The Time Is NOW—Switching from AutoCAD Architecture to Revit Architecture–the Right Attitude Is Everything

TOM TOBIN: OK. Well I want to tell you a little bit about what this class is about, so that you know. This is really more of an introduction class. It's a beginner's class. They listed it as an intermediate class because you're supposed to understand AutoCAD Architecture, but not necessarily Revit. Would that apply to most of you in here? Good.

So how many of you are running AutoCAD Architecture? How many of you are running it like AutoCAD Architecture and not AutoCAD? OK, there's a couple of hands stayed up. I'm glad to see that. I like that I like the person in back is kind of waving at me with that. Yeah, sometimes. It depends.

All right so what we're going to be talking about is switching from AutoCAD Architecture to Revit Architecture. And really this is so you're not going to be afraid. All right, we're going to go over some things here. So if this isn't really what you were thinking it was, you know, go hit another class while you still have time. Or go down to the open bar early. I'm all for that.

This is an AIA class. Guess what? You get points just for sitting here and falling asleep if that's what it's going to be before your flight. Are most of you leaving tomorrow or tonight? OK, so you can have one last Vegas night.

You know all about this. I just heard somebody say phone go off. Please vibrate that thing down.

So here's what we're going to be talking about. Why are we going to get a Revit in the first place? Are we going to Revit because our job deliverable requires it? OK, there's a few hands. All right, we're going to Revit because it's just time. Would we say that's pretty much the-- cool.

So we're going to talk about why you even want to consider going to Revit. We're going to talk about what holds most firms going to Revit. What holds them back. You know, what makes this tough. How do we introduce this to our firm?

So how many of you are already running Revit? OK, so you're doing kind of a mixed environment transition sort of thing right now? Sure. How's that going? How's that going for you? It's kind of slow isn't it? You've got some people who are fighting it, some people who aren't. We're going to talk about those things. We're going to talk about how we introduced this to a firm and what are some of the challenges, and then how to get over that hump. So we'll go through this.

So just a quick bio of me. My name's Tom Tobin. I am the BIM Administrator or Manager of Design Technology at Acock Associates in Columbus, Ohio. We are a design firm that [INAUDIBLE] office buildings, high end custom homes, distribution. So pretty diverse product line. I've been in the business about 26, 27 years. I actually started on ink and Mylar [INAUDIBLE] drafting. Cool. I've been on several different platforms. I spent some time in the reseller chain-- not really the reseller chain-- the consulting chain, where I helped transition in from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture. And then I drank the Kool-Aid now I'm trying to convince you to move on down the road. All right? So that's a little bit about who I am.

And for those of you-- I see a few faces that I saw in a class I did earlier, so some of these slides may look the same because I put this in every presentation I give. It's all about the attitude. Right? It's the attitude. It's the attitude that you guys have. It's the attitude your firm has.

How many of you have actually tried to go on vacation with your family? Whether it's your kids or your brothers and sisters, the long drive in a car. Does that work? You know, this is a great thing. We're going on vacation. We're going to this fantastic destination. When do we get there? Are we there? I'm tired. I'm hungry. You know, and all of a sudden your attitude is just shot. Everybody's-- even though the destination is going to be good, but while we're getting there--

So what my parents did, you know, they'd make sure I was loaded up with comic books. This is way before you know handheld devices and things like that. So we could have a good attitude in the car so we could enjoy this experience. Same way in the office.

How many of you are the end users? The guys who are doing the day to day drafting. Right? You are the boots on the ground. The guys who actually are having to deal with this. How many are BIM managers, CAD managers. A lot of those same hands went up. How many of you are the architects? Let's see, the same hands. OK not quite as many. How about owners of firms? We got any owners?

OK, this comes all the way down from the owners to the end users and backwards, because if the owner doesn't have a good attitude about trying to make this, he's not going to support it. OK, if the end user doesn't have a good attitude, he's going to run up to the owner and say, hey, I got I had this done an hour ago in AutoCAD, right? That you're making me do this, this is killing me. So, your attitude. You have to have the right attitude to get there. So enough preaching about your attitude.

You transitioned out of AutoCAD right? When you went to % Architecture you used AutoCAD before? Did you get a bang for the buck with objects? Did you feel that you're getting a little bit more productivity when you went to walls, doors, and windows versus lines, circles, and arcs? Right. So now what? We're trying to continue down the BIM road.

And one of the things I'm going to tell you right now-- and don't let anybody tell you it's not-- AutoCAD Architecture Is BIM. Right? It's as much BIM as Revit is, but for some reason when people say BIM they just think Revit. It's a drawing that contains more than just lines, circles, and arcs. It's an intelligent drawing that has information. So you're already working in BIM, and so that in itself should help you feel better about this transition.

How many of you actually downloaded the handouts? OK. How many of you brought them? How many of you need one? All right. I'm going to say I'm going to set these up here. Same thing I did in class yesterday. Take and out if you need it, put it in your bag because I'm not following it. All right.

The handout is for you, but really what the handout is, is it really shows you the comparison, the one to one comparison, of what this looks like in AutoCAD Architecture and what does it look like in Revit. And that's all I have. Sorry, man. You can download it, though. So I don't want you to be afraid. So if you already understand objects and how they work, then a lot about this already. OK?

I kind of call this good things come to those who wait. And essentially what that means is that when I get a new piece of software I'm the type of guy who wants to immediately load it, play with it, and do that. Anybody feel that same way? OK, that's me personally.

Professionally though, I don't do that. Firm I'm working for right now, we're just now starting to implement 2017, and 2018 comes out when? In April. OK? I like to wait for the next point release or patch, or being able to talk to other people. Say, whether they had a good experience with it or not. What they've done.

But when I say good things come to those who wait, I told you I actually taught a class from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture. That is a great transition from AutoCAD Architecture, then into Revit. I'll give you a real world example. I was doing an implementation with a firm down south. They had two offices. I went to their corporate office. So both these offices are running on a AutoCAD Architecture. Tell me if this sounds familiar to you guys at all.

All right, they're both running AutoCAD Architecture. I go the corporate office. They're using AutoCAD Architecture the way some of you who raised your hands like AutoCAD Architecture. They're using walls, doors, windows, objects. When we started doing the training for Revit, they were the ones going, hey this is just like making a wall style. Oh hey, this is similar to-- they had this one to one comparison. They related to it. I went 50 miles down the road to their branch office. Running AutoCAD Architecture.

Like those of you who waved to me in the back, they were really using it as AutoCAD. OK? The only time they use the AutoCAD Architecture part was when they were asked to help out on a job from the corporate office. Now, they transitioned. They made it, but it was a lot more difficult.

So those of you who already understand AutoCAD Architecture, you're going to make this a lot easier. Because everything that you know pretty much goes with you. I said that I've been a lot of different platforms have been on Intergraph. I've been on MicroStation. I've been on Arris, BuildersCAD. AutoCAD 10 was the first version I touched. Went into AutoCAD Architecture, Revit Architecture.

And my point in talking about that is that I think all CAD systems are the same. I truly believe that. Have you guys had that experience or no? Or has AutoCAD only been the only platform? Anybody else been on anything other than AutoCAD?

OK, so those people who raised your hands, this is somewhat true, right? Revit is the same way. Revit's environment used to be substantially different. It was scary to the AutoCAD user. Part of why I gave you the handout is because it's not anymore. Not as much any. The scariest thing about Revit to most AutoCAD Architecture users, or AutoCAD in general, is the fact that it is what? One file. Thank you. You guys can-- this is the last class. We had music. Let's have a good time, all right? You guys can shout out.

But we still need to have the right attitude. As I'm trying to talk about this, OK, the scary part is it's all in one file. But we're going to see that that's really a plus, not a negative. So objects work the same. Just about how we place was components buildings, everything's pretty much the same. There are some differences because it is in one file basically.

I can also tell you that having gone down the road, doing our wall styles, as in AutoCAD Architecture-- wall pipes in Revit Architecture. Revit actually handles this a lot easier. How many of you may display configurations and all that fun stuff in an AutoCAD Architecture? Yeah. That is great when it's set up, but man making that happen is a chore. All right? Would you agree? Yeah, pretty much that's a chore. It's not that much of a chore in Revit. It really isn't. And it's surprising how easy it became.

But there are some differences, so we'll work through that. The biggest difference is the fact that it is, as I keep mentioning, in one database. But what that allows us to do is to have more versatility in how we produce our drawings. I mean really. And we can still file share. So it's still not a only one person can open the file, we can still have multiple people work on these files.

So you guys have already asked yourself a series of questions. Whether you wanted to or not you've asked yourself these questions. Why do I want to move from AutoCAD architecture in the first place? Well is it because it's time, my firm wants to stay cutting edge, or because the deliverables are making me do this? All right. What's the gain in changing? Why wouldn't I want to stay with AutoCAD and an AutoCAD environment?

When I was teaching AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture the thing I said the most was, hey guys this is not scary. It's AutoCAD. You open it up and it looks exactly like AutoCAD. All your tools still work when you open up AutoCAD Architecture The line tool still works, all your audio lists still work. You just have the greater opportunity, so why would I ever want to leave that to go to Revit?

They both make models, right? How many of you are actually using the model aspect in AutoCAD Architecture? Wow, that's not many. OK. Is it because it's just kind of cumbersome? Right. OK. So we're going to talk about what the difference in these models are. So here's your answers. Why am I moving? What's my gain? And I'm going to use the word opportunity. Revit can give us more opportunities. And I'll elaborate on exactly what I'm considering an opportunity by using the software.

Why don't I want to stay with an AutoCAD environment? I just told you that that's comfortable. All my legacy product works. Right? How many of you have been on AutoCAD or an AutoCAD product, you know, CAD drafting package, for more than two years? OK. More than five years? More than 10 years? This is the majority of the room.

So you guys have developed all kinds of great ways to reduce your drawings, right? You've streamlined everything. You made it all down. You sit down you know exactly what you're doing because you've got a habit. Or maybe I should say some bad habits, because everybody doesn't follow the rules. Whether it is the rules set up from the software itself, or the rules set up in your office, right?

Somebody decides quickly they don't care what layer they're on. They just start drawing. We ever had that happen? Once or twice, right? Have we ever done it? No, none of us have ever done that. Somebody else's file that we've always had to deal with. All right?

Think of Revit, as we're moving to Revit, as this fantastic opportunity-- because I'm talking about opportunities-- to develop all new bad habits. Isn't that exciting? That's exciting. How are the models different? Bidirectional and parametric modeling relationships. There you go. Done. Clear? Clear as mud. Makes perfect sense. We're going to get into that.

What this really means is because it's one file, which is really a database, right? Revit is technically a database. I can make a change wherever the change makes sense. How many of you use the elevation tool in AutoCAD Architecture? Yeah, because sometimes it's easy, sometimes not so easy, right? It depends on what it is. So when you make a change in AutoCAD Architecture to your floor plan, that change isn't immediately reflected into the elevation, is it? Is it? No, it's not. I can't really go and change that elevation and have that reflect on my floor plan, can I? No. That's what this does. Parametric, bidirectional parametric modeling. And I'm going to show you an example of this.

So let's get into what I am going to call opportunities that I hope you think are opportunities as well. And the first one is improved quality. How many of you have ever spent time tracking down callouts and details on different sheets? Have we ever done that? Have we ever looked at a callout and flipped to that sheet, and go, well, where is the detail? That's never-- that never-- because we're-- I know everybody in this room has never done that, has ever had that problem, but other people have. OK? They've run into that problem quite a bit.

This is one of the things that Revit handles beautifully for us. Can AutoCAD Architecture handle that for us? It can. It can. But I'm going to tell you right now you have to do a few things to make that work right in AutoCAD Architecture. So I'm not telling you anything that you can't do today, of but I'm trying to tell you that ultimately this is going to be easier for you. I mean, way easier. All right? And unless as architects, designers, owners, BIM managers, you like doing this. You like chasing down callouts and going, that detail-- do we like doing that? Heavens no. Heavens no.

So let me give you an example. Oops. Jumped, hit too many buttons. So here's an example of this. I've got a floor plan here. There is my callout. Looks pretty much like what we're used to seeing, right? It's referring back to this sheet. For whatever reason I don't want that wall detail, that wall section, on this unit anymore. I want to put it up on this sheet. Now in a CAD package, we've got to get into that other DWG, we've got to move it, we've got a delete things, and we got to go back and change the text. I delete it off this sheet, that view, and immediately the callout is empty.

I just go to my project browser. I drag that same view-- when I deleted it off the sheet I didn't delete the view. I drag it on, and immediately it knows what sheet I put it on and it's position. Do we like that? I love that. I love that more than anything. I just think that is one of the most powerful things that this does.

The other nice thing, and I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but when we deleted that view the call out became empty, right? Now those of you who've been playing around in Revit, raise your hands again. You've been playing around somewhat? Do you realize that when the callout is empty it doesn't print? You guys know that? OK, in the print dialog box there is a place where you can tell it to not print unreferenced callouts. So if you want to see an empty callout then you have to uncheck that.

But if while you're doing this and you're kind of creating sections and things like that for-- because I want to see a particular view, but it's never going to go on a sheet. So you just, you don't want that to print, it won't. OK, that's another thing that we can't do without AutoCAD architecture as easily as that. It can be sitting there, we can see it. I see it on view, but it won't print.

OK, so that's what I would call my first opportunity for improved quality. And then we'll talk about the opportunity for greater productivity, but I pretty much just covered that in improved quality, didn't I? Yeah. Because that task alone can save you hours. I mean it can just save you hours. But let's go ahead and look at this greater productivity. And Is going to be an example of the parametric, bi-directional parametric relationships that I was talking about. Because this-- there's my job again.

I opened up three different views, and now because everything is connected in one file I can work in whatever view makes the most sense for me. So I'm going to come over here to my planned view. I'm going to select this window and immediately it highlights in every other view. This is also highlighting in building sections, and in the wall sections, anything else. So I'm going to right click-- I could just hit the delete key. I'm going to right click and I'm going to delete this out. And immediately, like that, it gives me a warning. Right?

In this case, it says I have another view that has dimensions on it. Those dimensions just got adjusted. Go look at that. So it's already telling me that I may need a little bit more work. It's trying to help me do my job. But we can see that it went away out of my elevation. And this is a true elevation. It went away out of my model. If I want-- if I'm using my model. And in Revit the model is everything, OK?

I don't know if you noticed, but I also have window tags. I've tagged the window. I created a schedule with that. My schedule is now updated. In one move, I now know I need to change another view that has my dimensions because I have a different dimension plan. It updated my elevations. It updated my wall sections. Updated my building sections. That's greater productivity.

I'll give you another real world example. I was in an architectural firm back when I was doing consulting, and a older designer, older gentleman, from the era of hand drafting-- fantastic artist. He could pull a napkin out, sketch an elevation, and you could drop a scale on that. It's a lost art. I mean, we've been losing that. He could not transition to CAD to save his life. Class, after class, after class, after class, and now he's a Revit expert. No, he's not a Revit expert, OK?

We all wish that could happen. That didn't happen. He can't create a Revit file. I'm not going to say that, oh that Revit's so great. He can do all this stuff. No. He still can't create this file. He can't create the types. He can't do any of that stuff.

But what we did teach him to do was to open up the project, work the browser, print sheets-- that's very important for your project architects, all right? But he could open views. And then he could come and do what he does as a designer. And we may have different program windows, right? That part of the job says, hey, we're going to use these types of windows, and he's going to say, hey, I need a different window in there.

We taught him how to select that, and he could pull off the list and replace that window. He could nudge that window over. When you nudge the window over you won't get a warning about dimensions. The dimensions will just update. OK? If you delete it then it tries to delete-- because you've referenced those points. So it says, hey, there's nothing here for me to reference to.

But now all of a sudden, without him knowing it, he's actually helping me do production work. I mean, that's incredible, because it's all in one database.

It's also got a lower cost. Right? You guys nobody's complaining about the cost of the software, right? Hardware? No. Actually that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the cost of efficiency. I'm talking about what we can get done. I just showed you two examples that back in the day, using straight CAD, and I'll even go back to the hand-drawn. Boy, this was time consuming. This is just time consuming stuff. So this is going to allow us to get more done with fewer resources.

And believe me, I'm not saying that, oh now you get to go chop some heads because they don't want to join the Revit team. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm talking about is that today, depending on the size of your project, you may need three to four people, minimum, working on a job, right? And in many cases, depending on the scope, many more, right? Would you guys say yes to that? Yeah.

And we have multiple jobs in our firm, right? No? You guys are only working on one job? OK. Must be nice. All right. Your fees must be incredible.

So we have many projects going. And once again, I know nobody in this room would ever do this, but sometimes firms have a tendency to put all their resources into one project. And this other one sitting back here waiting until it becomes a fire before we start throwing people at that, right? I mean, you've heard of this, right? Yeah, you haven't experienced that yourself. What I'm trying to tell you is that now, once Revit is fully implemented-- big caveat. Air quotes. OK? Once it is implemented you should be able to use fewer people to run that job, which allows those other people that you would have been using to be working on the jobs down the pipe. That way we can try to manage our workflow a little better. OK, that's what I mean by a lower cost.

The other thing that it really does do, as you've seen in the example, if you're a small firm you can get a lot done by yourself. And if you're a large firm it can really make you a much more efficient in how you use your resources and your time.

Visualization. How many of you do visualization? I'm talking about renderings and bells and whistles. How many of you do them electronically? OK, there's a few of you. All right? Once again when I was the guy who would come and demo to your office AutoCAD Architecture, there was this big section that the salespeople said, hey you got to show them the bells and whistles. You got to show them the-- look at what you can get, what you can do.

And hardly any firm really ever got there. I mean, you really had to do some work. I'm not saying you can't, or you couldn't, but you had to really allocate some time to do that. All right? Visualization really is very simple in Revit.

Have you guys played with this at all in Revit? A little bit? And would you say it's fairly simple? Yes? No? Maybe? Come on, let's-- OK.

So I'm going to give you a real example here. This is a project in Revit that I was asked to work on. We had a job come in that was an addition to a school, a high school. They wanted this addition to be kind of like a coffee house environment for kids that weren't really making it in a traditional classroom. It was still teacher lead, but they wanted it to be a more relaxed space. They drew all this up in AutoCAD. We shipped it out to a renderer that we had-- beautiful rendering. Oh my God. I still love guys who can render by hand. I mean it is an incredible art form in itself.

They go to the meeting, show them the floor plans, show them the rendering-- Yeah, I can't quite see it. So they came back and said, hey Tom. Can you put this into Revit for us? I reference in the floor plan, I trace it. OK? With Revit walls, and I go to the manufacturer and I download some of the stuff. So I didn't create all those chairs and all that stuff. I actually just got it from the manufacturer's website. And I didn't add anything that wasn't out of the box here. I didn't do anything special. If you ever worked with-- you see the curve ceilings and things like that. Anybody place ceilings in Revit yet?

OK. It's a sketch tool. You can curve, all that, do what you want. So I did this. I then took a camera shot perspective. We did others. That's why we put it in Revit because we wanted to show them multiple views so they'd get a real sense of this. But I just want to show you how in the design process it's working.

So we did a wireframe. We add a little color to it. Then they actually liked what they were starting to see, and they gave us a list of materials. So I actually went out to the manufacturer, put in the real carpeting, did the whole stuff. Just mapped it, OK? It's no no big brainer. This was-- you know, I didn't have to spend hours trying to figure this stuff out. And I rendered this in Revit. OK? I didn't put this into Photoshop, I didn't put it into Max. I didn't do anything. This is just out of Revit, nothing special.

By this time now, we got the job. OK, we got the job, and now they're critiquing and go, you know, that's too open. So I made some changes. Views already exist, take it back. The client goes Hey, yeah. That's about what we're looking for. And I'm still doing construction documents, because I'm still using these views. Everything is working together because it is one database.

I'm going to just show you this other picture. This was another view looking the other way, and there's a reason why show this other view. Because you can see, as they were working this, they says, nah, I don't want those colors. We want to change it. We want to change the floor types. So we're just doing that, and so this was the final rendering out of Revit I had done. Architect went out, and that's what was built.

Oh my gosh. I mean, I think that's incredible. I mean, how often does the customer actually get what they're going to get? I mean, they okayed a design from what we did and it's essentially exactly what they expected. This helped us get the job.

Within the same office we did another thing where we were doing a county courthouse, and they wanted a new bench for the judge. And the carpenters came in and made it, and he says, hey, I can't see the jury box. So they brought that to us and we just started pumping it into Revit. We took camera shots from where he would be looking, and then we figured out how high everything needed to be. And because they could see the space in Revit and it was still doing our construction documents at the same time.

Have you done this in AutoCAD Architecture? Can you do this in AutoCAD Architecture? Well, yeah, you could. You can do this. How many of you do this opportunity? Facilities management? Anybody here do this at all? Yeah? OK. That's cool.

I say this every time I've given a talk like this. Facilities management is really one of the up and coming money making ventures, I think, if you start getting into it. Because we have all this data. As I said, Revit is a database. There's all kinds of data inside here. AutoCAD Architecture is a database too, of sorts. I mean, there's a lot of information associated with spaces and whatnot. Excuse me.

But you don't want to do data management through Revit itself. There's a lot of other packages out there. ARCHIBUS is one of them. This is an example. Is that what you use? ARCHIBUS? And are you using Revit yet? OK. If you're using Revit-- or, I'm sorry, ARCHIBUS-- definitely start using Revit. It's backwards compatible. It'll bring in a Revit model into ARCHIBUS, and you can do all your facilities management stuff, and you can push it back out. And those changes will go with the model into the Revit environment.

And then you can make some different changes in Revit and push it back up, and it works really well. I mean I've seen it work. I haven't done it myself but it's been demo-ed to me. OK? And I know some people over there who have told me a lot of this and that's why I include them. I get no kickback for this, so you know, it's OK. It's a good product.

We have FM systems as well. You know, so AutoCAD does. So there'sa lot of packages out there that are trying to look into tying into Maximo. Are you guys familiar with Maximo? That's like one of the biggest facilities package out there. But anyways, owners are kind of starting to realize this too, themselves. It's no longer the days of where we draw a plan, print it out, it's built, then we do what? We used to shove it into a flat file, hope the owner would come back-- and many times they did if we had a good relationship-- and they would want a change.

Now, once again I'm going to date myself, and I want to see how many people know what I'm talking about. When the owner would come back, we would pull that old job out, and what would we do to that floor plan? We'd probably burn a sepia. Right? Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Right. There you go. There's a lot of people who have no I have not had the joys of working with sepias, or to smell like ammonia coming out of a blueprint room.

The sepia basically sort of burns an image on. You'd flip it over, you'd erase this part of it, and then you would redraft the new design. OK? Now we have-- and I'm sure you've heard this in just about every Revit class, any BIM class you've been in-- a building lifecycle.

OK, the owners want these things. They're not entirely sure why they want them, but they know that they can be used for more than just this piece of paper. One of the arguments that I have with the people in my office who are transitioning-- by the way, we're not transitioning out of AutoCAD to Revit. We're transitioning out of Microstation to Revit.

So one of the arguments I had. I had an architect. I'm building this model for him, and he's going, all you care about is the model. All you care about is the model. And I'm like, yeah, I care about is the model because the model is what creates all the data. All he cared about what was printed on the piece of paper.

How many of you are only concerned about what's on the paper so I can go to a meeting? Come on, be honest. OK. I'm surprised. Either you don't want to really tell me, because that's what most users, most people-- it's the deliverable, you know? What can you put out in the field? What can I get this done? But the whole industry here is changing somewhat.

So I've already been saying that you probably do all of this. And I've already mentioned, I think Revit can do this better. I mean I was the guy who didn't want to move Revit. I really didn't. You Know I was very happy where I was. And I didn't move into Revit for very long before I did not want to go back. If you take me back, I can still do it, but I don't like it now. And so I talk about a good attitude. I don't have one of those when you ask me to draft in something other than Revit. but that's another topic. All right? Because Revit really can do it a little better for us.

And I kept talking about the bidirectional parametric relationships. AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD in itself, by its nature is what? It's a fragmented file system. You have a different drawing for everything, right? For the most part? You have first floor DWG, second floor DWG, foundation DWG. Depending on how you're doing it, elevation DWG, details DWG, so on and so forth. So that means, as I've mentioned already, every change you make you may have to chase down and do in all these different places. I've already shown you how the parametric aspect of that works. This is really what's different.

How many of you use your project navigators? Do you love them? Once again, once you set it up right, it works very well and it can assemble a model for you. And once I got through the hoop, I did like it, but that was a lot of work. And it's a lot of work making sure everybody follows the rules right, right? We don't have that problem with Revit. And it still comes down to PMA, positive mental attitude in how we're doing this.

Now one of the biggest things I used to talk about in transitioning to AutoCAD Architecture was phasing in the stuff. Because AutoCAD Architectures-- what a big package, right? Yeah. OK. So I would always say, hey start doing walls, doors, and windows and get that immediate bang. Then maybe do schedules, then maybe do the elevations, then maybe do this. And before you know it you're doing all that, but usually you only get about this far and you go, yeah this is pretty good.

I say the same thing with Revit. You want to phase this in. You don't want to bite off more than you can chew. But I will tell you the minute you start doing Revit, one thing quickly leads to another. And before long you're using more things because it's that database. OK, I'm still going to hand do a schedule. That's fine. I mean, you know, draft it up and fill this in. But you're quickly going to realize that when I have a window type, and I can assign a size to that and other information, and I can hit a button and throw some fields and I got a schedule, oh man, I'll phase that in now. You know, why not?

But you can be successful without using every tool that's available, right? Because in the end of the day we were talking about deliverables. Is it buildable? So you don't have to use everything. You don't have to do that visualization part that I was talking about. It's pretty cool, but you don't have to do that. One of the things that I talked about is phasing in-- you know, maybe you don't do your details right away.

I did a class yesterday about how to bring in your CAD details into your Revit environment. I know there is a couple of people who were in that class, so just relax you're going to see some of the same things at this point. All right? But well but you can still use your AutoCAD details within the Revit environment without having to create them yet. And so we're going to look at an example of that right here.

So here I'm back in my job again. And we are going to add a detail to this sheet. And in this case it's going to be-- I'm going to switch to AutoCAD so you can see it. It's going to be a typical floor detail control joint. So if you're in my class yesterday the same exact same example I gave. So here is my AutoCAD. Do you guys have details in AutoCAD? Everybody? Yeah, of course. You have them in Revit yet? Not too many. And you wouldn't if you're transitioning.

Part of what you want to do is you want to build in time to build those too, OK? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to views. I'm going to create a drafting view. Do you know what a drafting view is in Revit yet? Good. So you create a drafting view. The important aspect about creating and drafting view and bringing it in from AutoCAD is setting the scale, because we need to have that scale be correct. See, I feel like I should have when going and the whole bit.

So we've got a blank sheet right now. And what's going to happen here is that I'm then going to go-- well, there, it exists right there. And I'm going to go to my insert tool. You guys know how to use an insert? Do you know the difference between linking and importing? OK. Good. Well, then maybe I should skip this part too.

Well, so here here's my DWG. We're going to link this in. And the reason why we want to link it in is because when we import it-- do you guys know that if you import it brings in information behind it? It brings in line types, fonts, patterns, all kinds of things that could slow down your Revit environment and maybe cause warnings and errors. I go through and I preserve the colors. I make the layers visible so I can quickly see what I brought in from AutoCAD.

And if I do a double click here, we might actually see a detail at some point. So there my detail. And essentially this is what in AutoCAD terms? So like a block reference, right? We've just brought this bad boy in. So now I could phase in and still continue to use my AutoCAD as I'm transitioning. As I told my class yesterday though, you want to start migrating these over into Revit if your goal is to be a full Revit house. I'm going to look at that example next.

But how do we add that fantastic opportunity of coordination to this? So I'm going to put a callout in, and this callout is going to be a plan detail callout. And so before I place this detail-- now this is an older version. This is actually changed. It's up on the ribbon now, but it used to be on the option bar. You have to tell it to reference another view. And I'm going to tell it to reference that CAD view that I created.

When you do the dropdown it gives you every single view that's in your project. This is an active project, you'll have lots of views. That's another thing that kind of scares people going in to Revit. You're like, I've got to create a view for this? Wait, another view for that? Why can't I just turn layers off and on? Well, we don't have layers. We create views. And you're going to see that working in one view to the other is actually pretty cool, becaus the changes you make one view reflect into the other views. All right?

So I am going to place this callout in my drawing, and granted this is not where you would put a floor control joint, but this is just to show you that now is going to work like any other Revit view call out. I hit the head and it takes me right to my Revit detail, or my AutoCAD detail. Now, if I place that onto a sheet, which is a simple drag and drop method, that callout head will get filled in and I will then be utilizing the opportunity of coordination while phasing in my AutoCAD aspect of this. So I put it on a sheet, it fills out the callout, and now if I delete it, the callout is cleared out. I've now got an intelligent Revit piece of AutoCAD Architecture. Any questions? Kind of cool? Kind of not?

AUDIENCE: If you do intergrate all your detail library, [INAUDIBLE]--

TOM TOBIN: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: --do you start adjusting the details [INAUDIBLE]?

TOM TOBIN: No. Did everybody hear the question? What the question was is that he was saying that once you start integrating your details, you're making them Revit details, right? He wanted to know if that's going to then affect the walls, and all that other kind of stuff, and I told him no.

Now the real answer to that is that if we're doing drafting views, or detailed views-- OK? A drafting view is just a 2D thing. It does not come from the model. So it would not affect our walls, anything. OK? At its simplest state this is line work. It's just 2D line work. You guys use your Detail Component Managers? I want to see heads shaking from everybody, because you should all be using your Detail Component Managers in AutoCAD Architecture. OK? It's the same in Revit. I have a Detail Component Manager there. So that's how you create these.

Now the other part is what's called a detail view, and you would put a callout around the chunk of the model. And then it-- like when you cut a wall section, that's really a detail view. And it shows you the outline of those walls, all that kind of stuff, and then you've got to add maybe the brick coursing and all that other kind of stuff to it. That's a different animal.

So here we can phase this in and do that. Now let's take a look at the next step that you just asked about, though, that we want to integrate this information. And let's see if this actually works. So using the exact same AutoCAD detail, what we're going to do is what I referred to and others refer to, as Revitize. We're going to Revitize, industrialize, utilize. Right? We're going to make this good. It's going to be the Revitization of our AutoCAD.