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June 4, 2008

Revit Me Better

I’d like to thank Mimi J. of Pittsburgh for asking Revit be a new blog topic. At the recent Boston convention, she test drove it at the Autodesk booth and was “totally excited about what the software can do.”

I bit the bullet spring 2007 and bought in to Revit. We’re still troubling over and with it. It has a huge learning curve to make things work like you want them to. So, for analysis:

On the “negative” side, it is an expensive purchase, requires a subscription, user manuals aren’t yet available, and, most of all, the training sessions are costly. So far it has taken much longer to become proficient than I would have liked.

On the “positive” side, it is fairly easy to build a simple model and really easy to “Wow” clients with what the building will look like. The Revit Web site offers a Return On Investment (ROI) calculator—it lies; either that or we’re really stupid. Conceptually it is a very good “tool” like any others that we use… it is not the end all to end all.

I can proudly say that we just completed our first (simple little dumb) building and submitted for a building permit with the documents based approximately 70% in Revit.  We reused a lot of our “standard” details (i.e., toilet room elevations, cabinetry details, etc.) and produced those sheets as well as the “stick down” spec in AutoCAD. Otherwise, I don’t know when we would have been “done” and ready to submit for permit.

So let’s open the blog for business on your experience, likes/dislikes, and, my favorite, the dreaded “work around…. And we’ll fix it later," and the “Hey, try this part” themes in this cyberworld.

—Lisa Stacholy, AIA, NCARB

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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Small Firms Ideas Exchange in the Technology category. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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