This review of the new version of Revit Architecture, which Autodesk started shipping earlier this month, is the third in a series of product reviews of architectural design applications in AECbytes, which started earlier this month with Nemetchek’s Allplan BIM 2008 Architecture and was followed last week by a review of AutoCAD Architecture 2009. The latter, by the way, has sparked off a very interesting discussion on the AECbytes blog about what is a BIM application and what is not, and what is the nature of “true BIM,” if there is such a thing at all. It is a discussion very relevant also to Revit—being one of the leading BIM solutions available today—and we will come back to it later on in this review. Let us first explore the various avenues along which Revit Architecture has progressed in this 2009 release.

To compare notes with previous releases, see the reviews of Revit Architecture 2008, Revit Building 9, and Revit Building 8. Those studying the evolution of Revit can even go as far back as Revit 7 and Revit 6 from the days when Revit was still a single application rather than a platform of multi-disciplinary products.
Conclusions
Getting back to the discussion of what is a BIM application and what is not that was started on the AECbytes blog in response to the recent review of AutoCAD Architecture—which, by the way, is not being positioned as a BIM application by Autodesk—I would have to say that the term BIM has become something of a misnomer, being used to describe all kinds of processes as well as products and everything in between! Given that the term is not trademarked as such, no one can really dictate how it should be used, so if a vendor chooses to uses the term BIM for their product, that is entirely their prerogative. There was some discussion about “true BIM” as opposed to just BIM, and some questioned if there was any such thing at all. While there is no easy answer to such a multi-layered question, I do think that BIM is more about a process than a product. This means that it is possible to do BIM without using a “BIM solution” (for example, take Neil Katz’s work with AutoCAD at SOM which he described in his Viewpoint article last year), just as it is possible to use a BIM solution but still not do a very good job of creating a BIM model.
Since Revit was developed from the ground up with the BIM concept, it has a definite edge in facilitating the process of BIM over most of its competitors which were developed much earlier on. This does not imply in any way that firms using other BIM applications are at a disadvantage and need to switch—they may have mastered the use of their application and could be doing BIM that is comparable, even superior, to that being done by firms using Revit. But the fluidity and ease of use that Revit brings to the BIM process makes it a very attractive proposition for firms who are looking to transition from 2D CAD to BIM. Even after so many years of reviewing Revit, I still marvel at its ease of use, and it’s hard not to consider its usability as a benchmark for evaluating other BIM applications and finding them lacking in this aspect.
That said, BIM is still very much a work in progress. While other BIM applications can certainly do a lot to improve upon their intuitiveness and ease of use, Revit too can look for ways to address the file size challenges that come with its centralized model structure and find ways to improve collaboration among team members. All the BIM applications could do with better conceptual design capabilities, more integrated space planning tools, and more inferencing capabilities and smarts that minimize the amount of modeling users actually need to do. Given the vast realm of potential improvements and possibilities still ahead, I think that no BIM application, even Revit, is anywhere close to being done.

Buy Autodesk Revit Architecture 2009 – 229$