B3: Group B - Schroeder

BIM And Revit - Disadvantages

In the interdisciplinary world that we live in today, various programs are used by Civil Engineering firms depending on their respective design work. Revit is a software application created by Autodesk for architects and building professionals alike designed to support building information modeling (BIM) workflows [1]. Because of the nature of Revit, it is also able to leverage dynamic information into intelligent models which allows for a complex building structure to be stored in a single database file. As already mentioned in a previous post, because of the one file system, complex buildings can be massive files to keep on your hard drive.  Although Revit is a superb and common design tool, there are several disadvantages.  

From an engineering firm’s perspective, Revit requires an investment in both time and money [2]. Time, as it will require hours of training for the current architects to get accustomed to switching to a new program. The monetary effort would be the purchase of all the licenses for the Revit software (which isn’t cheap when compared to other similar programs on the market). Both investments may be combined if there are additional costs associated with training. As most of my fellow groupmates have already posted about the main current problems of Revit, I chose to redirect my focus and compare it to a similar program called ArchiCAD.

ArchiCAD, created by Graphisoft, is an architectural CAD software that can be used on both Macintosh and Windows. When comparing the two programs, ArchiCAD has much more intuitive user interface than Revit, unless you are familiar with other Autodesk products. Graphisoft also created the first real-time BIM collaboration environment so that workflow between members of the design team can work on the project simultaneously [3]. A fellow blogspot user who works for Stantec chimed in on this discussion and how ArchiCAD is superior to Revit when it comes to 2D/3D Modification and Image Management. 

Using the Modify tools in Revit is no simple task, as you can only split one element at a time and cannot select the item first before invoking the command [4]. Using the Trim/Extend tool requires separate multiple cursor clicks while in ArchiCAD, you can extend multiple items at the same time. Revit also has a huge disadvantage when it comes to Non-CAD/BIM File Image management. Although insertion is approximately the same in both programs, the image in Revit is now embedded and static where you cannot change the linked path. ArchiCAD had handle a plethora of File Formats of inserted images; however, Revit is only able to handle BMP, JPG, JPEG, PNG, and TIF. 

In conclusion, when compared to Revit, ArchiCAD is superior in terms of modifications of elements. Despite all of this, Revit is widely used in engineering firms across the nation.

References:
[1] http://www.edulearn.com/article/what_is_revit_architecture.html [2] http://www.trustitllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Trust_Autodesk-Revit1.pdf [3] http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad/overview/ [4] http://scotthmackenzie.blogspot.com/2013/03/archicad-vs-revit-2d-3d-modification.html

EDIT: Comments left on Mark's and  Cathlene's original posts.