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Revit Revisited


wings

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Last summer I was on the forum talking about how I was planning on purchasing Revit. Things changed. I ended up getting a new job, and then was laid off 3 months later.

 

Now I find myself in a position where I am going to be doing work for myself and am trying to figure out whether to purchase Revit, or Autocad. Thanks to others in another thread I did manage to purchase a powerful laptop to run the programs (my business will need to be mobil which is why the laptop).

 

I have worked with Autocad for years, and have only been to Revit seminars, and seen video tutorials, spoken to friends about it.

 

My main concern is that the work I will mostly be doing will be small - additions, small commercial, and residential projects and that trying to reinvent myself by learning an entirely way to draft may not be the way to go.

 

Also, much of what I do starts in a schematic phase, where exacty materials and wall widths, heights, and sizes of things are not known. When I look at Revit, it seems as though the software wants you to know exact answers as soon as you hit the boards. That is just not the way it is done in my world, and this concerns me.

 

Plus, would I have to have all of my consultants be on board with Revit as well in order for our drawings to be coordinated? If so, that will be a tough task as I know my MEP and structural guys do not use it.

 

Thanks.

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Revit wants to know a lot of things to start but they do not have to set to what you choose. If everything had to be decided in the beginning, architects would not be jumping on the Revit boat. Things change on almost every project and if Revit made it hard to do that it would make life difficult and not be as popular as it is. Just start with generic/standard stuff then make the changes as the decisions are made. From what I've heard, architects really like Revit because it is very intuitive when it comes to changes.

 

You will probably also want to also have AutoCAD or one of the less expensive clones on hand especially since you are familiar with it.

 

Revit can export to CAD and does a decent job of it for your consultants.

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Rob's points are spot on. To add, the term "Revit" comes from "Revise It". The power of Revit is exactly how Rob described... just get started designing to your hearts desire, and at any time you can revise any portion of the project and the parametric nature of the program will show those revisions in all other places the revised objects existed in Views and Sheets. This is because there's only one model, and what you see on your sheets are "windows" from the same model and information. This is only if you use Revit in the manner it was intended, of course.

 

Also note that you can buy "suites" that give you Revit and AutoCAD packaged together at almost the same cost as Revit alone. Autodesk understands that you can't survive with just one CAD application. And Revit has and is gaining tons of momentum in the AEC industry so it would be in your best interest to dive in soon as you can.

 

Hope this helps. :)

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Good to know about "autocad" being part of the Revit suite. I checked out Autodesk just now, and it is included. I'm not sure to what extent, but it looks like the Acad building suite.

 

The other thing that some folks have told me is that it can take months to get a good grasp on revit. What have others found as far as time to adjust to it?

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Months would be an understatement lol. And no I'm not kidding. ;)

That is the problem. I will need to start making money immediately as I am currently unemployed looking to do my own thing.

 

I suppose the good thing is if I get the acad design suite and Revit together, I can still do ACADto get paid and work on Revit separately.

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I suppose the good thing is if I get the acad design suite and Revit together, I can still do ACADto get paid and work on Revit separately.
Good point! I'd advise you go this route, and force yourself to try a little Revit each day. In the long run going to Revit will reap the most rewards.

 

I had my own drafting service from 1995 to 2005, mostly additions / houses / contract work for other firms. What I've found was that later on my competition grew more and more. Even though I classed myself as an ACad guru at the time (not finding many others who could draw as fast and/or accurately), I found that some of the competition were simply out performing me. These guys were generally on other software, e.g. Caddie / ArchiCAD and later also Revit. Before Revit I was making lisps at speed to try and get acad to perform at least competitively.

 

Since I moved to Revit I've found that my productivity's increased tremendously. Then also I was able to find a much better paying job due to my experience, and last year I've been able to find an even better job exclusively in Revit (over here the tendency seems to swing in Revit's favour by a landslide, can't even find any jobs listed where only ACad is required).

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I'd advise you go this route, and force yourself to try a little Revit each day. In the long run going to Revit will reap the most rewards.
I have to agree with irneb 100% on this one.

 

Also, let me take a step back to make sure you understand that my comment wasn't to try and discourage you, but to give you honest truth. Especially if MEP is your main trade, as you'll need to have basic knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering to get certain things to work right. Revit is and has always been an "ongoing challenge". You never stop learning and you never stop running into situations that you'll have to really roll up your sleeves to make things work. It is very rewarding and fun though. And, Revit takes the monotony part of drafting and annotating out of the work, which is the biggest plus.

 

:)

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I have to agree with irneb 100% on this one.

 

Also, let me take a step back to make sure you understand that my comment wasn't to try and discourage you, but to give you honest truth. Especially if MEP is your main trade, as you'll need to have basic knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering to get certain things to work right. Revit is and has always been an "ongoing challenge". You never stop learning and you never stop running into situations that you'll have to really roll up your sleeves to make things work. It is very rewarding and fun though. And, Revit takes the monotony part of drafting and annotating out of the work, which is the biggest plus.

 

:)

Yes, I get that.

I do wonder how/ if I will be able to coordinate between my architectural drawings in Revit and my MEP engineer's drawings in cad. Normally I would give them a cad template that they would use to produce their drawings. Not sure if I can do this now. Seems like it makes things complicated if we are on different platforms.

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As I said in my first post, Revit can be exported to CAD quite easily. It is done all the time in the MEP world. As you already know, MEP firms have been slower on the uptake to Revit. You just have to make sure that you send everything they need. Unlike AutoCAD, RCPs and floor plans cannot be shown in the same view so they have to exported separately.

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I prefer working with consultants also on Revit, but even if they're on ACad the coord process isn't more complex than if I was on ACad too. Revit is able to export any view / sheet (with multiple views) to a normal DWG. And it's also able to import / link (think xref) a DWG into your model or into only one single view (whichever you prefer). So it's quite simple to overlay MEP/Struct/etc over the arch or visa-versa. Then you can even more easily align stuff.

 

What I tend to do is link in the DWG's, then using Visibility Graphics (VG shortcut) I adjust only that view's settings to display each DWG in a different colour. This makes it a lot simpler to see which line comes from which discipline. Then drawing detail lines (such as circles) to highlight clashes they need to change. Export that view and send them a DWG back.

 

If they have Revit, then it's even easier with the copy-monitor tool. You simply save their 2dn revision over the 1st and reload. It shows you what has changed since last time. No more hunting through the entire DWG to find differences.

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