Opinions on Revit .... moving from AutoCAD 2004 - revit a good idea?

[graphix]

In the overall wisdom of our firm "the powers that be", that of course really know nothing about nothing, have decided to entertain the idea of switching from autocad 2004 to Revit.

 

A little background about our firm.

3 offices across the country, nearly 200 employees, in house architect, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, structural, theatrical rigging, and visualization.

 

Our "bread and butter" is hospitals, however we do work on historic sturctures, historic theaters, and new theaters / performing arts centers.

 

I am looking for information so during our whole office introduction to the software packing to have knowledgable questions about the product.

 

So how does this package perform in the real world?

 

Does it really allow 1 file to contain an entire project, Architecture, MEP, sections, elevations, plans, and etc and really allow everyone to be working in that file at the same time in real time?

 

What happens if the network crashes?

 

How does it perform on a LARGE scale project, IE one of our current projects a 500,000 square foot hospital addition/remodel.

 

How is the transition from using autocad to it?

 

Is it friendly to go between autocad and viz?

 

How file format friendly is it, while we do have alot of inhouse consultants there are alot we get out of house.

 

How does it perform on a really crummy network, although we have very new equipment our network is continuously going from fast to slow to no access to the server to full access to not being able to get to another office's server, and etc in the matter of seconds/minutes/days sometimes.

 

And of course any other opinions you have on the product.

 

Thanks in advance,

graphix

[Scott Davis]

So how does this package perform in the real world?

Very well....talk to SOM, WATG, HCA, or some other large architectural firms about how well it performs on some very large projects.

 

Does it really allow 1 file to contain an entire project, Architecture, MEP, sections, elevations, plans, and etc and really allow everyone to be working in that file at the same time in real time?

Yes, one file can contain the entire project. Or it can be broken up into parts and linked together, which is what SOM is doing on the Freedom Tower. The MEP and Structural packages for Revit (coming soon) are reported to be separate files that are linked into the main file. Yes, everyone can work on parts of the model at the same time, using worksets.

 

What happens if the network crashes?

Better get it back up ASAP! I would think it would be problamatic in any office if the network crashed. We used to have problems here in 2D AutoCAD days if the network went down. If you are using worksets, though, every user is actaully working on a locally saved copy of the model. The Central File resides on a network location. If the network crashed, everyone can save local, and then update the Central file when the network is restored.

 

How does it perform on a LARGE scale project, IE one of our current projects a 500,000 square foot hospital addition/remodel.

Large projects aren't thie issue, its how those projects are set up, managed, and executed. With careful planning, (as in any project) Revit can handle anything.

 

How is the transition from using autocad to it?

Those who know AutoCAD well have the toughest time, letting go of old acad habits, and embracing a new way of working. Revit reads and writes DWG, so AutoCAD can be used in conjunction with Revit.

 

Is it friendly to go between autocad and viz?

Shipping with the 7.0 CD's is a plug-in for Viz 2005, which will allow import of a Revit model to Viz, with all materials, views, cameras, etc. Haven't tried it yet, but others say it works well.

 

How file format friendly is it, while we do have alot of inhouse consultants there are alot we get out of house.

Revit reads and writes DWG, DXF and DGN. Also can export to ODBC and GBXML. Image files exported to JPG and other formats. Schedules can be exported to Excel. Animations exported to AVI, panoramics to PAN.

 

How does it perform on a really crummy network, although we have very new equipment our network is continuously going from fast to slow to no access to the server to full access to not being able to get to another office's server, and etc in the matter of seconds/minutes/days sometimes.

Put some effort into getting your network fully operational and reliable. In any office your network is the 'brain and nerves' of your operations. If the network is crummy, any work process is bound to be crummy! If you have large projects, you will want gigabit connections to transfer large amounts of data over the network.

 

Hope that helps, let me know if you have more questions!

[czoog]

 

Does it really allow 1 file to contain an entire project, Architecture, MEP, sections, elevations, plans, and etc and really allow everyone to be working in that file at the same time in real time?

Yes, everything in one single file. Revit’s worksharing tools work allow many users to work on the same project at the same time. It multi-user mode: Basically there is one Central file for the project, everyone has a local copy of the file, this local file is in constant communication with the central file. Everything in revit can be put on worksets, worksets are part of the model that can be “checked out” like a library book by the user (i.e. exterior shell) so that only one person can work on the same object at the same time. You can also just grab a bunch of stuff and “borrow it” to work on. Users save locally until they are ready publish the changes back to the central file, users can get updates from the central file anytime they want. If a user A has something checked out that User B needs, Users B can request permission to edit the object in question, User A can grant or deny. The Central file also maintains a complete log of who did what and when.

 

That’s a really simplified explanation, there’s bit more to it than that.

 

It’s also worth noting that Revit will be splitting into three products: Revit Building (current revit) Revit Structure (due out early spring), and Revit Systems (might be out next year). It will be a 3 model file approach all linked together, sharing data.

 

 

 

What happens if the network crashes?

I don’t know, nothing I guess, we’ve never had our network go down while saving. If revit loses communication with central file it will warn you.

 

 

How does it perform on a LARGE scale project, IE one of our current projects a 500,000 square foot hospital addition/remodel.

It can handle large projects, it’s just a matter of careful workset usage and planning. We do a lot of large scale senior housing which are apartment buildings of 120 - 200 units, usually about 125,000 to 250, 000 sf. I've seen multi million SF projects in revit.

 

However, revit will require near state of the art hardware on large projects (Xeon/P4 2.6 min, plus 2 gigs of ram)

 

 

How is the transition from using autocad to it?

It’s like night and day, revit and autocad can play nicely together, just takes a little bit of planning

 

Is it friendly to go between autocad and viz?

The acad exports work great as “underlays” for consultants, but using them for architectural production drawings can be tricky (need to run overkill, etc) But layer control is excellent.

 

We use viz 2005 in our office and the interoperability is great. Export a 3d dwg from revit, link into viz, Viz converts the revit materials to viz materials.

 

 

 

 

How file format friendly is it, while we do have alot of inhouse consultants there are alot we get out of house.

It exports dwg, dwf, and dgn.

 

How does it perform on a really crummy network, although we have very new equipment our network is continuously going from fast to slow to no access to the server to full access to not being able to get to another office's server, and etc in the matter of seconds/minutes/days sometimes.

If you are talking about using revit worksharing over a WAN, I wouldn’t recommend it, the save to central time are too slow. Is your LAN crappy too? Gigabit can help on large projects. Revit files are big.

 

And of course any other opinions you have on the product.

It’s the best architectural software I have ever used by a long shot. We push out higher quality sets, with less people, in less time, that we ever did with autocad.

 

 

 

A few other thing to consider:

 

Training is Huge, it’s quite different than autocad, it’s not an electronic drafting board.

 

Be aware of the cultural issues that come with adopting a BIM solution: You are not drafting anymore, the people working on the model HAVE to know how building go together. There is no fudging, the design has to work in plan, section and elevation. You need to rethink how you divide work up. It may not work to have one person doing elevations the another working on the sections and another on the plan. You should have one person working on the shell, another the core, and another the interior layouts, etc.

 

I hope this helps, but I would also recommend visiting the revit community at augi.com http://www.augi.com/revit It is by far the best place to get real world info on revit.

 

-Z

[Sawyer]

I have only a quick observation:

 

My first job I worked on adt2. It took the office a long time to learn but we liked it. Finally we broke down and took one of the Reseller (sell the product) "classes". There they showed us everything we did was wrong (not the way autocad recommends). I was really sold on the idea even though every step seemed so cumbersome and time consuming. Just doing the sections took soooo many steps and then you had to update it and then you had to "draw" the items in that ADT didn't do right. So many things we never figured out like the schedule. Basically we ended up just using ADT to do 2d plans and insert doors & windows.

 

I have not used Revit in an office (I did see the Freedom Tower web cast ) but I have used the free trial and I was able to do plans, elevations and sections without reading a single tutorial or taking a class. Within minutes I was able to begin a project. That is an ease of use Autocad has never come close to.

[Richard McCarthy]

How file format friendly is it, while we do have alot of inhouse consultants there are alot we get out of house.

Revit reads and writes DWG, DXF and DGN. Also can export to ODBC and GBXML. Image files exported to JPG and other formats. Schedules can be exported to Excel. Animations exported to AVI, panoramics to PAN. [/Quote]

 

 

I might also add that current version of Revit (both v6.1 and v7.0) can export to DXF/DWG in 2000 and 2004 format ONLY. To export to an even earlier version could be a problem if you just bought Revit standalone (without the AutoCAD package) Solution is to buy "Revit Series" which would include also a copy of AutoCAD for your conversion convenience.