Revit 2010: epic fail?

[Anonymous]

Hi there ArchiCADers... news from the wild world of Revit!

Revit 2010 has just hit the streets, and implanted face first. So much for crowd surfing: this release was panned before it was released and now enjoys widespread scorn from the user community. Long time Revit users, ex-Autodesk employees, experts and implementers, and representatives from the Revit user community have all come to the conclusion that Revit 2010 sucks. There are a few that are supporting it on AUGI, so the hate isn't universal.

I'm a little stunned at the response, and not sure if it's warranted. Revit is in the middle of a UI facelift (evidently the developers are Ribbon haters -- it was forced on them by management), and its graphic engine is being replaced by one supporting DirectX 9. It's faster than 2009, but no one seems to care. It's that Revit Architecture got a few scant features in this release and an interface the majority didn't ask for.

Like you, we have a wishlist a mile long of items large and small. And most of those wishes remain unmet after half a dozen releases. It's customer relationship management 101: give the paying customer what they want. Talk to them before you force-feed them a new interface. And frankly, Autodesk has missed doing that so badly that some users are openly talking about bailing on Revit and trying something else.

Arrogance, incompetence, or did they just not see this coming? The user community would say either of the first two, and it's not pretty. I think it's a combination of management making a bad call and then not anticipating that the user community would blow their stack. But our users have been waiting for ages for some long-standing wishes to be fulfilled, and release after release, they don't show up. Patience evaporates, and now it's gone.

It's good news for you folks, because every time Autodesk screws up this badly, the sun shines a lighter brighter on you all.

Side note: Aaron Bourgoin, a local VW user and myself will be making a presentation to the Architectural Institute of British Columbia on how you can do BIM with AC, VW and Revit. Perhaps the field is leveling a bit?

AUGI appears to be down right now, but I'll post some links later showing how rabid our members are. We're a scary lot, I tell you!

[Thomas Holm]

metanoia wrote:
...our users have been waiting for ages for some long-standing wishes to be fulfilled, and release after release, they don't show up...

Metanoia, thanks for the heads-up! But what are those issues?

[Eduardo Rolon]

When you need a Hammer getting a redesigned Screwdriver will not do.

I posted these links in another thread

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=144242&highlight=revit#144242

ejrolon wrote:
a reaction to the ribbon from an existing user

http://architechure.blogspot.com/2009/03/well-intentioned-road-paving.html

and an opinion (that includes the link to the one above)

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2009/03/revit-2010-ui-step-forward-or-step-back.html

Thanks for the info.

[Laszlo Nagy]

This topic of the Revit forums pretty well summarizes users' first impressions and generally they are not very positive:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=99307&highlight=revit+2010
Another thread is a poll for small, medium and large firms and asks if they are "satisfied", "dissatisfied" or "dissatisfied and may cancel subscription". So far, satisfied to dissatisfied ratio is 10 to 25:
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=99789&highlight=revit+2010

[Eduardo Rolon]

another link

http://architechure.blogspot.com/2009/04/humpty-dumpty-sat-on-a-wall.html

[Thomas Holm]

Hey -take it easy - I'm not here to gloat or to flame another program. I know Revit has its strengths, as Archicad has, and I'm interested in Wes's mature opinions. I once wanted him banned, but I've learned I was wrong. Now I regard him as a serious professional, like many of us here. While I think Archicad works best for my needs, I'm a realist, and a professional, and I've switched before - I used mainly Microstation btw 1989 and 1998. (I admit I'd hesitate for a very long time before I'd cave in to Autodesk, though. Not because of their applications' quality, but because of their hilarious monopolist policies against their users, such as no upgrade for three years and you're orphaned)

[Eduardo Rolon]

To be fair,

here's a link to tutorials for Revit, they are quite good.

http://designreform.net/category/tutorials/revit-tutorials/

[Anonymous]

Laszlo -- those are the threads I was trying to link yesterday.

So what do Revit users want?

• : site tools for creating roads, sidewalks and the like in Revit's terrain
  : better text formatting tools -- they're quite rudimentary at present
  : all the tools for *modeling* structural and HVAC so they can be built into the arch'l model
  : customizable elevation tags
  : sloped walls as an instance parameter of any given wall

And I could go on and on... but if Autodesk were to give us one or two of those in this release, the masses would be appeased

[Laszlo Nagy]

Wes, so I beat you to it.

I think this is an issue that is a useful lesson for GS too: what kind of mistakes not to make.

[TomWaltz]

Revit 2010 kind of reminds me of Archicad 12. It has a couple new features that the manufacturer RAVES about, and the users kind of said "OK, that's nice. Where's the rest of the new features?"