Revit 2010 Impressions

So, we’ve been working with 2010 (update 1) for a bit now.  I have some preliminary impressions.

It seems to like to crash a little more.  At least, we are getting some reports of crashing on two very specific projects.  Both of these projects were updated from 2009, so that might be our issue.  But honestly it’s too late to go back.  Another potential issue with those projects is the linked Civil files.  WAY out in space.  We are approaching that as our working theory and seeing what we can do about cleaning up the DWG before linking.  I hate adding steps for my PMs, but five minutes of work up front to save three crashes in a day seems well worth it.

The Ribbon is not that scary.  I’ll just say that now.  Really, suck it up, try it out, and you might actually find that you like it.

Now it’s time for me to whine about change.  I haven’t spent more than 15 minutes in it, but man I cannot get my big head around the new massing tools (and on a possibly related note, if anyone can find “Curtain System by Lines” in 2010, let me know – I miss her).  I need to sit down for an hour and just do it.  I know they wanted to make it easier, and more ‘Sketchup-y’ (ugh… the S word…) but so far, not that much easier.  So far, none of our PMs have actually used the massing tool for any design work, but it’s there, so I really should know how to do it so I don’t get that blank vacant stare when someone asks me how it works.

I mean, no more than my usual blank vacant stare…

Pretty Pictures

Saw this at Autodesk University two years ago at their opening demo… I’m sorry, I meant “revival”.  It has recently popped up on Autodesk Labs, and I hope hope hope that it doesn’t die a slow Labs death and never really see the light of day.

Project Newport (which to those of us living near Philip Morris sounds like a top secret cigarette attack) is being touted as a game engine for designers.  Which frankly, would be awesome.

No, I don’t want to make myself a root beer float and pull out the lime chips and sit on my couch in the middle of the night and shoot zombies in one of our designs.  Or do I?

Being able to leverage modern “gaming” processing hooks on video cards for real time visualization type rendering would be amazing and such a boon.  Right now, if we want real time 3d viewing of our Revit model, it’s in Shading With Edges and looks like a cartoon.  If we want some nice materials on there, it’s wait 5 to 30 minutes for this image to render.

And if nothing else, if this works like it’s touted I might help me kill Sketchup in my firm.  That’s too harsh.  Not kill.  But significantly maim.

Hopefully, Newport will happen and it will bridge these two.  I’m not expecting photo realistic real time rendering, but if I can see my building and it looks as good as a modern video game on my PC, that would go SO far to get our design intent to owners.

And if I can export it and navigate through it on an XBox360… how cool would that be?  I’m just saying…

Sketchup Users – The Steep Learning Curve

Change is hard.  I totally understand that.

Sketchup is easy to start using.  Check.

Revit isn’t easy to master.  I get that, too.

Now that we have the baseline set, we can start.

In a previous post, I talked about how evil Sketchup is to the documentation process, and ultimately a disconnect that it creates can impact the design process as well.  As we are moving past our pilot projects, we are introducing the concept of BIM and Revit to the population of the firm at large.  Some of the folks are 100% on board with the concept.  They know there are going to be hiccups and a rough time learning the software, but they are ready to get their hands dirty and come along for the ride.

Now (and here’s where things took me for a loop) on the other side, I have the Sketchup lovers.  They are not ready to move along.  The extreme cases find folks who find multiple excuses to convince themselves that modelling in Revit is bad and completely subpar compared to Sketchup.  Don’t worry about the built-in rendering engine in Revit.  Ignore the fact that you have started your documentation.  Pay no attention to your engineers who can start their analysis based on the Revit model.  You can’t do any of these with vanilla Sketchup.  You can start tacking on add-ons, but they are iffy, thrown together and sometimes expensive.  On the other hand, this is precisely what Revit is made for.

I mentioned that the Sketchup hold-outs threw me for a loop.  I had convinced myself that the 20 year ACAD experts would be my biggest fight.  That hasn’t been the case at all.  In most situations, while they lament losing some key features and functions, they have been on board and are quite excited about making the change.  As one of them put it, “This is what computers should have been doing for the last 10 years.”

So, what to do about our Sketchup folks?

Right now, there isn’t much I’m doing.  I am putting my time and energy into the people who “get it”.  I am whole-heartedly convinced that once the learning curve is crossed, the models created in Revit will be superior in so many ways to the ones in Sketchup.  And the projects will be better coordinated.  And the rainbows and unicorns will return to the golden fields and it will rain chocolate!

Seriously, there isn’t much I can do.  I can’t twist these people’s arms.  That would accomplish nothing.  I am getting the people who are along for the ride better training and support.  We are working hard to prove all these theories.  And then I am hoping peer pressure will do the job of converting the die hards for me.  They need to be willing to take the time to learn the tools, and I cannot push people into willingness.

If that doesn’t work, I get out my BIM Stick.

Why I Hate Sketchup

One of our biggest fights with our Revit deployment has got to be with the die hard Sketchup users.

I absolutely understand that Sketchup is easy and doing Revit properly is… not as easy. I get that, I totally do. And the really good Sketchup users, when they finish a model, everyone oohs and ahhs, because it looks so good and it’s so amazing. Then why is Sketchup a bad thing?

If you are reading this, you know part of the answer already.

Sketchup is 100% outside of the documentation process for most firms. Sketchup Master has spent all this time creating this elaborate beautiful model in Sketchup. Now let’s waste some time rebuilding the entire thing in Revit so we can actually put out a set of construction document, which is ultimately what we do. I find it interesting how, on a macro level, this issue with Sketchup reflects exactly the same issue that BIM as a whole process is trying to work past. In the “rainbows and unicorns” world of BIM, the passing of the model from designer to contractor to owner is an attempt to not lose valuable knowledge and information that has been put into that model through the process. The Sketchup to Revit shift is the exact same loss of information. It is a waste of time that is unnecessary.

I would submit another reason Skethchup is bad, bordering on evil. It is imaginary. Now, before you start yelling, I know you can make Revit do some pretty amazingly fake things. Things that completely defy the laws of physics and gravity. But if you use the tool correctly, Revit has checks in there to try to help you along the way and not design something that defies the laws of time and space. Sketchup is nothing but fantasy design. Hopefully the designer has enough experience and knowledge to be able to avoid the pitfalls of building a completely imaginary model, but this isn’t always the case. Sketchup makes it very easy to design something that simply cannot be built. And the owner loves it and it’s gonna be on the cover of some grand architectural review magazine! Except that it’s entirely fiction, and when you Revit guy starts duplicating the model in Revit (which is a waste of time – see above) he or she finds this discrepancy with reality and has to spend more time discussing a solution with the Sketchup designer to find a solution.

Sketchup has a place. That place is the first five minutes of predesign, schematic design or whatever you might want to call it. That’s it. The word “sketch” is in the name for a reason.

This is one of my big soapbox items. I could rant for much longer, but frankly this blog post has gotten too long. I will post again soon where I discuss what I have found with some Sketchup snobs users and how we are trying to deal with them.