With all the current excitement and talk of BIM and Revit, I have been thinking recently about the future of AutoCAD.

At CADS we’re pretty representative of the market, and our current mix of licenses is around 15% Revit / 85% 2D CAD (AutoCAD and MicroStation). It will remain this way for some time yet, largely because this is where our customers are in the cycle.

If we examine the manufacturing marketplace, Autodesk took the (at the time) brave decision to remove AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop and migrate everyone to Inventor.  My personal opinion is that this won’t work in the AEC market due to the construction supply chain being quite different. The approach Autodesk are taking of nudging customers to 3D via product suites is the right way to go.

A recent survey of Architects showed 55% market share in AutoCAD with no other product (including Revit) being in double figures.  Perhaps more telling was that in the National BIM Report conducted by NBS, 35% of the 1,000 respondents had no CAD at all!!!

So AutoCAD is here to stay for a few years to come.

Should CADS make a full transition to Revit?

You’ll probably have gathered from previous posts that CADS is very keen to keep up-to-date with the newest technology. CADS Space Planning team are no exception. As a department we have recently been taking steps into investigating the use of Revit to deliver our projects. I’ve been challenged with investigating what benefits the use of the Revit programme would bring to the office and ultimately to our clients.

Having worked in-situ with a client recently it appeared that they had made a complete transition to Revit and that although the cross-over period had been a slow one, other programmes had eventually been completely phased out.

The question is should CADS make this full transition too? Or should we remain multi-software users, adding Revit to our arsenal to stay flexible in our market?

Given the nature of what we do, I think we’d be wrong to phase out our other planning tools completely, in favour of Revit. Our projects are led from the top through Architects and/or Trusts. They specify how the project is run and dictate what programmes and methods they require. As suppliers, CADS has to adhere to the requirements.

So there are a number of benefits of our working knowledge of multiple programmes, and on live projects this has meant that we are adaptable, able to understand the clients sometimes difficult requests, and can put a strategy into action using the full toolkit of AutoCAD, Micro station and Codebook in conjunction with each other.

In trying to meet a clients’ requests recently it actually proved useful in discovering that we could use a greater amount of codebook tools than previously thought on other projects, such as creating link code schedules and room labelling.

So, how should we be responding to the changing market place and the introduction of Revit? My recommendation is to carry on with what we’re doing – up-skilling team members to become advanced Revit users, without losing our existing expertise in the other tools. But will these tools eventually become redundant? What do you think?

Steven Ellis

C A Design Services

BIM is the process of generating and managing a buildings’ data during its life cycle.  As a 3D visualisation professional, I want to talk about the relationship between BIM and 3D visualisation.

Let’s begin by saying that at CADS 3D we’re big fans of Autodesk. We use their AutoCAD software as well as their 3DS Max piece of kit. It has therefore made sense for us to explore Autodesk’s BIM offering first. The product is called Revit, or more precisely ‘The Revit Platform’.

According to the clever people at Autodesk: “It (The Revit Platform) is a purpose-built solution for BIM. Applications such as Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, and Revit MEP built on the Revit platform are complete, discipline-specific building design and documentation systems supporting all phases of design and construction documentation”. [1]

So how will BIM, and Revit, affect the 3D Visualisation industry? To understand this, it will help to understand the process of creating a 3D visual or video. Here it is in a nutshell:

1. Take the 2D CAD plans/elevations, import them into 3DS Max, then create the 3D model
2. Apply the necessary textures
3. Set up the lighting rig
4. Line up the necessary cameras and do the renders

We’re always trying to streamline this process, and BIM achieves exactly that by removing the need to create a 3D model. Revit does that for you. This not only saves time and enables us to keep our pricing competitive, but it also enables us to spend more time improving the realism of the 3D visualisation.

I believe that as BIM becomes more commonplace amongst architects and other industry stakeholders, 3D visualisation will become an even more specialist field. It will focus even more on the interaction between material and light.

In addition, where 3D visualisation has previously been kept for final, high-quality marketing images, it will now infiltrate its way right through the building management process. Design will well and truly be revolutionised as the impact of design decisions on lighting, and materials can quickly and easily be tested.

I’m excited about BIM and am looking forward to really getting to grips with the process and the various tools such as Revit.

Paul Hatton

C A Design Services 3D Team Leader

[1] BIM and Visualisation white paper 2008

We’ve been talking a lot about Building Information Modelling – or BIM – recently. It seems to be on everybody’s lips, and yet there are plenty of individuals and companies that don’t fully understand what BIM actually is.  I’ve been discussing BIM with some of our main clients, and the same questions come up again and again…

1. What is BIM?

In short, BIM is a process.  It encompasses the development and use of computer software to model the construction and operation of a building using a library of objects.  A building information model includes all spaces, structures, components and materials within the building, as well as their essential information and properties.  Building information modelling is not a particular piece of software. It is both a process and a method by which a project can be described.

2. Where do software packages such as Revit fit in?

First let me clarify, Revit is not BIM. Revit is actually a BIM authoring and editing tool that can be used to build and modify building information models throughout their lifecycle.  There are many companies out there getting Revit and drawing 3D buildings incorrectly thinking this is BIM. There are plenty of other BIM authoring tools out there, ArchiCAD and MicroStation to name two.

3. How does everyone else look at a BIM Model?

Not everyone in the project process needs a BIM authoring tool. In fact only stakeholders responsible for editing the Building Models require it.  Everyone else can view the BIM model in one of various export formats including graphical outputs:- .DWG, .DGN, .PDF or .NWD or numerically (for instance spatial data or equipment counts) in .xls.

4. How easy is the conversion to BIM?

To convert to BIM is not as complex as you may think.  BIM specialists such as ourselves can assist with the migration of existing data from AutoCAD or Microstation to a common BIM format, and link to a reporting dashboard or external application.  Data migration can take place quickly using our team of BIM specialists.

If you have any BIM related questions, contact me below and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Guy