rev-it vs archicad

[Anonymous]

im an archicad drafter who works for a company that is the sole distributor of archicad here in the philippines. and people just can't help compare archicad to auto-desk rev-it (as of now, autodesk is the leading cad software here). some people says that archicad is better and some people says otherwise.
"why is archicad better than rev-it?" people always ask me this question and i yet have to come up wit a decent reply. please help me up with this. im really proud of archicad and i just want to help promote it.

[Anonymous]

There have already been quite extensive discussions of this. There is one here.

If you search for both ArchiCAD and Revit you will find 737 pages of postings. You will undoubtedly wish to refine your search a bit more than my quick one.

You may be able to get another discussion going on this topic. But I for one am tapped out on the subject for now.

[Anonymous]

helo im kristine from the phil also..i just want to say that archicad is much better than autocad, i cant tell exactly why but i just know it!!

hehe..nwei im working in makati for a U.S based company..and was surprised to know that there is a company which uses archicad here..is your company a U.S based also or is it local?Because I'm just new with archicad and i want to know if there are other companies using it here so that if I want to resign with my present company,which i would like to do , I can look for other companies using archicad..because for me it's really really cool..

Although, as my other officemates here realized especially if your working previously with autocad, that the two are really different software, far from each other..i mean with autocad you work with commands and keyboard..with archicad alot of mouse clicks and less
keyboard shortcuts(or do you know lots of it?)...pls do send me a reply via email..kristinegrace_sanchez@yahoo.com............

Thanks a lot!

[Anonymous]

as sir matthew sugested, i did read some of the topics concerning the rev-it vs archicad. but as of now th only thing i noticed is archicad is a lot better when it comes to compatability.
other than that, is there anything else? i guess, same as kristine, i can feel it in my gut that archicad is a lot better than rev-it but i just need to know specifically why.

[Anonymous]

dino wrote:
as sir matthew sugested, i did read some of the topics concerning the rev-it vs archicad. but as of now th only thing i noticed is archicad is a lot better when it comes to compatability.
other than that, is there anything else? i guess, same as kristine, i can feel it in my gut that archicad is a lot better than rev-it but i just need to know specifically why.

I am not very familiar with more recent versions of Revit so I can only give you some vague generalities.

ArchiCAD has been around a lot longer and so has had time to develop tools, methods and workarounds* for just about any circumstance.

It was originally developed on much slower computers and so has many methods for working efficiently on projects that exceed the capacities of the machines. Using the marquee tool to inspect and work on an arbitrary isolated part of the model is one example of this.

It was originally developed for the Mac (like Word, Excel, Quark, PageMaker, Photoshop, etc...) and so it still has a legacy of quality interface design that is often lacking in Windows only products; though increasing complexity seems to have degraded this somewhat over the years. (I haven't looked at the recent versions of Revit so I don't know how it compares in this regard.)

Revit is a newer product and so lacks the time in the field. (It would be interesting to know the difference in hours billed on each program - I imagine that ArchiCAD must be quite a few (tens of?) thousand years ahead by this metric.) But from what I understand Revit are working very hard to catch up.

It is also based on a substantially different premise than ArchiCAD. From the beginning it has worked with relationships between the architectural elements (ie. stretch a dimension string and the associated element changes with it). While great in principle this has created problems. Early versions had significant performance problems. The other issue is managing all these relationships. I have heard of some who had some very unpleasant experiences with automatic relationships doing things that they didn't expect and didn't know about until after the drawings were issued. I believe recent versions are addressing this by allowing you to limit the extent of these relationships.

In Summary: Each program has it's advantages. Most I have talked to seem to agree that ArchiCAD is much better in the initial design stages despite that you have to use an add-on (MaxonForm) to do freeform modeling. ArchiCAD also has very strong drafting and documentation tools, and the integration of the model and documentation is also very good (and improving substantially with each release of the program).

Many people have complained over the years about ArchiCAD's lack of drafting tools but this can only come of not knowing how to use the program. Most of the people I have trained quickly prefer to draft in ArchiCAD even when they are old hands at AutoCAD (there have been some who simply refused to learn and left their firms to go back to AutoCAD based practices). I have one client who uses ArchiCAD almost strictly as a drafting tool (they often use form•Z for conceptual modeling) and they could generally run rings around AutoCAD users.

I don't know how Revit stands up on drafting and documentation but have heard that it is good.

My lack of recent experience with Revit prevents me from having a strong opinion about which is better and by how much. I do know that Autodesk's purchase and promotion of Revit has driven a lot of ArchiCAD sales, which suggests that quite a few firms - once convinced of the need to move to BIM - are choosing Graphisoft's product over Autodesk's. I know from experience that my clients studied the two programs long and hard before choosing ArchiCAD. They certainly didn't go to Revit just because it's owned by Autodesk (in many cases that is more of a negative factor).


* Don't look down on workarounds. They are future new features and without them we often would not be able to get the work out on time. The worst place to find yourself is when the only workaround is to print out, white out and paste up (been there done that too).

[Scott Davis]

Matthew wrote:
My lack of recent experience with Revit prevents me from having a strong opinion about which is better and by how much. I do know that Autodesk's purchase and promotion of Revit has driven a lot of ArchiCAD sales, which suggests that quite a few firms - once convinced of the need to move to BIM - are choosing Graphisoft's product over Autodesk's. I know from experience that my clients studied the two programs long and hard before choosing ArchiCAD. They certainly didn't go to Revit just because it's owned by Autodesk (in many cases that is more of a negative factor).

Revit sales are the driving force in Autodesk's recent successes. 15,000 seats of Revit in a 3 month span is impressive. This information is from the latest quarterly report on Marketwatch.com:

".......Autodesk's performance was driven by strong increases in revenue from new seats, subscriptions and emerging economies as well as increasing penetration of its 3D products...Revenue from new seats of 3D model-based design products increased 41 percent over last year, on particularly strong sales of the Revit family of products.....The company's 3D products, Inventor, Revit and Civil 3D continue to increase their market penetration. Combined revenues from the company's 3D model-based design products increased approximately 37 percent over the second quarter of last year to $91 million or 20 percent of total revenue. In total, more than 32,000 commercial seats of 3D were shipped in the quarter. The Revit family of products led 3D growth again this quarter. Revit revenue increased 96 percent compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2006. Autodesk shipped more than 15,000 commercial seats of Revit in the quarter...."

[Djordje]

Scott wrote:
Revit sales are the driving force in Autodesk's recent successes. 15,000 seats of Revit in a 3 month span is impressive. This information is from the latest quarterly report on Marketwatch.com:

How many of those are RevitBuilding bought for AutoCAD?

Many ADTs were "sold".

[Scott Davis]

Djordje wrote:

Scott wrote:
Revit sales are the driving force in Autodesk's recent successes. 15,000 seats of Revit in a 3 month span is impressive. This information is from the latest quarterly report on Marketwatch.com:

How many of those are RevitBuilding bought for AutoCAD?

Many ADTs were "sold".

Article doesn't give specifics, but surely some were "upgraded" seats of ADT to Revit.

[Srinivas]

Interesting to know how many of them were forced upgrades?

[Scott Davis]

Srinivas wrote:
Interesting to know how many of them were forced upgrades?

What was forced about it? I could still be running Revit 1.0 and AutoCADr14 if I wanted.