Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Do I really want to? But I have to...

YEAH! Revit 9 is released, we can all jump for joy! New features, more improvements, better performance!

Right, that was your reaction wasn't it? You know it was, it was mine too, still is. Take a step back though...

What about that 120,000+ sq ft project, that is a big hole in the ground right now? With CIP columns poking out. That Revit file has been through alot you know, started in version 7, upgraded to 8.1, now CA is moving along nicely, the uprgade to 8 was a little sketchy, do I really want to upgrade it again to v9.x?

Quite honestly this is a question facing us, and I think that it is a question that more firms will face. We're not doing day to day designing in this model any more. Sure it is open just about every day (on one person's computer) and he modifies a few things, adds more revision bubbles, new RFI sketches, but we're not documenting the building anymore. Why should we upgrade? The new features have no benefit at this point, we've worked around all the kinks that we found in 8.1, and it is, what it is at this point, we don't have the time or money to worry about "improving it", we're trying to build it! (if you're in Philly swing by Locust & 10th, that's right, that's a rendering straight out of Revit on the construction sign.. :) )

Furthermore, there is another huge project in another Burt Hill office that is a 40 story condo tower, all done in Revit 8.1, they just finished their CD's and I know they have no interest in bringing the model into 9, in fact from what I heard, there are drawbacks in their case, because of they way they solved some problems in 8.1.

What's a subscription firm to do? Right now we're talking to AutoDesk about this, in our case we're lucky, we'll probably resolve it one way or another, but we're big (I admit that), what is a small 12 person firm going to do if they run into the same problem? AutoDesk needs to seriously consider looking into setting up a structure to resolve this issue (because I don't see it going away), I've put my word in with out contacts, now its your turn! Tell your reseller, tell your Autodesk rep, tell the support guy on the other end of the phone! The more voices the better!

But hey, 9 is just plain cool too. :) Almost got it deployed here, IT is sometimes a little slow, :)

Oh, and by the way, please scroll on down to the next most recent post and respond, I'd really like to hear from different people.

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