Understanding Revit

[angiegauthier]

Hi Everyone,

I've been asked to review the use of Revit in our company. Right now we use Inventor, and from what I know, these are two totally different worlds. I work at a window manufacturing company, and we have requests to send customers Revit files. What I need to know, is if Revit would be a good fit to work in, or if we would just be using it to support our customer requests.

We need to be able to have our products as assemblies built from part files. From what I understand, Revit doesn't work that way. Am I correct? 

Is it possible to convert Inventor models to Revit files? Is there anyone else out there sending revit files to customers, but working with something else?

As you can tell by my questions, I don't know much about Revit at all.

Thanks!

Angie

[rodrigo.bezerra]

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angiegauthier escreveu:

Hi Everyone,

Hi Angie 

I've been asked to review the use of Revit in our company. Right now we use Inventor, and from what I know, these are two totally different worlds. I work at a window manufacturing company, and we have requests to send customers Revit files. What I need to know, is if Revit would be a good fit to work in, or if we would just be using it to support our customer requests. It depends in what your costumers want from your firm and the product you offers to them.

We need to be able to have our products as assemblies built from part files. From what I understand, Revit doesn't work that way. Am I correct? Yes and no. Revit works with a "family" concept that is very flexible if you have a experienced subject to guide the adaptation proccess. Depending on your company's projects, proccess and products, you can break the windows in as many parts (families) as you need, and work with parameters that will define the final product that will be a finished window with all the data and functions built in. As an architect I can say that will be awesome if you guys accomplish it.

Is it possible to convert Inventor models to Revit files? I know that you can export to 3D and CAD formtats. Never worked with Inventor. Is there anyone else out there sending revit files to customers, but working with something else? As you can see in seek.autodesk.com, there are many manufacturers worldwide publishing their products in revit families.

As you can tell by my questions, I don't know much about Revit at all.

Thanks!

Angie

Regards

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[chrisplyler · Accepted solution]

Do not switch to Revit for your manufacturing needs. Do use Revit as a complimentary addition to your marketing efforts, to provide usefull architectural families to Revit users.

[Anonymous]

I also work in the manufacturing realm and have been asked to supply REVIT models instead of the regular, vanilla CAD that we always have. I am finding it hard to convince the powers that be that we need to supplement our models to architects with something new. Add to that BIM and they think that we are giving away National Secrets (rather than the good 'ole fashion way of buying our product and pulling out the calipers). 

[David_W_Koch]

@Anonymous:  Like the CAD blocks you currently supply, the Revit families should be representative of your product, including simplified massing matching overall dimensions, with perhaps a bit of detail to make it readable as "yours", not something from which one could manufacture the product.  That "detail", if provided, would ideally be mostly symbolic lines and/or detail components (for whatever view directions make sense for your product), to keep the model "light".