Transitioning to and implementing Revit

[KyleDasan]

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.

[Anonymous]

KyleDasan wrote:
> and no keyboard commands?! C'mon!

I'm fairly certain that Revit allows for keyboard command entry?

[pcaruthers]

I've had the privilege of transitioning several companies to 3D software from 2D programs like Autocad. In all honesty the most difficult part hasn't been learning the new software, it's been changing the way people think.....it's a different thought process. you're not drawing lines anymore, you're building a virtual model of the building. I admit, I haven't done the Revit thing, but I too know it's coming. Every company I've done has been to ADT.

Good luck! I'll be joining you in the next 6 months I'm sure!

Paul Caruthers
Bessolo Design Group

[KyleDasan]

It does....for mesurments and the like. And I'm sure theres some keyboard shorcuts.

But I like like typing in "L" then hitting enter, rather than go finding a stupid icon to draw a line. I hardly ever use toolbars...so perhaps I should have said command aliases... Message was edited by: KyleDasan

[Anonymous]

Won't find any of those from me. Deployments are easy, it doesn't crash, and
I've yet to come across something that was shown at a demo that I can't
replicate.

That said, GET TRAINING. Lots of it. Like Paul says, it's a completely
different way of looking at it. Revit's not hard, but it is different, and
you need at least a few people who really understand it. Formal training's
the only way to get that understanding.

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.

[Anonymous]

KyleDasan wrote:
> It does....for mesurments and the like. And I'm sure theres some
> keyboard shorcuts.
>
> But I like like typing in "L" then hitting enter, rather than go
> finding a stupid icon to draw a line. I hardly ever use
> toolbars...so perhaps I should have said command aliases...

all the Revit key-in commands are 2-key.


>draw a line.


"What's a line?"

[pcaruthers]

I agree with Kate 100% Formal Training, and several levels of it for your key people. It's not a good idea to just train the trainer. Everyone should have a basic class, then a select few should take it to the next level or 2 would be even better.

Paul

[KyleDasan]

In AutoCAD, a line can be whatever the heck you want it to be. THAT'S THE BEAUTIFUL THING! It can be defined later....

[Anonymous]

KyleDasan wrote:
> In AutoCAD, a line can be whatever the heck you want it to be.
> THAT'S THE BEAUTIFUL THING! It can be defined later....

you were obviously wearing your foil hat
when the Autodesk Mothership's Brain-Washing beam
(powered by Revit(tm) )
passed over your town...

nice work!
what clued you in?

[KyleDasan]

No clue,
I habitually wear a foil hat to dissrupt the goverment/alien mind probe beams....

[Anonymous]

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.

[dxarhoulakos]

The ironic answer to your question is actually......you.

The biggest problem we have faced making the transition, is people who refuse to try something new. And make assumptions about a program they never even tried (ie: no keyboard shortcuts).

Not sure where you heard that from, but there are plenty of shortcuts, and you can customize them as well.

[KyleDasan]

I never said I wasn't willing to try it. I specifically asked for, in this forum, was the horror stories. I need to hear the good with the bad...

[Anonymous]

I heard this same complaint from Architects 22 years ago, when they were
trying to justify staying on the drawing board.....

I'm sure that with the efficiencies you can....

1. Justify higher billing per hour to cover more efficient design.
2. Handle more projects per year with the same staff or less...
3. Think outside the box you have built.

--
Dennis Jeffrey, Autodesk Inventor Certified Expert
Autodesk Manufacturing Implementation Certified Expert.
260-399-6615
Instructor/Author/Sr. App Engr.
AIP 11SP3, AIP 2008 SP1, PcCillin AV
HP zv5000 AMD64 ( modified)
Geforce Go 440, Driver: .8185, 2GB RAM
XP Pro SP2, Windows Classic Theme
http://teknigroup.com
"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5748471@discussion.autodesk.com...
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.

[JMoore]

Kyle,

We are a large architectural services and software developer for the residential industry. Specific focus on production homebuilders, regional, some custom and the manufacturing groups.

We spent a great deal of time considering Revit for our organization. It never got to the point of a horror story because we never took the implementation that far but here is a bit of our experience.

We feel Revit certainly has some excellent qualities but it's positives were not enough to overcome our customers requirements for DWG compatible documentation, ability to customize, run large-scale 3rd party applications, file compatibility issues with older versions of AutoCAD and other manufacturing programs that accept intelligent DWG files more efficiently than what we could get with the Revit/AutoCAD package.

The modeling in Revit was very nice but we were unable to produce the construction documentation results that our customers were used to and required. Granted we could take that information to AutoCAD but you then break the intelligence chain. And when you do that where is the BIM? It is gone and we were back to standard AutoCAD.

Also, we saw a large cost in increased training trying to maintain and increase our drafters knowledge on two programs that have very little in common, Revit and AutoCAD. So it was around this point we realized Revit was not the proper solution for our requirements. We still stay knowledgeable of it but we have chosen to stay on the AutoCAD Architecture platform to leverage it's intelligent properties and robust API so we can create high-end 3rd party solutions on it for a specific industry need. In our case residential. As you should know by now most Autodesk products are created for commercial first and residential a distant second. This is bad for the follow that does not want to customize (or can't) and does not want to (or can't) afford 3rd party solutions.

Well that would be my 2 cents. Just because a solution is hotly marketed and does have some great properties does not mean it is a good solution for you. Your customers needs and requirements should be a large driver for the solution that best fits your needs while giving your customer the results they demand.

Thanks
Jay

[SRobbins]

I agree... Revit is a fad... Its like RAP or R&B


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.

[Anonymous]

pkirill wrote:
> 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...

interesting analysis.

seems like if you're going to BIM-it (and BIM-it good...)
you really need to leveage all that data you've infused into your process;
to do more for you than model smarter, check Mech/Stuct conflicts, and
intelligently schedule
your doors/windows/partitions.

As the overall industry begins to embrace BIM,
AMEP will have to create new services for itsself;
beyond the Construction Documents and Construction Administration phases of
a project.

BIM talks about "project lifecycle".
AMEP needs to be providing valuable services to the majority
of that cycle to remain profitable, IMO.

Thinking that you'll just churn-out more Projects, annually;
is a flawed buisness model, IMO.

[Anonymous]

"Dennis Jeffrey" wrote in message
news:5748990@discussion.autodesk.com...
I heard this same complaint from Architects 22 years ago, when they were
trying to justify staying on the drawing board.....

I'm sure that with the efficiencies you can....

1. Justify higher billing per hour to cover more efficient design.
2. Handle more projects per year with the same staff or less...
3. Think outside the box you have built.


I don't disagree with what you're saying, and i do believe it will all play
out in a positive direction (just like CAD 22 years ago), however:

>I heard this same complaint from Architects 22 years ago, when they were
>trying to justify staying on the drawing board.....
And I know some today that are still on the boards. One or two person firms
that have all the work they can handle, are doing projects that are
interesting to them, and are very successful financially. Success means
different things to different people and it's important to have your
definition of success clearly defined before you step out of the box...

> 1. Justify higher billing per hour to cover more efficient design.
Good luck. I'd like to hear some architects and owners weigh in on whether
or not they will accept higher fees for BIM work. While I think it is fair
to say that you can charge the *same* for lump-sum jobs which would equate
to a higher hourly billing rate, the hourly jobs are going to pose a
problem.

>2. Handle more projects per year with the same staff or less...
This assumes you can *get* more projects. It was pointed out in the webinar
that there is pretty much a finite amount of construction projects in the
world and this is not going to increase significantly just because design
projects are being done in less time.

>3. Think outside the box you have built.
This is exactly the kind of off-the-cuff statement that got us here in the
first place. I'm not poo-poo'ing BIM - we're on board and moving forward
with a cautious implementation - my intention was to show that if you're
going to think outside the box, you need to be thinking out from all six
sides. Don't just go outside the box for the sake of being out of the box.

[Anonymous]

We've had some discussion on this issue here, where we're moving to Civil 3D
and Revit Structural. Since both these programs are supposed to make you
more efficient in the long run, what to do about this "time/billing" issue?
The direction suggested is to look at charging by the job, not by the hour,
sort of like flat-rate auto repairs. If you're truly more efficient, the
bottom line will reflect this. Of course - it goes both ways...

John

"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5748471@discussion.autodesk.com...

Now you're billing $225/hour for the same amount of work.

[Anonymous]

or that darn rock and roll.

lol

wrote in message news:5749665@discussion.autodesk.com...
I agree... Revit is a fad... Its like RAP or R&B


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.