topic Re: Reality check - Revit in Collaboration with other software

Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:23:55 GMT

I´m sure someone will tell me how wrong I am, but I just saw the funniest 6 minutes video ever:

http://cad-vs-bim.blogspot.com/2008/09/filter-this-selectively-selecting-in.html

Apparently, it takes all of 6 minutes to explain how you can do selective selection in Revit, something that we do in ArchiCAD in five seconds with Ctrl+F, Atl+click, "+", and then 5 more seconds to apply different pens.

Thank Thor for making me choose the right one

Re: Reality check - Revit

Rod Jurich — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:31:58 GMT

Krippahl wrote:
/...... but I just saw the funniest 6 minutes video ever: /....

Krippahl wrote:
Thank Thor for making me choose the right one

Re: Reality check - Revit

Karl Ottenstein — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 03:40:46 GMT

Krippahl wrote:
I´m sure someone will tell me how wrong I am, but I just saw the funniest 6 minutes video ever

Pitifully boring is more like it ... I would never want to have to listen to that guy in a training session!

Terribly awkward and tedious process compared to ArchiCAD's years-old Find & Select ... but I believe that the result is much more powerful than anything we can do in ArchiCAD: the purpose, as I understood it, was to apply a dynamic filter to a view in order to change the appearance of the filtered items.

Yes, our filtering tech is better - but we have no means for having elements appear in different ways in different views other than playing with pen tables. The Revit concept appears to give the ability to query footings, for example, and have them appear dashed in certain sections and yet solid in others. (Similarly, Revit has element-specific and edge-specific appearance over-rides AFAIK.)

So, if I interpretted what the guy was trying to say, then what he showed is much more powerful than our 3-click selection ability in ArchiCAD ... and so I'm not actually laughing (other than at bad teaching style).

Cheers,
Karl

PS If this is indeed dynamically changing the appearance of filtered items per view - I cannot imagine (1) the computational overhead [slow?] and (2) the confusion to the user trying to figure out why things appear one way in one view and another way in another view, especially with many complicated filters as well as individual over-rides.

PPS What in the heck is a 'demountable' element in Revit?

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 04:53:47 GMT

Karl wrote:
PS If this is indeed dynamically changing the appearance of filtered items per view - I cannot imagine (1) the computational overhead [slow?] and (2) the confusion to the user trying to figure out why things appear one way in one view and another way in another view, especially with many complicated filters as well as individual over-rides.

PPS What in the heck is a 'demountable' element in Revit?

From what I've seen Revit's performance is still way behind ArchiCAD.

You're right that Revit's filter functions offer a lot of cababilities that are unavailable, difficult or kludgy workarounds in ArchiCAD, but as you say they are difficult to set up and potentially confusing for average users. They remind me of the old View Filters in speedikon (which were even more powerful and more tedious than the Revit features).

It still remains that Revit does not have a functional equivalent of Find & Select. In fact the selection tools in Revit are generally quite pathetic.

BTW: Demountable partitions are walls that can be installed and removed like casework/office furniture. Nothing to do with any particular Revit functions.

Re: Reality check - Revit

TomWaltz — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:01:06 GMT

I think Revit's closest function is "Select all instances", which lets you right-click an element and select every item in the project that is identical to it.

It's not quite Find & Select, but it's close.

I wouldn't say that Revit's performance is worse than Archicad's, just different. You never wait for an elevation to rebuild or a sheet to update. Instead, Revit makes changes as you do. It's a little slower to move a wall or change a parameter, but you get very fast opening of views. Send & Receive to a central file is differential (sending/receiving only the changes, not the whole file), so sometimes it's much faster than Archicad, depending on how many changes were made. Other times, if major aspects of the file changed, it can take forever.

Keep in mind, our average project is 300,000 SF, so neither program is exactly blazing fast for us. Minor differences matter, especially when applied over that scale.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:00:47 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
It's not quite Find & Select, but it's close.

I beg to differ. Unless there is some trick I am missing, Revit cannot easily accumulate and de-accumulate a selection (if you know a way to do this please let me know - it would be a huge help). I think ArchiCAD's selection tools not only beat Revit all hollow but are way ahead of any other software I've seen. (I know there's grep but that's just for text.)

If Revit were to add the function to right click and "Add all instances to selection" then they would be starting to approach the capabilities of Find & Select, but they still wouldn't have the fine tuning of detailed selection criteria. I admit I haven't worked with filters much yet so I'll have to see just haw much they may be able to serve as a substitute.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:10:12 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Keep in mind, our average project is 300,000 SF, so neither program is exactly blazing fast for us. Minor differences matter, especially when applied over that scale.

I've been working on projects of 400Ksf+ with detailed architectural models, complete structure and the MEP ductwork and ArchiCAD is quite snappy. Detailing an entire floor in 3D with all the layers on can be a little draggy but it's not bad and if I marquee half the floor it's very quick. I haven't had the chance to try a similar model in Revit yet, but the smaller models I have worked on have seemed noticeably slower.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:34:49 GMT

Not being an Archicad user, I'm not privy to the find and select function, however I am familiar with Revit and there is the ability to select a single item and using the "temporary hide/isolate" icon at the bottom of the screen, you can choose one of four features.
Isolate element
Hide element
Isolate catagory
Hide catagory
These would allow you to do a mass edit of all walls e.g. Not sure if that is similar to the command you are trying to replicate but it does allow you to activate all elements of a specific catagory. If you need a more specific selection tool than using the "select all instances or select previous" function works better. HTH

Re: Reality check - Revit

TomWaltz — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:43:33 GMT

I thought I would miss Find & Select a lot when I first started with Revit. What's interesting is that I found that I didn't need it. Revit's workflow just didn't seem to require it as much (possibly due to more use of "type" parameters in common elements). The selection tools are definitely weaker, but I do like the Filter Selection command.

Like Archicad, if you need to select odd-ball items across views, you can make a temporary schedule.

We've not had much in the way of performance slowdowns. We did a lot of research on "large projects", using the seminars at Autodesk University as a major resource.

I think a major key is creating families carefully (no "PROJECT2" type elements) and being careful about what elements are constrained to others go a LONG way toward improving file performance.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:04:03 GMT

Keep in mind, our average project is 300,000 SF, so neither program is exactly blazing fast for us.

Ha Tom wait till you try a project of 265,000 Square meters (Over 4 levels Lots curved sloping Slabs oops! ROOFS although it is well structured with layers)
Macbook pro (new 15") V12 handles it like a Ferrari

Re: Reality check - Revit

TomWaltz — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:11:44 GMT

Martin wrote:
Keep in mind, our average project is 300,000 SF, so neither program is exactly blazing fast for us.
Ha Tom wait till you try a project of 265,000 Square meters (Over 4 levels Lots curved sloping Slabs oops! ROOFS although it is well structured with layers)
Macbook pro (new 15") V12 handles it like a Ferrari

I'm assuming you have that broken into multiple RVT files?

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:35:35 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
I thought I would miss Find & Select a lot when I first started with Revit. What's interesting is that I found that I didn't need it. Revit's workflow just didn't seem to require it as much (possibly due to more use of "type" parameters in common elements). The selection tools are definitely weaker, but I do like the Filter Selection command.

It all depends on the sort of work you are doing.

I agree that selection tools are less needed in Revit for design work than in ArchiCAD. In my experience this is largely because of the relationships which automatically adjust related elements when design changes are made, whereas in ArchiCAD one has to select and modify the bits that don't adjust themselves.

On the other hand, in the work I am doing presently Find & Select is a primary tool and it's lack in Revit is a big disadvantage. We are doing construction coordination models on very large projects. In this work I find the Revit relationships more of a hindrance than a help and since much of the work is making revisions due to change orders and RFIs the quick and versatile selection tools of ArchiCAD are a big plus.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:31:02 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Martin wrote:
Keep in mind, our average project is 300,000 SF, so neither program is exactly blazing fast for us.
Ha Tom wait till you try a project of 265,000 Square meters (Over 4 levels Lots curved sloping Slabs oops! ROOFS although it is well structured with layers)
Macbook pro (new 15") V12 handles it like a Ferrari
I'm assuming you have that broken into multiple RVT files?

UH No it was done in ArchiCAD 11 migrated to 12
1 master file
6 modules
It did get complicated but learnt a lot

Re: Reality check - Revit

TomWaltz — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:51:57 GMT

Martin wrote:
TomWaltz wrote:
Martin wrote:
Ha Tom wait till you try a project of 265,000 Square meters (Over 4 levels Lots curved sloping Slabs oops! ROOFS although it is well structured with layers)
Macbook pro (new 15") V12 handles it like a Ferrari
I'm assuming you have that broken into multiple RVT files?
UH No it was done in ArchiCAD 11 migrated to 12
1 master file
6 modules
It did get complicated but learnt a lot

Sorry, I thought you meant in Revit. I've done jobs that size in Archicad already (AC9 and AC10, not quite as snappy as AC11 and 12 are!).

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:04:16 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
Sorry, I thought you meant in Revit. I've done jobs that size in Archicad already (AC9 and AC10, not quite as snappy as AC11 and 12 are!).

I think the construction team split it into 20 or so files Sloping slabs are a breeze in revit though.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:04:22 GMT

I have learned both revit and archi well, and the two both are best..two programs have plus and min..I have some staf that I taught them archi cause archi has easy to learn interface. I myself still work in revit cause revit like more intuitive for me as an civil engineer..In my day work,I still handle the two programs from co worker..a key is, archi is more like from architec for architec while revit is more like from engineer for engineer and architec who works in architecture, structure and mep..

Re: Reality check - Revit

Laszlo Nagy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:44:46 GMT

Rikhardus,
Just out of curiosity: Can you give some comparison between AC and Revit, pros and cons, based on your or your collegues' experiences? There has been some discussion on these topics. We do not have too many people fluent in both so as to give a broad opinion.

You might want to post that in the ArchiCAD vs Revit...pros and cons + various thread:
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=9280

By the way, you might want to change the Location in your Profile so spam bot programs will not take your email address from the forum.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:59:17 GMT

"laszlonagy" wrote:
Rikhardus,
Just out of curiosity: Can you give some comparison between AC and Revit, pros and cons, based on your or your collegues' experiences? There has been some discussion on these topics. We do not have too many people fluent in both so as to give a broad opinion.

I think that both AC and Revit are good but I can compare some of the two program, Revit has fully parametric internal engine, so single change updates all corresponding views/schedulles..AC has easy interface..Revit has instant and type family and In place family that easy to edit or modify while AC has GDL Object that requires knowledge of script. Revit has no layer but categories and specific while AC has layer..Revit has host for componen/family while AC doesn't. We can make our object/family ourself freely in Revit. I like Revit's Site Modeler and Mass Modeler..Layout in Revit is more integrated, Schedules are just another view in Revit..For me, ..Revit has better support from Autodesk resellers..For me, Revit can understand more for what I meant

Re: Reality check - Revit

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:31:46 GMT

OK, thanks for the information.

Re: Reality check - Revit

Laura Yanoviak — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:25:55 GMT

Rikhardus wrote:
[..Layout in Revit is more integrated, Schedules are just another view in Revit..

...and how is this different from AC?