Saw Imaginit's presentation of Revit Series yesterday.

[JayAyalaATG]

I have to say, as my first time exposure to Revit Building, I was impressed with what I saw from that piece of software. I like the idea of one database for the entire project and the views concept. The software definetly has the right idea and is constantly expanding, as evident with Revit Systems.

One thing I do have to say about Revit Systems however that I was not impressed with was that I didn't see anything new. Nothing that ABS isn't already doing for me. I believe that Revit Systems might have an enhanced way of Auto-Routing ductwork and Electrical, but that isn't exactly new in my oppinion. I've been doing that for a longtime with ABS (electrically speaking anyway). The ABS 2006 has a single line layout tool wich works pretty good, doesn't exactly Auto-Route the way Revit Systems does, but close enough.

Is there a chart or a side-by-side feature comparrison that I can look at that explains the difference between, ABS 2006 and Revit Systems?

[phighley]

Jay -

We are in the same boat - we use ABS 2006 for much of our electrical design and have been getting the calls lately to move to Revit but as of yet we just can't see that many enhanced features to make the move

[JayAyalaATG]

You know, I can't remember if this next comment came from a forum post, or an actual conversation that I had with someone, but if I remember right the discussion was about how the current Revit Systems works.

In the discussion, I was surprised to find that people are generally being advised to draw the systems and use the intelligence of Revit Systems but are then extracting that out to ABS product to do the documentation like Tags and Schedules. Now ofcourse this comment may or may not have any merit, and also this is the first release of Revit Systems. However, I think that the method described above defeats the purpose of having a syncronised single database that Revit Prides itself in.

My understanding of Revit Systems is that it is a somewhat complete system but it isn't all there yet. Now, I don't really mind that, I make great use of ABS 2006 and I think its a great product. My productivity with it is really high, the software is very user-friendly and also very intuitive.

Sure, I might spend a little more time placing my geometry, but that is because I'm also accounting for systems and properties that are not being considered in comparrison to 2D drafting software. But that initial investment of my time pays off in the end when the documentation starts happening. My Tags are right, my schedules are updated and coordinated with very little effort. Which brings me back to my point about developing the model in Revit Systems, and then documenting it in ABS. Is the documentation back to DText and MText, or attributed blocks, how about tags that read property set definitions? Will the Revit Model extracted to ABS still have all of the information attatched to it so we can use the tags and schedules.

I don't knowthe answer to those questions yet. Maybe I'm painting a worst case scenario. I still have to get my hands on the software and give it a real go. I was talking to the corporate license guys from my company and it seems I might be getting the Revit Systems sometime in the mail soon.

I'll have a better oppinion later I suppose, but for now, my comments are all speculation and I hope they don't infulence a desicion to avoid it. I think it holds a lot of promise and I saw a few things that I really liked about Revit Sytsems that I don't see in ABS yet. But personally, right now I'm leaning more towards ABS then Revit Systems. But I think thats only because I don't have hands on experience with Revit Systems yet.

Jay Ayala
Portland, Oregon.