.

[hand471037]

Dick, it sounds like more and more all you want is for Revit to be like AutoCAD, but not. It's a little silly. Give it more time, and gain a better understanding of it. No offense ment, but your posts decrying the 'lack of advancement' of Revit in the last two years, about how Roofs are 'broken' because you don't understand them, and now to take a step backwards by adding a frickin' command line to Revit because you don't know that you can use keybpoard shortcuts for everything... geeze man. All of them point to the fact that you just don't know enough about the software yet, and assume that it should be the same as what you know, which it's not and never will be.

I think there were major changes from 4.5->6, even if the UI looks the same. I think the roofs in Revit are great, and with the new dormer openings and such even better. I think the UI in Revit is OK, yes I agree with you that it needs work, but I certainly don't think it needs to go backwards by adding a command line- and I never have to 'bounce' between the design bar tabs for tools, I simply type 'DM' whenever I need a dimension string.

Give it more time, man, it's not ADT or Autocad, and expecting it to be the same is silly. It would be like me posting about how Inventor doesn't have 3DFaces, LISP, and a command line....

[BomberAIA]

It's been proven icons are the quickest way to imput information. The keyboard is old school.

[Clyne Curtis]

After 15 years of using Autocad and Autocad verticals, I was surprised to discover it only took me about 2 days to get accustomed to not having a command line! Don't make me go back!! The Revit UI was a major appeal point to my using the software and it just keeps getting better!

Clyne

[barathd]

Jeffery:

You may or may not be correct about my lack of knowledge. Please tell me how one is to learn when the documentation is scant at best. If Autodesk "really" wants to migrate users to Revit there is no better way than to make the program "Autocad" like. Don't kid you self there isn't all that much in Revit thats all that revolutionary. "Time" - R6 - how long should it take? Roofs - Cadsoft was basically doing what Revit does "fascias and barges" ten years ago.

Yes Revit does function fairly well - I just don't want to work in several programs at one time - drafting (not modelling) is still klunky. Jeffery why should 24 in Revit mean feet and in Autocad mean 24 inches?

Shortcuts - I am aware of them - just a royal pain having to go out of the program to edit them. Overall probably everything is pretty much there but the packaging needs refinement.

Regards

Dick Barath

[jbalding48677]

Jeffery:
Jeffery why should 24 in Revit mean feet and in Autocad mean 24 inches?

FYI - 24 can mean anything you want it to in both AutoCAD and Revit. Feet, inches, meters, millimeters, etc. It's that in Revit it is a real world dimension and in AutoCAD it is merely a "unit". If you want to use inches as your base unit in Revit, go to Settings|Project Units and select Fractional Inches.

[barathd]

Jim:

I not sure were talking the same thing I will play with it.

Regards

Dick Barath

[Scott Hopkins]

Dick,

You sound like you are unaware that Autodesk offers live on-line classes in Revit. Assuming that you are on subscription, these classes are free! In about 10 hours of virtual classroom time you can really get up to speed. Then we won't have to hear you complaining that Revit doesn't have features/tools that you just don't know about. ;)

[barathd]

Scott:

Take it that the classes aren't the same ones I took back in 4.5.

Regards

Dick Barath

[barathd]

Jim:

Tried you suggestion - not what I am looking for. You can set "unit settings" to do the entry in the manner I want - however then the temporary dimensions show the same.
Dimensions can be set to show correctly - guess I would like to override the temporary dimensions to show the same as the dimension setting.

Thanks

Dick Barath

[sbrown]

Revit has the easiest UI I've ever used. Its clean, architecturally organized by task and with keyboard shortcuts for you to use without even hitting enter for most of them(unlike the command bar). Autocad had hundreds of little buttons on toolbars that when you went from station to station were diff. on every machine, you needed profiles and God forbid you had to reinstall..., how is that easier than Revit. Revits UI is different but not worse. Its a vast improvement over the acad UI in my opinion.

[tjk0225]

I have seen a web seminar with a version of Revit with the UI suggested, except they didn't call it Revit - They called it AutoCAD 2005.

Seems like I have heard, with every release of AutoCAD going back to r12 or r13 that the comman line was going to be eliminated. Might as well get used to it.

[jbalding48677]

Jim:

Tried you suggestion - not what I am looking for. You can set "unit settings" to do the entry in the manner I want - however then the temporary dimensions show the same.
Dimensions can be set to show correctly - guess I would like to override the temporary dimensions to show the same as the dimension setting.

Thanks

Dick Barath

Just so I have this correct, you want:

Input in inches
Temporary dimensions in feet and inches
Permanent dimensions in feet and inches

If that is the case, I suggest you get in the habit of doing one of the following for 7"

7" (with the inch mark)
0 [space] 7
0 - 7
0' 7

I prefer the 0 [space] 7 as i use the number keypad for the numbers and my left thumb takes care of the space bar.

I prefer feet as the base unit because I don't like trying to figure out what 17' - 4" is in just inches.

HTH -

[barathd]

Jim:

My preference is exactly the same as yours WITH ONE EXCEPTION when one enters a distance without a foot indicater Revit recognizes it as inches rather than feet (basic Autocad). I start working in Revit and spontaneously entering units as if in Autocad and all sorts of silliness - gets the better of me quickly. No matter.

Thanks

Dick Barath

[Scott Hopkins]

Jim:

My preference is exactly the same as yours WITH ONE EXCEPTION when one enters a distance without a foot indicater Revit recognizes it as inches rather than feet (basic Autocad). I start working in Revit and spontaneously entering units as if in Autocad and all sorts of silliness - gets the better of me quickly. No matter.

Thanks

Dick BarathDick,

I feel your pain. Fortunately there is a solution. Check out the Revit Inchworm...

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=2870&highlight=Revit+Inchworm

[aaronrumple]

Jeffery:

You may or may not be correct about my lack of knowledge. Please tell me how one is to learn when the documentation is scant at best. If Autodesk "really" wants to migrate users to Revit there is no better way than to make the program "Autocad" like. Don't kid you self there isn't all that much in Revit thats all that revolutionary. "Time" - R6 - how long should it take? Roofs - Cadsoft was basically doing what Revit does "fascias and barges" ten years ago.

Yes Revit does function fairly well - I just don't want to work in several programs at one time - drafting (not modelling) is still klunky. Jeffery why should 24 in Revit mean feet and in Autocad mean 24 inches?

Shortcuts - I am aware of them - just a royal pain having to go out of the program to edit them. Overall probably everything is pretty much there but the packaging needs refinement.

Regards

Dick Barath

1. People moved from MDT to Inventor because it was a better tool - it is nothing like AutoCAD. Making Revit "AutoCAD like" won't encourage people to move, but just reinforce the idea that AutoCAD is what they should stick with.

2. I'm working on a set of 2d AutoCAD drawings for a 5 story spec office building. I got so fed up with the poorly drafted details in AutoCAD, I tossed it aside and did all the new 2d details in Revit. It was much faster. The PA, who isn't cadd savvy even commented on how good those details looked compared to the others. I dare say I could even draft - not model a full set of CD's in Revit faster than someone with AutoCAD. When it comes to drafting, I'll dance circles around AutoCAD with filled regions, dimensioning and leaders that that actually work, repeating details and annotation families.

3. Even in AutoCAD 2004 - you still need a bonus tool to edit keyboard shortcuts without notepad. So what's your point?

[hand471037]

Dick, you're right that what Revit's doing isn't 'new'. It's just the first system I've seen that actually makes it really work, and work well. Heck, Arch-T and such did some of these things. Heck, I remember reading articles written before I was BORN (and I'm 30!) that talked about CAD and how it *should* work and how we'd all have something like Revit any day now. It's the way it's all put together in Revit that makes it a viable, efficent system.

And Aarron, I experienced the same thing. When I started with Revit I had a hard time with it's drafting toolset, but once I understood them, I started drawing all my details in Revit. Heck, the last 8 months was at Huntsman I was drawing all my details in Revit and exporting them back into AutoCAD without telling anyone because it was just so much faster to do them in Revit...

And Dick, I used to teach Revit, and Autocad, professionally in the past both at a school and for a reseller. I found that those with *no* AutoCAD experience, but lots of construction experience or experience with other Standard Windows software had a much easier time learning Revit than those that only knew AutoCAD, for those Autocad-only folks had to unlearn as much as they learned. And that's what I'm saying: let go a little, and understand that Revit is nothing like Autocad, and will never be, and you'll find that it's a lot easier to learn, rather than wasting energy getting upset about how it's not AutoCAD. ;)

And, at the end of a three day class I had my students able to produce CD's in Revit. Details and all. At the end of a much longer AutoCAD class I used to teach, I had my students able to draw a bathtub, maybe at most very simple floorplan.

Finally, Dick, why are you learning Revit at all? If you're happy with just drawing stuff, and with AutoCAD, why change?

[jwilhelm]

Dick I will agree with you, there is nothing revolutionary about REVIT, in fact this technology is at least 15 years old, The first time I saw it was in a minicomputer based product called RUCAPS built in england, it was conceptually the same. The REVIT team needs to look around if they intend to keep up because there are some rather interesting developments in some other systems for example a generative design system that has been developed by bentley, not to mention the efforts that are likely to come out of Frank Gehry's technology spinoff. SO lets encourage them to go beyond the "basic", this applies to the user interface as well, there are a number of modelling programs that use more advanced interface techniques.

[m_cahoon14336]

I led the charge in my office to convert from ADT to Revit earlier this year. I just quit using ADT "cold turkey" and started Revit. To keep projects flowing, others continued to use ADT for a short while. After I learned the basics, I began teaching others in the office the basics of the program. Now, ALL new projects we started and produced on Revit. We rarely use ADT anymore. The others now also prefer Revit to ADT. Many thanks to this zoog and this forum for making the transition so easy. I have asked a lot of "dumb" questions, but they have most all been graciously answered. Sure it's a pain at first, but stick with it. ADT is old school. Revit is the future. ADT doesn't come close to having the features and ease of use that Revit has. Some commands may seam odd or even back wards at first, but thats only because ADT had it wrong.

[barathd]

Revit is a wonderful program - no doubt. All I was questioning is the User Interface. Why not more dynamic editing rather then going to all these silly boxes to initiate "offset, copy, move,etc." is the issue. Grips or right mouse clicks work great - but going to boxes to initiate commands ???? Each to their own - end of argument.

Regards

Dick Barath

[hand471037]

Dick, I totally agree. I wish Revit had more keyboard things that would, say, trigger the options on the options bar when drawing sketches. It's a pain to have to manually click up there every time you wanna switch from a line to an arc, for example.

Also stealing some of the transparent-ish things from AutoCAD would be cool, it would be great to be able to 'float' your Project Browser over your project and make it semi-transparent... or at least make Revit understand dual-monitor rigs.

However, I think the Revit team should look at things like Adobe's or Macromedia's, or heck even some of their own products like Inventor. I know we disagree on this, Dick, but I think AutoCAD (and Viz/Max) UI is the worst of both worlds- an inconsistant time-wasting command line, and a convoluted esoteric toolbar/menu combo... Now if the command line was more like Linux, where it's somewhat consistant and very powerful; and the toolbars/menus made more sense like Maya or Intentor or Revit or something, then I might be more into the AutoCAD UI. It's always just seemed a mess to me, ever since I started using AutoCAD, back in version 12 on Dos. Even then I thought Generic CAD had a better UI!