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Is ACA to be "retired"?

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Message 1 of 11
2Harry
664 Views, 10 Replies

Is ACA to be "retired"?

Hello,

 

Our firm  has been taking a close look at both Revit and AutoCad Architecture as an upgrade from our current seats of vanilla AutoCad.  The plan is to implement one or the other as we transition to a BIM process for design and manufacturing (modular factory-built buildings). 

 

Some other websites and forum opinions have expressed the view that AutoCad Architecture is inevitably due for "retirment", presumably with Revit as the sole architectural BIM software product from Autodesk.  However there is never any timelines or references given for these opinions. 

 

Has Autodesk expressed any official position for the future of AutoCad Architecture?  If so, where could I find it?

 

We are leaning heavily toward implementing ACA within the next few months, mostly due to the precieved benifits of working within the comforting AutoCad environment as we make proceedural changes to a BIM process.  Howver if ACA is destined to be discontinued within the next two years we may hesitate going that route.

 

Thanks

10 REPLIES 10
Message 2 of 11
MarySeufert
in reply to: 2Harry

Autodesk gave at least three years plus warning on its last major retired product Land Development Desktop (LDD aka LDT). They introduced Civil 3D around the same time and explicitly told all customers of LDT that it would be discontinued. 

 

They did not do the same thing to ACA when they introduced Revit. Coupled with the fact that ACA still brings a good revenue stream along with MEP which is built on ACA, I would guess that it won't be discontinued any time soon. For what it is worth, I am a brand new ACA customer, and our deciding factor to use ACA and not Revit is interoperability with Civil 3D and the dwg format.

 

I doubt you will find any official statement from Autodesk on which products have a future or not, until they have made the final decision to pull the plug.

 

~ Mary

EXPERT ELITE MEMBER
Message 3 of 11
pendean
in reply to: 2Harry

Your decision should be based on interoperability with others in your daily scope of work: are your project partners predominantly AutoCAD or REVIT based? Or are you an island, stand-alone with no CAD-files sharing, ever, not even with contractors?

Last thing you want to do is isolate yourself from those that you collaborate with to get paid.

Message 4 of 11
Hugh_Compton
in reply to: pendean

 

A similar thing was talked about years ago with Inventor and AutoCAD Mechanical.  AutoCAD Mechanical is still going strong. 

 

I can't see AutoCAD going away soon since it is Autodesk's flagship program.  It is my opinion that as long as AutoCAD is going strong then there is a market for ACA due to the popularityof the DWG format. 

 

 

 

 

Message 5 of 11
ntellery
in reply to: 2Harry

IMHO you got some good advice here.  As a power ACA user I know that it's a great program. One negative is that it's based on Acad.  Users will/can fall back to old habits and not learn new better ones.  That's obviously also it's strength if you have to get a job out the door.

MEP isn't going anywhere soon.  I've read a number of posts from MEP users who say RevitMEP just can't do what's required and so ACA will have life for years yet. 

That said it is worth investigating Revit and sounds like you've done that. But as you say it's a completely new start whereas you can gradually climb into ACA over time.

I've noticed some new activity on youtube of training vid's for ACA.  It still has some good like in it yet.

cheers

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Message 6 of 11
2Harry
in reply to: 2Harry

Thank you to everyone for your responses.

 

They all make sense and make me more comfortable with recommending ACA for our office. 

 

Interoperability is  a major factor in our decision. Though the vast majority of our drawing output is used internally in our own shops,  when we do extchange drawings with subtrades and external consultants it is invariably in AutoCad format. 

 

We are assuming that some of the Architectural firms we partner with may move to Revit in the future, and some of our major clients have indicated that BIM submittals may be a future requirement.  If so we are hopeful that ACA's compliance with the IFC file format will put us in a good position.

 

Again, thanks for all the valuable comments.

Message 7 of 11
jeff
in reply to: pendean


@pendean wrote:

Your decision should be based on interoperability with others in your daily scope of work: are your project partners predominantly AutoCAD or REVIT based? Or are you an island, stand-alone with no CAD-files sharing, ever, not even with contractors?

Last thing you want to do is isolate yourself from those that you collaborate with to get paid.


I completely agree with pendean.

If your boss had a ton of long term, good paying clients who wanted all drawings done with crayons then you would be a Crayola expert.

 

If you have a Revit job or two come your way every once in a while it would probably be cheaper and better quality to pay a company to take your dwg files and produce a Revit project instead of spending the resources and time learning, setting up, etc..... for a job and not use it again for another year and forget everything you learned.

 

If you are already familiar with AutoCAD definitely go ACA.

 

I do not think ACA or MEP will be retired any time soon as they are AutoCAD extended with ObjectARX and probably does not take too much resources to update each year.

As for how much resources will be put in extending and adding new functionality will just have to wait and see.

 

 

 

You can also find your answers @ TheSwamp
Message 8 of 11
Matasovsky
in reply to: 2Harry

We began implementing BIM w/ Arch. Desktop - ACA and Building Sys. - MEP 6-7 years ago (as that's how Autodesk marketed them both before the acquisition of Revit).

Started w/ babysteps and simply using the 3D AEC tools (walls, doors, windows).  After getting comfortable w/ how they work, cataloged and customized our own and created layer keyes and tool palettes.

Began using Project Navigator and working w/ property sets (Style vs. Object) to begin data extraction for Door schedules and Room Finish schedules.  Started taking advantage of the reference linking between reference/title bubbles.  Used classifications for the first time to distinguish between things I wanted on a schedul vs things I didn't.

 

After getting the hang of how Classifications work and can be applied w/ schedules and property sets it's just a minor step to setting up schedules of Qty/Material takeoffs.

 

This whole time....display settings are being visited, revisited, modified and (hopefully) improved.

In this last project I took the BIG leap and got us to Elevation extraction, Section extraction, and Extraction of Enlarged Plans.  It wasn't perfect, but it never is the first time.  I accomplished this by having 1 model of the entire building.  Achieved this setting up Display Configurations to display at different levels and utilizing the Elevation tabs regarding floors and Z coordinate in the lower left corner.

Modeling the entire building in 1 construct file got me to the point of it practically replicating a "Revit-Like" environment.

We're still going to pursue Revit because there are clients out there that wish to use it and we do not want to limit ourselves from the work out there, but that's the ONLY reason.  From a functional standpoint, I'm still struggling to justify the $ to upgrade to Revit when everything they say Revit can do I seem to be able to get ACA/MEP to do.  If we're simply talking between the two softwares.... I'm not seeing it.  Perhaps Revit has an advantage when you get PAST the A/E office and the "model" (is supposed to) moves on to the GC level??  Of course, Autodesk was marketing those abilities before Revit came along too.

Understand the GIANT task of implementing BIM.  Willing to pass on my contact info if you need to bounce (or borrow/steal) ideas.

Message 9 of 11
steve
in reply to: 2Harry

We crossed over to ADT many years ago (began with ADT3.3).Previously used AutoCAD with 3rd party Architecure add-on. Recently upgraded to Building Design Suite Premium which gives us the best of both worlds (Revit and AutoCAD products). If they chose to retire ACA I would expect a discount on my subscription, as it increased substantially with the upgrade. We primarily still use ACA for most of our work and have only managed to get a couple of projects over the line using Revit (with a little help from its friend ACA)

Message 10 of 11
Matasovsky
in reply to: steve

Again, that's another thing that creates hesitation in leaping to Revit.  I keep hearing about it having to be "backed up" by doing certain things in ACA/MEP.  Why start a new software if it needs support from the one you're already working on?

I understand the push by Autodesk (because of the jump in $ubsription cost) but everything they are pointing to for Revit I'm already getting or can get w/ ACA/MEP.  In this economy, It's too difficult to justify the leap in cost and time to do it all over again.

Message 11 of 11
jmcintyre
in reply to: 2Harry

To your original question re any announcements by Adesk about retiring ACA, no I haven't heard anything, but all the dealers keep telling me 'revit is the future'. They of course want the upgrade and training dollars. I've used both and tried implementing it in a company I worked for. Because ACA is based on acad it was difficult to get everyone to move to 3D. Not everyone shared my enthusiasm for the progression. Revit is a totally new way of doing things and must be used in 3D. If it's just you and a few equally skilled operators who are willing to 'learn' and progress then ACA is fine. There is a steep learning curve for both programs but it's well worth the effort.

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