ACA vs. Revit

[jpottsjeffrey]

I have recently started working with an older architect who uses Autocad Architecture. I am not familiar with this program, although I am adept at producing drawings with either Revit or "vanilla" autocad. ACA seems to have some BIM/3d-type features, but appears less developed than Revit.

Bottom line, I am wondering if learing ACA is a marketable skill for future jobs in the architecture field. What % of architects are using ACA, as opposed to Revit? Is it a viable tool for BIM, or is it just an expensive 2d drafting program? Is it similar enough to Revit so that whatever skills I learn in ACA will further my knowledge of Parametric Modeling/BIM/rendering in Revit? or is it just a program that is waiting to phase out?

Thanks for your input!

[HVAC-Novice]

all architects I know at least claim to use Revit.

ACA is horrible compared to Revit, don't suffer for that.

Putting all your resources into learning ACA vs. Revit is a sure way to the unemployment agency. For the old architect the situation probably is, he is used to ACA, and doesn't want to change 1 year before retirement. Unless you are ready for retirement as well, learn Revit.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

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@jpottsjeffrey wrote:

I have recently started working with an older architect who uses Autocad Architecture. I am not familiar with this program, although I am adept at producing drawings with either Revit or "vanilla" autocad. ACA seems to have some BIM/3d-type features, but appears less developed than Revit.

Bottom line, I am wondering if learing ACA is a marketable skill for future jobs in the architecture field. What % of architects are using ACA, as opposed to Revit? Is it a viable tool for BIM, or is it just an expensive 2d drafting program? Is it similar enough to Revit so that whatever skills I learn in ACA will further my knowledge of Parametric Modeling/BIM/rendering in Revit? or is it just a program that is waiting to phase out?

Thanks for your input!

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I do not know any actual percentages, but I suspect that even if there are currently more installation of AutoCAD Architecture than Revit Architecture, the trend is certainly in favor of Revit, and it is likely that a large number of those using AutoCAD Architecture are using it "as AutoCAD" or only using a limited number of AutoCAD Architecture's features.

I would take exception to classifying AutoCAD Architecture as "horrible," but would not look at learning AutoCAD Architecture as furthering knowledge of Revit, as the two programs take a different approach to modeling and file structure, so little beyond general principles will transfer between the two.  I am not certain exactly what "working with" means (are you an employee, who expects to be there a long time, or just a contractor/consultant doing work on an as needed/as available basis?) or to what extent this "older architect" is using AutoCAD Architecture.  Unless you are full time with this architect, who is using all/most of the features in AutoCAD Architecture, or find yourself working with many firms who are using AutoCAD Architecture to its fullest extent, you will probably want to focus your learning efforts on Revit and learn enough AutoCAD Architecture to meet the needs of your current work.

[HVAC-Novice]

Clarification, I didn't mean to say ACA is horrible in itself, it sure had its time and its uses...I meant in compariosn to Revit. Once you used Revit, you never want to go back to autoCAD. At least in my humble opinion.

[Alfredo_Medina]

ACA is a powerful program, and you can make any project with it. However, Revit's full bi-directionality, parametric power, friendliness, etc. has won the race long ago and will be the main authoring tool for quite some years to come. On the other hands, ACA is fading out the scene. So, if you are in a new job and have to use ACA, well, you don't have a choice. You need to learn it and be productive because that's the tool at your job. But, outside of that office, most other offices are already using or are moving into Revit.

[HVAC-Novice]

If you are forced to learn ACA and don't want to change jobs, my advice is to learn Revit on the side to be marketable.

ACA may have been good at some point in time, but it is much less efficient than Revit and doesn't give you good enough results. It was good in 1995, but Revit is better in 2014. VHS tapes were really great then too, and they didn't get worse, but no one buys them in 2014.

Look around that now almost every archtiect uses Revit. Fast Forward 5 years and imagine you applying for a job that requires Revit, and you are the only applicant without Revit knolwedge. 

[loboarch]

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kschindel wrote:

It was good in 1995, but Revit is better in 2014. 

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Clarification:  To be fair ACA (formerly Architectural Desktop) was released in October 1998.  Although the first release was not really used by many.  Architectural Desktop Release 2 was out in July 1999 and adopted by many (but probably used by most a plain AutoCAD).

Revit version 1 was released less than a year later in April 2000.  Surprisingly close to each other in development.  

So the comparison to VHS is somewhat accurate, it is just that Revit is VHS and ACA is Betamax.  

[derrickmoore]

Except Betamax was a superior format. VHS could tape longer and the bigger-is-better masses bought it because of that.

[loboarch]

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derrickmoore wrote:

Except Betamax was a superior format. VHS could tape longer and the bigger-is-better masses bought it because of that.

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Right, but VHS was the winning format.  Revit will be/already is (not sure of the total install base of both products) the winning format in this race.

[David_W_Koch]

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@loboarch wrote:

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@derrickmoore wrote:

Except Betamax was a superior format. VHS could tape longer and the bigger-is-better masses bought it because of that.

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Right, but VHS was the winning format.  Revit will be/already is (not sure of the total install base of both products) the winning format in this race.

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With the emphasis on suites, and the inclusion of both AutoCAD Architecture and Revit in the Building Design Suite, actual usage numbers may be hard to determine. We currently use both, but are encouraging the use of Revit.

[bholliday_raneytruss_com]

So in conclusion, I should go with VHS and not Betamax. Right?

[David_W_Koch]

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@bholliday_raneytruss_com wrote:

So in conclusion, I should go with VHS and not Betamax. Right?

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If we are still using video recording formats as an analogy for software, then yes, assuming all other things are equal in your situation.  If we are just talking about video recording, you may want to look into DVDs.  😉

[bholliday_raneytruss_com]

Nice reply. I actually started out on Autocad, got into Revit, then started working in Autocad Architecture. I want to go back to Revit...lol.

[timothy.puccetti]

It's 2017 now. I started using Revit and plain Autocad in college last year. I discoverd Autocad Architecture after a year of using Revit and thought it was an interesting cross between plain Autocad and Revit. That sounded appealing. I was initially excited when I discovered that you could quickly add complete 3D walls, doors and windows to an Autocad drawing. So, I decided to fully test it out on a mock project to see if it might have promise as my new tool of choice.

After a week of practice creating new views, sheets, schedules, keynotes and more I discovered that while it actually can do a surprising amount of things similar to Revit (create 3D objects with a few clicks, create door schedules that are already filled in with data, create sheet views, create keynotes with matching legend tables that are already filled with data, etc) it was a lot more fussy and difficult to navigate the user interface and procedures. And I had constant time-consuming problems trying to figure out problems with text, annotation and table scales. The big frustration was keynote legends were coming in upon creation at 75 feet long, and symbol text sizes and annotation scales were always wrong and needed constant detective work by looking up CANNOSCALE, DIMSCALE and all that.

After a week of detective work I decided that using Autocad Architecture was like using a more complicated, fussy and difficult to navigate version of Revit that doesn't have all Revit's features like the full BIM feature set that might be needed to collaborate with structural designers and engineers. Also, the documentation and help tutorials online are lacking when there were simple but tough problems to solve. I had the worst time with the keynote legend and accompanying table creation which were designed at about 75 feet long. Trying to scale down the legend table was very difficult because it also scaled the keynote symbols inside the cells too small. And the top and left side cells of the table containing the row and column labels (numbers and letters) did not scale down with the table creating a mess of giant letters written over a now small scaled table making it hard to edit the table cells. Googling answers to fix this provided nothing of value.

So, my conclusion was that Autodesk Architecture is now a curious novelty item like you'd find in a nostalgia store. You have to be a great computer sleuth to navigate the user interface and get objects to scale correctly and work right. You have to be a master of the dozen or so annotation scale settings. You have to edit every text and table. You have to decipher a far flung set of confusing interface windows to get simple things done. This led naturally to the question of why would you go through all those hoops when it does most of the same things as Revit but with only a fraction of Revit's features and with a lot more confusing user interface. And, you need to solve annotation, text and table scaling problems every step of the way.

Going back to try Revit felt like a relief. That was my impression.

[timothy.puccetti]

Just to update ... I did get the keynotes and keynote legend tables to work by creating the legend through the tool palette. I first had to add the Keynote Legend command to the Tool Palette manually by dragging and dropping from the top left Ribbon->Tools->Content Browser->Documentation Tool Catalog - Imperial->Keynotes to the Tool Palettes.

For some reason the legend came into my drawing scaled properly when I created it with the tool palette tools. But, when using the Ribbon menu Home->Annotation menu to create a keynote legend it consistently created legends with incorrect huge text size (2.5 inch text that came in at 1/8" = 1'-0" scale at 20 feet tall), and thus huge table scale. The text was designated to be 3/32" tall and scaled up by annotation conversion to 9 inch in model space. Going through the Tool Palette worked like a charm. I did first make sure that my text sizes and dimension scales matched those in the Program Data/Autodesk/ACA 2018/enu/Styles/Imperial/Table Styles Imperial.dwg file just in case.

Lots of runaround, but it did work.