this is so true - offices that are "hybrids" what we call autocadRevit fall on their swords everytime - the problem is they have senior staff that refuses to learn Revit "Oh I don't have time for that - that's why we hired you to model, we're the architects " Or the ones that use Sketchup - when Revit should be used.
The worst was a certain large firm during the recession that reverted in mid project(s) to autocad from Revit - they went down hard
chigurh
May 10, 16 5:02 pm
Abandoning BIM half way through is a recipe for disaster, sack up and stay the course. You gotta make it through the steep learning curve one time to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once you start to develop standards/templates and families to use on all projects its smooth sailing after that.
no_form
May 10, 16 5:17 pm
there's two reasons why people do not go to bim. 1. cheap. don't want to invest in the software. 2. comfort/stubborn - do not want to take the time to learn. too stubborn to learn something new.
interesting argument - BIM frees up time to find more work. would like to hear more about that.
zonker
May 10, 16 6:02 pm
that's why I am learning dynamo and grasshopper - my co-workers fresh out of Berkeley are grasshopper aces and look at me as if I am Old school - - "Xenakis only knows Revit Tee hee hee"
we must always look over the horizon and go there
gwharton
May 10, 16 6:14 pm
A big problem is that BIM is a shitty design tool, and teams try to implement it too early in the process.
no_form
May 10, 16 6:19 pm
xenakis, what are you using dynamo and grasshopper for?
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 6:29 pm
BIM isn't a shitty design tool any more than Oil Paint is a shitty artists' medium.
Problem is we've given watercolor experts oil paint and expect immediate results.
gwharton
May 10, 16 7:04 pm
Yes, BIM is a shitty design tool. Not because of differential skill levels, but because it inherently forces too much precision and too much information too fast. CAD does the same thing, actually, but fractionally less so.
archanonymous
May 10, 16 7:18 pm
We should differentiate between "BIM" and "Revit"
The new Rhino and Grasshopper to ArchiCAD pipeline looks amazing for integrated concept design/ dd/ and documentation.
Revit markets itself as such but it can't touch the freedom of a good freeform modeling program in Concept Design.
Xenakis - Its probably good to know a bit of grasshopper and dynamo but I have found that even at my young age (when I am working at a firm that uses these tools) I more often than not sketch out "pseudo-code" or "scripting flowcharts" for people to follow in order to actually produce the work.
zonker
May 10, 16 7:25 pm
no_form
Dynamo - right now for conceptual studies, generating sidewalks and writing params to and from excel.
Grasshopper - also used for conceptual studies
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 7:32 pm
"Yes, BIM is a shitty design tool. Not because of differential skill levels, but because it inherently forces too much precision and too much information too fast. CAD does the same thing, actually, but fractionally less so."
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
Learn a process. Use the process. Don't let the software dictate what you do.
To clarify, we use a pencil to sketch. This is the most basic of tools. Yet most arguments I hear against BIM consist of "grasshopper, sketchup, et al can do *insert thing here* better".
A pencil can't do that thing better, either, yet we still consider it a quality design tool. So do we want a tool that can do MORE, or can do LESS? Or do we simply want tools that get us to where we need to go? If you NEED parametrics or programming, create a process to get it done.
Just because the BIM you have doesn't do it doesn't make the BIM you have "a shitty design tool".
chigurh
May 10, 16 7:32 pm
BIM is not a design tool. Its software for generating construction drawings.
The failings for design don't have to do with precision and too much information too soon. It really boils down to the fact that Revit/BIM tools are only created for very regular (boring as shit) building typologies. Plumb walls and square windows/tilt up cracker jack box junk. If you design in another way/other sofware/by hand, etc. you will find that you create all sorts of weird conditions that are very difficult (not impossible) to model in BIM and by doing so you create much better designs.
Ever hear the sentiment that you should never let the difficulty of a drawing prevent you from doing what you want to do? Well BIM does that all the time, if that is your primary design tool, especially for newbies.
Where BIM gets interesting is when you start to plug in 3rd party software models, rhino, maya, custom families, weird shit that pushes the limits. When you are not letting an out of the box software tool control what you can and cannot do.
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 7:37 pm
"BIM is not a design tool. Its software for generating construction drawings. "
So you don't want your left brain to know what your right brain is doing?
curtkram
May 10, 16 7:43 pm
bim is not a replacement for your brain. get the idea in your head, then learn how to use oil paints or revit or whatever to communicate it and work out the details.
this article is nothing but some guy drawing arbitrary graphs. if it looks like a power point presentation from an accountant, it must be real science right? dumbest thing i've seen today
tduds
May 10, 16 7:46 pm
Those graphs make sense if you replace "Design" in his x-axis with "The very last step of SD"
BIM is not a design tool, nor is CAD. If you do design right, then jump into one of the two, you're still going to have about the same time balance as those graphs show.
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 7:52 pm
The foolish (and pervasive) tendency to continue calling ONLY pre-design "design" as if all of the answers are there at the beginning of SD bugs the shit out of me.
What's the D in SD?
What's the first D in DD?
Software is a part of design. All of it. Like curt said, stop making arbitrary statements about what is or isn't a design tool.
FFS.
archanonymous
May 10, 16 8:09 pm
curt - I absolutely agree with your "bim is not a replacement for your brain. get the idea in your head, then learn how to use oil paints or revit or whatever to communicate it and work out the details."
The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand.
tduds
May 10, 16 8:10 pm
DD is where BIM can become immensely useful, if used correctly.
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 8:17 pm
"The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand."
This is the bad kind of lazy that one should strive to avoid, like weeds in a garden. It's also a more pervasive problem for firms and teams which silo their staff into different tasks. While necessary to a large degree, it creates the type of animosity and territoriality that leads to whole-hog statements about software and the people who use it.
archanonymous
May 10, 16 8:34 pm
If you think you can avoid falling into that trap simply by "not being lazy" when using a single software package, you are delusional. No matter how hard you try and how conscientious you are about it, it still happens.
diversity in tools and workflows may be good for design but there are very few firms who think it is good business.
curtkram
May 10, 16 8:43 pm
The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand.
so don't do that. seriously. be aware of where the software is leading you and make sure it's your brain that's running the process rather than taking the quick way or the easy way out. i think it's true that it sometimes happens though.
SneakyPete
May 10, 16 8:45 pm
Please explain why "diversity in tools and workflows may be good for design".
That's a broad generalization.
curtkram
May 10, 16 8:47 pm
could just be like looking at something from a different perspective. i would advise getting up and walking around every now and then. that also helps.
archanonymous
May 10, 16 8:59 pm
I'm not even talking about architecture anymore.
People who are good at making things are always tweaking their tools, making and buying new ones and experimenting with where the new tools can take them.
It is always possible to be aware of where the design is going - what is ideal vs what is achievable - and even with bad tools, you can get those two to converge, but it seriously limits your ability to test different solutions if you are having to overcome deficiencies in your tools in order to achieve what you want.
Trying to achieve an idealized solution with limiting tools results in the use of a great deal of time that could have been put towards design or some other billable project.
SneakyPere - diversity in tools and workflows IS good for design. full stop. Unless one is trying to produce more of the banal shit you see everywhere in architecture, that is.
Could you design and document a ZHA or SHoP building with pencil and paper? Sure you could, but we couldn't have even gotten to the point of conceptualizing projects like that without new and different tools.
I could probably build a damn nice dining table with nothing but a chisel, a hacksaw, and a quart of my own semen but again, why? It's analogous to saying an architect can do everything in BIM.
midlander
May 10, 16 9:26 pm
so... setting aside the orthodoxies of software religions, what are the workflows you / your teams / your offices use for design now?
My team has found revit just doesn't often make sense before DD. Our clients tend to be capricious and indecisive - it's far less labor to string along on a handful of sloppy sketchup models and some sketchy CAD plans then try to keep up with them at the level of model quality needed to function in revit.
Once we're in DD, the design is settled enough that the effort of revit modeling makes sense on most projects (but not always). If substantial design changes come up, it's either within the labor budget or we can hold out for additional services at that point, because by then the owners are usually in a hurry to get things moving.
The BIM graphs are kind of stupid and vague the way all BIM promotion seems to be. They seem to be working backwards from the generalization that Revit modeling takes more time up front. Which isn't exactly true. It's just that revit isn't good at ambiguity, and most projects start with a lot of that. This notion that software purity is the essence of good design practice is idiotic.
---
I will say aside from anything about BIM or workflow, revit has an inept modeling interface. It's functional but clumsy - the iTunes of modeling software. I'm not talking about capability - I just mean things like how I pan / zoom / scroll or how to obscure and reveal elements as I develop something is needlessly cumbersome. The whole thing seems designed by database engineers and not a single concession to UX principles was made. Which isn't new to revit: AutoCAD had about the worst modeling interface of the pre-bim 3D software, to such an extent that as far as I know no one except community college CAD instructors ever used CAD for 3d modeling.
Dangermouse
May 10, 16 11:18 pm
Revit UX is a steaming pile of shit, with 8 different radio buttons buried in context specific menus, each button having the ability to totally fuck with what you're trying to do. When Revit works well, its amazing, but when it doesn't it gives you cancer.
Dangermouse
May 10, 16 11:26 pm
@midlander my office has no revit standards, so each PM does things differently. Our modeling practices, as a whole, are not good. I feel like I spend ~80% of the day punching myself in the dick.
a mouse
May 11, 16 3:08 am
@midlander, exactly. our general rule is no BIM until the client has a planning approval for the project and wholesale changes to the form will cost them more in amendment fees and delays than it will us.
a mouse
May 11, 16 3:19 am
The graphs are crap as well. Even if you believe the proposition that the BIM timeline can tail away that quickly from the initial workload, it doesn't relate to the reality of project timelines or fees. I would suggest that for commercial and multi-residential projects the majority of market driven projects will inevitably go on hold for some period between the design and documentation phases, sit in planning for years, or even vanish entirely with clients onselling sites etc.
i don't know any commercial clients who will have enough confidence in getting planning, tenants or sales on a project to pay 60% of my fees in the design phase. its usually 5-10% depending on complexity and time. So i have to load my fees in the documentation phase anyway. So why go to BIM earlier. all it does is increase the risk of being underwater on the project.
gruen
May 11, 16 7:53 am
Mouse-you make a valid point. I'm a sole prop office and mostly use revit. Cad for very simple projects.
I'm not good at other tools _ too old for rhino for example-so I'm usually using revit to get designs together. Sometimes sketch up.
I find that design time in revit is costly but does save a bunch down the road. Honestly I find design to be slow regardless - so I'm usually trying to cut a few corners during design - example-not modeling fascias and trim during design.
I like revit for any project where I'll need to do elevations and sections. Little TI projects are still faster in cad.
I'm still not sure about cut / paste / reusing elements. Cad is just better at this. A good template helps in revit.
Non Sequitur
May 11, 16 8:04 am
Oh, I normally save my BIM vs CAD discussion for the bar where I am garanteed s steady supply of Guinness. I am both the software guru and revit Guinea pig in our office and that often leads one to drink.
Good points all arround, especially the one about using semen for furniture making.
archiwutm8
May 11, 16 8:54 am
Why are we still on about this shit?
gwharton
May 11, 16 1:19 pm
+1 on midlander's post. That's pretty much how we do it too. No BIM until SD is done and changes have settled down to incremental evolution and refinement. Despite it's fluidity for coordinating minor changes during documentation, BIM is extremely change intolerant during concept and schematic phases. Maintaining multiple major alternatives or making substantial changes from week to week is very cumbersome and costly in BIM. It goes way faster and easier with tools that are better for conceptual design tasks.
And also, Revit's GUI sux hard. It's almost as bad as 3DS Max.
zonker
May 11, 16 1:52 pm
Where I work, concept through SD is in Skp and acad - DD - CA is Revit - because Revit lost ground in design to legacy tools - Autodesk came up with Formit - at many offices I worked at before this one, we did everything in Revit and never had any problems.
also with Revit, there is better coordination the design phase, total transparency - this way team members can't do stuff to their own agenda - it keeps everyone honest
gwharton
May 11, 16 2:03 pm
I would actually like to hear, in detail, about a project that successfully and profitably used Revit from concept planning through construction, and how that was done. I have yet to see one that wasn't a complete disaster on some level in the design phase.
curtkram
May 11, 16 2:05 pm
3DS Max ui is crazy easy. if you want to move a point up, you move it up. you want to move it sideways, you move it sideways. you don't have to pick planes to extrude from, which is cumbersome. on the other hand, revit's section box is really handy.
i assume the decision to use revit early or not is based on the people doing the work and what tools they know. if the principal is involved early in schematics while it's fun and steps away when production starts because it's not fun, then the principal uses whatever tool they think is fun to start the project with, and then dictate the production tools based on what they heard from the latest autodesk sales rep. perhaps xenakis can provide more insight as to why he's seen the offices he worked at choose different methods.
gwharton
May 11, 16 2:26 pm
curtkram: You are correct that the decision about which tools to use in the early design phase is entirely driven by the people doing the design work. However, this is not a simple matter of familiarity or lack thereof. Some tools are just better for the job than others. That anybody would dispute this is really bizarre, and seems to be entirely motivated by production staff being frustrated that their pet tool isn't being used for everything as a matter of convenience to them.
bundy
May 11, 16 2:50 pm
Is it me or was Revit improving every year until autodesk purchased it, and has been stuck with the same issues and no evolution since? I feel like the same complaints about Revit today are the same as 10 years ago.
Dangermouse
May 11, 16 3:08 pm
i know that in revit 2017 autodesk finally brought the text editor up to the functionality level of microsoft wordpad, so there's that.
curtkram
May 11, 16 3:19 pm
i don't think it's about pet tools gwharton. i think it's about familiarity.
gwharton
May 11, 16 4:01 pm
I'm as familiar with Revit as I am with Rhino or Sketchup or AutoCAD. I refuse to use it for design because it is a poor tool for that task, not because I am unfamiliar with it. ArchiCAD is marginally better, mainly because it has a set of plan diagramming tools built in. But that is faint praise.
archanonymous
May 11, 16 4:02 pm
gwharton - I am currently working on a project in Revit that is going swimmingly.
Most "design" - meaning design thinking and concepts - happened on paper, but it has been represented via Revit since day 1. Only 13k sq ft though and it is a very simple building.
SneakyPete
May 11, 16 5:13 pm
We can sit here all day and accuse each other of not caring about x or y, but assuming anything about people simply from an opinion is a good way to ensure they never really give your position a proper listen.
And yeah, that's directed to myself as much as anyone else.
A.I.
May 12, 16 3:52 am
Stop referring to BIM as a software or a 'design tool.'
Our office doesn't require a Revit Model until the very end of SD. Before that, each designer/team can use/do whatever the hell they want to work with the client, gain approvals, and design freely.
The only rule is that the design better be consolidated in to a decent Revit Model according to stringent office standards by the end of Schematic Design so that DD, coordination, clash detection, and ultimately CD is as painless as possible.
Ironically, design teams that have gotten past the 'Revit sucks for design' culture and are able to build kick-ass conceptual/schematic Revit Models are the most cost effective teams for the design process as a whole.
However, I will grant that the learning curve is steep, and if your office doesn't have effective BIM workflows, standards, and templates that your employees actually follow, then you're going to probably lose money on BIM adoption.
curtkram
May 12, 16 9:39 am
how is bim not software or a design tool?
archiwutm8
May 12, 16 11:36 am
Cause it isn't, BIM is the process within the software, it wasn't created to be a design process but rather a collaboration and to be able to have all your information in a singular set.
The software itself is just a "Modelling" software which allows for the process with a good set of tools.
SneakyPete
May 12, 16 12:46 pm
I use BIM as a generic because otherwise people tend to start a "Mac vs. PC" argument.
I would like to see a better process developed to get the initial design (in any medium) tracked into the BIM software. One that acknowledges individual preference.
curtkram
May 12, 16 1:53 pm
i don't know archi. that sounds like saying it's wrong to skype someone, because skype isn't software but rather an audio/video collaboration. really, it's still software that you're using, as a tool, to collaborate with someone.
when i bim, i use software to bim. it's still a tool we use to design buildings that can be built, and to communicate design intent with the various interested entities related to the project. focusing on bim as a collaboration (if i understand you right) instead of as software or a tool doesn't help the building. the deliverable is still typically a set of construction drawings printed on large format paper, or sometimes on a pdf.
nrotelli
May 12, 16 3:37 pm
At least no one here is saying that Revit is a nice software to render and do pretty images as I see some people around me braging about.
Oh look at this beautiful kitchen I did on revit. FULL REVIT.
http://www.shoegnome.com/2015/12/09/bim-still-bankrupting-firm/
this is so true - offices that are "hybrids" what we call autocadRevit fall on their swords everytime - the problem is they have senior staff that refuses to learn Revit "Oh I don't have time for that - that's why we hired you to model, we're the architects " Or the ones that use Sketchup - when Revit should be used.
The worst was a certain large firm during the recession that reverted in mid project(s) to autocad from Revit - they went down hard
Abandoning BIM half way through is a recipe for disaster, sack up and stay the course. You gotta make it through the steep learning curve one time to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once you start to develop standards/templates and families to use on all projects its smooth sailing after that.
there's two reasons why people do not go to bim. 1. cheap. don't want to invest in the software. 2. comfort/stubborn - do not want to take the time to learn. too stubborn to learn something new.
interesting argument - BIM frees up time to find more work. would like to hear more about that.
that's why I am learning dynamo and grasshopper - my co-workers fresh out of Berkeley are grasshopper aces and look at me as if I am Old school - - "Xenakis only knows Revit Tee hee hee"
we must always look over the horizon and go there
A big problem is that BIM is a shitty design tool, and teams try to implement it too early in the process.
xenakis, what are you using dynamo and grasshopper for?
BIM isn't a shitty design tool any more than Oil Paint is a shitty artists' medium.
Problem is we've given watercolor experts oil paint and expect immediate results.
Yes, BIM is a shitty design tool. Not because of differential skill levels, but because it inherently forces too much precision and too much information too fast. CAD does the same thing, actually, but fractionally less so.
We should differentiate between "BIM" and "Revit"
The new Rhino and Grasshopper to ArchiCAD pipeline looks amazing for integrated concept design/ dd/ and documentation.
Revit markets itself as such but it can't touch the freedom of a good freeform modeling program in Concept Design.
Xenakis - Its probably good to know a bit of grasshopper and dynamo but I have found that even at my young age (when I am working at a firm that uses these tools) I more often than not sketch out "pseudo-code" or "scripting flowcharts" for people to follow in order to actually produce the work.
no_form
Dynamo - right now for conceptual studies, generating sidewalks and writing params to and from excel.
Grasshopper - also used for conceptual studies
"Yes, BIM is a shitty design tool. Not because of differential skill levels, but because it inherently forces too much precision and too much information too fast. CAD does the same thing, actually, but fractionally less so."
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
Learn a process. Use the process. Don't let the software dictate what you do.
To clarify, we use a pencil to sketch. This is the most basic of tools. Yet most arguments I hear against BIM consist of "grasshopper, sketchup, et al can do *insert thing here* better".
A pencil can't do that thing better, either, yet we still consider it a quality design tool. So do we want a tool that can do MORE, or can do LESS? Or do we simply want tools that get us to where we need to go? If you NEED parametrics or programming, create a process to get it done.
Just because the BIM you have doesn't do it doesn't make the BIM you have "a shitty design tool".
BIM is not a design tool. Its software for generating construction drawings.
The failings for design don't have to do with precision and too much information too soon. It really boils down to the fact that Revit/BIM tools are only created for very regular (boring as shit) building typologies. Plumb walls and square windows/tilt up cracker jack box junk. If you design in another way/other sofware/by hand, etc. you will find that you create all sorts of weird conditions that are very difficult (not impossible) to model in BIM and by doing so you create much better designs.
Ever hear the sentiment that you should never let the difficulty of a drawing prevent you from doing what you want to do? Well BIM does that all the time, if that is your primary design tool, especially for newbies.
Where BIM gets interesting is when you start to plug in 3rd party software models, rhino, maya, custom families, weird shit that pushes the limits. When you are not letting an out of the box software tool control what you can and cannot do.
"BIM is not a design tool. Its software for generating construction drawings. "
So you don't want your left brain to know what your right brain is doing?
bim is not a replacement for your brain. get the idea in your head, then learn how to use oil paints or revit or whatever to communicate it and work out the details.
this article is nothing but some guy drawing arbitrary graphs. if it looks like a power point presentation from an accountant, it must be real science right? dumbest thing i've seen today
Those graphs make sense if you replace "Design" in his x-axis with "The very last step of SD"
BIM is not a design tool, nor is CAD. If you do design right, then jump into one of the two, you're still going to have about the same time balance as those graphs show.
The foolish (and pervasive) tendency to continue calling ONLY pre-design "design" as if all of the answers are there at the beginning of SD bugs the shit out of me.
What's the D in SD?
What's the first D in DD?
Software is a part of design. All of it. Like curt said, stop making arbitrary statements about what is or isn't a design tool.
FFS.
curt - I absolutely agree with your "bim is not a replacement for your brain. get the idea in your head, then learn how to use oil paints or revit or whatever to communicate it and work out the details."
The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand.
DD is where BIM can become immensely useful, if used correctly.
"The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand."
This is the bad kind of lazy that one should strive to avoid, like weeds in a garden. It's also a more pervasive problem for firms and teams which silo their staff into different tasks. While necessary to a large degree, it creates the type of animosity and territoriality that leads to whole-hog statements about software and the people who use it.
If you think you can avoid falling into that trap simply by "not being lazy" when using a single software package, you are delusional. No matter how hard you try and how conscientious you are about it, it still happens.
diversity in tools and workflows may be good for design but there are very few firms who think it is good business.
The problem is that repeatedly using one kind of tool conditions your brain to think and work towards solutions which are easy to develop using the tools you have on hand.
so don't do that. seriously. be aware of where the software is leading you and make sure it's your brain that's running the process rather than taking the quick way or the easy way out. i think it's true that it sometimes happens though.
Please explain why "diversity in tools and workflows may be good for design".
That's a broad generalization.
could just be like looking at something from a different perspective. i would advise getting up and walking around every now and then. that also helps.
I'm not even talking about architecture anymore.
People who are good at making things are always tweaking their tools, making and buying new ones and experimenting with where the new tools can take them.
It is always possible to be aware of where the design is going - what is ideal vs what is achievable - and even with bad tools, you can get those two to converge, but it seriously limits your ability to test different solutions if you are having to overcome deficiencies in your tools in order to achieve what you want.
Trying to achieve an idealized solution with limiting tools results in the use of a great deal of time that could have been put towards design or some other billable project.
SneakyPere - diversity in tools and workflows IS good for design. full stop. Unless one is trying to produce more of the banal shit you see everywhere in architecture, that is.
Could you design and document a ZHA or SHoP building with pencil and paper? Sure you could, but we couldn't have even gotten to the point of conceptualizing projects like that without new and different tools.
I could probably build a damn nice dining table with nothing but a chisel, a hacksaw, and a quart of my own semen but again, why? It's analogous to saying an architect can do everything in BIM.
so... setting aside the orthodoxies of software religions, what are the workflows you / your teams / your offices use for design now?
My team has found revit just doesn't often make sense before DD. Our clients tend to be capricious and indecisive - it's far less labor to string along on a handful of sloppy sketchup models and some sketchy CAD plans then try to keep up with them at the level of model quality needed to function in revit.
Once we're in DD, the design is settled enough that the effort of revit modeling makes sense on most projects (but not always). If substantial design changes come up, it's either within the labor budget or we can hold out for additional services at that point, because by then the owners are usually in a hurry to get things moving.
The BIM graphs are kind of stupid and vague the way all BIM promotion seems to be. They seem to be working backwards from the generalization that Revit modeling takes more time up front. Which isn't exactly true. It's just that revit isn't good at ambiguity, and most projects start with a lot of that. This notion that software purity is the essence of good design practice is idiotic.
---
I will say aside from anything about BIM or workflow, revit has an inept modeling interface. It's functional but clumsy - the iTunes of modeling software. I'm not talking about capability - I just mean things like how I pan / zoom / scroll or how to obscure and reveal elements as I develop something is needlessly cumbersome. The whole thing seems designed by database engineers and not a single concession to UX principles was made. Which isn't new to revit: AutoCAD had about the worst modeling interface of the pre-bim 3D software, to such an extent that as far as I know no one except community college CAD instructors ever used CAD for 3d modeling.
Revit UX is a steaming pile of shit, with 8 different radio buttons buried in context specific menus, each button having the ability to totally fuck with what you're trying to do. When Revit works well, its amazing, but when it doesn't it gives you cancer.
@midlander my office has no revit standards, so each PM does things differently. Our modeling practices, as a whole, are not good. I feel like I spend ~80% of the day punching myself in the dick.
@midlander, exactly. our general rule is no BIM until the client has a planning approval for the project and wholesale changes to the form will cost them more in amendment fees and delays than it will us.
The graphs are crap as well. Even if you believe the proposition that the BIM timeline can tail away that quickly from the initial workload, it doesn't relate to the reality of project timelines or fees. I would suggest that for commercial and multi-residential projects the majority of market driven projects will inevitably go on hold for some period between the design and documentation phases, sit in planning for years, or even vanish entirely with clients onselling sites etc.
i don't know any commercial clients who will have enough confidence in getting planning, tenants or sales on a project to pay 60% of my fees in the design phase. its usually 5-10% depending on complexity and time. So i have to load my fees in the documentation phase anyway. So why go to BIM earlier. all it does is increase the risk of being underwater on the project.
Mouse-you make a valid point. I'm a sole prop office and mostly use revit. Cad for very simple projects.
I'm not good at other tools _ too old for rhino for example-so I'm usually using revit to get designs together. Sometimes sketch up.
I find that design time in revit is costly but does save a bunch down the road. Honestly I find design to be slow regardless - so I'm usually trying to cut a few corners during design - example-not modeling fascias and trim during design.
I like revit for any project where I'll need to do elevations and sections. Little TI projects are still faster in cad.
I'm still not sure about cut / paste / reusing elements. Cad is just better at this. A good template helps in revit.
Oh, I normally save my BIM vs CAD discussion for the bar where I am garanteed s steady supply of Guinness. I am both the software guru and revit Guinea pig in our office and that often leads one to drink.
Good points all arround, especially the one about using semen for furniture making.
Why are we still on about this shit?
+1 on midlander's post. That's pretty much how we do it too. No BIM until SD is done and changes have settled down to incremental evolution and refinement. Despite it's fluidity for coordinating minor changes during documentation, BIM is extremely change intolerant during concept and schematic phases. Maintaining multiple major alternatives or making substantial changes from week to week is very cumbersome and costly in BIM. It goes way faster and easier with tools that are better for conceptual design tasks.
And also, Revit's GUI sux hard. It's almost as bad as 3DS Max.
Where I work, concept through SD is in Skp and acad - DD - CA is Revit - because Revit lost ground in design to legacy tools - Autodesk came up with Formit - at many offices I worked at before this one, we did everything in Revit and never had any problems.
also with Revit, there is better coordination the design phase, total transparency - this way team members can't do stuff to their own agenda - it keeps everyone honest
I would actually like to hear, in detail, about a project that successfully and profitably used Revit from concept planning through construction, and how that was done. I have yet to see one that wasn't a complete disaster on some level in the design phase.
3DS Max ui is crazy easy. if you want to move a point up, you move it up. you want to move it sideways, you move it sideways. you don't have to pick planes to extrude from, which is cumbersome. on the other hand, revit's section box is really handy.
i assume the decision to use revit early or not is based on the people doing the work and what tools they know. if the principal is involved early in schematics while it's fun and steps away when production starts because it's not fun, then the principal uses whatever tool they think is fun to start the project with, and then dictate the production tools based on what they heard from the latest autodesk sales rep. perhaps xenakis can provide more insight as to why he's seen the offices he worked at choose different methods.
curtkram: You are correct that the decision about which tools to use in the early design phase is entirely driven by the people doing the design work. However, this is not a simple matter of familiarity or lack thereof. Some tools are just better for the job than others. That anybody would dispute this is really bizarre, and seems to be entirely motivated by production staff being frustrated that their pet tool isn't being used for everything as a matter of convenience to them.
Is it me or was Revit improving every year until autodesk purchased it, and has been stuck with the same issues and no evolution since? I feel like the same complaints about Revit today are the same as 10 years ago.
i know that in revit 2017 autodesk finally brought the text editor up to the functionality level of microsoft wordpad, so there's that.
i don't think it's about pet tools gwharton. i think it's about familiarity.
I'm as familiar with Revit as I am with Rhino or Sketchup or AutoCAD. I refuse to use it for design because it is a poor tool for that task, not because I am unfamiliar with it. ArchiCAD is marginally better, mainly because it has a set of plan diagramming tools built in. But that is faint praise.
gwharton - I am currently working on a project in Revit that is going swimmingly.
Most "design" - meaning design thinking and concepts - happened on paper, but it has been represented via Revit since day 1. Only 13k sq ft though and it is a very simple building.
We can sit here all day and accuse each other of not caring about x or y, but assuming anything about people simply from an opinion is a good way to ensure they never really give your position a proper listen.
And yeah, that's directed to myself as much as anyone else.
Stop referring to BIM as a software or a 'design tool.'
Our office doesn't require a Revit Model until the very end of SD. Before that, each designer/team can use/do whatever the hell they want to work with the client, gain approvals, and design freely.
The only rule is that the design better be consolidated in to a decent Revit Model according to stringent office standards by the end of Schematic Design so that DD, coordination, clash detection, and ultimately CD is as painless as possible.
Ironically, design teams that have gotten past the 'Revit sucks for design' culture and are able to build kick-ass conceptual/schematic Revit Models are the most cost effective teams for the design process as a whole.
However, I will grant that the learning curve is steep, and if your office doesn't have effective BIM workflows, standards, and templates that your employees actually follow, then you're going to probably lose money on BIM adoption.
how is bim not software or a design tool?
Cause it isn't, BIM is the process within the software, it wasn't created to be a design process but rather a collaboration and to be able to have all your information in a singular set.
The software itself is just a "Modelling" software which allows for the process with a good set of tools.
I use BIM as a generic because otherwise people tend to start a "Mac vs. PC" argument.
I would like to see a better process developed to get the initial design (in any medium) tracked into the BIM software. One that acknowledges individual preference.
i don't know archi. that sounds like saying it's wrong to skype someone, because skype isn't software but rather an audio/video collaboration. really, it's still software that you're using, as a tool, to collaborate with someone.
when i bim, i use software to bim. it's still a tool we use to design buildings that can be built, and to communicate design intent with the various interested entities related to the project. focusing on bim as a collaboration (if i understand you right) instead of as software or a tool doesn't help the building. the deliverable is still typically a set of construction drawings printed on large format paper, or sometimes on a pdf.
At least no one here is saying that Revit is a nice software to render and do pretty images as I see some people around me braging about.
Oh look at this beautiful kitchen I did on revit. FULL REVIT.
Very interesting discussion here - what do you all think of the findings in this piece? https://www.intramatting.com/b...
There's a spelling error in the sub header.
Is there? I can't see one ;)
Ha, you sly dog!