I think Revit was good 5 years ago, not anymore. Its inteface is unintuitive, commands are annoying, and each updates are nothing more than slight tuneups, there is nothing major. I just do not see any future of Revit. I think Autodesk needs to ditch Revit altogether, forgett about backward compatibility, and give us a brand new software, more stable and more intuitive. And please ditch the ribon as well... the commands itslef are annoyings, and ribbon just adds one extra steps to make things more annoying..
Why revive a 3-year old post just to complain about a software that you don't even want to use?
I suppose he could have started his own post but, who cares -- it's a fun read. I agree with him, by the way, and by posting critical commentary that isn't a vulgar rant, he's hoping to not be dismissed and, instead, affect positive change. And by posting it under "Future of Revit" it will get noticed.
Revit should take a few lessons in functionality and work flow from SketchUp.
(My apologies if "he" is a "she".)
Cheers.
Dont get me wrong, I want Revit improved. More competition is better for us designers. Its just that the thing is so annoying sometimes. Sometimes too smart for its own good. I just feel the whole structure of the program is holding it back, and it cannot be updated anymore to match the competition, they need a totally new system. Call it Revit, but dont base it on the old system. Use strengths and commands from all the various other software anc come up with a super revit.
why cant we adjust small distances? why does not any model space have coordinates,x,y,z, it would be easy to copy move items accurately, there should be a common family folder from where we will use families, instead of creating whole host of families in each projects.. and it becomes a nightmare to keep track of which ones are upgraded and whic ones are old. why cant we snap paper space, paper edges so we can place views accurately? why can we underlay a paper space over another paper space?.. you know all these things.... I just feel we need a total redesign, rather than yerly refreshes and tuneups.
Revit tortures me. It tortures me every ... single ... day. Why?
I've given this a lot of thought. I studied Architecture back in the '80's. The first CAD software I ever used was AutoCAD. I started with version 2.18 and followed the upgrade path with 2.5, 2.6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 2000, 2002, 2004. The early days of AutoCAD were best described as an electronic drawing board. Line, Arc, Circile ... Move, Copy, Erase ... Zoom Window, Zoom Previous, Zoom All ... Dimensions and DText .... Blocks and WBlocks ... Layers ... there just wasn't much more to it than that.
It was also a relaxed way to work. If you needed the area of your building you didn't reach for the calculator. All you needed was a PLine around your building and List it or use the Area command. I always had time for a coffee before starting work because I could make one in the time it took AutoCAD 2.18 to load the average 80KB Food Plus job. Yes, the whole job was stored in a 80KB file ... that's kilobytes. On the IBM 80286 that would take about 3 mintues to load. In those days we had PCs with 640KB ram and 20MB hard disks ... yes ... just 20MB .... "Who'd ever fill that?" my CAD dealer used to joke !!!
As a CAD manager in the early days I used to boast that I could have architects drawing buildings within a day. And I did. It was easy because the concepts we had all used as architects for years of drawing plans, sections, and elevations with lines, arcs and circles was easily migrated from the drawing board to AutoCAD.
During the life of AutoCAD 14 I started my own practice. I hired draftsmen. They used AutoCAD with a commercially available add-on that drew Walls, Windows, and Doors instead of Lines, Arcs, and Circles. It would extrude elevations and sections, but we still had a fair bit of editing to do. My draftsmen were like typists in a typing pool, only they churned out drawings instead of written documents.
Then, after about 5 years of private practice, I stuck my head up and took a look at what Autodesk was doing. Revit had arrived. I was sold after seeing how plan, section, and elevation were all related. Move a door in plan and the elevation and section were automatically changed as well. That one feature was enough for me. One of my biggest time wasters was marking up drawings where plan and section did not corrolate and having the draftsmen fix it in AutoCAD ... not anymore!
The first shock with bringing Revit into the practice was that no one knew how to use it. The second shock was that no one wanted to use it. The third shock was that I, with 20 years CAD experience, could not learn it in a day. Revit sat on the shelf for a year ... then two ... while I made sevaral attempts to grasp the fundamentals of the software. Then, a couple of my draftsmen moved on and I was hiring staff. I noticed that one young lad claimed he could use Revit. So I hired him. He was only with me for a year but we were able to document a few smaller projects with satisfaction. But none of my draftsmen could learn the software. So I continued hiring younger people who were studying part time or had just graduated.
As the draftsmen moved on I replaced them with fewer, younger, and cheaper recent graduates. Heck, they could draw better than me on Revit. By 2009 we were 100% Revit. The key is younger staff. Staff who have never drawn with a drawing board. The best staff I've had can't even use AutoCAD!!! Revit doesn't bother them. They've only ever known Revit. I needed fewer staff and fewer computers. They worked as fast as the draftsmen, but with fewer errors. These staff were better qualified too. Just as the days of a typing pool are over, so were the days of a drafting office, at least, in my practice.
I'm certainly not going to complain about Revit or suggest that it doesn't have a future. It continues to torture me because I know how easy it was for me to document a project in AutoCAD. Revit works with building elements. For me, these elements don't always display on a drawing the way I would like to see them. For example, in elevation it isn't easy to make parts of the elevation that are further away print out in a thinner pen. I end up outlining the things that are closer with detail lines to beef them up a bit. I also can't draw a leader arrow with an angle greater than 90°. So drawings do look as "artistic" or "architectural" as I would like. But to a young graduate, they look just fine.
Consider, for example, drawings produced in the 1920's and 1930's. To me they are works of art. Yet I remember explaining to my grandfather, who had the luxury as a young graduate of spending a whole three days drafting a cover sheet for a large institutional project that he was working on in those days, how computers had changed Architecture. He argued that the drawings were sterile and denude of any Architectural style that might indicate the author of the work or which practice it had come from, for each practice in those days had its own style. I argued for speed and accuracy, and not having to calculate dimensions. My grandfather shouted at me that he could do the math in his head ... I must admit, so could I ... but it was a skill that I no longer needed.
Likeways, Revit delivers a whole range of new features. BIM is quite different to CAD drafting, and that's what we've got to get our head around. Young people get that, just one of my pregnant staff considers it completely normal to have an "app" for her phone for timing the contractions during labour. Apparently these days a wrist watch just won't cut it. Whereas I use my phone as ... well ... a phone.
Yes, Revit continues to torture me. But I'm learning to cope. My office standards can change to match what I consider to be limitations of the software. Instead of struggling with the model, I frequently use a few detail lines in an elevation. It works. No one knows. I allow time to outline parts of my elevations to make them look better. I draw my leader arrows as detail lines to get the wider arrow spacing and save it as a group. It becomes second nature ... if you let it.
The problem is us. We are getting old, technologically speaking. The problems I'm having with Revit are torturing me just as my grandmother struggled with trying to use a microwave and my grandfather never learned to record his favourite show on the VCR. That's just how it is.
Revit has another 15 years or so ahead of it, I would guess, before something bigger, bolder, and better usurps it. Younger professionals will grasp that new technology too, just as they have Revit. Those who learn Revit now, will be complaining about that new type of software in 20 years time.
It's called progress ... and that's just how it is !!!!
Nigel,
There's a fundamental truth underlying what you've written - but it applies to many aspects of building, not just drawing.
It is a shift away from traditional craftsmenship and towards automation. It's happened in other industries, and it has finally got its grasp on architecture and building and shake it up.
I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing though - in fact in many areas it opens up so many opportunities in design and analysis that were just not possible with more craftsmenship methods. That's not to dismiss either, both approaches have their place.
My problem when it comes to Revit, is similar to other people's. It is a totally different way of working that architects of my generation (qualified 20+ years) will struggle with. We see that the end results are different than those we are used to seeing. We still remember hand drawn drawings and the flexibility we had to get them looking 'just right'.
I see in Revit a major step to actually limit the impact of the traditional 2d drawing in the design and building process. The focus on the model and building information certainly streamlines the process and seems to re-focus on providing more specific information in a far more coordinated fashion.
I personally see a problem in that in the way I design and communicate my design ideas to myself. That link of brain>eye>hand>pencil>paper>image>eye>brain is somehow hardwired in the way I visualise and design. It's a communicative and creative process that because it also involves the physicality of drawing it uses my brain in a different way. I don't get that with manipulating 3d images on a screen - sure they help me to see in 3d, but somehow it seems to bypass a creative part of my brain.
There is a plus side though - as architects we have sometimes been at fault in seeing drawings as a final product (hence our focus on them being 'art') - instead of a means of communicating building instructions to a contractor - or to sell an idea to a client. Revit and BIM places the emphasis towards the building again - at least that's is how I see it.
BIM / Revit requires a re-callibration of the way we work as architects. The introduction of a new tool that has been difficult for many architects to get to grips with runs the risk of eliminating experience from of the equation as practices re-tool with younger Revit capable graduates - but a sensible practice will quickly work out how to harness the design/building experience of their architects with the technical requirements of BIM/Revit.
1. THANKS to vector for bringing the subject up, I know he stepped on a few toes, but he had valid points in some areas. In fact, I will have to agree that -PRACTICALLY SPEAKING- BIM *is* Revit (or Archicad/whatever), to many who similarly say AutoCad is CAD. It is not technically true, but it is close enough to the truth to serve as a rough approximation. Insisting on some overly officious and technical definition is silly.
2. For those decrying that BIM is much more than Revit, a process, blah blah blah. Sure, but it is a process which is *generally* not what actually happens in the real world. IF you have design/build contracts make up a large part of your workload, then you are closer to a BIM process than what happens most of the time with a design/bid/build process which is the norm.
3. To that end, THAT is one of the main stumbling blocks I see to advocating and adopting Revit/BIM (and yes, I"m going to use 'Revit' to mean BIM). The traditional process -MANY times to the industry's detriment- is based on 'adversarial' relationships, NOT cooperative ones. EVERYONE in the process is looking to minimize THEIR responsibililty (read: cost), and put as much on the other parties as possible: that is simply the nature of what happens under a low-bid realm of doing business. Further, the legal responsibilities and liabilities are unclear to a lot of adopters, and THAT is a scary unknown to them.
4. Even though I am an old dog (started out on the boards, ink on vellum, leroy lettering, etc), I am learning the new tricks as they come down the pike. I have ZERO doubt that Revit/etc is *the* way to go, but it is not all the way there, AND I foresee the traditional construction practices being more of an impediment than learning software.
5. In many ways, this old dog is better prepared to deal with Revit than new kids on the block. While I have years of CAD practices to unlearn, and the youngsters may have open minds, they *probably* don't have much of a grasp on real-world construction practices, much less how a building actually gets built. I do. That experience should translate to more effective use of the software.
6. Nigel hit many nails squarely on the head. Even with 'cold' AutoCad, there are ways to dress up and create a 'style' that 'looks good'. Revit seems to handcuff you in ways that discourage that, and you end up with the same bland drawings from every office. The 'art' of drafting is dead. Long live the King Model!
my two centavos
Just curious: Vector posted the original triggering message of this thread in the year 2009. Do what is stated in that original posting of 2009, or part of it, still seems valid today in 2014? Have things changed?
Wonder what others in the construction and architectural industry have to say about that original posting about 5 years later.
Hi Octavio,
Well, reading Vector's original post again has me thinking.
Five years on from that post I must disagree with the expectation that Revit is only suitable for large projects. Most of my projects are under $5m construction cost and vary between commercial, industrial, residential and small public buildings such as church renovations. Revit handles all of these quite well. At the other end of the spectrum, a colleague of mine is involved in a large project for a shopping mall. Offices in several states have documentation teams on different aspects of the job. All works fine, except for several occasions where the data file has been corrupted. This has caused several days downtime and my colleague has been left to her own devices while the problem is resolved.
If I used AutoCAD to prepare my drawings today it would take me a great deal longer. That said, I don't use Revit the way Revit programmers expect me to. See my post on p6 of this thread to appreciate some of my frustrations. We still outline our elevations with detail lines to give them more depth, we still draw leader arrows by hand because we like the leader arrow head to have an angle of 150°. We draw our windows as curtain walls and do manual window schedules because window families are just too cumbersome and inflexible. On small jobs we can't afford the time to create a new family for each window type, so we use other geometry that behaves the right way to get the elevations and sections right ... let's face it, at the end of the day our clients are paying for drawings!!!!
As to other consultants using AutoCAD, I have to agree with Vector. Every engineer (structural, civil, mechanical and electrical) that I know uses AutoCAD. Likewise, every surveyor I know also uses AutoCAD. This would amount to some 30 or 40 consultants. Of those, only 2 or 3 ever talk about the latest version or upgrades and probably 50% are using software that is at least 10 years old. This leads me to suspect that most of them are using illegal software. Most are small businesses or sole traders. I'm often having to convert my AutoCAD files exported from Revit 2014 back to AutoCAD 2000 for another consultant to use.
I find that disappointing, but also appreciate that not all consultants will stick with the rigorous upgrade path that Autodesk imposes. Autodesk is its own worst enemy in this regard. We are on subscription for the Architectural suite. We get a new version every year. We only install every second year. So, I will never install my recently received 2015 upgrade. It's not the $1800 per seat per year cost ... because I continue to pay that for software I don't use ... it's the down time in doing the upgrades properly so that software doesn't get installed on the C: drive, which we reserve for the system, sorting out the libraries, paths to folders, learning the changes to the menus and ribbon, fixing up the printing options ... and so the list goes on. Add to that the training time for new features and it works out to be about 50 hours per seat of downtime.
So, every second release of Revit I receive IS sitting on the shelf doing nothing, just like Vector said. Most consultants in engineering and surveying disciplines are STILL using AutoCAD ... many might be using old or even illegal copies. But Revit is a very productive tool and, despite my 28 year relationship with AutoCAD, has become the software of choice for documenting architecture in our office.