Wish: shadows and "SAVE AS... previous"

[ponce068]

Two wishes...

Dwg export is great, but can't export shadows otherway than a bitmap picture. Would be nice if it would be possible to export them too as a vectorial and hatched area.
Some people prefer some fine hatch rather a light grey...

Secondly, it sounds for me as a shame Revit is not able to export to some older version, at least fromt v/9.1 to v/9.0 and (dreamer) v/8.0
Please, engineers, don't tell me there are so many dramatic changes! AutoCAD 2007 can still save in older than 2000 format.
I more believe that is a good purpose to force subscription (although, in many offices, we don't upgrade ALL at same time) and it's a so more and more common way to obtain profits with more and more CAD and Building software...
It would just be more HONEST to have such possibility in further version!
Ponce

[aaronrumple]

Please, engineers, don't tell me there are so many dramatic changes! AutoCAD 2007 can still save .Ponce

However things like dynamic blocks and newer features will be lost in the save. In Revit - there could be substantial lose of whole building componets. Line based families are a good example. Keynotes are another example....

[DaveP]

And how much fun have you had with Proxy Objects in AutoCAD? I don't EVER want to see that in Revit!

I'd much prefer that they spend their time adding new features and fixing broken items (cue Ben Kane here) than trying to figure out a way to retro-fit something like Keynotes or Dependant Views.

[byori]

A more accurate comparison would be between Revit and ADT (or is it AA now?). Since there are intelligent building objects in ADT, whereas not in ACAD. Objects from one release of ADT aren't compatible with previous releases of ADT, either. You usually end up getting some sort of eDuplicateKey error when trying it.

This is maddening, and frustrating, yes. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for the same feature. The trick is to find a way to make the objects backward compatible without sacrificing flexibility going forward. It's an excellent suggestion to have a limit on backwards compatibility, say, between the .0 and .1 releases. You'd limit the amount of information that's potentially lost while still providing some flexibility. And no proxy objects! Saving back would simply create geometry. Of course, that opens up a whole Pandora's box of discussion topics...

Thoughts?

[ponce068]

"This is maddening, and frustrating, yes. I can't tell you how many times I've wished for the same feature. The trick is to find a way to make the objects backward compatible without sacrificing flexibility going forward. It's an excellent suggestion to have a limit on backwards compatibility, say, between the .0 and .1 releases. You'd limit the amount of information that's potentially lost while still providing some flexibility."
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Sure sounds like an excellent idea. I think such software could give the ability to save in previous version, letting you know what parameters you will loose.
Although AutoCAD is not so complicated, you know you loose some functions when saving in AutoCAD 2000 or 97 version. Same with some versions of Ms-Office. You can disable new functions to be sure you can use your documents with older products.
At least, Revit let you export in DWG but in such way you have to redraw all in your "old" Revit version