With regards to being owned by Autodesk, the pros compared to just being the Revit Technology Corporation are:
* huge exposure and marketing power, and good street cred (look at the price they paid for Revit... $133 million US in 2002)
* better financial backing
* the ability to field input on the software from a wide variety of users
* the ability to see how the software performs in a wide variety of environments and make improvements thereof
* the majority of the key RTC people stayed: programmers and product designers, product managers and marketing. They have maintained and defended RTC values and culture
The cons are:
* development is controlled by a bureaucratic organisation, whose aims may not be aligned with those wanting Revit to be a "one app does it all" package. I believe that Revit's modeling [in]abilities are not being focused on by Adesk the way they should, possibly because a) the other wishlist items are deemed more important, or b) Adesk wants us to buy other Adesk modeling apps to interoperate with Revit.
* the founders and some original RTC people left once the big A was boss, leaving something of a hole in the team, which hasn't been the end of the world, but it's still a shame. Jungreis and Raiz were among the world's best geometry kernel programmers so I do wish they could have stayed
* Autodesk is a public company and boy do they keep to the SEC rules. So all betas are strictly confidential and getting input on new versions is a limited affair. Ex RTCers are always afraid that leftover RTC culture will be taken away, which up to date it hasn't. I've visited the main Revit programming office which is very relaxed.
Adesk is a different company than it used to be. Much less boring, but still profit driven. I like Carl Bass and Phil Bernstein and everyone developing Revit. It's the Autodesk sales chain that makes my skin crawl. We have Autodesk sales guys in Canada who are all about money and have never touched Revit. Same thing in the US. The Autodesk support system outside of the Revit support group are morons with the software; they've never used it for real. Revit would have more momentum if people just knew how to use it.
As to Djordje's comments that he hasn't seen a set of Revit CDs, I could post endless sets of them, as could many other firms in the Vancouver area. I'm working for an architectural firm that has switched 100% to Revit, and we do it all with the software, right down to details. AutoCAD is used for odd jobs and cleaning up or working on DWGs from other consultants. Click
hereto see part of a reno project I did on contract a while back. That's not the complete or final set either; it's a test and all I have on PDF on this computer.
Revit does it all, except the really funky stuff. And that makes me sore. We don't want MaxonForm for Revit: we want MaxonForm *in* Revit. I won't need it 95% of the time, but I want to know that it's there if I need it.