Difference Between Revit Lt And Revit Lt Suite

[Boyan Atanaschev]

Wellhave a project now that I need revit for so went out and installed revit 2017. Didn't want to overwrite my copy of autocad architecture right now so decided to NOT download the entire building design suite.

Because of my familiarity with Autocad products, was thinking that maybe the Revit Architecture was a suite that had product in addition to vanilla Revit..... similar to the way there is an autocad and an autocad architecture package.

So, if I'm reading what you wrote correctly, in my mind, the way revit is packaged is backwards from autocad. Meaning REVIT 2016 actually is more all inclusive than REVIT Architecture 2016. Is this correct?

So my office is starting to dabble in the world of BIM but we're not quite sure what software to use. A lot of firms of our caliber use Microstation at the moment, but we already own licenses of Revit.

Does anyone have strong preferences for one program over the other? If so, why?

I prefer revit... But I think it depends what you want to do... How large is your office and what kind of projects do you do? Large project teams? Or single or two person teams?

With either of these, I think if you are going to be working on large projects with teams of people, you will probably need a cad/bin manager to set up work standards and facilitate work sharing and standards...

In microstation, the drawings are all separate files. Even your 3d models are separate files from which drawings are cut, "extracted" which is a bit of a clunky process... None of that happens automatically, one person might get into the 3d model file and then after making a change, runs an extraction which is almost like printing the 2d cad drawing off the 3d work and it updates the other 2d files etc. The advantage of this, for working in teams is, since drawings are separate files with references like xrefs etc, people can work in separate files and just need to talk to each other if they need to get into a drawing... In a way though, to me, this isn't real Parametric modelling, it's just maybe one step removed from CAD... The way alot of firms use it, the majority of people at the office don't work well enough to take advantage of the BIM capabilities, they don't get that in depth so it is really more just a glorified cad that takes more time than it offers benefits... Maybe some avid microstation fans can weigh in and argue it's merits but to me, it's not really that different from cad...

Revit, the whole bim model exists for the most part in a single file... all of your drawing sheets even... They are almost like layout spaces in cad... Drawings are simply views of the model so things happen more seamlessly... Everything updates automatically... You move a wall in plan and it is updating the section automatically...The way multiple people work on the same project then is, well at least when I worked on it, you have "the master" file... And every time somebody opened it, normally you would never work off the master, but you open it up as a local copy and work...basically the local copy is a fully identical copy of the current master but running on you own computer or rdp server... If you want to save your changes to the master, you would click "save to master"... Even though everybody is working on seperate local copies of the model, they are however linked, and it will tell you if you try to edit something that somebody else is working on that so it doesn't give you permission to mess with same model element as somebody else... In revit, things are much slicker, everything is parametric and I think more authentically BIM than microstation... It's a big database in the background...

Revit works because it was developed asa parametric modeller from ground up... It was designed for the purpose... Microstation was a 2d cad software that evolved to 3d modeller, that evolved BIM capabilities later with triforma and then bentley architecture, so there are also IMHO alot of redundancies in the tools that can actually make it a little confusing for many people working on it... I think where bentley really excels and where they are really more cutting edge is in advanced parametric software like generative components but to me, that's not really useful in day to day work...

Anyway my 2 cents... I would use revit... Also being autodesk it works well with autocad if you already have autocad... If you have microstation you wouldn't need autocad...

I think with revit you will see the benefits of learning it more immediately... You will be able pick it up more quickly and run with it and be able to do things you can't already do with autocad right away... With microstation, you will not be see the benefits right away, it will be like learning another redundant cad software first, and then learning a 3d modeller, and then learning vim, and it is not a seamless transition, a big waste of time and energy if you ask me... Revit is seamless, and you can still use your autocad details and content if you want to xref as a an underlay or drop them onto drawing sheets... So your autocad skills don't go to waste... I'm assuming of from the way your question was presented that you already use cad? If you already use microstation for drafting then that us different...

Microstation has the benefit of being compatible with the US DoD requirements (very mysterious requirements). There are firms that have completed projects in Revit, believing that they were complying with the BIM stipulations and then have had to either reproduce the documents themselves or contract out the reproduction of the drawings in 2D Microstation.

Many firms I deal with who use Microstation do so for this reason.

I work with many mega global offices who use Revit... not sure what your caliber might be if similar firms are using Microstation. It is definitely the minority of the two as far as market share, and most firms that I have encountered who are utilizing Microstation have a majority of their fees coming from engineering work.

I concur with brink on functionality issues, Revit is a far more practical (and rapidly developing) platform.

USACoE requires Microstation because it's free for them. We are sinking a ton of time into Microstation and it's becoming a pain. Far less intuitive. And Revit is more of a ground up piece of software as opposed to Microstation, whose BIM capability is more of an add-on.

Our adventures in Revit seem to have been a lot smoother and it seems as though the demand out there is mostly for Revit.

...aaand I just read bRink's post... well said, he/she's got it all there.

Maya,

Is your shop using Microstation V8i (MS) or Bentley Architecture? I'm also trying hard to convince our office to jump on the BIM bandwagon. Since we have studs that can make MS sing so the natural progression is Bentley Architecture. Plus we do Army Corps jobs too, so sticking with MS.

You will also need to get your consultants on board with BIM too.

One thing I would say for Microstation is though: it tries to be everything in one package... drafting, 3D modelling and rendering, and BIM... The problem is though, it does none of these things as well as an equivalent autodesk software, and really, why do I need to always be using the same piece of software to do a completely different task, but in a clunkier way?

I actually like microstation for 3D modelling better than autocad 3D, and it is better than revit for "dumb geometry" modelling than revit... Revit being more of a BIM modeller... But then, if I really wanted to do pure 3D modelling and rendering, I would rather use 3D studio max or sketchup with vray...

Also, although I said revit is not a standard *solids and surfaces* type of 3D modeller (it is a bim modeller), you can do most everything with a revit model... you could, cut sections off it in views, you can render, you can do simply hidden line "sketchup looking" drawings (views of the model) like axon's or perspectives from it, with shadows if you want and drop them live onto sheets (which are automatically updated as your design changes), you can animate, do walkthroughs, etc... you schedules automatically update, all detail and sheet references, etc... So *almost anything you can do in microstation 3D you can do in revit, but the modelling technique and tools are just different since it is building objects as families and smart components that have parameters etc...

What this means however is that when you model, you are not drawing dumb geometry in 3D, you are drawing with walls in the plan view, and it is automatically extruding that wall in 3D, etc... everything is real component that has real construction info and parameters associated with it that link to data in the database... It sounds complicated but it actually works alot more intuitively and in a more user friendly way than it sounds... The software does most of the grunt work for you, so it has smarts built in...

Revit is not a great 3D *design* tool however IMHO but that is not what it is made for... You can design in it, but it is intended to provide more intelligent 3D objects and BIM capabilities rather than quick 3D sketches... Also I think microstation isn't really a design sketch tool either... It's not that quick for doing 3D sketches... While Microstation is a pretty robust, okay 3D modeller and has some rendering capabilities, it works best as a *solid modeller* (similar to autocad 3D but a bit nicer) vs. a *surface modeller* like 3D studio (which is also autodesk) or sketchup (which has some quick, nice, push and pull capabilities that you could use to explore a quick detail or something)... So for 3D conceptual design and quick exploration I would prefer to use 3D studio or sketchup...

If I were to start my own office, I would choose:

-autocad

-revit

plus

-3d studio or sketchup w/ vray

also something that drives me crazy with microstation is:

there are really like *4 steps* to get a quick 3D output you can print out or email to somebody... i don't mean renderings with lighting and materials etc. which would take way too much time if you just want to quickly draw something and talk about it, but simply to get to a simple looking hidden line view of your 3D model...

it outputs hidden line drawings as *2D CAD drawings basically... you basically get 2D cad line work of the flattened 3D view on your screen... You then need to either bring it into illustrator to make it look not just like a bunch of thin wireframe cad lines and actually have some 3D legibility with varying lineweights, or take that same 3D view and underlay a rendered raster image of that same view under the line work in order to see something half decent looking that might show some shading etc... By contrast, revit or sketchup, you are more or less working in hidden line... what you see on your screen already looks half decent as a drawing, and you can just output it by printing and it will give you something that looks decent enough to talk about...

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