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Forums >> General Discussion >> Revit ROI >> Need help in trying to Convince Office to switch from ADT to REVIT
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Joined: Tue, Jun 19, 2007
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Hi everyone. I could use your help. I'm looking for articles/white pages/ links for information on making the transition and implementation of REVIT. The comany I'm working for in interested in REVIT but is aprehensive about making the transition and how it will effect the "typ" design flow, how to work with MEP engineers still stuck in Autocad 14, file size management, etc..... If you have any good reading please..please email me at rickkremer-at-mindspring-dot-com. Thanks, Rick
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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
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I wish I could help you with your engineer problem but we basically still have that too. I doubt you can convince your engineers to switch because REVIT MEP does not yet have all of the families and support it needs but REVIT Structure is fully capable and interactive with their normal analysis programs. You should be able to find whitepapers on that. Here is the good news. To heck with where your engineers are, REVIT will work for you better than you ever thought. And, the export from it to autocad for your engineers should be almost completely transparent. Our engineers didn't even know until we told them! What we have been doing to influence our structural engineer is to feed him our model on complicated structures in dwf format and quick analysis sections showing him important relationships. We think that in tim, he will start to see the benefits. He has had demonstrations in his office and we know he's looking at the product. Don't be fooled though, there is a learning curve and it will take someone in your office that can be the guru to guide everone else.
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Thanks for the reply. I agree. I beleive that us architects should not wait until the MEP engineers change. I am interested though how REVIT has or has not changed how a team works on a project? Do you have multiple people working on the model, and if so how many people. Are they all located in the office using your LAN or have you tried having other offices work across the WAN? Thanks, Rick
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We have had around 6 working on a project at the same time. We are in the same office although on multiple floors. We have not fully broken down a project into controlled worksets but are nearing the point where we feel that will be necessary. Most of the time, only a couple are really working on "the model". The others are working on details, elevations, sections and call-outs where they typically don't change the model.... but sometimes they have to and when they do, they own those parts until a save to central. We tried to work across our WAN with our other office but we have problems because our connection, which is twin T1's, has an incriptor working and that slows the connection down too far.
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Hi, I once read somewhere that orginally Revit was sold with a bookshelf to ADT user. The idea was to place ADT on the bookshelf where it was supposed to be. Here in Malaysia, many ADT users only use like 10-25% of its full features. They are impressed with how easy for Revit to generate 3D model esp mullions! If I am nearby your office, I would love to demostrate Revit vs ADT for you. Maybe your bosses will then put ADT away on the bookshelf. Before ADT, I used Auto-Architect by Softdesk. Good luck in implementing Revit and welcome to the forum.
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G'day mate. I am migrating to Sydney, Australia. Looking for Revit Architect position. Any taker? Thanks. Kim Wong. |
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In our office, Arch trained on Revit a year and half ago and are at about 90% of projects now. Structural is in about the same boat. MEP (all engineers in-house) recently went 100% Revit...so even for AutoCAD arch projects. He's right about MEP not being ready out-of-the-box...our guys built a bunch of families. My response to this and many complaints people at my firm have about Revit vs. AutoCAD/ADT is that AutoCAD out-of-the-box was not the end-all-be-all either, it's just that over time you built up enough things that look the way you want that you become efficient. My MEP guys just work under the assumption that you have to start building/learning sometime, because Revit takes some tweaking and building too. Waiting until it does everything you need out of the box means that the day you start using the program is the day you are no longer needed. Just get you some people who don't enjoy obsoletion. Beyond that, the main thing to be careful of is sending management off to a sales pitch and having to rein in their early expectations.
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Just to add something you touched on in the OP, file management is an issue compared to what you previously had. You should add to your server storage significantly as the average Revit drawing is probably 3-4x the typical dwg file.
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Don't compare REVIT's file to a single drawing file. You need to compare it to the whole folder including SD, DD & CD dwg's and bak's. When you do that, I don't think the file is really that large by comparison.
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Not to try to plug it, but I just attended the AUGI CAD Camp in Dallas, and it was well worth it. The classes on Revit provided a great deal of interdisciplinary information. I ended up speaking with the MEP engineers we use the day after and after our discussion they decided to go ahead and convert to Revit MEP. If there's an AUGI CAD Camp near you, I would recommend going to it if you can. The information provided, and the contacts you make could provide you with the leverage necessary to convince your office to change. John
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Along these lines how are firms managing the control of the file.....For example we do some design build thus it is requested that we turn over our Revit file to the contractors, is there a way to lock them out and prevent them from making changes?
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How are they using the file? Most of the time, a 3D DWF file is better. Gives all of the visual along with an index of all the components. You can also put all of the 2D drawings in the same dwf and then everything is scalable as well.
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You can convert Revit models to 3D DWFs and send those to clients for review and/or markup. They can use Design Review from Autodesk to do that. For facilities maintenance, they can use Autodesk FMDesktop.
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Thats the whole reason we are doing the job in Revit is so at the end they can get a BIM model....
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i am so refreshed that there are more people than myself trying to implement this project into our firms- i love the feedback that everyone has and i am hoping to be a better provider as time goes on (that curse learning curve) the one issue that i have encountered is the reluctance to leave autoCAD alone and not mix the two programs together. the biggest fear that my collegues have is that everything they know and are proficient at will not matter anymore, and that the new girl (me) will be the only one in the office that knows how to manipulate this technology- the best thing i can tell you from my experience is to aide people in keeping an open mind because the barriers may seem HUGE at first, but the payoff is even better. Good Luck!! Look forward to tracking this thread-
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I have a small firm and have been using revit since 2001. I know I am joining this discussion late, but I don't get many chances to use Revit City resources fully. For years, I export my plans to my engineers  who are outsourced) as autocad files and treat their plans as dumb flat cad drawings. They are not interested in BIM at this time. So be it. It serves our purposes. It has been seven years since I used ADT. Is it better? Did Revit make it change? I know some friends who run larger firms who keep trying to tell me it is just as good as Revit but I hear in their voice that they HOPE it is as good because they don't want to retool.
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