Computer aided drafting has revolutionized the building
design industry. AutoCAD has made it easier for engineers to draft drawings on
a computer in which everything would be standardized. This makes it easier for
contractors and anyone that’s looking at the sheet to understand it. On the
other hand, a program that actually sprung out of AutoCAD is Revit. Revit has
been of great use specifically for building design and drafting. The
incorporation of BIM to Revit has also helped make the software great. There
are many ways that Revit and AutoCAD relate to each other and many ways in
which they’re different from each other. Also, Revit and AutoCAD can be used
together and actually compliment each other for different projects.
During my coop at a consulting engineering firm, we had many
projects that involved the use of both Revit and AutoCAD. AutoCAD was mostly used
for detailed drawings that were later imported into Revit sheets. Another
interlinked use of AutoCAD and Revit was downloading 3D AutoCAD drawings of
certain HVAC equipment and uploading it into Revit to be placed in the building
model. Revit floor plans were also uploaded into AutoCAD specifically for line
diagrams which were easier and more convenient to make using AutoCAD.
Both AutoCAD and Revit are computer aided design software
that is used for drafting in the building design industry but Revit is geared
more towards building design. Revit makes it a lot easier to draw floor plans
and to place doors windows and materials used for the building. On the other hand AutoCAD is better for
drawing details of certain equipment or their connections. The primary barrier between
AutoCAD and Revit is the level of detail in AutoCAD for drawing and the lack of
preset design tools for the ease of building design in AutoCAD.
Upon reading the article “AutoCAD or Revit – Where do you draw
the Line? “ [1]. I learned that the
fundamentals of both drafting tools are pretty much similar and interlinked.
Like I stated above both software are used for building design and drafting.
What makes Revit the primary choice for building design is the ease of its use
to design buildings.
Laura,
I completely agree with your opinion on problems that may
arise with BIM and Revit. During my coop, which consisted of building energy
modeling and HVAC analysis, I was faced with many difficulties with the
software. The largest problem I had was losing certain information when
transferring a building model to HVAC analysis software. Certain inputs would
be lost or sometimes even completely erroneous. Certainly there have been
updates and software companies have been pushing to perfect the
interoperability of BIM software. But, I completely agree with your statement
on potentially destructive reliance on BIM technologies with minimal to no
understanding of the actual basics in which the software works on.
Alex,
Great post! Your first point on current problems using BIM
and Revit is interesting but I do not completely agree with it. Working in a
large consulting engineering firm for my coop, I learned that their Revit files
are actually a compilation of multiple Revit files. The whole model is on a
network, which can be accessed by multiple users on the network. The whole
model then can be compiled and compressed into one big file if needed.
Although, I do agree with you on how sometimes these files even when split into
multiple files can get slow and lag a lot.
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