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Revit is Autodesk's BIM software. (REVise InstanTly)

Very Big and Very Powerful and built on Acad's platform which is also used by ADT and Land Desktop (the AutoCad family is BIG) in my area most Designers, Architects, Contractors, Engineers and Land Surveyors use an Autodesk product

Designing a house or good size commercial project use VW

Designing a 30 story office or six lane bridge use Revit

You are Welcome

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Maybe 40 storey building for Revit.

VW can handle building of 30 storeys BIM or no BIM.

BIM, building Info Model.

The basic idea is model real world objects like walls, concrete slabs, doors and windows. From there the computer produces the dumb line drawings for you as the promoters of BIM will call them, or the comics as the builder calls.

The hope is that this will save us a lot of time on co-ordination services, structure, fittings and all the others things that make up a building.

BIM systems are more about how many objects they have scripts for Plug-in Objects in VW languages.

VW is coming along.

It's a nice objective.

Vectorworks has had BIM like feature the whole Hybrid Drawing System could be thought of as Reverse BIM if you want, or BIM done right. you draw in real world objects that are presented in the drawing language we use, but with little or no extra input they are 3D as well. Which can produce co-ordinate elevations, sections and the like.

The change in the last few years computers are getting fast enough to render these models fast enough to not get in our way well they where meant to but processors hit the wall and started going multi-core. CAD and BIM have issues with Multi-core.

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Here in the MidWest U.S., it seems that AutoDesk is very successfully working to corner the market on BIM (a word that AutoDesk invented). One way they're doing this is by authorizing retailers who hold computer classes in Revit, like Hagerman Assoc., while also making sales pitches to the colleges, universities and professional organizations.

For example, the St. Louis AIA recently held a members seminar called "What Can BIM Do For You?" The presenter was an architect who happens to be an instructor for Hagerman Assoc. ---- hence the entire presentation was constrained to Revit drawings and movies to demonstrate what "Revit" can do for you. Much of Revit has a constrained work flow. The construction details need to be drawn right on the building section, and the linework isn't that great.

The Revit program alone costs over $3000. This does not include the AutoCad program you would need to work on dwg detail files. I suppose that Revit could do all of the detailing, but to have a library of details in a program that only uses one mega-model-file seems to be a problem. Perhaps this is where the "families" are used. Families are similar to the Resource Browser in VW.

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Revit is Autodesk's BIM software. (REVise InstanTly)

Very Big and Very Powerful and built on Acad's platform which is also used by ADT and Land Desktop (the AutoCad family is BIG) in my area most Designers, Architects, Contractors, Engineers and Land Surveyors use an Autodesk product

Designing a house or good size commercial project use VW

Designing a 30 story office or six lane bridge use Revit

Revit (.rvt) IS NOT based on the AutoCAD (.DWG) file format/platform. It is NOT related to ADT or Land Desktop. It was originally created and developed outside Autodesk. Autodesk purchased Revit several years ago. It is entirely different technology and interface.

I disagree with Gregory assertion that Revit is better than VW for "large" projects. Check out the VectorWorks "BIM in Practice" website, found under the Support pulldown of the navigation bar or at:

http://www.nemetschek.net/bim/index.php

The Projects section contains a large (1.25 million sq ft) project (Ellicott Heights), at about early DD phase.

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The decision to select one particular BIM software over another is primarily a strategic business decision not a technological one.

Revit has certain features which are advantageous to certain firms.

Vectorworks has certain features which are advantageous to others.

If 30 story buildings were my stock and trade, I'd probably consider Revit given the sort of engineering tools available for integration within it.

I suspect that I could do it with Vectorworks, but I'm not sure that I would want to go through the exercise.

Revit, as I understand it, has an extremely robust database technology underlying it. And that technology is what Autodesk was after when they purchased it.

The limitations of autocad's database are apparent in the ADT project manager which is a pure kludge.

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BIM aproach of VW's looks very powerfull and logic for me. It's just a question of time.

The idea, implemented on early versions of VW (since MiniCad days), of making any drawn object as an information container, through records formats and the data tab, is a great concept. The Bim aproach of only using walls, doors and any kind of parametric object is limited and doesn't solve much of the problems when designing one specific element, not cosidered in the predifined parameters. VW with its's modeling and drawing tools promise more.

It isn't only what costs more or less. Archicad costs US$4000.00 and doesn't have something near to the parking object of VW (that can be better), for example.

The aparent success of Revit is more based on it's marketing than in any real difference with other Bim packages, included VW.

Edited by Mr. Gog
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Jeffery,

What I was trying to get at was a simple answer/response to defjef's post and in the speed of the moment I put forth two comparative examples that I thought would point to scope and range of the two programs. You offered Ellicott Heights as an exmaple to support your point of view and I offerd the Freedom Tower.

Now get at this on my Mac I have Acrhicad and Powercad w/ Wild Tools and stack of books and stuff because I don't use it that much, on my PC I have autocad, ADT, Revit, TurboCad and VectorWorks. In my line of work I support Architects,Designers,Engineers and Land Surveyors and now that I am getting to be pretty good using VW I have found that I can do a good job and deliver a fast turn around using VW and letting my clients think that I am some kind of AutoCad stud is part of the fun. For my own personal clients it's straight VectorWorks and no chaser.

Oh and once I learn to be really good using VW's DTM here in the hilly Oakland Ca area I will then be able afford season tickets to the Raiders, Niners, A's, Gaints, Warriors, Sharks, SaberCats and gasoline. What I am trying to get at by saying all this is that VectorWorks is my money making Ace In the Hole.

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The Freedom Tower was proposed by Daniel Liebeskind, and the critically acclaimed master plan for the WTC re-development was executed using VectorWorks. The tower design was intended to act as a spire-like armature, similar to the steel framework of the Liberty Statue.

From there the NY Port Authority handed the job over to Daniel Childs and SOM, and the tower design was dramatically changed several times. So the resulting design is a mere shadow of Liebeskind's vision. Architectural Record has repeatedly expressed disappointment in the Tower's design development, from the wind turbines on the roof down to the concrete walls encasing 10 stories of the base. This raises the question over whether or not AutoDesk Revit promotes good architectural design in this particular case.

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I got this from Wikipedia:

-------

" There are two theories on the origin of the term. The first one is that the term was coined by Autodesk [2] to describe "3D, object-oriented, AEC-specific CAD". The second theory claims that Professor Charles M. Eastman at Georgia Institute of Technology coined the term [3]. This theory is based on a view that the term Building Information Model is basically the same as Building Product Model, which Professor Eastman has used extensively in his book [4] and papers since the late 1970s. ('Product model' means 'data model' or 'information model' in engineering.) Nevertheless, it is agreed upon that the term was popularized by Jerry Laiserin [5] as a common name for a digital representation of the building process to facilitate exchange and interoperability of information in digital format."

-----

So I guess my comment on AutoDesk inventing the term BIM is another internet rumor :-)

And in reference to the AutoDesk white paper on the Freedom Tower, it says that the tower was split into five vertical segments- one for each project. This means that there were 5 Revit files, each containing 20 or 30 floors. So this was no herculean task for Revit. I suspect that VectorWorks could handle 30 workgroup references in one file, since 30 story high rise buildings were built in Japan, where VW is the main program in use there (but if someone could prove me wrong in this assumption...)

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Thanks for the information.

I have recently taken a position as a "senior" project architect with a midsized firm (?20 staff) and growing. They are producing their drawings in ACAD and are thinking of going into REVIT. The principal does not do any type of CAD, something I have noticed for architect's of that vintage (me) and rely on some IT person CAD manager to run produce the output.

So far I may only have to do some details and no production work (red lining check prints) so I may draw in VW and export to ACAD or print them and let them draw them again (nuts) in their ACAD.

I am wondering if this firm could actually change to VW efficiently. How do they handle the legacy docs and ACAD files which I assume are a voluminious.

How do they retrain staff to do VW? Has anyone had experience where a firm who is about to move into BIM, object oriented, or 3D or some other level of CAD aside from 2D line to line production docs has done this successfully? Seems like there would be lots of inertia to overcome?

Since firms do a lot of copy, paste and edit in order to be efficient, would changing platforms represent an inefficiency is this aspect as well?

Are there "CAD Consultants" who can advise and manage such transitions?

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Moving from CAD to BIM will require re-engineerng workflows and retraining staff regardless of the software selected (or the salesman's pitch).

In my opinion, moving from acad drafting to revit is as much of a radical change as from acad to VW.

However, the change in vendors is another matter from a psychological standpoint.

If you throw in some of the preceived deficiencies of VW such as not running 64bit native and quirky graphics requirements, it's probably a tougher sell to an autocad shop.

Regardless of which BIM software is selected, use very small projects with very loose deadlines to start.

The dumb tax for switching software is high and it's better to get creamed on a little project than a big one...and better to have several projects to learn how not to do things.

Again, the learning curve will be steep no matter what software is selected.

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