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

TOM TOBIN: OK you want me to start over? No, we won't do that. How many of you who-- you all have AutoCAD Architecture loaded, How many of you have Revit loaded? How many of you actually started doing work in Revit? OK, so the reality is if you've already started making some wall types and some families and some doors, you've already noticed there's a lot of similarities between the two products, right?

Sort of, kind of, yes, no, maybe? Maybe? Maybe? We'd go with maybe. So you're going to know a little bit more about what's the same, what the differences between the type of file systems, that's kind of a big one. And how to put together the right team, and how to put together a checklist.

Of what we can do. Now, you guys should all know this. Hey, I like to leave this up, if you're rocking a pager, rock on man, just silence it, all right? So, just to give you a tad bit of background about who I am and why maybe you can listen to anything I'm saying, is that I am currently the BIM administrator for an architectural firm in Columbus, Ohio.

We have done university libraries, multi-family apartments, dorms, distribution centers, high end residential. So that's what we're currently doing, and we are currently in the throes of transitioning to become a full Revit house. But we decided to throw one extra wrinkle in there. We're doing it from MicroStation. So any of you familiar with MicroStation?

Yeah, OK, you guys using it? In transit, OK, yeah, big just shaking your head no, OK. So I've been in the field-- I actually started-- I learned how to draft on ink and mylar, pen bar drafting. Anybody know? OK, you guys are old. All right, so am I. So I was there when CAD first started coming out. My first CAD system was Bruning.

You know the old blue print ammonia driven blueprint machines? They had their own CAD system. First one I was on. Then I went to Intergraph, MicroStation, ArrisCad, anybody know what Arris is? Yeah, Arris is late '80s, early '90s Revit. And if you open it up today, are you still using it?

AUDIENCE: No. [INAUDIBLE].

TOM TOBIN: OK, so in 2004, if you would have opened up Arris, it would have looked exactly like it did in '89. So unfortunately, they had a great idea, but they didn't quite keep up with the look. First version of AutoCAD I touched was 10, got an architectural desktop, then Revit. Even dabbled in the ASG, RGIS world. Don't ask me why, just had to.

I was in the reseller chain for a while, I was a senior consultant for what is now Imagine It, doing AutoCAD Architecture, and then Revit Architecture. So I've kind of been through this with some companies, and doing it in the firm that I'm currently in. And if you ever read in one of my classes-- I do a few classes here every year-- this is the one thing I always stress, something my father beat into me, which was PMA, positive mental attitude.

You have to have the right attitude, and when you are trying to convince a whole bunch of users to change the way they do everything, you better have a good attitude about it, because if you don't have a good attitude, they won't have a good attitude, and you're not going to get anywhere at all. OK, would we agree with that? OK, so our attitude here is really important.

Oh, by the way, did everybody download the handouts? You guys all download your handouts and get them? I have a whole bunch of handouts here if anybody wants some, I've got it here. Just set that there, you can grab it. You can grab it on your way out, because actually, we're not going to use them. It's just for you to take home for you to reference when you get home.

But I'm going to cover most everything that's in there. I just like to make sure that you have them. OK, so you've been working with AutoCAD Architecture, and it's pretty much taking the long way, right? How many of you started in AutoCAD Architecture? OK, most of you probably started either drafting or in AutoCAD, right? Yeah. Lot of heads nodding.

I used to do a class here called transitioning from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture. And one of the things that I would talk about was how wonderful it is that AutoCAD Architecture is AutoCAD, right? And what I get is a bang for my buck. I can still bring in all my legacy products, everything works. It's wonderful, but now I can start doing objects, walls, doors, and windows.

So would you admit that AutoCAD Architecture has increased your productivity over AutoCAD? Yes? Yeah. No more drawing lines, offsetting, breaking, trimming, rotating blocks, putting them in. OK, so what we want to do now is we want to really go to the next level of VIM. And as I mentioned before, you're pretty much already using VIM.

I will say that Autodesk has done a wonderful job of putting in equal signs between the word Revit and the word VIM so that you think they are synonymous. But we know that all of VIM model is building information model, right? Simply put, and really, what that means, is that anything that has intelligence associated with it. We can pull data out of it, that's more than just notes on a page or dimensions on a drawing.

Revit does this really well. Revit does this much easier than AutoCAD Architecture does. How many of you are CAD managers? You've been managers in your office. OK. And you really worked hard at getting your AutoCAD Architecture environments set up, right? Was not the easiest thing in the world to do. Am I correct? Took time. And when you get it, oh man, it is wonderful.

It is great, you have got to keep up with it. But getting those display configurations right, getting your styles right, getting everything that you want-- how many of you use the Project Navigator? Yeah, only a couple of you. Yeah, most people don't like it. Because it's not that simple to set up. Once you get it going, then it's pretty easy to maintain. But it's getting it there. Revit actually does all these things, and it does it much easier.

So I like to call this good things come to those who wait, and really all that really means is that you didn't jump on the bandwagon right when it came out, you've sort of been waiting. Ah, let's see how this thing turns out. Is it going to have legs? Is it going to stick around? Well, it's been what, 15, 20 years? I think it's going to stick around.

All right, but I don't load up the newest release of anything when it first comes out, right? You kind of wait for other people to do the testing of that. Well, because you transition through AutoCAD Architecture, you guys have a leg up on the whole process. How is that? That's because Revit and AutoCAD Architectural objects work pretty much the same.

When you look at making your wall styles and your wall types, it's almost identical, except for there's actually less options in Revit. You don't have to do a whole bunch of extra display things to make those wall styles work. You still map materials, you still have a material editor, and you can still put all your pieces together, but everything is pretty much there. And I told you, I was on a whole bunch of different CAD packages.

And other reason why I mention that, is because I am a firm believer that once you know one CAD package, you really do know them all. Would you agree with that, reasonably? A few of you? Yeah. It's simple things like, a trim and extend command could be that, oh, I have to pick the object that I'm trimming to first, and then pick what I'm extending to it. Or no, wait, it's the other way around in this package. I pick the one

I'm trimming first and then when I'm trimming to. It's little things like that. It's just finding the right buttons. In AutoCAD Architecture and Revit Architecture have gotten a lot closer in their environment. Would you say that? When you've loaded Revit and kind of looked at it, you see some familiar things? You got a ribbon and all this other stuff.

If you would have loaded it in, let's say, '09, it would have been a much scarier interface. It was completely different. They've gone to a long ways to try to make it feel more Autodeskisque. Autodesky? Autodeskish? Autodesky? OK. But everything still really works. As long as we have the right attitude, it's going to be OK.

The objects are the same. You guys have played around in, right? So you've placed walls. It's all about the same, right? You got grips, you've got the whole bit, kind of snaps to your orientation. You can set your angles just like you can in AutoCAD Architecture as you're working. The components are essentially the same. And all this is sort of spelled out a little bit more in the handout.

All the Fundamentals are about the same. There are differences. There's differences in every package, there were differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD Architecture. But you pretty much work through them. So here are the questions that you're asking. You people who are being forced to go to Revit, you're not really asking these questions, you're just more or less holding your head in your hands going, why? OK.

But really, why do we want to move to it in the first place? What am I going to gain? Why wouldn't I want to stay with a package that is an AutoCad environment, right? When I taught the class before, it was like, that was the strength. It's not scary, you open it up. I open up a legacy product, I type in L, oh, look, It's a line command. Everything's the same.

So why wouldn't you want to stay in that environment that is so friendly for us? What's really the difference in the models? How many of you who were using AutoCAD Architecture are actually using the model aspects of them? OK, not really too many of you. You're just really kind of utilizing the walls, doors, and windows.

Are you scheduling? OK, is anybody else scheduling? OK, are you using the elevation generators? You're generating elevations, floor plans? OK, all right. I didn't see a lot of hands going up for all this. OK, well there are some big differences and some big benefits between the two differences, OK. So let's answer some of these questions.

Why do we want to move? What is our gain in changing? And I like to say, opportunities. I'll explain in a moment here what I think those opportunities really, really are. Why wouldn't we want to stay in the same environment? I just told you how great it is. Well, over the years-- and once again, you guys who are the CAD administrators, CAD managers-- I know that you got a system down that is so perfect, that your end users could never do this wrong, ever.

They don't have any bad habits. They never draw everything on one layer, ever, right? OK, well think of Revit as a whole opportunity to get new bad habits. I have a guy who sits next to me, and he sits next to me because he's transitioning, and it's difficult for him. And he has come up with some have bad habits in Revit that I never thought anyone could come- he is a master at coming up with ways to make his job harder.

[LAUGHTER]

And what's the difference in the model It's this thing right here, bidirectional parametric relationships. Everybody know what that means? Sure, Yeah, no. No, of course we don't. I'll get into that in a little bit more detail. I have an example of it. But really, what that comes down to, is that when you make a change in Revit, it's a database. Ultimately, Revit is a database.

So when I change one object in that database, It's that object in every single one of my views. So I can make the change wherever it makes sense, and it reflects throughout the whole project, OK. That's huge. So let's talk about these opportunities, and I'm going to apologize right up front.

I try not to do live stuff as much as I used to, because I always had connection issues. And there's nothing worse than standing in front of a whole bunch of people and suddenly having your Revit locked up on you. OK so I did some videos of doing this. And one of the first opportunities I like to talk about is something called improved quality.

Now, having been in the consulting chain and walking into your offices and trying to convince you back in the day that AutoCAD Architecture was the job because you'd have improved quality, you'd have better control over things. I'm going to give you the example of just how great Revit is at doing this. How many project architects do I have in here, designers? OK, so mostly we are the owners.

OK, you got a few, all right. So one of the tasks we all love to do in production work-- always, whether you're an architect, a production person, any type of manager-- is to chase down and coordinate callouts and details, right? That is why we got into the business. We didn't get into the business to design beautiful structures and do things like that. We just wanted to chase down, how come this detail isn't where it's supposed to be and is labeled wrong. That's how we enjoy our day.

No, that is the most time consuming thing that drives you crazy. And in AutoCAD, unless you've really gone to the extent of trying to utilize the tags, how many of you have done that? OK, we've got we've got a roomful of three. OK, and it was this easy to do, wasn't it? Yeah, it can be done, but you gotta jump through hoops, right? Yeah. OK, so here's a project. This is just a project I did it in Revit.

This was an actual, active project. So I've got my wall section, which is just a tool out of the box. And it created a wall section detail for me. So I've got my call out over here, I've got my wall section on this sheet, and I want to put it on the sheet above. So all I'm going to do is, I'm going to select this view, basically a viewport, right? And I'm going to delete it off the sheet. Immediately, my tag goes blank.

I come over to my project browser-- which, if you're using your navigator, would be similar to your project Navigator-- and all I'm going to do is drag that view back onto a sheet. As soon as I do that, the software is intelligent enough to fill back in my tag. Improved quality. Time consuming task that just drive us crazy. No more will you be able to go out into the field and be talking to a contractor and says, this detail doesn't even exist on this sheet.

This detail, a7, or 7 on a41, doesn't exist there. Revit handles these coordination issues very, very easily. Now, these wall sections that we're looking at-- because Revit has the tool-- you just go up, you pick a wall section tool, you throw it in there, and it just gives you an outline. It creates another view. Now does everybody understand what views are in Revit? OK, we've got a couple of people.

OK, when you first got into Revit, what's the first thing you noticed? Where's my layers? You have no layers, right? So this isn't controlled by layer management. Everything is object driven in Revit. So views are how we control what we want to see and not see. So it may seem like you get very view heavy, but really, you're going to find that it's not that big of a deal.

So what I did, was it cuts the wall sections for me, but all this other information, that's detail component Information. How many of you use a detail component manager? Almost identical. So there we've already talked about a couple of things that are similar between the two packages, right? How we create and place walls, those types, how we can tag, somewhat, once they're created, once you've made them.

And that the Detail Component manager is about the same. Now this is a huge time saver, agree? Not agree? Agree. So what's our next one? It's greater productivity. That's another opportunity, right? Well, I just gave you a perfect example of greater productivity. Because that is a time consuming task that all of us hate to have to do.

And my project architects, they get so upset when they have to do that, when they've marked something up. And what this does is, it helps them not have to mark everything up. Not have to look at, OK, here is the wall section tag on the first floor, second floor, third floor, fifth floor, circle, circle, circle, circle. Make sure that it's done, they don't have to do that now.

Now, I'm going to show you a case of greater productivity, but I'm also going to show you the bi-directional, parametric modeling part of this. So I'm going to go back to the same project. Some different views. So I actually-- when you're working in Revit, you'll find you'll actually start using your 3D model. Mine happens to go on my cover sheet. It's the live elevation generated from the model, from the building, from this section mark right here.

So I got my window in plan, I select the window, it selects in all three views. I could have selected this anywhere. And that window would have shown up. I'm going to go ahead and delete that window. And when I do, Revit is going to talk back to me. It's going to say, hey, you removed a reference. I'll explain that in a second. It's also going to say, a dimension was deleted. Hey, thank you Revit for telling me what's going on here.

I actually have another view that has those windows dimensioned. And so it's telling me that I had it dimensioned to the center, so you're going to have to check that dimension string, something's changed. The reference it was talking about is I actually have a call out, a reference call out. I tagged those windows. So now, as soon as I did it, you guys should share this experience somewhat in AutoCAD Architecture, but you remove the window, and what, the wall heals, right?

So there's no more-- haven't determined, extend, and all that stuff. That immediately healed. How are you generating your elevations right now in AutoCAD Architecture? Go ahead, somebody tell me.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: Are you just drawing them?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: You use section?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: OK, and so when you do that, can you make changes to that elevation? Or do you have to make changes to the floor plan and then tell it to kind of update the elevation?

AUDIENCE: You might have to change the model and then refresh it.

TOM TOBIN: Right, you have to refresh the elevation. You do not have to refresh the elevations in Revit. I could have selected that window here and deleted it there. So now what's happened? It's updated in live time, it's updated my elevation, it's updated my model, it updated my floor plan, it updated any other floor plan that it may have of the first floor that's like a dimension plan or anything else. And it updated my schedule.

How many times do you remove something and you have to go back and redo your counts in the schedule? OK, so this was a huge deal. Just to give you another quick story, is that I was working with a firm that had one of the principal designers, one of the principals of the company, he'd been in the business for quite a while.

He's the type of guy who could sit-in a meeting, and as the client is talking-- I'm sure many of you guys can do this-- he could sit there and start sketching an idea, an interior elevation or something of what he wants to convey. But you could take his sketch and just drop a scale on it. It was freehand, it was beautiful.

He's tried over the years to get into CAD. He has tried and tried and tried and tried, and it just never clicked for him. Now, he's a Revit master. No, I'm not going to tell you that. He can't create a Revit model. He doesn't want to create a Revit model, and that's fine. But what he can do, is he can open up the job, he can look at these views the way he wants to, and he can go, I don't like where that window is.

And he can scooch it over. And he does that, and it's reflected everywhere. All of a sudden, he's doing production work. Can you imagine the designer who actually does production work? It's a rare-- no designers, right? OK, all right. So Revit can also give us lower cost. And I'm not talking about the cost of the software, all right.

Not talking about cost of hardware or anything like that. What I am talking about is that we can get more done with fewer resources. Now, what's that mean? You get to go back Monday and evaluate your staff and cut half of them because you can now get more done? That's not at all what I'm trying to say. How many of you hopefully have many jobs in your pipeline? Or several jobs.

How many times do you just let the ones in the pipeline sit there until there's a fire? Has that ever happened? Yeah, it never happens, right? Because we're concentrating on this one, so we're putting all of our effort into this, and we kind of forget about the other one until, oh, I got a meeting Tuesday. Guess what, well, if you had a job that may currently be taking, let's say, four or five people, members of your staff.

I can tell you that you can probably do, depending on the size of the job, get that done with two people. Doesn't mean that now you get rid of three people, it means now you start working on your other projects, and you keep things flowing. Revit can really make a small firm seem larger with what you can get done. And if you are a large firm, how many of you are in a firm under 10 people?

OK, 10 to 20. 20 to 30. 50 to 100. OK, you must be really big, big, big firms. So transitioning is a big deal in looking at this, because you got a lot of people you got to go through. But if you're a really large firm, and you work this, it can make your firm way more efficient in the time that's used to do things. Now, this is my favorite one, because I like to play around in this.

This is renderings and animations all done in-house. How many of you using AutoCAD Architecture are using it to do renderings, animations, anything like that? How many of you were promised that when you switched to this product, that this would be one of the things that you would be doing all the time? Because, well look at it, It's beautiful, right?

OK, I'm going to tell you that this will be something you will do all the time, not because it's beautiful, but because it's just so easy. It's frighteningly easy. So I was working with a company, and they were going after a jobs-- I'll show you this here in a sec. We're going after a job that was an addition to a school. And what the addition was, it was going to be sort of a coffee house, learning at your own pace kind of thing.

Teacher driven still, but they wanted to make this a very friendly, non-threatening atmosphere. At the time, the architect went ahead and started it not on CAD. Hired a renderer to do a rendering shot. And I love those, those are beautiful, beautiful. That's a talent to hand render something up, it's gorgeous. But they went back to the school board and they didn't quite get it.

So they came to me and said, hey Tom, you think you could create a quick Revit model for us? They didn't even want to use it for production at this point. They just wanted to be able to take some camera shots. Any of you who played with Revit yet ever taken a camera shot? It's pretty darn easy, isn't it? So you get a perspective view. So I have other shots that I took of this.

But very quickly-- and just so you look at the furniture or whatnot, I didn't create any of that. I went to the manufacturer that they said they wanted to use, and they have Revit content. Most of our manufacturers today are creating Revit families for us. All right, so everything you see here is 100% Revit. I took this camera shot, and just like in AutoCAD Architecture, we can apply materials and all that kind of stuff, paint, color.

So quickly getting the idea in, so we took it. We took it back to them, and they're starting to kind of get an idea. So I just took it in and rendered this. I did nothing else, this is just Revit architecture. I have done nothing special, I am not a 3D-- well, I want to be-- but I am not a 3D master, I don't have that education. But when they saw this, we got the job.

OK, they were able to understand what this space was starting to look like. Then, they said, that's too open. So I go back into my model, I add those walls, and I re-rendered it. Because the view, they're all saved. So that took me almost zero time to act like, oh yeah, might be a week or two. By the time we get it up to the renderer and all that kind of stuff. No, it really took me an hour.

And most of that was in rendering time. So we did that, and now this is another shot. And I took this other shot-- this is towards the end of the project. And you can see they made changes as far as the colors go. And the only reason the shot that we were seeing before was coming down from back here in this corner looking that way.

So this is the opposite corner. But the only reason why I want to show you this one, is because my project architect went out and he took that picture. How often does that happen? His looks a little different, because he used a fish eyed lens. But other than that, with the warmth of the colors, the customer got exactly what they wanted.

They knew what it was going to look like when it came out, I did this in Revit, we finished the job in Revit. After I created the model, it was like, well, why not just dimension it up? OK, boom. So, Revit actually-- the biggest difference between Revit and AutoCAD Architecture or any other CAD package that we do, is that you kind of have to be a little more front loaded with Revit.

In other words, you sort of have to understand how the building goes together and what your concepts are. And the model really is everything, because if you build the model correctly the CD's just fall out of it. Really, literally. Now, there was a question I had gotten before about-- hey, do you start a project in Revit? How do you start a project in Revit? Are you using masking? When you are switching from SD to DD to CD? And that's a big deal, right?

I know what my answer is, I talked with several other people because I wanted to get a good handle on this. Because I worked with some people who still initially sketch. I mean literally on paper. That's right, on paper. Killing trees everywhere. No, they'll sketch this, and then once they kind of get the sketch worked out, then they'll bring it into Revit.

I have other people who start it in a CAD package. OK, and then there are those who start it straight in Revit, and the answer is, what are you most comfortable with? What are you most productive with?

And as time-- if you're going to become a Revit house, eventually you will be so comfortable in Revit that you won't even try to do it in anything else. But, there's no problem with doing it in a CAD package, taking it from doing your SDs, but it should be pushed into Revit before DD.

OK, because you get more out of the model at that point. Massing, that's up to you. I've talked to people who love the massing aspect of Revit, others who just absolutely hate it. OK, I don't care for it, but I'm still a little old school, I-- a little trouble with that one.

But, a lot of people tell you, oh it's a great design tool, you can do all this massing with it, and then you can map your walls to the masses and all of that and it's true. But, that comes down to your familiarity and your level of comfort doing the project, OK. So, I hope that answered that question, I had a few people ask me that question.

The other thing I wanted to say about that though, is that if you actually start the project in Revit, what ends up happening is that you really don't have a DD phase or an SD phase. Whichever you want to take out of that, because you're changing and you're working at model, that it's becoming the actual thing.

Another example of visual graphics here. This building right here to your left was an existing building and we were doing an addition. Because, whether you use the one to just the printed page of a 2D aspect of this, when you're placing this stuff in Revit, you're getting a model. Whether you know it or not or care to use it or not.

So because it's producing everything for us in 3D, we put this together and took it to the client and said, hey, this is what we're thinking of this looking like at different parts of the design process. We change that connector piece, we change these window things. There are curtain walls, I think, now, and then they became punched openings and all that kind of stuff.

So at any point during the design process, all we had to do was go back to this view and it's updated as we're working on the drawing. Now, we can save the view as well, so that doesn't get updated. We can do options, we took a couple of different camera shots, added some color to it. And then once again in Revit, I did a walkthrough.

Have of any of you played with the walkthrough in Revit? It's not too bad. I mean, this isn't too bad. It's a little clunky. But, I rendered all of this in Revit, I didn't take it out to anything special. I used all Revit tools here. There's no magic.

The longest-- the worst part of this whole process, and I'll be perfectly honest, you can't set up a render farm. And my computer was that laptop right there, and this took me about two days to render. Now, you get a much better machine and what not, it's not going to take you nearly as long. You cannot render a walkthrough in the cloud. So, you can do cloud rendering, you can't do that and you can't render a walkthrough in the cloud.

But what I actually did find, I'm just going to show you this to the next level, is that you could take this into Max. Any of you familiar with Max? How many of you used it? OK, have you imported your model into it?

I've done an autoCAD architectural model.

OK, so you've taken your AutoCAD architectural model. OK, so that's what I did here, I took my Revit model, Revit in 3DS Max, there's a plug-in, and it just goes right over, I changed nothing. OK, all my materials went over that I mapped in Revit. And all I did was sort of add a little extra to it. Different camera shots, put a little music to it.

Now this is still very, very basic, all right? But it starts to bring your thoughts to life. Now we did this four times. Once I brought it in all I had to do was import the newest model to whatever we had changed. And they got to see what the changes were.

So the people moving, that's all Max stuff. And there's a great class-- I don't think you did it this year, but you could look it up online-- by Matt Dillon, who steps you through exactly how to do this. And I've sat in his class, he's really knowledgeable and I actually followed everything he told me to do in doing that.

How many of you do facilities management? OK, just a few of you. Alright, this is still a really big deal. I think it's still an untapped aspect here of what we're looking at. Revit can do facilities management, it absolutely can do everything that we want it to do, but it's not really built for that. I mean, you can put all the information in, you can do things like that, but really you want to push it out to something else.

OK, there are several packages-- and I'm going to have to tell you-- you're going to have to do your own homework. I'm not a rep for any of these, but I do know and I have seen the Archibus. Have any of you played with Archibus or known anything about Archibus? Archibus and Revit play together very well.

OK, so you can take your Revit model, push it out to Archibus, make changes in whatever you need, and it's bi-directional-- it'll go back into the model. So you can really have a building lifecycle. So you can track things like, who's in this room? Not just the number, but who are they? What's the equipment?

If you're a hospital, this is a big deal, OK, because you need to track all the equipment and where that's at. So, how many of you are in the hospital industry? OK, there's a couple of you. It's my understanding that they don't necessarily track rooms as much as they just do equipment. So, that's a big deal. Where is that equipment in this space? So you can punch that out. You can even take it out-- anybody use Maximo? Anything like that? It's just another facility tool.

Archibus will go into there real well. FM Systems also does that. But it takes the Revit model, and you can put all these attributes to it, and it goes back and forth. Our customers want the models now. They want the building lifecycle dynamic. They're not exactly sure what they're going to do with it when they get it, but they know they want it. And they know that it can do things, they just have to figure out how to do that. And this could be, actually, another revenue stream. If you guys want to get into something like this.

You've built the model, you might as well maintain the model, right? And then they're going to come back for you for the additions, hopefully. All right, so, you're probably saying that AutoCAD Architecture does all that stuff, right? To one degree or another, yes, no, maybe, a little bit, sometimes, occasionally, if we put the effort into it. You don't have to put much effort into it with Revit, honestly.

So, the big difference between our model is that bi-directional aspect that I was talking about. And that goes into AutoCAD Architecture and every CAD package, is what's called a fragmented file system. Excuse me. What does that mean? Anybody have an idea of what that means? Go ahead, just throw it out there.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: What was that?

AUDIENCE: Only a portion of--

TOM TOBIN: Only a portion of the entire information, What was--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: Basically, what that term is meaning, he said that every piece is separate. Another answer was portion of the information. Basically, what it means, is that I have a first floor plan, it's completely independent and separate. I have a second floor plan, that's completely independent and separate. I got a third floor plan, I got a foundation plan, I got an elevation DGN, right?

Everything is a separate drawing, correct? Yes, no? Yes, OK, in Revit it's not. It's all in one place. Of course you're going well, how do I have somebody work on the second floor then, if someone's in the model and they're working on the first floor? Model sharing is incredibly easy.

So that's not-- that's not hard. But-- so how many of you-- ADT, ADT, Yeah, boy, did I. ACA users, when you create a shell drawing, do you do the shell all the way from, let's say, the first floor wall, all the way up? Or is it first floor to second floor, second floor to third floor? OK, I'm getting I'm getting mixed, I get that a lot of you are doing it just per floor, there's a few of you are taking it all the way up.

OK, well that's one of the great things in the examples that I showed. That when I did the shell, I just said, hey, I'm starting here at the base of the first floor and it's going up to the parapet wall. And then when I make an adjustment to that wall, it's adjusted on every floor.

If I had to move that wall out two feet, I don't have to get into the first floor and move it, second floor and move it, third floor and move it. That's what the bi-directional is. That's why-- the difference between a fragmented system.

Remember, keep your attitude. Check it, check it at the door. Check your attitude. No, attitude really is everything. Have you ever had somebody you don't really care tell you to do something, right? And so you have a little resentment and you've been doing it. So it's your attitude. Your attitude is the important thing here. I like to do what's called a phased approach. So when you went to AutoCAD Architecture, it's a big beefy product, really, right?

So when you decide to implement it, you just said, we're going to use every bit of it all at once, right? Yeah, if you did, you'd still be using AutoCAD, all right. So, it's really big, so maybe you just used walls, doors, and windows. Then you start generating elevations, then you add roofs and you add schedules and so on and so forth, and before long you're using the whole product, right?

But you had to get your people comfortable with this. You had to phase things in. Revit is the same way. The only difference between phasing in with Revit and AutoCAD Architecture, is that the phasing period will be much shorter. I used to tell people when they went to AutoCAD Architecture, hey, don't use schedules right away, OK.

Just get used to object based stuff. All right, we'll face schedules. Well when I first went to Revit, I was kind of thinking the same thing and I was like, well, they're pretty easy, I guess, why wouldn't I just use them now? So you're going to find that a lot of things that you might have phased in before, they're going to be much easier.

One of the things that I think is important to-- where you can phase something in, is with your details. How many of you have a fantastic detail library? Made for every occasion, I didn't see many hands go up, so the rest of you have really crappy detail libraries? OK, all right.

Basically what happens though, you've created a whole bunch of 2D details, right? And you probably copy them, hopefully, you have them in the library on your server, on your standards folder or something like that right? Hopefully, is that the dream?

Reality, we copy them from job to job to job to job, don't we? Hey, I need a detail. Hey Jim, didn't you do something like this in the project two years ago? Yeah, let's get that, that's not out of date. It's good, all right. No that's what we do, that's great. So this is one of the places where I might say that we phase in Revit details.

OK, those of you who have played with Revit, have you even looked at making drafting views and 2D details? It's really not that hard, is it? To do it, If you were doing it in AutoCAD Architecture, with the Detail Component Manager and all that kind of stuff, it's really not too different.

But, what we can do, is we can go ahead and use our AutoCAD details. Last year, I taught a class in how to bring in those CAD details, and attach them, give them some intelligence in Revit. So, we're going to take a look at that. I'd like to just give you a quote for thought here, take it back with you. The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

You guys have been aware for a while, you who are being forced to do this, you just need to accept it. You need to go through it. The firm that I'm currently in, that was finally the straw that broke the camel's back, is the deliverables had to be in Revit. So that's why they are finally making that fantastic transition out of MicroStation.

OK, so let's look at this example. This is using a CAD detail, just a regular CAD detail, I'm going to bring it into Revit and I'm going to use it. And I'm going to add that intelligent call out ability. So here's my building, I've shown this building to you a couple of times. So what I want to do is-- and I was looking at this the other night, I got a little crazy with expanding and collapsing the windows here, so bear with me.

That's how you know it's not a canned, slick demo. What I want to do is, I want to put a detail onto that sheet. So, here's my AutoCAD, here's my CAD detail, I'm going to put this typical floor construction joint in. Now I'm not going to really be showing it the right way, this is all just for example. But here's my CAD drawing, I want it in here. So, what I'm going to do, what am I going to do?

The first thing I'm going to do, is I'm going to go to my view tab. Are you guys familiar with-- have you worked in your environment at all in the Revit environment? How many of you actually opened it up, played with it? How many of you actually gone to a training class? Picks and clicks? OK, about half of you.

So I'm creating what's called a drafting view, which is really just a 2D, just a piece of paper. All right, and so when I create it, it's blank, the only thing is really important if I'm going to bring in an AutoCAD detail, is that I set my scale to be the same as the CAD detail I'm bringing in. If this was all Revit, it wouldn't matter, because Revit handles scale for me.