The three-day intensive in-office training is very useful due to the ability to tailor it to your specific template, families, project processes, and hardware. After that the Lynda is useful because the users can refer back to the lessons at any time.

I would discourage in-house informal training between employees at the start because it tends to result in bad habits being passed on.

I would also strongly suggest making an effort to integrate Revit knowledge into all roles. Architecture staff being relegated to "cad-monkey" status because only part of the staff knows the documentation software can easily lead to negativity.

online tutorials are good as a base, but it really helps to have a seasoned Revit user around to learn from and to help develop standards for the office.  In house training sessions...dunno...depends on the group...I don't think you really learn software till you get in and struggle, which is why the online tutorials are better, pause and work, repeat. Get a bunch of old timers watching a presentation and they aren't going to learn shit, but they are also too lazy to dig in and struggle with tutorials either...

family creation can be as complex or simple as you want...depends on the use and functionality required.  It is a whole other area of learning that is fairly complicated with parameters and associated modeling constrained to those parameters.  

Autodesk seek is a great resource for readymade families, although their search engine sucks, some of the families are heavy and not built very well, it is hit or miss with online downloads, revit city has some real garbage, but also some good models.

Key is to get a good template with your top 100 families already loaded, a server library is OK, but does have the same benefits as CAD, since it is all going cloud anyways and you just download what you need on a case by case basis.

Good luck.

Thank you both for the insight and perspective!

I always tell people to avoid internet families unless they know how to analyze them with regards to their technical merits. Bad families can bog down a model at best and corrupt it at worst. 

Also consider blocking Revit City on your network, as most of the help and families are not of any great quality.

revit city has some good q & a tho for quick answers if you are stuck.

just don't use some 50mb stove family created by some dude in the Andes.

Revit Forum tends to be my go-to for quick answers. When I popped into the Revit City chat, I got the impression many users were High School students learning Revit for class credit.

I usually just google:  "bla bla bla problem revit" and revit city or forum is the top answer; just saying its not worth throwing it out completely even though the families are junk.

You are correct.

whats your story pete...BIM master? Licensed Architect? Super Nintendo champion?

I work in a firm, taking exams, trying to figure out how to help push the profession to stop treating software like a stepchild and the people who are good at using it as second-class employees. I believe that if we can figure that out, we can have quality input at all stages of the design instead of a front loaded "DESIGN" phase followed by 6 months to a year of argument about how the Revit monkeys keep screwing up the design by working out those pesky details...

I find certain Architects take the easy road of sticking with fat pencil design ("I can't get into that whole Revit thing...") followed by blaming the nerds for their lack of foresight ("Would you like me to draw it for you on trace?"). I don't enjoy the conflict driven aspects of the practice, I guess.

I was participating in an open air art festival this past weekend and I got to talking to a gentleman that is an architect at a major stadium firm here in KC. He started to mention how he gets peeved by Revit and wish ACAD was still the standard. He was mentioning how more and more the production staff (Revit monkeys) keep encouraging him to draft in it instead of 'redlining it" and passing it back to production to pick up on, especially during times of crunch.

The quagmire is quite apparent.... it is much akin to the iconoclastic imagery of the monkey in 2000 A Space Odyssey picking up the bone for the first time and using it as a tool. These architecture firms are stacking the ppl that drive the ship in the hull, without a window to navigate from. While the ones that run the company are like "why are you driving the ship here, it need to be over there...why...here let me draw you a map".

In a way these managers are subsequently giving away their 'managing power' everyday that goes by, and they don't take it on themselves to learn the new tools of the trade. In the end, and the truth of it all, the production team is the most important part of getting a building to bid, and the managers and PMs are effectively removing themselves of worth if they cant get on the level of the 'Revit Monkeys".

It's a horrible business model, put your most important assets in the basement and the ones that get to 'meeting' all day and push paper sit in the ivory tower.

I cant thank myself enough for getting outta that shit.

Why do you think Revit is any different than CAD in the management/employee structure/relationship?  I get what you guys are saying, but I don't really think the tool is the problem, sounds like the management would be the same in either software?  

I am a PM that uses Revit and produces my own CDs.  I love and hate it for exactly that reason...There is no faking it in Revit.  In CAD you can make a change and fake in a detail and call it good...Move one piece of steel in Revit and it can lead to hours of follow-through to clean up effected problem areas.  Main problem I find is revit based consultants not pulling their weight, sloppy models, not useful in plugging in an coordinating.  

Either way, I would never go back to CAD...dark ages.

Move one piece of steel in Revit and it can lead to hours of follow-through to clean up effected problem areas.  

not sure what scenario that's actually referring to, but move one piece of steel in a building and it could be problematic too.

I think the issue is that Revit and it's learning curve farther isolates 'managers' from their importance, if the 'manager' does not embrace the new tool. What Revit does is reduce the number of floors between the 'monkeys' on the bottom floor and the 'manager' above. What you are witnessing is Revit managing the operator in a much more efficient manner than ACAD did/does. Thus gutting those imaginary floors between management/ drafter.

I think the door is wide open for the 'cottage' industry of architecture as long as you have someone to help deal with the city. You already see a large number of boutique firms specializing in daycares, breweries, recycling old unused high schools, etc with a staff of 5 max. 

a piece of steel in a revit model is a direct representation of a piece of steel in a building....that is exactly what I am referring to.

I am also witnessing a union of boutique architecture firms forming relation with small advertising firms, Graphic Design, even Landscaping companies. The idea of specializing in one thing and doing great, and out sourcing to other small business that do what they do best. Everyone stays small, but works together.

I think the new (which really isn't new) form business in America is the 'do it yourself entrepreneurs', which is what it was long before Reaganomics, and then became lost 30years down the line. The internet and the wealth of knowledge that can be self taught is unbelievable. It is time to break free from the corporate shackles, and I'd like to think that we as Americas are on the cusp to do so.

Why do you think the Koch brothers are trying to infiltrate politics thur out the country, and are amassing a small army as we speak?  

Revit monkeys are now the people that figure out projects more than the PMs because they are forced to due to the precise nature of the software?  In a traditional firm structure, I still don't know why a PM can't redline a set of revit drawings and regain control of the project, it might lead to a lot of whining from staff, but that is part of the process - was the same with CAD.

I think titles are part of the problem...senior PM, drafter I, revit technician, paper organizer. Regardless of the software used in an office, people in this day and age need to be a jack of all trades, I don't really care what your title is, I just want to know what you are capable of.

perhaps a better way to phrase that is the manager is more of a middle man and less of a manger, like just another step in the game of telephone to obfuscate the flow of information.  in that sense, they are impeding the development process rather than helping it.  they're becoming dead weight.

it's not necessarily the detail of the software.  revit is different than cad in that a lot of information needs to be filled in early on.  like you said, you can fake stuff easier in autocad since it's just lines.  in revit, something needs to be put in place to move forward, so ultimately it's the person using revit that ends up making that decision.

if the person on revit is doing what the manager does, they would know more about what's going on in the project and be able to make better decisions.  that would lead to better buildings and better architecture.

imho, for someone who is now a manager to still be useful as an architect, part of their time will need to be spent working on the actual drawing set instead of marking up typos on paper, and part of their time actively teaching the production staff how to make better decisions with regards to the actual building design.  you could say that redlines can be useful in teaching how to detail a building, but ultimately we have new tools that could be more effective.

Revit monkeys are now the people that figure out projects more than the PMs because they are forced to due to the precise nature of the software?  In a traditional firm structure, I still don't know why a PM can't redline a set of revit drawings and regain control of the project, it might lead to a lot of whining from staff, but that is part of the process - was the same with CAD.

Back in the day 2007 - 2010 - being a Revit monkey was great - because even though I had very little experience, I was the one who would figure out the project - then the P.A.s learned enough Revit to at least open the files and go to various sheets and views and make changes and decisions - that was when I got my "Fast Trak" pass revoked and only recently manged to work my way back up to where I was before the recession. - Oh Well

Revit is a tool. Architecture utilizes it. You can't be facile in Revit without being an architect (fuck title law, I'm talking about what we DO, not what we're CALLED). So when the architect in charge of design doesn't use Revit and doesn't respect the architects who do because the architect in charge of design doesn't see the architects who use Revit as designers and instead sees them as the new flavor of cad monkeys, the architect in charge of design is fucking over the architects who will get their designs realized. I work with young people who have now figured out that to get to design, you need to have the Revit cred on your resume, then lie on the job and say you don't know it very well. This is not conjecture, they have admitted as much.

This is completely fucked up.

It was the shock of the new when Revit came out - Many of us "young guns" learned it on our own out of necessity before and during the great recession -  either we were Revit proficient or unemployed - and became these Revit Rats or Revit Monkeys whatever - acquiring architectural cred became much tougher because the architects just wanted us to model and draft "I do the thinking, you do the Reviting" is what one architect told me. 

and now we also need to learn to be programmers to write in python for Grasshopper and or Dynamo - so we will have to call ourselves architech because that's the corner we painted ourselves into.

I choose not to blame the victim. Architects need to respect their colleagues. All of them. I know more Revit than most of my coworkers, and I know more about architecture than a fair share, and for some reason the Revit knowledge sets be behind those with less architecture knowledge when it comes time to hand out tasks.

I believe it's because there's a bullshit belief that no self-respecting DESIGNER would ever debase themselves to learn SOFTWARE.

xenakis...you don't need to learn dynamo or grasshopper unless you are doing starchitect type work.   You have posted that a number of times...why would you need those skills?  you are just doing some blow and go multifamily right?  What would those skills add to that type of work?  Calling Dynamo "programming" is a stretch...visual nodes is hardly coding. Python is another story. 

I guess it just boils down to the fact that the real design and decisions get made in Revit and the old dogs don't want to learn it, but they still want to control every aspect of the production...sounds like a paradigm shift.  Solution - each architect models their own project.  Middle managers - do-nothings - get fired...no need to keep around expensive dead weight anyways.

chigurh

actually Dynamo will be used to do a lot of workhorse level repetitive tasks in "blow and go multifamily" not for doing some wowie zowie corporate campus down the peninsula - this way we can spend more time on coordination and design and value engineering.

I guess it just boils down to the fact that the real design and decisions get made in Revit and the old dogs don't want to learn it, but they still want to control every aspect of the production...sounds like a paradigm shift.  Solution - each architect models their own project.  Middle managers - do-nothings - get fired...no need to keep around expensive dead weight anyways.

you nailed it here - 

that's kind of the hard part chigurh.  people are trying to manage processes they don't understand, just to desperately keep up the image that they're still relevant.  it's just software.  it's not that hard.  if you can learn sketchup and minecraft, i'm sure you can learn revit.

if you want to manage a project in a office that uses revit, learn revit.  if you don't want to learn revit, manage projects in autocad.  the software won't make the building better or worse.  on the other hand, screwing shit up because you feel the need to interject into something you don't understand just makes you look dumb.

'you' is a general term not to mean 'you.'  i don't think anyone in this thread has really planted a flag on one side or the other.

curtkram - many of those who still manage a project in autocad are being pushed into revit irregardless - job adds for PMs at the 10 year mark expect some Revit knowledge - 

We haven't had a debate internally whether or not Revit is a better tool than ACAD. It seems quite straight forward from a drawing efficiency standpoint that it is increasingly years beyond ACAD. 

We are also not debating learning curves or if it will segregate others who willingly do not adopt the change. If an employee is required to complete drawings, they will learn the software in which they are created.

Other than components libraries and training, what else would one well versed in Revit suggest investigating -- templates, standards? I know there are many more aspects involved with getting operational. What am I missing?

You should invest time in creating a good template for the firm. This, combined with a pdf explaining proper usage and process of the template and families (creating as well) will go a long way towards a quality set of documents.

This has been a fascinating conversation. I started using Revit in 2008, in a very large firm.  My Revit skills helped keep me employed during the 4 rounds of layoffs during the recession.  

Now I've been in the profession for 10 years, breaking into more of a leadership/manager role.  It definitely seems like my Revit expertise hurt my career; I was doing and those that couldn't do were getting promoted (or fired during the recession).  There is not a single principal in my 200+ person office that knows how to use revit.  Beneath that layer there is a big group of associate principals/project managers that can't use revit and are providing diminishing value to projects they're running.  That layer isn't making principal, and gumming up advancement for the next generation that should be promoted.  Its a real problem that the office is attempting to address now.  A few weeks ago 10 people were laid off, mostly middle managers that could/would not use revit, they spent most of their time sending emails and attending meetings that the "reviteers" are shut out of.

I think that attitudes about technology in architecture are changing; there really isn't another game in town,

The next recession will finish off those that never made the transition to Revit 

Being a Revit Rat/BIM WIT whatever is almost a profession with architecture - becoming a full fledged architect is a road to middle management and getting culled

when CAD first became standard practice for most firms was there this same kind of simmering resentment between the users / non-users? how long do we have until Revit/BIM is old tech and all those who never got past being good at it get bumped out?

@khmay: it would be worth designating someone to be a 'fixer' who can go through models and make sure the team is organizing things properly and building families well so that projects run smoothly as they become more detailed. It's easy for inexperienced users to start off in the wrong way and slowly compound the mess if no one is watching - like throwing junk families in that kill performance for nonsense like detailed 3D plumbing fixtures.

Ideally this would be a project architect who understood enough about construction to judge if the modeling actually makes sense for what it needs to show. In addition to what sneakyPete said, clear guidelines for using materials (and setting appropriate parameters for them in families) to coordinate with keynotes and schedules will save a lot of time later on.

@khmay: it would be worth designating someone to be a 'fixer' who can go through models 

I went into architecture to be an architect, not to be a BIM model fixer - but if I can sustain the BIM model fixing as a career - do a job no one else wants, then maybe that will be a good trade off - 

Thank you for the suggestions!

The template suggestion makes me wonder if there are packages available for purchase that help companies get setup. For example a template/component library built for residential firms that cover your basics. 

I agree a designated person- likely the most experienced person will likely be required to check models, maintain libraries, etc and be the point of contact for Revit help. 

It's not a glorious job to be in charge of software efficiencies but these employees can and will demand higher compensation for their crucial knowledge.