Hi,

I am a from Australia and a current user of Both Revit Building 2008 and of Archicad 11 as I do contract work for 2 companies that use each of the systems.

A bit on me. I have been using different cad programs for over 15 years ranging from Autocad R10 up to 2005, 3D add-ons to Autocad r14 DRC auto and Karelmate professional, Vectorworks Architect with Renderworks and Landmark from 9.5 to 12.5, Revit 8.0, 9.1 and now 2008 as well as Archicad 10 and 11 so I feel I am well versed to speak on issues that people may have.

If I was to choose a platform when the choices were Revit 8.1 or Archicad 9.0 I would have chosen Revit 8.1 as at this stage Plotmaker wasn’t integrated with Archicad, and I feel this was a huge drawback of the program and made updating and editing nearly finished documents a time consuming process. Once Archicad 10 came out this all changed and it is now an all in one program.

Both Revit and Archicad are now great programs, but on a day to day basis I am constantly frustrated with Revit. Things are just a lot harder to achieve in Revit.

The family system in appalling and there is no intelligent search function. the families are very hard to edit and when you do you actually create another object in the file increasing its size, let alone the fact that you have to click 5 dialogue boxes deep the ok all the way out again.. In Archicad the search function is brilliant and changes to library parts is a breeze with very visual interface all in the one dialogue box only 1 click deep.

This constant clicking through dialogue boxes is all the way through Revit and the fact that it looks like a data base with no graphical interface is painful.

In Archicad the complex profiler is a dream meaning I can have my wall with set downs, slab set down and edge beam, eave details, cornice, flashing detail and anything else I want to be on the wall for instance profiled mouldings all as one wall in my favourites list. All I have to do is use this wall and the whole lot is placed. This is all able to be scheduled as different items as well.. While in Revit you can do host sweeps but this is just extra work and more steps. I am looking for productivity gains

On controlling your document, we have all grown to use layers to give us control over your document.. Well in Revit there are no layers. At first you go great.... but wait until you try to isolate a certain type of wall you cant as all walls are in the same type, yes there are sub types of but once again this is extra time to work out when it can just be automatically placed on it correct layer in Archicad., in Archicad you still have layers and this is a God sent and critical to have when trying to isolate or group certain things. For instance when you export to DWG all your walls are placed on the one layer... a nightmare if someone else needs to just see masonry walls.... get my drift..

With Archicad the production of different sets of documents i.e. Presentation sets, DA sets, CC sets, DWG export, DGN export, PDF creation where you require your documents to look a certain way and with certain pen thickness and colour and isolation of different things for different consultants is all just a click of the mouse within Archicad once you have set up your template file. In Revit you have to prepare all of these manually each time you wish to produce them. Also you get a PDF and3D PDF creator inbuilt in Archicad. In Revit you may have view sets but this still does not give you the flexibility and speed that Archicad does.

Yes I know you can have saved print sets but this doesn’t change how the documents look for instance if you want solid fill in walls for presentation and hatching for CC documents you have to change this manually.. In Archicad you just publish that set and it’s done in the click of the mouse..

In Revit I have and still do find it cumbersome to produce Construction documents, as there are very few so called drafting tools to complete your documents, although it can still be done as I have completed a few medium size unit development projects in Revit and modelled the entire building. I think all told in all 4 elevs and a total of 8 sections I drew about 8 lines, so it can be done, I just takes longer.

In Archicad from Version 10 onwards there are so many easier to use drafting tools to help you get the job out the door.

I agree with a few people here that what ever you choose you have to spend the time and do whole projects and not revert to any 2D programs to complete your documents. Get professional training as I have done for all programs that I have used. Yes it costs money but it costs you a lot more sitting around trying to work things out for your self.

I found that the experience of the Graphisoft team in Australia is far better as they have been doing this for some 20 years and it is one company Australia wide where as Autodesk is a lot of resellers. The support system from Graphisoft is a lot better to as you get to speak to a real architect with years of experience in both the Program and Architecture. Where as with Autodesk it gets logged then sent to the US and if they think it’s important they will get back to you maybe in a week or so.

With rendering I feel and most people on Revit also agree that Archicad wins hands down. While Autodesk stick with Accurender this will always be the case. Archicad uses the Lightworks rendering engine which you can buy as a stand alone rendering program. Once again Google it to see what it can do. Also there I would recommend at least getting the DVD tutorial as I have to get the most out of it.

Archicad also have interactive tutorials and virtual tutors that make learning it a breeze, compared to the written tutorial from Revit...

If you are looking to change to BIM I feel the superior program is Archicad but don’t believe me get both and trial them for free for 30 days. But you need to go into this with an open mind on interface and who makes the program. Try some simple operations like changing properties of a wall, window, library item such as one of the cabinets, do you want to look at lines of text or pictures that describe things. Try searching for a particular library item. Try exporting a file to dwg and open in Autocad to see which is better to use. Also if you are on Mac then you can only use Archicad as Autodesk do not support macs. Yes you can run windows on a Mac but ive spoken to a few people doing this and they say it’s not the best solution.

File sizes from Revit get quite large compared to Archicad from version 10 onwards so if you are working over a network this could also be an issue. Also I heard that Graphisoft have signed a deal with Oracle the clear leader in data base systems and have also heard that this will be included in Archicad 12 so we can expect some great speed increases in how the program works,

Archicad is also cheaper to maintain in Australia with there subscription service than Revit so in the end it costs you less. Upfront costs of Revit vary depending on who you talk to but on average are the same as Archicad.

What ever you decide spend the time, get professional training both basic and advanced..