Open Design Alliance enables native support for Revit files

[Laszlo Nagy]

This week the Open Design Alliance has announced that they have been working on for 3 year a solution that would make it possible for any vendor to read and write native Revit files (RFA - Revit Families, and RVT - Revit PRoject Files). The first version of this solution will be available from the beginning of 2017.0
Here are some additional info:

http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2016/09/open-design-alliance-opens-up-the-revit-file-format.html

http://architosh.com/2016/09/oda-accelerates-bim-interoperability-with-native-revit-file-support/

What do you guys think about this and the magnitude of this announcement?

The first thing I thought was that now it will be possible for manufacturer-created Revit content to become available for import for ARCHICAD users as well (this has been discussed quite a bit on the forum in the past).

[Laszlo Nagy]

Here is one other thing I was thinking. This new development will make it easier for offices to break away from Autodesk, if they want to. Since August 1 you can buy only subscription from Autodesk, so you cannot buy perpetual licenses. And if you don't pay your subscription fees, Revit will not run and you will not have access to your own Revit files.
Now if a company decides that they have had enough, they can convert all their projects to other application formats and make the move to the other platform.

(The ODA announcement said their solution is not complete yet, but in a few years it will be so this will be a totally realistic scenario.)

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Okay. I'll chime in. Thanks for posting this!

That is really fantastic news. Can't wait to see how GS implements this. And hopefully, sometime before ArchiCAD 22.

[stefan]

If the ODA would announce ARCHICAD PLN support this may be more significant for ARCHICAD users. RVT file format support (2017 only at the moment) is a huge undertaking but one that also confirms "de-facto" standards which Revit has become.

While I think it it is good for users to have more ways to access their data, even without the native software, theres isn't much you can do with Revit native data as such. They are organised completely different than e.g. ARCHICAD Elements or Vectorworks or any other software for that matter.

With DWG support, a line is still a line and an arc, polyline and text can be reasonably translated into other systems. But the way Revit defines e.g. a slab or a wall is different from ARCHICAD and others. So not sure how far they'll get in having full access.


OTOH, if some owner enforces delivery of native RVT content (which they shouldn't, but somehow some organisation seem to do), then other users may finally be able to deliver. Although it'll take a while to have fully validated RVT models according to a specific template when coming from other software.

So yes... HUGE but with lots of considerations.

[Anonymous]

Private organizations have every right to require any type of file they want. I always recommend to my customers to require native file + IFC.
I think like every conversion process it will not be perfect, but walls should be walls, doors should be doors, lines should be lines, views should views, sheets should be sheets etc.
A lot of work to make a proper translator.

[Anonymous]

It's mid 2017....has this happened?

[Anonymous]

Cary wrote:
It's mid 2017....has this happened?

There is beta testing being carried out on an add-on for RFA and RVT import see https://beta.graphisoft.com/#/news for details.

[davdelven]

Honestly... No favour to "open Standards" like IFC developed by buildingSMART.

[Link]

The RFA & RVT Geometry Exchange Add-on for ARCHICAD 21 is now available for free!

Check out http://www.bim6x.com/solutions

Cheers,
Link.