2D deliverables - Who's faster, AutoCAD or Revit?

[Marek Brandstatter]

At Cadplan, we are experiencing a lively debate amongst ourselves and our clients on certain projects where deadlines are extremely tight and 2D deliverables are *all* that is required. Essentially if you need to burn rubber, which software should be used - AutoCAD or Revit?

(1) Is it possible to use Revit as a *fast-track* 2D architectural solution?
(2) What are best practice fast-track 2D techniques in Revit?
(3) Is fast-track AutoCAD quicker than fast-track Revit?

On a broader level, check out New Procedures for some interesting opinions.

[beegee]

I always try to answer those sort of questions by looking at "real world" situations.

Here's one, - nearing a major deadline issue and the client decides to:-

a) Lift one of the floor levels of a multi storey building. ( Including stairs and ceiling )
b) Change the external wall material and structure from single skin concrete block to cavity face brick.
c)Change numerous window and door sizes.
d) Change one of the floors construction from steel and timber to concrete.

Deadline remains unchanged.

All deliverables ( drawings , schedules ) remain 2D.

Which will be faster Autocad or Revit ?

I think I know the answer to that question.

[Martin P]

Eh? there is something to debate about, is this genuine, Have you simply tried to do it?.

a floor plan cannot possibly be drawn quicker in Autocad - trim, trim, trim, fillet, fillet fillet, block etc etc etc... to insert a door or window..... to draw a wall, line, line line,line,hatch, pick etc etc etc. There is nothing to discuss here?

Elevations, well the same again - they have been pretty much drawn already when you did the floor plan - how on earth can autocad be any faster than that?

I was and am a big fan of Autocad, and very experienced user. But there is no way I would use it to quickly produce as set of drawings over Revit, to suggest ytou could is quite franky ludicrous, that is absolutely 100% Revits strength. Anyone who would suggest otherwise cannot be using Revit properly?

What is fast track Autocad? it has one way of producing drawings - laboriously. Revit has at least 2 ways to fast track a set of drawings aside from just using it correctly (coarse detail level - and massing tools) can you define how to fast track with Autocad?

[BomberAIA]

Revit is faster. You don't need to 3D everything. Be selective. After you input or block out the project into the the computer, you are furture along w/ Revit than Acad. If you have to adjust the design it's faster w/ Revit. Just face it.....Acad is a DOS Drafting program w/ a DOS 3rd party architectural program on top of it tryinging to be a windows and a 3D program. I don't think so.

[Marek Brandstatter]

To keep the thread simple - I didn't mention that at Cadplan we have developed an architectural add-on to AutoCAD that on a basic level (walls, doors, windows, dimensioning) is arguably quicker than Revit. So in my mind fast-track AutoCAD is AutoCAD on steroids (lisp, ARX, VB etc)

[Martin P]

To keep the thread simple - I didn't mention that at Cadplan we have developed an architectural add-on to AutoCAD that on a basic level (walls, doors, windows, dimensioning) is arguably quicker than Revit. So in my mind fast-track AutoCAD is AutoCAD on steroids (lisp, ARX, VB etc)

Ah, I see now what you are getting at. - it wont be quicker than Revit, I have used several add on products for autocad, many of which are excellent, I am sure yours is as good as some I have used. Sorry to be blunt, but they only try to make autocad do what Revit already does. You are trying convince the wrong people here I am afraid! - Autocad on steriods is that not ADT?

The opinions in the post you have linked, which do you find interesting? All I can see that that any of them say is dont do absolutely everything in 3D - and with time you will learn which tools are the best to use.

[barathd]

Mindless argument - depends totally on what you are trying to achieve. In some cases Revit and other ADT wins. If you had the best of both environments you might really have the chance to do something in real time. Notation in Revit remains IMHO very very poor.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Wall routines to clean up corners and insertions of doors, windows etc can be pretty quick in AutoCAD but unless you have a full blown 3rd party add on that handles revisions across plans and elevations as quickly as Revit then I think it's no contest.
I don't know a lot of 'only 2D required' sets of drawings that would not include scheduling of some sort. Schedules for doors, windows, room finish, areas etc. are all much quicker, and better coordinated, using Revit right out of the box.

[Scott D Davis]

To me, it's nearly impossible to compare Revit out of the box, with any other program with all the add-ons one can afford.

I think if you compared them dollar-for-dollar, Revit would win hands down. Install Revit, install AutoCAD OOTB, and then compare. Now while you are still buying and installing add-ons to AutoCAD to make it faster, I'm finishing my design in Revit.

[Marek Brandstatter]

Let me try and articulate the issue a little bit differently.

Some of our clients are experiencing situations with Revit projects where after 3 weeks the SD's are nowhere near where they would be if working in AutoCAD and there's some grumbling going on. We've identified things such as:

(1) Overmodeling. People seem to get sucked into a 3D problem solving vortex. Whereas in a 2D environment this would not exist.

(2) Failure to use Revit's various detailing tools.

(3) DWG overload. Too many large linked dwgs in the Revit project. We've suggested the creation of view templates where dwgs are turned off or even removed.

Any other suggestions?

[sbrown]

Once your model is built, revit is tremendously faster. So it comes down to delieverables again. Do you owe your client just exterior elevations, if so acad is faster, do you owe them plans elevations and building sections, then revit is faster. Are you in SD only? Plans faster in Revit, elevations faster in Acad. Are you going thru CD's? Then revit will save you tremendous amounts of time. Give a trained revit person and a trained acad /ADTperson and ask them to draw the same Wall section or window detail, the revit person will put the acad person to shame most of the time.

[juggergnat]

Marek is right. Under the circumstances mentioned, I believe that Autocad would be faster for his clients. But the reason for this is not the technology, its because those people don't have the proper mindset or the experience to use Revit to its best capacity. I think this problem is magnified across multiple employees, because the level of experience will vary (& things like "over modeling" become common).

Revit is far better technology, but that better technology carries with it a greater burden. You have to know how to manage the new tools, and this is a new paradigm for many users.

Also, even with experienced users, having these new tools does bring out the tendency to get distracted sometimes. Like for example I find myself occasionally revising a custom annotation family that has been bothering me, when I should be working on something more far more important. Its like the TV, sometimes it just sucks you in (and I think this tendency is greater than Autocad). Until Revit gets totally saturated into your firm culture and methods, and your standards become rock solid...this will continue to be the case. I'm guessing others have had this experience, too.

JG

[Martin P]

(1) Overmodeling. People seem to get sucked into a 3D problem solving vortex. Whereas in a 2D environment this would not exist.


(1) That really is the major one, if you can get over that one everything else seems fine, I used to spend ages with complex wall joins and room boundaries etc that didnt quite work out. I think possibly one way to approach that is if you spend more than 1 minute and its not working out right just 2D it before you spend 1 hour and just have to 2D draft it anyway. I sometimes touch up externals with a model line if the walls wont join geometry etc.

(2) see number one!!


(3) Re the autocad files - the simple answer is probably - just do not do your siteplans in Revit - export your floor plans out of revit and.... yes do it in autocad - I will be frank about this point, doing siteplans in Revit is just not as easy or as fast as Autocad, thats my experience so far with them - with Autocad having a UCS and doing it all 2D makes huge sense here. I do sometimes venture into revit for site sections etc, but generally it is always Autocad.

Split up you autocad files into the parts, Say I have to trace over an old file, I split it into bitesize parts ie separate plans and elevations...

[sbrown]

I agree that site plans are dreadfully slow in revit, acad is a clear winner there.

[Steve_Stafford]

On a task by task basis you can attempt to make the case that one is faster than the other. But our work is seldom in a vacumm, one task only. Everything is inter-related. It may take "extra" work to model a roof but once it is done any view that you see the roof in, is "done".

A single 2D elevation drawn once in Acad may be faster than doing the same in Revit and if you are being paid for just that one view then maybe it makes sense. In fact I'd even argue it makes more sense to not use Cadd at all for that one view. But how often are we paid for only one view of a project? Taken as a whole Revit wins in the end...in any phase...in my opinion...

[Wes Macaulay]

Once your model is built, revit is tremendously faster. So it comes down to delieverables again. Do you owe your client just exterior elevations, if so acad is faster, do you owe them plans elevations and building sections, then revit is faster. Are you in SD only? Plans faster in Revit, elevations faster in Acad. Are you going thru CD's? Then revit will save you tremendous amounts of time. Give a trained revit person and a trained acad /ADTperson and ask them to draw the same Wall section or window detail, the revit person will put the acad person to shame most of the time.Scott, you're dead on again. Some people just want to draw elevations in AutoCAD... they don't want to do anything else. To quote: "I can do elevations faster in AutoCAD than in Revit." Fine: do it you own way. (Idiot!) But in the end it does not improve the process and you're not going to save time.

If all we had to do is draw elevations, I wouldn't use Revit either.

[Alex Page]

What about alterations? Two scenerios which I reckon Acad is faster.

1. Doing some alterations to a commercial fitout that has been already drawn in Autocad
2. Doing small residential alterations: Ie putting some french doors into a wall and creating new patio, or even a bathroom work around (in NZ, this means plumbing plans and site plan + bathrom plan for Building consent) - very fast in Autocad

Guess Im saying small projects which one knows you dont need 3d, even if planning changes

[BillyGrey]

The compairisons here are interesting, and well merited, but it occurs to me that this is kinda of like asking:

Which is faster for pure vector representations of a Ferrari, Adobe Illustrator, or 3dsMax?

Revit in my office is 95% modelling, and as long as we stay focused, and don't tweek while we model, we can fly (in the z axis, naturally).

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Just today.

Permit department requested a change to a parapet height. This change occurs in two locations. The top of parapet elevation was locked to a ref plane/level marker when drawn.
The change is visible on four elevations, more than a half dozen sections, two plans.
Time to make those changes in Autocad 2D? I don't even want to think about it.
Time to make the change to all the Revit created drawings... three minutes! The reason it took so long? I had to explain how it worked to another employee. ;-)
Revit user and never going back thank you very much.:-D

[sbrown]

Good point, the initial elevation may be quicker in acad, but as soon as you need to change the elevation(sections, details, etc.) that initial "quick" elevation becomes a problem. Not to mention how many times the elevations never actually got changed once the wall section was drawn in the old days of 2d.

[Cathy Hadley]

I think the issue here is also how, using Revit, the traditional time line our clients are used to may need to be revised. Personally I find I am spending more time in the schematic phase... modeling does take longer... but then the other phases, DRAMATICALLY decrease... So in the original example, yes perhaps if drafting side by side, same project... in 3 weeks I could see where it might *appear* that the AutoCAD side was further ahead, (if you well) ... but then look again at 4 weeks or 5 weeks (depending on the project) and at some point BOOM, Revit will be dramatically ahead.

I think the other point to bring up besides education of the staff.. is education of the client.

Just my .o2
CZH

[fernando]

my 2c
actually i'm cordinating a project of a large comercial store
3 levels
cinemas, bowling, restaurantes
3 great comercial shops
50 comercial shops

the first draw's were made using adt/acad by 4 designer's, they had great skills using the ADT/acad solution
they take 2 months to draw it all
mostly using 2d drawing's
i redraw it all in revit
and actually i'm cordinating the constrution, and correcting all the layout's of havac, elec, piping, plumbing, celling, decoration, etc
with the 2d tecnology nothing of that could be done using only one person and with the speed and the response to the solictations of all the contractor's



good bless Revittt

(sorry for my english)

[fernando]

by the way
the redraw of all the project take me 2 weeks
no i had instant sections, live scheduals, and lot more

and i start learnig 2 of the 2d designr's to use Revit and they are loving it
and the director to...

[Scott D Davis]

Great story Fernando! Congratualtions on the progress with Revit, and keeping the Director happy!

[JamesVan]

To keep the thread simple - I didn't mention that at Cadplan we have developed an architectural add-on to AutoCAD that on a basic level (walls, doors, windows, dimensioning) is arguably quicker than Revit. So in my mind fast-track AutoCAD is AutoCAD on steroids (lisp, ARX, VB etc)

I wonder if he just dug up the old Softdesk AutoArchitect code? Does anyone remember that?

[Martin P]

So in the original example, yes perhaps if drafting side by side, same project... in 3 weeks I could see where it might *appear* that the AutoCAD side was further aheadCZH


I think that really would depend heavily on the families you had made up already and the experience of your employees in the type of project you are doing (with Revit, and also in General). If it is a "repeat" type project then Revit will always be faster than Autocad - for example our residential projects, we would just never do these in Autocad now as we have all the families and bits in the template that we need and can just fly through them. But if we attempt something completely one off, with a lot of families to build then you can potentially spend a large amount of time doing these things very early on in the project - for example with AutoCAD the windows and doors are not something you will spend time on - with Revit it is easy to but with great dividends later as you say. I think this is where employee education is really important, you have to NOT concentrate on building families at this stage and do things "wrong" in Revit to speed it up.... ie dont spend a week modeling doors that aren't really important at this stage, just use some modeling lines over the top of plain ones, or make dumb families - With Autocad things like the doors and windows etc are done last on our projects - with Revit you need to think about them very early on, and family creation with Revit does take time - the results are great when its done but it can really bog you down early on in a one off project if you insist on doing it all "right" and parametric every time - it is perfectly OK to make a "dumb" family that will not do anything parametric - maybe even save 2 or 3 versions of it with different sizes if need be, often it would be far quicker than making an all singing all dancing parametric family - but how many of us would actually do that?? Its too tempting to think ahead all the time.

Its my opinion that it is almost always going to be family creation and over modeling that will slow people down, both of these are things that with experience and a bit of trial and error people will generally get over, it is pretty new to all of us working like this so it is bound to be hard in some areas at first.

We often dont put Family creation down to the job we are working on in the office, as usually it will be used on many projects, we have a separate area to log time on this.