You didn't mention what version, but since folks are praising it, I'll guess
Architectural. We've been doing a few pilot projects using Revit MEP and
every one is a bleeder. I could go on and on about the shortcomings of revit
MEP, but as you mention, this is not the forum for that and as I am
committed to making it work, I'm trying to maintain a positive attitude.
I did get an evil chuckle from a webinar I sat in the other day. Basically
it was on BIM, being careful what you wish for, and how listening to the
hype will get you in trouble. The short explanation is this: If you have
small project team made up of an engineer who bills out at $150/hr and three
designer/CAD types that bill out at $75/hr, for each hour they work the
company makes $375. Out of that $375, some goes to cover direct labor costs,
some goes to overhead, and some (hopefully) goes to profit. So what happens
when the BIM software lives up to the claims with regards to productivity?
Say it's true and you now only need the engineer and one of the
designer/cadd types? Now you're billing $225/hour for the same amount of
work. Now for the same hour of work, your direct labor costs go down a
little because you got to lay off two people but your overhead doesn't
change all that much - you still have to pay rent, cover all the admin
staff, insurance premiums, etc. Which means your break even point goes way
up. The only way out is to win more work - which I think most firms would
already be doing if they could. And this doesn't even address the immediate
productivity losses incurred whenever you introduce a significantly new
process into the operation.
So if you think hard about this, and work it through using some of your
numbers, you might be able to reduce the momentum a little...
wrote in message news:5748144@discussion.autodesk.com...
This is a portion of a post I did in Augi.
"Recently, the company head raised the Red Flag, and said, "We need to go to
Revit."
First off, let me get this out of the way and say that I hate Revit. While I
feel that's it's a cool flashy program, and I see and like where it's going,
I really don't see the practicality of it for our companies needs, and feel
that it's not quite there yet. Secondly, you can't draw in it the same way
as you do AutoCAD, and quite frankly, I like AutoCAD's command interface a
helluva lot better than Revit's. I mean no command line, and no keyboard
commands?! C'mon! That's like a one button mouse! Autodesk take note..don't
you ever..EVER.take away the command line and keyboard commands from
AutoCAD. EVER. Okay my rant's over. I could go on, but I'm in the wrong
forum for that. And who knows, after a year, my tune can completely change
after using it for a while. But right now, I hate it.
But I've been fighting this losing battle for a while now, and it's time to
raise the white flag."
Now I've gotten nothing but praise and well wishes over in Augi, and I do
appreciate it. But, what I'm actually looking for here, is the Anti-Revit,
or horror stories with a Revit implementation. It's going to happen, I
can't stop it. But the more negative info I get, the better I can prepare
myself. Quite simply, I've seen the clean, and shiney and pretty. Now I
need the down and dirty. Now I need the other side of the coin.
Fire away with your comments.....
Thanks.