ACA vs Revit? General Discussion

[Tallans422]

Hi All,

I know, a topic that's been beaten to death from both sides (with ACA loosing more blood every round) but maybe worth having a good conversation about again...  

Starting to get a little bit of pressure to consider Revit in my company.  We've been on ACA since 2007 when I implemented it using most features available to make the process quick and easy.  Wall, door, window styles, schedules, standardized templates, complex tool palettes with all components that anyone would need are all available to a team of 17 that was well versed in AutoCAD before the switch.  We do about 200 projects a month in the healthcare industry and ACA has really maximized our efficiency in producing these full layouts & specification plans in 2-4 hours depending on the square footage.  We're able to be creative, fast, and rarely have to worry about customization on-the-fly.  Plus being in our niche there is very little need for coordination that may be present in large architectural or engineering firms that rely on Revit for those type of abilities.  Most consultants we deal with still need our 2016 files saved down to earlier versions of AutoCAD.  For rendering purposes we use the much under-utilized and now discontinued Showcase software that comes with our Suite to import the 3d model and render in less than 10 minutes with good results.

I'm curious who out there has gone through the transition with a group the size of mine and what advantages it really brought to the table.  I'm learning Revit as I get time but I can't imagine how long it would take a team of CAD'rs to get as creative, efficient, or PROficient as they were in ACA.

Curious to hear your stories, good or bad!  I'll be posting to the Revit forum as well.

Thanks,

Todd

[robincapperw]

From your description of your current workflow it seems ACA offers an efficient system. Apart from it being effectively in maintenance mode and Revit becoming more standard what is driving the desire for Revit?

[pendean]

REVIT is big in Healthcare and only getting bigger by the day: but if you and your consultants on these projects are all working in AUtoCAD/ACA and you can project this to be true for the long term in your company's region/area/city/county, continue with it.

I personally cannot predict that far into the future, so in our office we brought in REVIT and are actively pursuing REVIT projects to future-proof our survival in our market. AutoCAd/ACA is still here and still dominant, but it's slowly losing ground with our customers and partners.