@Ric_Weber wrote:
@HVAC-Novice you stated, "Revit also isn't a good tool to design a consumer product, like a car." I would agree, consumer products; cars, appliances, tools, etc. would best be designed in the realm of Inventor, 3ds Max, Fusion. Those products that are part of the Product Design & Manufacturing Collection.
You also said, "I don't know about the feasibility of incorporating Civil and Plant features in Revit." and you're right in regards to the Civil definitely. That is why I was talking about InfraWorks being a possible option there. Not knowing all of the capabilities of InfraWorks and Civil3D, I am unsure, but I would believe there would be enough overlap to combine the functionality into one application. An application that could seamlessly integrate with Revit.
Plant features, in my experience is basically, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing items (machines, electricity distribution, and pipes and valves and regulators). So other than being larger, what would the difference be between that and MEP modeling. The information would just be different that is plugged into the items modeled. I could say that I could see a day when the MEP/Plant functionality within Revit could become a separate extension that users could choose to install or not install. That could take us back to the days when Revit Architecture, Revit Structural, and Revit MEP were separate applications. Not a bad option as long as they continue to work seamlessly together.
Your statement, "My first question would be, who pays for the added cost if most current Revit users only design building features?" confuses me a bit. Don't most engineering and architectural firms already subscribe to the AEC Collection for their users? All of these applications are already available in that collection. Therefore we are already paying for them. By consolidating the applications we would essentially also be applying all of that manpower into one application instead of across several. Therefore the cost to Autodesk would not increase and update production could theoretically increase. Which is kind of an answer to your comment of "Especially with Autodesk already way behind with fixing and providing the Building design features in Revit." with which I definitely agree. In my "roadmap", if you will, Autodesk would have a lot fewer products, but equal if not higher capabilities. Focus would be narrowed.
These are just my opinions. I doubt if Autodesk or anyone of any influence would ever listen to me, but this is how I think.
I didn't see "Plant" among all the software in our AEC package. But I saw it includes Civil 3D.
I'm not civil engineer, but Civil design includes the overall system (i.e. the entire sewage system of an entire City, and not just the one project). This is very unlike a building design where we really are independent off any other buildings or streets outside the project.
Each of the software they have is a spaghetti-code from different companies Autodesk purchased. So it isn't easy to just combine them. I don't know if "Plant" has any MEP features that are better than Revit. but I doubt they will easily port to Revit.
I think they would have to start with an all new software that includes options for Buildings, Civil, and Plants. Probably a web-based application. That would solve many problems including versions. Probably can be done. But I doubt Autodesk is the company to do it. Seeing the slow disaster ACC is, I doubt they want or can do it.
Revit Version: R2026.2
Hardware: i9 14900K, 64GB, Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada 16GB
Add-ins: ElumTools; Ripple-HVAC; ElectroBIM; Qbitec
