Autodesk Construction Cloud vs. Revit

Well Suited: Autodesk Construction Cloud is cost effective, user friendly, and robust. They aren't nickel and diming you for use of each module. Once users are on-board with the system it creates an ecosystem that all users "go to first" for an answer. Less Appropriate: As a Developer, there are some hiccups as it is designed more for the GC (general contractor). A template option that is Developer forward would an improvement.

Incentivized

Revit is very well suited to creating designs and construction documents for standard buildings. Buildings that need to utilize phasing in their construction process are also well suited to this software. Revit is not as well suited to buildings that have irregular shapes or components that need to be highly detailed.

Incentivized

• Meeting Minutes: Simple to use and adapt from Agenda to Minutes, attach reference documents efficiently, and assign accountability to attendees.
• Budget/Cost Reporting: There is a learning curve, but the visibility of budgets and costs from inception to closeout is beneficial for the user and makes reporting to investors simple and consistent.
• Document Management: The version history on drawings "sheets" is very helpful when managing a project through design and construction. Issuing addenda, drawings, or tracking down a change in design is simple.
• Pay Applications/Change Order Workflow: the customizable workflows along with time stamps of reviews and response makes tracking down status and bottlenecks very easy.

Incentivized

• Revit allows users to create real buildings and is very much rooted in making functional buildings.
• Revit allows users to collaborate both within their own firms and with other types of firms as well. This is particularly useful for coordinating buildings between architecture and engineering firms.
• Revit integrates fairly well with other programs such as AutoCAD and Sketchup. This allows us to bring in elements modeled in other programs into our revit models.

Incentivized

• Managing Data
• The footprint large projects leave within Desktop Connector and Mitigating that data
• REMOVE "add up to 80 projects" from the Desktop Connector Select Projects Screen! It is better to cycle the project data in/out for syncing latest greatest rather than have users load up their desktop connector full of projects and let data stagnate/have to be racked to update.

• Versioning - Revit is not backwards compatible. This creates issues if you are working with people who are using older versions as you cannot save to a previous version. I understand why this is and I do not see this ever changing, however, Its very annoying.
• Autodesk - They are the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. The lack of competition inhibits development and it seems Autodesk has put more effort into its BIM 360 platform and Revit development has suffered because of it. I would like to see better competition so Autodesk would step up its game.

Incentivized

I don't make these decisions and its what the company wants

We will almost certainly be renewing all of our current seats of Revit and will likely be adding seats as we look to get more and more of our staff trained and using Revit. The software is starting to become the standard for our projects as we move forward as more and more of our clients are requesting or accepting use of it

Incentivized

It is overall a very great product in terms of usability. Some features need some work like RFI tools and contruction administration tools. As the product develops I imagine these becoming more important and easier to use

Incentivized

It is a professional environment, but far from easy and overly complex in many places. The system is often too deep in settings and overrides (see Visibility/Graphics in combination with linked files, filters, color overrides and view templates). I don't really like the dialog-in-dialog interface and its spartan looks. But it works well overall if you know what you are doing.

Incentivized

5 major outages in the last year, some on days of major deliverables or deadlines... dependent upon AWS

Revit seems to always be available when I need it. I have not experiences an outage. There are occasions where we need our internal IT department to trouble shoot a file on our Revit dedicated server and that sometimes causes a delay however that is not a software access issue

Incentivized

The data mitigation is complete garbage. Any cloud collaborated model takes 2x to load in the Autodesk Construction Cloud environment that if it was saved locally or to on prem servers. We had our systems and bandwidth all evaluated to be applicable but the data downloads and sequencing through Desktop Connector leaves much to be desired.

Revit is a fairly graphics heavy piece of software. It is powerful in its capabilities but as a result it takes a lot of the graphics card, the memory, etc. For all that it can do and the specs of my computer I find it pretty good from a performance standpoint

Incentivized

Autodesk staff intervention often required to support IT when normal installs and direction was erroneous

Autodesk has always had a good support system in place. There is a massive user base for Revit, and there are thousands of forum threads and other discussions online about any and every problem that you could ever run into. For being such a large program with so many different options, there aren't many roadblocks or pitfalls that users can fall into.

Incentivized

Great to have hands on folks to answer questions. Live training worked better for real time scenarios.

The training was Revit Essentials and it was very beneficial. I would say that it is best to get the training right before you know you will be using Revit as learning the basis then applying what you learned immediately is the most effective and best value for your money.

Incentivized

Good as any other online content, not incredible. There was a cost associated with this training

The online training is hit or miss. I feel that its better to be live to be able to pace and ask questions to a live person as you are learning hwo to do things. Its not natural to learn Revit especially if you know AutoCAD so my suggestion is the live training

Incentivized

Be prepared for nothing to work originally, and support staff to fight change and be cumbersome at properly learning how to use in my opinion.

Implementing Revit as your main drafting software (i.e. moving to BIM from CAD) may be a tough decision if you have learned drafting. It is a different way to approach and think about developing a project. However, if you are able to adapt to a new way of thinking and get used to it by working through a few projects than it is as efficient as CAD in most areas in general and will also be both better/worse in some areas

Incentivized

Procore's user interface is not as user-friendly. Next steps are not as obvious and the overall graphic design is more old-school. I do however like how Procore lists the specific issues that you are assigned on the home page. Procore can be more difficult to navigate and it's hard to find attachments.

Incentivized

Revit is used primarily for creation of contract documents and documents that need to be used to build in the field. Sketch Up is great for a quick concept sketch, but lacks the details that Revit has which are needed to construct. AutoCAD is a great tool for details as well, but does not have as many building capabilities as Revit.

Incentivized

Required yearly upgrades and contracts a opposed to one-time purchases

Not applicable/harder to implement across larger workforces or large-scale projects

While I am not directly involved with the deployment of Revit, it seems that our internal IT department has appreciated the ability to increase or decrease the number of seats. I have never had an issue with the deployment if and when needed, especially regarding the availability of a set

Incentivized

They were attentive and thorough when their software releases caused errors

• Make us easier to manage files
• Coordination model more easier
• Keep internal file secret to external by managing access to our Autodesk Construction Cloud system

Incentivized

• Though implementation of Revit is usually front heavy which means a lot of effort is put in at the front end of the project, the return of investment towards the remainder of the project is really good. All the effort in decisions made at the beginning of the project pays off with Revit incorporating all the building information in the model so the team can glean from this throughout the life of the project is a major plus.
• A major negative is the many false assumptions that comes with using Revit on a project. Just like any other computer application, Revit is only a tool. It's only as good as the operators who implement this tool. Revit is not a cureall for fixing all the problems that still can come out throughout the life of a design & construction project.
• A major positive for our office involving the use of Revit is the ability for our staff from multiple offices to work on the same project central file. We don't need to maintain an expensive server. With the addition of Collaboration for Revit the entire project can be stored in the cloud for our staff to access and complete the project faster than ever.

Incentivized