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Joined: Mon, Oct 5, 2009
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I work for a small architectural firm (about 8 employees) and we have been thinking about switching from AutoCAD to Revit for CD's. The problem we keep running into is that the majority of our Structural and MEP engineers use AutoCAD and are not wanting to make the switch. We have tried on past projects to export drawings from Revit into AutoCAD to send for their use, but they always need a lot of clean-up due to overlapping lines, etc. It seems to be hard to coordinate between disciplines and it is preventing many in the office to want to switch. They still dont believe Revit can create fast, accurate CD's and think it should only be used for pretty pictures. I know better, but am not sure how other small firms have dealt with this issue?
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Joined: Thu, May 28, 2009
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Fast? No. Accurate? YES.
Revit's greatest strength might be its accuracy. It doesn't allow you to lie--and by extension get screwed by conflicting drawings and assumptions. However, at a conceptual level, you're not going to have very good-looking sections.
So, the timing of your CDs will be different.
In CAD, people are used to being able to whip up a very pretty floor plan, maybe a single pretty section, and some elevations. 6 sheets. 6 polished drawings.
In Revit, if you want all of those things, your building will have to be 100% finished as a model, and those 6 views extracted from the model. it requires a level of detail that you don't need with drawings. A level of three dimensional planning that was never neccessary. And THEN, on top of that, the sheets have to be cleaned up through VG overrides, linework, annotations, etc.
The payoff with revit comes in the short term conceptual phase, with modeling, and in the final stretch, with construction documents, when you have a finished model that you can slice up with sections and details and plan enlargments, and get automatically generated views that require very little refinement.
but in the intermediate stage where the model is not complete but good drawings are expected, it's often a little rocky and discouraging to people who don't know the process with revit.
Edited on: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 4:56:16 PM
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Joined: Wed, Mar 20, 2013
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Revit is a new tool to a new user, so inevitably people shy away at the start as there's an evolution of training and set-up that is required before everything becomes a streamlined process (Cost and fear of the unknown). They shall pull into line once the Clients and Principles start demanding Revit to be used.
I work for a structural engineering firm and have used Revit since 2010. Most of our design teams use Revit, though in the past we have work on many projects where we have been the only design team member using Revit. Exporting and Importing 2D files have never been a problem to us as they are only to be used as overlays. Therefore, it hasn't been critical if lines overlap etc. The actual CD documentation is the PDF and Printed versions of the drawings straight from Revit. We have all our Revit Templates set-up so our drawings print off in the same style as those produced in CAD.
Revit is never necessarly going to be quicker in creating an initial set of CD documents  though in some instances it's not necessarly going to be slower with an experienced user at hand) due to the fact you end up managing a complete model of your structure/MEP/Architectural elements. Revit lets you see the design in 3D and which allows you address design/detailing/coordination issues earlier. Therefore, we tend to spend more time during the early design stages of the project, and less time sorting out problems during construction etc. Full 3D collaboration is another beast entirely and will never be quicker than simply drawing and coordinating lines in a 2D environment.
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