Revit Structure is a great tool for structural design and analysis. What about detailing, whether done within the same firm that did the design and analysis or sent out to another firm?
Are the detailers expected to recreate the structure manually in xsteel (now tekla) or a similar package which costs perhaps 10 times as much? If that's the case, why buy Revit Structure when they could just do it all in xsteel? Even if Revit Structure 3 had the ability to export to xsteel, that would be one small step forward.
I don't know much about the steel industry, but I've seen the connection and cutsheet capabilities of xsteel.
Revit ships with two connections!! If they can ship a full set of steel beam families, why not a more complete set of connections? I know I can create my own. But why should I and 500 other people create our own connections if they could just ship pre-made with Revit? It's not a lot to ask for.
A lot to ask for would be to have Revit automatically choose the right (default) connector size based on me selecting a connector type and then picking on two objects (for example, a beam and the column it connects to). That's what xsteel will do, and for $50,000 (or whatever) it better.
As far as xsteel's auto-generated cutsheets go: It would seem that cutsheets with automatic dimensioning and so on would be an easy enough feature for Revit to include. I know that cutsheets can be manually created in Revit, but does anyone really want to create 30 of them, let alone 2000 for a larger project?
If someone from the factory or otherwise could enlighten me on these things, I'd much appreciate it.
Thanks in advance,
Rob