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Widely used multi-disciplinary BIM software - not necessarily the best for everything
Updated November 30, 2021

Widely used multi-disciplinary BIM software - not necessarily the best for everything

Stefan Boeykens | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Revit

I have used Revit both as part of my teaching at the university (alongside other software) and as part of our consulting offerings (also alongside other software). We follow the tools as used by our clients and Revit is widely used in our projects. It is used in the majority of BIM-related projects, which can be project management, but also custom development and as part of standardisation and educational activities.
  • Our development division creates custom Add-ins for Revit.
  • Our management division often uses Revit when it is applied in projects we manage or support. Commonly for information extraction and occasionally for modelling
  • Our innovation division ensures that our industry working groups contributions are widely applicable, so Revit is one of the reference systems we try to support whenever possible. This often implies testing the support within Revit for IFC model exchange and noting the limitations as well.
  • Revit is a decent BIM-modelling software, as it supports architectural, structural and technical design
  • Revit can be customised and extended via its API and other means
  • Revit has a broad toolset and is a professional modeling and authoring system for BIM
  • Revit is single-platform. To run it on my Mac is less than ideal (I use Bootcamp and Parallels).
  • Revit is complex software and has a very deep and layered system of view filters and overrides. You can get lost.
  • Revit projects tend to have a huge need for custom Family development, which makes it a huge effort in projects.
  • Shared or Project parameters are linked to every element of a category and cannot be limited to only certain elements.
  • You can not display Rooms in a 3D window.
  • IFC import is still a bit hit and miss. Export has improved a lot but it still lags behind the competition.
  • No backward compatibility. You can never downgrade a file to an older version.
  • A dialog in a dialog within a dialog. The interface is convoluted.
  • Heavy burden on the system (huge installation requirements, lots of additional software gets installed).
  • Expensive.
  • Many of our clients need Revit knowledge, so it is a huge part of our business as consultants
  • There is a significant license cost
  • Yearly updates and frequent changes in feature sets and services make it sometimes difficult in long-term projects
  • ARCHICAD and VectorWorks
We select Revit when required for projects. If ARCHICAD or other BIM software is needed, we use those. I personally prefer ARCHICAD for architectural design, but it depends on clients and projects which tools are being used.

Revit is a decent product, although innovation has slowed down a lot, which price seems to increase. Integration is good as many external products and services support Revit (more so than other software).

IFC export has (luckily) improved a lot, so it can be used successfully in open BIM workflows. It lacks some of the refinement when compared to ARCHICAD on the deepness of IFC support, but there are a few nice techniques which work well in Revit.
When all project partners are using Revit, it makes it more straightforward to collaborate using the same software. However, you also need to ensure that everybody is using the same version and organise model setup to aid collaboration.

It is well suited to multi-disciplinary building projects, especially if Structure and MEP are also fully elaborated as BIM models.

It is, however, complex and expensive software and for particular scenarios, not always the best software: for architectural design, ARCHICAD has some advantages, for structural design, Tekla and Allplan offer more refined toolsets. Moreover, modeling in Revit requires a lot of Family editing and development, which increases development cost and hugely increases file sizes. Ensure you have lots of RAM and CPU speed (high-frequency CPU is more important than having lots of cores which run slower).

Revit Feature Ratings

6.3
Plan distribution & viewing
8
Plan markups & sharing
6
Document sharing
6
Issue tracking & punchlists
3
Collaboration & approvals
7
As-built drawings
8
Estimating ()
Not Rated
Human Resource Management ()
Not Rated
Payroll Management ()
Not Rated
Asset Management ()
Not Rated
Reporting & Analytics ()
Not Rated

Using Revit

ProsCons
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Do not like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Constraint based modelling
  • Developing basic schedules
  • Export to Navisworks
  • Full view template setup
  • Editing a more complex family
  • Multi-category schedules (as they expose so many limitations)
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.