Our 'Where do we go from here with Revit?' meeting

[Chris Riddle]

We are a 13-person firm that's used Revit for 4 years. It hasn't been an unmixed blessing. Here are minutes from a recent meeting on 'Where do we go from here?'



Crossroads Meeting
Where do we go from here with Revit?

Present: Chris, Jonathan, Carol, Peter, Tarik, Pooja, Chuck

Date: September 28, 2004

1. Situation: We’ve been at Revit for several years. It has failed to take over of its own accord. Revit jobs seem to take longer than Acad jobs. We’re just finishing Hamilton Dorm, a big, complex, worksetted renovation project without enthusiasm.

Where do we go from here?

2. Options: We developed the following list of options:

A – Keep at it. Manage training & production aggressively. Make it work.

B – Use Revit just as a design tool. Acad for production.

C – Use Revit or Acad depending on what you’re comfortable with.

D – Use Revit for production only if no worksets

E – Use Acad 3D models and 3D Studio Max.

F – Use Revit as a design tool, then keep the floor plan only in production.

G – Use Revit modeling back and forth with hand drawing as a design process.

3. The Voting:

a. Carol: I’ve forgotten AutoCAD. I’ve been working with John, a principal who requires good linework, so I’ve been using Revit linework successfully.

Can’t do B., because of having forgotten acad.

I don’t like worksets.

If you’re the only person, Revit is powerful and great.

Floor plans are much faster in Revit than AutoCAD. For many projects, a floor plan is all you have to do.

The strength is in floor plans and scheduling.

Don’t obsess about the model; do wall sweeps or other fussy things. Do what feels natural in linework. Drafting views are great.

Do an office standard. i.e.:

- Floor plans: Revit
- Schedules: Revit
- Elevations: Acad
- etc.
- etc.

I vote for D.

b. Peter: (Peter and George just finished up the Hamilton project).

We had a substantial fee on Hamilton, and still managed exceed our budget. I know we could have done Hamilton in far less time in AutoCAD.

If you could just sit down and get things done it would be fine, but you run into glitches, and resolving the glitches takes forever.

I’m very frustrated by worksets. George tends to grab all the worksets, so I have to spend time getting him to release what I want to work on.

The software should be a conduit for communication between co-workers on workset access.

The system is incredibly prone to human error. There is a chronic problem with putting things on the wrong workset. The software should manage this.

We had a terrible time with Hamilton controlling wall cleanup. I’d work for hours and finally get something looking presentable, then go home, and by the next morning it’s all screwed up again. This happened over and over again. Sometimes it happens when you’re working somewhere, and you try to do something and it says ‘Can’t keep walls and floor joined’ or something like that. So you say OK, and somewhere else where you’re not looking some wall join gets fouled up.

We created too many worksets on Hamilton – too much administration of this long list.

In spite of all this, I’m being gradually won over. There is a beauty in scheduling, once you understand how it works.

On the Northampton Coop job, we built a family for the eave brackets and it behaved unpredictably in the model. The bracket attached itself somewhere in the inside of the wall, and the geometry of the bracket in the model wasn’t the same as the bracket in the family editor. We spent hours trying to figure this thing out.

I vote for a mixture of B & C.

c. Tarik: I’ve given up on Revit and have largely gone back to AutoCAD. For now, I’m trying to be as productive as I can.

We shouldn’t forget that AutoCAD has been around for 20 years and Revit’s a very young program – only a few years old. He is hearing more about it from friends in other offices, where people are ‘experimenting’ with Revit.

I’ve never ‘flown’ on Revit. There’s always a hangup of some sort.

Revit’s selling point is coordination, but for most jobs most of the time, keeping things coordinated is no big deal. Revit saves time in some areas but you lose the savings in glitches.

Revit’s scheduling is good. Managing schedules in acad is tedious.

We need to move to current AutoCAD. Nobody, including our consultants, uses 14 any more.

I vote for E. and G.

d. George:

One of our problems is that we don’t have standards – the partners and everybody else does things differently. We need office standards.

I’ve totally forgotten AutoCAD; very comfortable with Revit.

Worksets are not a disaster. The problem is that we do a workset project and then leave it and do another one a year later. We need to stay on it and get comfortable.

With Revit, you need time to think, to plan things out. Example: Take the time to figure out the right wall types at the beginning.

I like detail components.

I like Revit for its coordination. Example: You put the date in once, then it’s on all the sheets.

I vote for A, C and D.

e. Jonathan:

I can be efficient and productive on Revit; I just finished the Bete residence and it’s been profitable. But I did it all by myself.

Worksets aren’t ready for prime time.

I’ve done a lot of the Bete residence production drawings with linework. I don’t try to fine tune the model, but I keep it more or less up to date so I can use it for communication with the client for construction phase decisions.

I use the model for plans and elevations, but the wall sections are all linework with the model turned off.

I vote for D & G.

f. Chuck:

It doesn’t make sense to give up on Revit.

I love Revit for early modeling studies. I do sketch overlays over the Revit models. The clients love to see the models spun around on the screen.

But I switch to acad after schematics, or maybe DD.

We should be using it this way. I suspect I will gradually stay with Revit longer, eventually I’ll get there.

I vote for A & G, plus B.

g. Pooja (who hasn’t worked in Revit):

Why not model things when we need to in AutoCAD and render them in 3D Studio? This is what most offices do.

h. Chris (moderator)

I like Revit for schematic design/space planning. Working from a program to produce a floor plan with Revit (using room area tags) is very easy and natural.

I will find out if there’s an architectural add-on like Arch-T for Acad 2005.

[Wes Macaulay]

How are the computer skills of your people? Do they troubleshoot well?

What were the projects described here? Size / architectural style / basic organisation... that will help us understand more of the problems.

Four years is a long time to figure out of you want to keep working on something. I CAN relate to the matter of wall joins going awry. I'm getting to the point where I would wish they could be turned off by default! Or maybe some sort of Lock Join setting where once a wall joins, it retains the join's state forevermore until you use the Wall Join tool on it.

[Scott D Davis]

wow! at least you are being thoughtful of the process and talking about it. Studies have shown that th biggest gain in Revit as far as productivity/profit potential is in the CD phase. If you are only doing SD and DD in Revit, then you are missing out on potentially the single biggest gain.

If after four years, its not working the way you thought, maybe its time to bring in the experts to help you see where you could have improvements....did you know you can hire "Autodesk Consulting Services" that will send a team of Revit experts to your office to help you? It seems that you may be making some things m ore difficult than the y should be i.e. Too many worksets on a project. Has your office created standard Revit Templates that you use to start each project? If not, you must!

If people in your office can seriously say they can do CD's faster in AutoCAD than Revit, they aren't using the tools correctly.

[hand471037]

<lurkmodeoff>

Buy & read this book before you do anything:
Business @ the Speed of Stupid: Building Smart Companies After the Technology Shakeout

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738205427/104-9304196-2917550?v=glance

It's about how & why technology fails within business.

It sounds like, to me anyways, that no technology is really going to give your office what it wants, for you're trying to solve a problem that's not rooted in technology. Going back to AutoCAD isn't going to solve that problem either, with the added pain of switching again & loosing abilities & capability.

I'm thinking that, when you started using Revit within your office, someone just thought it was cool, got the boss to buy a copy, and swallowed the hype that Revit being 'easy' meant that you didn't have to think about how it was really going to fit into your business. It's amazing that something to integral and important to a firm is rarely given much real thought.

Your problem is how you're approaching the tools in the first place.

Case in point: the firm I'm at now has been using Revit for the last year, but when it started they had no training, taught themselves as they went, and took no time in thinking about how Revit was really going to work within their business. Hence now I'm cleaning up messes, showing them how to do some *very basic things* that they had no idea even existed (like being able to use Autocad details via Drafting Views), and helping them get to where they want to be. But that's only possible because I've been using Revit heavily for three years, and used to work for a reseller, and am rather familiar with how to 'roll out Revit' within a firm.

If AutoCAD really does fit your business, then more power to you, but it sounds like half your firm doesn't understand Revit, while the other half does and has forgotten Autocad altogether- and you've even got people on the sidelines chiming in to use AutoCAD & MAX, because 'that's what all the firms do' (uh... yeah. right.). So the problem you've got isn't in Revit, it's in how your approaching the tools. So again, read this book, and then talk to your bosses, and your crew, and maybe an expert or two... then you'll really understand where you want to go, and how you can get there.

Otherwise you're just flailing, and you'll be unhappy no matter what you do.

just my 2 cents.

<lurkmodebackon ;) >

Jeffrey McGrew

[gregcashen]

I agree with Jeffrey. This sounds like a business issue. Also, the fact that you have been working with Revit for this long and you have only posted here 2x indicates that perhaps your firm is not really using the FREE training resources out there to smooth out the bumps in the Revit learning curve. We are all here to lend a hand whenever you need us...use us!

[sbrown]

Which version of Revit did you use on your worksets nightmare projects? I was in a firm with 10 seats of revit and we had a very similiar experience to yours using worksets was a big loser. This was pre 6.0 however. Element borrowing has drastically improved the way you can work with revit and worksets. We were at the same crossroads, ie, only do jobs in revit that don't require worksets, problem, all jobs at somepoint benefit from multiple users. That issue is no longer now that you can "not check out entire worksets" Workflow today can be very fast if executed properly.

Some things to consider.

Do I really need to check out the whole workset(who else will be affected if I do)?
If the answer is no, don't check it out, just do a crossing window around the items you need, right click and say make editable. If all team members work this way you will have very little overlap and less STC downtime releasing worksets and re checking them out.

Keep the number of worksets to a minimum (but don't be afraid to add one whenever it will help the workflow) and try to base them on user task, ie, if someone is going to be working on the second floor today, have a workset for the second floor that, then if its not needed anymore collapse it and place the items on the appropriate workset.

Avoid groups when working in a workset environment(they are better now, but can still cause problems)

Try to divide up the job in a way that keeps users separate, ie one person creating the model, one setting up views of the model and sheets, one creating content(families). Remember that anyone at anytime now can add items to a workset even if they don't have that workset editable, just have the active workset set to whatever you need to add to.

Good luck, and don't go backwards the rewards are out there if you stay the course!!!

[ariasdelcid]

Very interesting thread. Should also be posted on the ConDocs forum.

[ernestatar]

So what?
WHAT is the BEST?
ADT 2005 or Revit 7 ?
Begin to thinking about it in Russia...I am frustrated,
now I began to work in ADT, but great songs for Revit stops me!
What I must do, help me please.

[Steve_Stafford]

but great songs for Revit stops me!Sing with Revit of course!! (I'm biased naturally)

[beegee]

So what?
>>>>> but great songs for Revit stops me!
............Sing-a-long with me…

"You say you want a Revit solution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
We tell you that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
>>
We say we’ve got a real solution
Well you know
You’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We're all doing what we can... "

[ernestatar]

I translate poetry without dictionary!!!
All my friends-architect lay down and laughed.
We have a good mood today.
Ernest.

[Martin P]

We too have had Revit 4 years, and have just added our fifth user, and are finding it very very sucessful for us. We may have a couple of things you could find useful that we do.

We will not be using worksets any time soon, and have done no projects using them....... We do not use design options, we make some use of phasing. We make use of linked Revit files and treat them like xrefs (ie for structural etc) this we find simple to manage, worksets have always seemed a little overkill for our project sizes. We do tend to have one person work on one project though, so this may be different for you.

We also do - All our site drawings in Autocad. All plans, section elevations in Revit and use a lot of detail components and detail sweeps to add to the drawings in plan and section. We do detailing in both Revit and Autocad, depends on the user and what they are comfortable with - both achieve the same thing at the end anyway - why force somebody to use something they are less effective with.....

We spend no real time messing about with wall joins - forget about it, they will never, ever work 100% of the time, this is not possible and cant be really. Do detailing over the top - so long as your drawings look fine on paper who cares or knows if it is a group of lines etc??.... Unless you have an awful lot of these joins of course - but if thats the case they ought to be fairly simple, for rare ones that dont work - detail..... We do not trouble shoot for extended periods of time with Revit - more often than not it is far better to do something "not by the book" and get on with the job. Similar to wall joins sometimes things are just not worth worrying about, and have no adverse effects if ignored - for example trying to join geometry that will not behave as you wish - use the linework tool and make the offending lines invisible!! simple, you could spend hours to do it "right" and only achieve the exact same result - why do that?

Again why spend hours and hours making a family all singing all dancing with loads of parametric dimensions when the project has 3 different sizes?? Make 3 different families if this quicker and get on with it - who cares if they arent parametric, you did it in half the time..... Take a view on this though, sometimes you will want to make families that are fully parametric, sometimes not.



I can honestly say that none of us could say that we'd produce our drawings faster with Autocad alone, and none of us would go willingly back to that situation.

[Andre Baros]

One think that is very telling about the people who switched to Revit in my office is that after the "this is crazy" phase, they enter the "this is fun" phase and finally the "how could you do it any other way" phase. This takes different amounts of time for everyone, and having small projects to learn on helps, but everyone one so far has reached a point of no return.

[Wes Macaulay]

If you want to look at things in the most negative light, people learning Revit are often frustrated with the lack of equivalent CAD tools from their previous program. So they work away in Revit with some annoyance. Then they go back to their previous CAD program and then they're REALLY annoyed.

:-P

What amazes me is the variance in speed with which people learn the software. Some people take a few days, some take a few months. I have to determine why we get these extremes.

[Andre Baros]

I've sort of created two factions in the office... training new people as they arrive and the least experience AutoCAD users on Revit and leaving the hardened AutoCAD veterans for last as they are the hardest to swtich over.

[J. Grouchy]

What I've discovered is that no software is 'goof-proof'. What I mean by this is that there are people out there - and I'm suspecting that it is the majority of people, sadly enough - who don't really take the time to do it right. By "do it right" I mean do things in a logical and efficient manner. In my office I often have to go back over a project someone else worked on and I discover things they did that make no sense - not taking advantage of the word-wrapping feature in text notes (so you have a lot of returns and tabs that throw you off when you have to edit the note), drawing lines instead of detail components (so moving or deleting becomes a long, drawn-out ordeal), filled regions that vary from section to section instead of wall sweeps that are the same in every cut...I'm sure you know what I mean.

Getting away from AutoCAD did not eliminate these minor-yet-aggravating things...and me being the perfectionist I am does not help.

[Martin P]

What amazes me is the variance in speed with which people learn the software. Some people take a few days, some take a few months. I have to determine why we get these extremes.

There is a fine line with Revit between overdoing something and not doing enough.


My theory is that with Revit you really have to know when to "quit" with the parametric stuff AS WELL AS when to use it - and the admin type stuff (phasing,worksets,design options etc etc) In My experience this is where a lot the frustration and time problems lie. For example I am doing some door schedules at the moment. I could spend a huge amount of time tweaking all the different families etc etc to get my schedules to display the data I want and the models to be 100% perfect and all have the same parameters in them and so on - OR - I can add some paramaters in the schedule, type in the data I want to the schedule and not worry, nobody knows but me and Revit and I have saved myself a days pointless work, the schedule and drawing look exactly as they would have had I done it by editing a load of families....Just an example, but if you dont know you can do this imagine how long it would take.

That said we have one user in particular here that takes the path of least resistance every time, with everything - looks fine on paper (mostly) but the drawings are attrocious to work with - filled regions and detail/model lines all over the place, not grouped - even sketches in his own section heads as he cant be bothered to learn how to create a family!!...... he is not stressed with Revit - but I get very stressed using any of his files, but thats the other end of the spectrum really from this discussion. It sounds to me very much like the people in the original posters firm are having a problem knowing when enough is enough with modelling etc and when to do something "manually" or not parametrically. We went through a similar phase. It is very hard to pin down though and come up with a standard as each project presents its own sticking points.

[John K.]

Critiquing the techno-effectiveness or saavy of the [original post of this thread] author's firm aside, Thanks to him for posting the minutes of the meeting. I saw plenty of parallels to my first year or two with Revit in a small firm. Trust me, I used this forum -- e.g. 'read' -- constantly for tips and answers and it worked amazingly well. Still does... But even so, I seriously doubt if he and his colleagues have a monopoly on many of the issues cited.

Having said that, I remain a Revit believer. Especially after taking a few months doing nothing but ACAD -- with some ADT thrown in for added puzzlement...