All the reasons Revit is “bad”

It seems like the more time I spend with Revit and the more places I visit to teach Revit, the affinity for people to absolutely hate the program seems to grow and grow.  I know what you are thinking.  “Oh gosh another blog about why people hate Revit”.  That’s partially true, but I would rather provide some intelligent information to go along with those downright hate filled comments.  Here it goes a list of the most common things people hate about Revit and a solution to those problems.

HATE:  It can’t be used in the Design Development Phase.

SOULUTION:  To me this is absolutely crazy.  Not only can Revit be used in the DD phase, but it can actually help you perform complex analysis that normally left you building a physical model, taking that model outside with a sundial, sketchbook, and a camera and studying for hours or days.  If you still don’t believe that Revit can actually help make your designs better then check out Chapter 23 of Mastering Revit Architecture 2011 or 2012.  I feel this will be a focus for development at Autodesk for the next few years.  Expect the DD phase in Revit to become even more dynamic than it is!

HATE:  It doesn’t do CD’s as well as AutoCAD

SOLUTION:  The first question that pops up when people say this is, “Have you actually tried to use Revit yet?”  Revit is an amazing CD software and can perform all of the same tasks as AutoCAD without the bother of command line interfaces, xrefs, and blocks.  Next time someone tells you not to use Revit because it is terrible at creating CD’s tell them that they must be using the wrong program because the Revit I know does beautiful CD’s.  If someone is leaves scratching their head, that’s good.

HATE:  It’s too time consuming to learn.

SOLUTION:  This is always going to be an argument with any new software someone is trying to implement or learn.  You always feel like the risk is not going to be worth the reward.  Just remember that Revit is becoming the new standard and soon will be, much like AutoCAD a decade and a half ago.  If you don’t try to adopt new technologies your company will eventually be eclipsed by time and will soon be struggling more and more for work.  Ask any company that is still hand drafting how much revenue they are pouring in every year?

HATE:  It doesn’t render well

SOULUTION:      Understand that Revit is not a rendering program and probably will never be.  That’s why Autodesk has 3DS Max as well.  However you can get some amazing renders out of Revit.  Check out www.jereme.webs.com to see some great Revit renderings.  With any rendering software it comes down to the ability of the user to understand what the end result needs to be and how to get there.  If you can’t create a good rendering in Revit, guess what?  You won’t be able to create a good rendering in any program.  Rendering takes a special focus and expertise more closely related to a photographer than anything else.  Don’t waste your time trying to learn a new program just because you don’t think Revit can render well.  Instead, focus on learning how to take better photos then implement those qualities into a camera angle or view in Revit.  Remember that renders are all about the details!

HATE:  It doesn’t detail well and has terrible graphics.

SOLUTION:  First off, of course “it” doesn’t detail well, because that implies that Revit creates the details for you.  That is completely false!  Everything in Revit is 100 percent controlled by the user so anything can be detailed in any way that you see fit.  Because everything is controlled by you, the users, then this hate boils down to your own ability to be able to do anything in Revit.  I have made plenty of drawings that professors and professionals that hate Revit say, “wow, beautiful drawing, and good use of CAD”.  I have had to tell them that I did the drawing in Revit and they still don’t believe me most of the time.  Proof has to be shown on my computer inside of Revit.  I must say in this case that if you think that its Revits fault for having poor graphics I have to stop you.  It’s you who has the poor graphic skills and poor understanding and you should be doing everything you can to improve your graphic ability.

HATE:  It crashes too much and I lose lots of work.

SOLUTION:  This is another area that I will have to partial agree with the masses.  I believe Revit does crash a little too much and that is 80 percent Autodesks fault and 20 percent our fault for performing inappropriate tasks like trying to move a fully constrained model over 1’ all at once.  Every program is going to have times that it crashes and it’s hard to prevent it from ever happening.  However, you can almost always prevent the loss of work you have done.  Just remember to save before and after an import task inside of Revit.  Eventually you will learn that Revit has certain areas in which saving before are a must.  I hardly ever lose work now and it’s mainly due to my “6^th sense” for knowing when something is going to make Revit crash and saving before I even try the task.

In closing, if you came here to find out some shocking reason why you or the firm you work for shouldn’t use Revit I am sorry I disappointed you.  That was kind of my point though.  Sneaky, huh?  Revit is an amazing software and will continue to develop over the next decade.  I really hope everyone reads this and has a new take on Revit.  In the end, its better to embrace new technology than to wish 10 years from now that you would have embraced it while you had the chance.

Thanks for reading! Got anything to ad? Well, let me know about it!

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