I think of Revit, Microstation, and other sim. programs as a step to the next level. Where ever that is. Just like AutoCAD was the next step to hand drafting. When AutoCAD was getting started, it was explained to me that AutoCAD was just a tool to help everyone draw more accurately and faster. But it was just another tool to get the drawings done faster. It also help a lot of firms keep the engineers and architects in the office more often, because the lines were drawn faster and that lead to more drawings to be created. The more drawings we created allowed the dectection of possible conflicts. So Revit, Microstation, ArchiCAD and other programs similar are the next step in the drawing creation process. To me BIM and VDC are just new terms in helping me create the drawings faster, accurately, detect conflicts and possibly do a building material take off. So BIM is another term used like CAD was a few years ago. I say a few years, because I am that old
I personnally like Revit more than ACA. I also see Autodesk playing the greed game. They will do everything they can to put more money in there pockets and if that means to extend the life of AutoCAD for another 20 years to make that extra multi-million dollars, then I am sure they will do that. So I think the winner is Autodesk in the ACA vs Revit.