What Revit WantsA Black Grid publication
From the archive

Challenging article at Arch | Tech

· Luke Johnson

Phil Read has posted a confronting analysis of the current state of the BIM software industry.

Here are some quotes I found particularly stimulating:

“When I demonstrated Revit during sales presentations, people were very quick to raise the numerous objections:
  • 3DMax was a better tool for modeling
  • VIZ was a better tool for rendering
  • AutoCAD was a better for detailing and documentation
  • Excel was a better for creating spreadsheets and schedules
And you know what? They were right. And they still right. Compared feature to feature, Revit can’t compete with those kinds of tools.”
” Applications create silos. Exported data means that the everyone is working in separate versions of the truth;”
“…I don’t believe that Revit is capable of evolving beyond it’s designed intent as a tool to resolve coordinated documentation.”
 “Revit isn’t the center of this ecosystem of geometry and data; it seems to orbit other applications (Navis, ProjectWise, etc) that in turn attempt to integrate data across domains.”

Read the entire article:
Arch | Tech: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Something that isn’t mentioned here is monopolization.  At times we feel that an all-in-one Design/BIM/Documentation/Presentation tool would be awesome.  But where is the competition?  If we all end up using one powerful piece of software (ie. Windows), who makes the developer accountable?

Discussion

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Peter
Oh, come on - as an investor, surely you know the primary motivations behind the development of anything at Autodesk: capitalism ... which is fine, by the way. Autodesk's primary concern is to satisfy the demands of shareholders - from this all else flows. If Autodesk were to actually create a flawless piece of software, (one that could link in, say, Word and Excel files ;-), then customers would not have to buy anything from them for a period of years. This would have a deleterious impact on the flow of cash toward shareholders, resulting in the possible removal of upper management at Autodesk. If you were in upper management, what would you do to protect your six-figure salary?

The imposed annual release cycle is not something that any other major software company uses as a business model. It usually results in burned-out programmers and buggy bloatware that causes as many problems as it resolves, but it IS guaranteed to do one thing really well: maintain revenues.

That's how the game is played, and anyone can buy in.