Revit Vs. Graphisoft Archicad

[celigo]

I'm going to start working in Revit in a residential architecture class I'm taking. I've only used Graphisofts Archicad up until this point. How do the two compare and what frustrating things can I expect to find in Revit?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Too vague a question to receive a good answer. Base workflow is the same, create a model and program "extracts" the 2D info. My main peeves are that I don't like RVTS interface on all levels and that I cannot work in perspective.

[jl_lt]

The main frustation you will have is that Revit will try to "fix" your model and more often than not you will be battling it to get it do what you want.  It is strongly adviced that before you start working in Revit you already know more or less how the design will be either in 2d plans or in a model done in a more free software.

In Archicad it is also advided you more or less know what you will be modelling, but as you might already know, it affords more freedom to design and change stuff within its own environment.

This is not to discourage you, as, if you are still on school it would be a great use of your time to learn both softwares; master one, but learn the other.

Best of lucks!

[Laszlo Nagy]

One of the biggest differences for me is that in Archicad you select an element instance and you can modify any of its parameters or settings. In Revit, elements have types and you have type-level parameters and instance-level parameters. So for each element type you have to know which parameters are type-level and which ones are instance-level.

Also, Revit does not have Layers, it has Categories and you define the 2D/3D representation of elements on the Category level. So, for example, all your Walls will have the same Cut Line Pen color. Then, if you want a Wall instance to have a different Cut Line Pen color in a Views, you can override it in that specific View or you have to create View Filters to override it is multiple Views.

Also, it does not have a Project Map, you always have to define Views.

Actually, if you go to the Graphisoft Learn Portal, go to the Catalog and search for "Revit" you will find free courses like "Getting Started with Archicad for Revit users". These courses cover some of the main differences between the two applications so it can be helpful, and they are FREE:

https://learn.graphisoft.com/home