Reality check - Revit

[Anonymous]

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

[Rod Jurich]

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

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

[Karl Ottenstein]

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?

[Anonymous]

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.

[TomWaltz]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[TomWaltz]

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.

[Anonymous]

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