Revit Backwards Compatibility

[bobmayflower]

Does anyone know what Autodesk plans to do about the backwards compatibility issue with Revit?  I have Revit 2012 but I have to use Revit 2011 because the software is incapable of saving back a release.  This is total craziness!  Why would anyone knowingly upgrade with this being the case?

[Anonymous]

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@Jimbobidybone wrote:

.. Not only that I don't think I've ever seen £1000 worth of improvements from one years upgrades, a few tweaks here and there normally, and alot of the time fixing and adding things that really should have been there in the first place.

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the most poignant nugget it a post that I could not agree more with. A lot of good points on this thread, and wouldnt you know it. as soon as the questions got a little tough, the Autodesk respondants bail out.

to the above point,

We are a small commercial/residential design firm and from 2010 to 2012, the only upgrade we've leveraged has been the Create Parts feature. not exactly worth the two years of subscription fee.

 Why not make these types of 'improvements' a plug-in that users could opt to purchase rather than force the entire community to cough up for upgrades that lately seem to focus on interoperability and collaboration.

[Anonymous]

took a minute to validate my point by poking around and made it over to David Light's blog, http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com, and was enlightened as to a few functions I had not uncovered yet and can foresee utilizing. but as not to totally recant, the differences between 2010 and 2011 by no stretch validate an entirely new release.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the original post.  We need backwards compatibility in projects and families, similiar to how it's done in AutoCAD.  I completely understand why Autodesk needs to not be bound by past file formats, HOWEVER having 2014, 2013, and 2012 just so that you don't alienate any clients is a massive burden to us.  It's literately over 100 GB of install files you have to story, especially if you have any of the design suites.  

Asking all of our clients to upgrade to 2014 is unrealistic.  Why?

1. Autodesk's has killed their reputation with regards to releasing functioning new features.  Most of our clients are not willing to deal with IT headaches caused by half baked new features (i.e. Autodesk 360) and will only update after the first release update and that's only if there's a compelling reason.  Right now, the only paying clients willing to upgrade to 2014 are those who benefits from the new cable tray functionalities and/or those who can utilze the embedded lookup tables.  In others words, not many.

2. To quote one of my own clients, "Installing Revit is a nightmare."  If you have to uninstall previous versions of Revit (.i.e. your running out of space on your SSD), all you can do is pray that Revit won't mangle your registry forcing you to reinstall the entire OS.  And I'm not even a religous man.  Then you have to spend hours waiting for the 60 GB download to finish (for the design suite), then another few hours waiting for the install to finish.  This brings you to activation.  Half of the time it works, then the other half you have to either email Autodesk and wait a day or two for them to fix it.  Or if you're really lucky and you have a phone number with a live person at the other end, you can call and it will only take another hour or two to navigate to that live person and get the activation issue addressed.

3.  Compatibility is another huge deterrent to upgrading Revit.  Especially when it comes to graphics cards.  Each version of Revit is only only compatible with basically a specific Nvidia Quadro card and not even with the latest drivers!  I'm using the top of the line Nvidia Quadro K5000M, a $1200 graphics card and I'm still have graphical issues even after the latest release update.  Most sane people are only willing to install Revit once, getting it work and will not rock the boat with another install unless life forces them to.

Autodesk, please implement the backwards saving capability in Revit, similiar to what you do in AutoCAD.  Once you do that, then those of us with the pain tolerance high enough to use the latest releases can do so without having to save so many previous versions of Revit on our machines.  Then fix the installation process, but that's a seperate conversation.

[bobmayflower]

I couldn’t agree more and I’ve experienced all the scenarios you mentioned.  In fact I’m running Revit 2011 which de-authorizes it’s self every year.  So I get the joy of re-authoring once a year, usually when I really need my software running.  Autodesk has so many opportunities to make their software great, but refuses to do so.  My impression is that they are much more motivated to sell subscriptions than continuous improvement of the software.  It’s really a shame, Autodesk is shooting it’s self in the foot and refuses to acknowledge it.  I really want to use the latest version of Revit, but as a content creator, I simply can’t.  Once Autodesk stops supporting Revit 2011, I really have no reason to keep up my subscription either. 

There are so many improvements, (I have an extensive wish list), that would greatly improve the software.  But this one issue trumps them all.  Alright, I’m stepping down from my soap box now. 

[RyanCameron]

Wow, I thought it was just me who has nightmares of installing Autodesk's software.  JUST release the software every two years if you can't produce a quality working product!

Dont' even get started on how installing R2014 will cause instability in the ribbon on R2013...!   lol

[Anonymous]

It's not a matter of preference of less functionality or anything. It's a matter of money and time, if everyone (contractor, subcontractors, and consultants) could simultaneously upgrade to the most recent version, would be ideal. But doing this means an investment which is not to be taken lightly  (Autodesk licenses are not cheap) and all companies; contractors, subcontractors, consultants, etc. have different capacities and employee number, and can't afford to make the investment simultaneously. Also, most of the times you are working with new subcontractors. So Scott, what you're saying while desireable, is far from reality.

And most of the times family creation almost always uses features that have been around for 3 years or more, not every single family requires or benefits from the new features. So it's not logical that Revit cannot rollback family files, it should be able to do it (at least for 2 previous platform release), and for the new features and parameters should be simply deleted from the family when rolling it back, as it already happens with autocad files.

Family creation is time consuming, if the content were easier to be distributed and created and encouraged,the more popular the platform would be.

It is an obtuse and narrow vision, (greedy?) from Autodesk's part not see this.

And for project files, It is comprehensible (I dare to even say, desireable) not being able to roll back. But here is where the coin turns for Autodesk, if families could be rolled back, the leverage to make users upgrade to the new version would be gone. So it appears Autodesk is not really focused on making work easier, but just into making it LOOK easier, so they sell more. Usually this is found out after the investment is done, that pisses people off. Every single Revit user and buyer I know has had this feeling once (even the ones I know that formerly were employed by Autodesk).

So please, tell your boss (or whichever responsible dept.) they really should consider only families to be able to roll back compatiblity to one or two older realeases.

[Anonymous]

Also, as a vendor, it is not my place to dictate what versions of software my clients are using.  

[Anonymous]

Revit should be compatible for 3 versions.  There are many cases where you work with teams that have different versions, or projects that have different timelines.

Also, a detail that you develop in a later version might be useful in a 'current' project that is using an older version of Revit.  Having used Revit in all these scenarios, the refusal to make Revit backwards compatible is frustrating for the user base.  Autocad does this quite well so that one never has to put up with the hassle. Perhaps Revit could learn from this!

Stop preaching and start listening....please.

[RobDraw]

Don't hold your breath. BTW, the ideas forum is a better place for your request. This is a user help forum. Feature requests die here.

[bobmayflower]

I was relatively new to Revit at the time I wrote that post, many years ago, and it seemed to me this was a problem that was maybe not being considered, or not being taken serious by Autodesk.  My hope was that there was a work around, or future solution to the backwards compatibility issue.  The ideas forum is an incredibly good idea.  I did not know it existed.  I am fairly sure that forum did not exist at the time I wrote the post.  Autodesk needs to understand how people are really using the tools in the field, and the challenges they face.