Autocad vs Revit for darfting home plans.

[Anonymous]

The company I work for is just recently moving into the house building market after being part of industrial construction for years.  They want to be able to show 3d models of the homes during the planning process as well as being able to show 3d videos of the house. At the end of the day they not only want to draft the plans to build the house, but show 3d models to the clients of what their house will look like. 

My issue is that I need to find the software that will meet their needs. I know Autocad can do everything above and beyond, but I don't know how easy it is to go from a 2d cad files to a 3d model. In the other hand there is Revit (just found out about it), Revit seems to start off as a more building focus suite. What software should I tell my company to buy and will it meet all our needs?

[L.Maas]

If it will meet all your needs is up to you decide. You can download a trial version of Revit for testing purposes.

As you mentioned Revit is geared to create buidlings. Especially if you want to deliver 3d Models Revit seems more suitable for the task.

You will find out that you can not do everything with a single piece of software. Revit is great for buildings. At a certain point when you get into the (very) small details you might need different software (e.g. Autocad, Inventor). While Revit is capable of rendering and creating walk throughs at a certain point you will need to move to different software (e.g. 3ds Max).

So Revit is great if you want to do buildings and get into BIM. But do not expect that it will do everything. So you may want to consider a suite.

Best advice, take your time to look at the different options. Use trials or, if possible, purchase a single license and experiment.

[Richard.Vivanco]

Autocad, Revit and 3dsmax is a complete list of softwares that your company can use.  

If you dont need fantastic renders or complex walkthrough, dont include 3dsmax.

Move to revit means change your methodology.  Visualize, analyze and strategize will be your new lenses.

Revit will give you a great adventages in all of your process, be patient and include all of your team in this new phase.