AUGI Revit MEP Wish List Voting

Please go to the AUGI Revit MEP Wish List and vote for your top 10.

How many versions of Revit MEP does it take...

As long as I am throwing things out for discussion, here is another one for the fire.

How many versions of Revit does it take to work as a consultant? Well, it takes as many versions as your clients choose to use. As a consultant, you work for a variety of clients, that may be on any given version of any given software.

In the DWG world, we have simply become experts at converting formats and versions up and down as needed. If I'm on 2010 but you use R14, no biggie, I can even convert MicroStation files as needed.

In the RVT world, I have projects in Revit 2009 that will not be migrated for what ever reason by my clients. Two of these projects will be in my office for the next 3-4 years. That means I will keep Revit MEP 2009 on my users PCs until 2012. I will be using Revit MEP 2013 by that time. Does this mean I may have 5 versions of Revit running to satisfy the needs of all my clients? Unless something changes... Yes. (Will my PC be able to handle that?)

Where before, my users opened the current version of AutoCAD (MEP) and worked in it all day converting when needed, now they will jump from one version of Revit to another depending on the job they are working on.

I understand the benefits behind restricting compatibility with Revit products, at the same time I really wish I could dumb something down when I need to.

There is a really good chance that I have missed something simple here, so if you know something I don't, please comment. In fact no matter where you stand, I would like to hear about it.

Take My Families, please!

As a consulting engineers and a Revit MEP users, there are some things we have to live with. I am interested in what others think about this situation.

I work for a firm that performs MEP engineering. That's mechanical, electrical, and plumbing. It should be common knowledge that any MEP firm that has been using Revit has created a great deal of content. What may not be common knowledge is that sometimes a MEP firm bids on a project, but is only awarded part. I may win the electrical and loose the mechanical. This means that a different MEP firm is doing that work. In the past I was sad because I didn't get all the work, but I went on and worked with the competition as best I could.

Now things could be a little more awkward. In a situation where the project is being completed in Revit, my families are now subject to be shared with a direct competitor. Especially now, I may feel my families give me an advantage. I most likely have quite a bit more information in a Revit family than I would ever have in an AutoCAD block. How and what I schedule, work flow and simple intellectual property is now in the position of being compromised. The whole idea of BIM is to share. That didn't sound bad until I thought of it this way.

I brought this up while speaking at the Revit User group of Nebraska a couple weeks ago. Some people suggested only sharing a 3D DWF. There is no real way to lock down a family like a lisp. It seems like you are in or your are out.

For me, take my families... please. It doesn't matter how awesome they are, they won't make me any more creative in my design. They don't listen to the client, I do. They don't establish relationships and build trust, the team does. Families are wonderful, for those of us who have created them, we hold them very dear. But just like children, at some point you are going to have to let them go. If you haven't thought about it yet, you might want to, they are growing up fast.

Like I said, I am very curious to hear from you. Please post a comment.

Iowa Caucus... Check out my poll

It's the end of 2008, so my poll on what software you are using is closed. Here are the final results.

Now let's turn our attention to something everyone seems to be talking about, yet I honestly don't see any in action. If you are using BIM, let us know. Just to Clarify, BIM is not Revit. BIM is a process by which Building information is modeled and shared. Easily done with AutoCAD MEP (ABS and ADT) and other software. I like to keep the polls open for a while, but I also like to see some numbers up there, so vote early and often.

See the side bar to Rock the Vote!