The Time Is Now—Switching from AutoCAD Architecture to Revit—The Right Attitude Is Everything

TOM TOBIN: Hope you enjoyed that-- something a little better than just staring up at the screen. So day two-- hey you, right? How are you guys doing?

AUDIENCE: Good.

TOM TOBIN: Good? Good. Good. Tomorrow will be your tough day. Because by the time you hit the end of today, you've got all that information overload, and you're going to go to the AUGI beer bash right, and maybe bash a little more than you should. So, enjoy this, so you guys are all getting stuff out of it.

How many of you are first timers? Well, that's a lot of you. OK.

Are you really enjoying it? Everybody who's been here before-- they know what they can get out of this. Is this about what you expected? Good. Good.

Well, this session is going to be-- the time is now. What are we waiting for? Why have we been procrastinating so long in moving to Revit? And really, what it comes down to is our right attitude.

So, just to give you a quick overview of what this class is going to be about, how it's going to be structured, is that it's listed as an intermediate class. But it's really sort of like a beginner/intermediate class, depending on how you want to look at it. So, what would that be a beginnerate class? I don't know.

It assumes that you have knowledge of AutoCAD Architecture. So that's where the intermediate aspect of this-- so you're suppose to have a very good understanding of AutoCAD Architecture. But maybe not so much in Revit. So that's where the fundamental aspect is.

We're going to be looking at a 30,000 foot view of why we should transition, how we can get there, some of the things we're going to run into. This is not a class on how to take my AutoCAD architectural models, my AutoCAD Architecture models into Revit, and have all the intelligence be there. Is that what you were expecting? Good. Because you can't do it.

So I'm just throwing that out there so if this isn't what you thought it was going to be, it won't hurt my feelings if you want to hit another session. I will take names of those of you who leave, though.

[LAUGHTER]

So, let's see if we can get this thing to work. Apparently-- OK. I know I tested that before, but let's try this.

Congratulations, this is an AA accredited class. So those of you who want to get learning credits, you're on board. You should get an email from Autodesk, if you haven't already. That will help you get your credits.

So, here's what we're going to go over today-- why Revit? And not simply-- I know a lot of you, the answer is why Revit? Well, because we have to. There's more to it than that.

It's going to be what holds us back, how do we introduce it to our firm, what are the problems that happen when we do that? We're not expecting any problems, all right? Smooth sailing.

How to migrate, we'll look at a checklist. And of course, this is going to be good. Let's put that back.

So you guys should have already seen some of these types of slides. Please just be kind. I'll curtail from swearing, because Autodesk is recording.

So, let's get into this. Just a quick background is the who I am and why I'm actually going to be telling you this class. I've been in the industry for about 26 years. I actually started on ink-on-Mylar pin bar drafting. How many of you know what that is? Wow, that's the biggest amount of people I've ever had who actually even know what Mylar is. Let alone pin bar drafting.

OK, so that means I started out hand drafting. First CAD package I was ever on. Those of you who are familiar with hand drafting probably remember ammonia blueprint machines. Bruening, basically.

Well, you may not have known that they came out with a CAD system in the early '80s. So that's the first CAD system I was ever on. Then I moved into Intergraph MicroStation, ARRIS-- anybody familiar with ARRIS?-- 1990, '89-'90 Revit is really what it is. Not related at all, but it's that type of system.

BuildersCAD, the first version of AutoCAD I touched, I think it was 10. Then AutoCAD Architecture, Revit Architecture. Now, the reason why I sort of give you that background of different platforms is because it really plays into what you're doing. Although this is still an AutoDesk product-- you've looked at it-- it's kind of like a platform change, isn't it? That's the way you do it. And I believe that once you know one CAD package-- really, you do know them all. And that's what we're going to talk about here.

We're not really going to follow the handouts in this class, so if you've opened handouts or downloaded them, those are really free to take home. Those have a lot of the comparisons between the two packages. The information that I'm going to hit, some of that's in the handout, but there's more information in the handout than what we're going to go over here.

So the time's now, and what's most important is this-- PMA. My dad drilled this into my head as a kid. Positive mental attitude.

You can do anything if you put your mind to it. And that's not just an individual statement, but that's where you refer them to-- your users. The attitude starts with you guys.

How many of you are users? I don't want to make it sound like just users. But you're the production people. The guys who are in the trenches, using it every day. Great.

How many of you are CAD/BIM managers? OK. And owners, architects, designers? Because we got a pretty nice mix here. And your attitude reflects to your users, reflects up to your owners, your owners, it reflects down to your managers. So if you do this, then you're going to be able to move to the next level of BIM.

So you've been working in AutoCAD Architecture for a while, right? How many of you are using AutoCAD Architecture? How many of you have been using it for more than a year? More than five years? So we've got some people who are pretty familiar with the product.

Now let me ask you the million dollar question. Those of you who actually have it installed and are using it-- are you using it like AutoCAD Architecture? OK, very few hands at that point. So really, what you're doing is you're using it as sort of an enhanced AutoCAD platform, right? OK.

There's really nothing wrong with that. It gives you more opportunities, because it should have taken you a lot further than just plain AutoCAD. When you transitioned from AutoCAD, or any CAD package, to the CAD package, you should have gotten a bang for your buck. You should've sort of moved forward in the BIM road, and in your production, by using object-based information. Did you feel that all, or?

OK, yeah. So you're not doing line, offset, break, trim, block, insert, rotate-- all this other fun stuff that became second nature. Or you wrote scripts to help you do that. So, AutoCAD Architecture has really taken us a lot further, getting us down to BIM. But Revit really can get us there in a more efficient way. It's going to give us a lot more opportunities, it's going to enhance our experience once we truly make this transition.

How many of you-- before I get too far into this-- how many of you are actually using Revit? OK, full production? No. So, using bits and pieces, maybe mainly as a design tool?

OK, so you're kind of just doing mass things, because you don't think that it can actually do CDs very well? Because you think it looks like cartoons when it comes out, or something like that? How many of you-- yeah, there's a few of you. All right.

Well, I kind of named this part "Good things come to those who wait." You know, I'm the type of guy who once a new release comes out, I really want to install it. But I know that it makes more sense not to. Got to wait a little bit. Maybe wait for that first patch, or whatever, to the forums where they're telling me what all the problems are.

One of the things I neglected to talk about when I was giving my little bio is that I had spent some time in the reseller chain, as a senior consultant working for Avatech Solutions, which is now part of IMAGINiT. So I was going around the country. I was doing training in AutoCAD Architecture and Revit Architecture, and I was helping firms do implementations of such, and whatnot.

And an example of where we're going here with this is that one firm, two offices. I went to their home office, they're using AutoCAD Architecture. They transitioned from AutoCAD into AutoCAD Architecture, which I think is the best way to get to Revit, to be perfectly honest. I used to teach a class here, actually teaching NAT.

So when I went in, taught them how to go to Revit, they could draw on what they've learned in AutoCAD Architecture. They would go, oh, that's just like how we did this. Oh, when we did that [INAUDIBLE]-- OK, that makes sense.

Same firm, office 50 miles away, running AutoCAD Architecture. They decided to use it like some of you guys raised your hands, as AutoCAD. They had a much more difficult job transitioning.

Did they transition? Yes. It is possible to transition? Absolutely. But the concepts from AutoCAD Architecture are pretty much the same in Revit. Have many of you already found that out, somewhat? Right.

So what are we waiting for? Are we waiting for the right job? Maybe.

Or waiting for-- this job's too big. No, this job's too small. No, these standards aren't-- no, this-- we keep coming up with excuses. Our deadlines are too much.

I mentioned the different platforms I've been on, simply because it doesn't matter. You can figure out-- you already understand how buildings go together. You already understand how objects work. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: Well, what they've really done-- he was asking a question about the cost of the software itself. And if you've noticed that the model that they're giving, AutoDesk is giving now, is basically suites. So for the most part, if you want any CAD package, you're getting Revit.

I don't know what their pricing is going to be. I do know that they are starting to roll some new things out about online leasing. You know, if you need another [INAUDIBLE], you can kind of do a monthly payment. So there's different options that Autodesk is going to be putting out. I can't really answer that question.

But we still need to have the right attitude. Objects in Revit are the same as they are in AutoCAD Architecture. Placing the objects are about the same. The components are about the same. When you look at the handouts, you're going to see that I've got some side by side comparisons. Actually, building the wall components is easier in Revit than it is in AutoCAD Architecture, because you have to kind of jump through a few more hoops to get the display configurations to work the way you want them to work, and all this other stuff. A lot of that's more intuitive within Revit.

When I was with Avatech, there was a lot of the-- oh, I'm AutoCAD Architecture guy, you're the Revit guy. Well, I can do this in AutoCAD Architecture, but you can't do that in Revit. And I can do this in Revit, and you can't do that in AutoCAD Architecture. It took me a little while, I drank the Kool-Aid, and I'm a convert. So, it was just easier in Revit, once you kind of got into it.

So there are differences. There's always differences. It's not a one to one comparison. But you're going to find that because you understand how packages work, that you're going to get through it.

So there's questions you need to ask. This is the crux of why you're here at AU. You're probably taking every Revit class that you can.

Why are we going to move to Revit in the first place? What am I going to gain by moving to Revit? Why shouldn't I stay with an AutoCAD Architecture-- AutoCAD environment?

I told you I used to teach the class transitioning from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture. And one of the first things I would say is, the most powerful aspect of switching from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture is, it's AutoCAD! It's this same! Everything you know in AutoCAD still works in AutoCAD Architecture. A line is a line is a line, will be a line.

You just have a greater opportunity to use objects. And all your legacy data works. So why do I want to leave that thing that I was just saying was fantastic?

And they both produce models. How many of you are using, in AutoCAD Architecture, truly producing 3D models? OK, there's a few of you. It's actually more than I anticipated, that's nice. But still not even half of the room.

So we're going to talk about what's the difference, and how does that benefit us? So the answers to this-- why? Well, Revit can give us more opportunities-- more opportunities to be productive, more opportunities in our coordination-- we'll get into some specifics here of the opportunities it's going to give us.

Why don't I want to stay with AutoCAD? I just said that that was one of the power, right? I know it. All my legacy product work in it. Why wouldn't I want to stay with that?

Well, over the years-- now, I know each and every one of you, you haven't developed any bad habits. Your users may have developed some bad habits, but you guys, you know exactly how you want this to be done.

Now, one of the worst things about AutoCAD-- and any package, really-- is that we've created our own shortcuts, we've put things out to the side. Or I don't need to change layers, I'm just kind of working it out right now. And then somehow, it never gets put to the right layers.

And which one of these views is the right view? I don't know. I get into trouble.

What's the first thing I do if you're an AutoCAD user, and something's not working out? You go, explode. You explode everything.

So these are some habits that you really can't do in AutoCAD Architecture, or you shouldn't do in AutoCAD Architecture. You can look at Revit as an opportunity to develop all new, great bad habits.

So, how are these models different? Bi-directional parametric relationships-- say it with me! Bidirectional parametric relations-- whatever that means, right? We'll get into that more in a moment. But really what that means is that the way Revit works, is that I can make the change anywhere, in any of my views, that make sense for me to do it.

In AutoCAD Architecture, how many of you are using it to generate elevations? OK, wow. Why aren't you? Because you have to regenerate the elevation, right? It doesn't just happen when you make the change to the floor plan, correct? I can't make changes to the elevation and have them reflect back into the floor plan. I can in Revit. And that's where this parametric relationships happen, and we'll show you that in a moment.

So let's get into these opportunities a little bit more. We're going to have improved quality. What does that really mean?

You're putting out a nice set of contract documents now, right? How many of you have ever run into the situation, where you put a detail on a sheet, you put a call out on the plans, it gets printed out. You're out in the field-- let's look at this detail. Oh, it's not on this sheet.

As a matter of fact, it's on a different-- wait, it's not even on a different sheet. It's not even part of this set anymore! There's a real coordination issue.

Can you add some intelligence with our coordination and AutoCAD Architecture? Yeah. Is it kind of a pain in the butt? Yeah, reasonably.

This is one of the most time-consuming aspects of producing our contract documents. Revit really can handle this well for us. As a matter of fact, this is one of the most powerful things I think it can do. And why you're just using it for mass design studies, and not taking it all the way to contract documents just surprises me. Because contract documents-- this sort of happened in Revit.

So, I'm going to give you a real world example here, so you can see how everything's been working well for me. So I went ahead and I videoed these. So please bear with me, that it's not live. We're going to try a little bit of that.

So this is a real world example. What I have here is a wall section callout. I've got three different views up. Here's the sheet that my wall section actually exists on. And then above is the sheet that I want to move it to.

Now, quite often if I do this, things can go wrong. So I'm just going to select this view. When I delete it, the callout is emptied. And I don't have to go back and edit text, or anything like that. I come back over to my browser, drag it on to my new sheet-- because when I deleted it off the sheet, I didn't delete it out of the system. The view's still there. As soon as I drop it on, my callout, and every place that callout is being seen, is correct. I'm just going to scoot it over a little bit, so that it reads better. Automatically handles the numbering for me. I can edit that. I can change it if I need to.

But now the whole concept of making sure that the details, my sections, are all coordinated properly, is handled very easily, very simply. I mean I know that you guys-- how many designers do we have, architects do we have? Project architects. Yeah, a lot of you. And I know that the thing you love best is looking through the set, and marking up change this number to that because you-- I mean, you don't want to be designing, right? You want to be editing this stuff for people to make changes. Yeah, this is how you want to spend your day.

So here's something you don't really have to worry about so much. Does it still need to be looked at, reviewed? Yeah, OK, you still need to look at it. But 9 times out of 10, you're not going to have a problem.

Greater productivity is another opportunity. Of course, I said you could get greater productivity just by moving from lines, circles and arcs to objects in AutoCAD, right? To AutoCAD Architecture.

We're going to show how this is going to help us even more in Revit. Now basically, I just show greater productivity with the coordination, right? Right there, you're being more productive. This is tying back into the model type, that bi-directional parametric modeling, where can change it wherever I want to.

Going back to the same building here. Three different views. So, I'm looking at this window, in my 3D model, my elevation, and my floor plan. I could select this anywhere. But I'm going to select it in plan, and we're going to see, as soon as I do, it highlights in all the other views. It's the same window. The window is the window is the window.

So if I go ahead and right click and hit delete-- now, I can just hit the Delete key, and all this other kind of stuff. But I'm going to delete it. As soon as I do that-- in this particular case, I actually have another view that we don't see, that has dimensions to it.

And it's telling me that, hey, you have some dimension to this. Revit's taking care of that for me, too. It's deleting that dimension string, or changing that dimension string. So we may have to go back and look at it, just to make sure it's still reading the way we want.

But it's telling me, I need to look elsewhere. We see immediately without any other regenning-- my elevation is updated. My model itself is updated.

If you notice here, I tagged the window. The window tag is gone. So if I'm using schedules-- which I am in this particular job-- my schedule is updated. That's a whole lot of productivity, done with one simple move.

Let me give you another example. When I was going in and out of different firms, I was working with the company, had a gentleman-- fantastic-- older gentleman who could take a napkin, and could freehand interior elevations. And you could drop a scale on it. I mean, he's been in the business a long time, knows what he's doing, knows what he wants. Couldn't ever grasp CAD.

Took classes, kept trying, wanted to be involved in it-- couldn't do it. Can he create a Revit model? Heavens, no. He still can't create a Revit model.

But what he can do, is he can open up this model that has been created. He can look at it. He can go to what view makes the most sense for him for what he's trying to get with his design content. And he can go, you know what, I don't want 3 million windows.

He can select that, and he can change that window family, as long as we've made different windows for him to change into. Or he can delete it, he can scoot it up, he can move it.

Now, he's being productive. Man, a designer? Actually doing production work? And unless you're like a one man firm, one person firm, you're probably not doing that.

So, it has its advantages there too. So as long as you kind of know how to get in and out, and he knows how to print, that's important.

So, we have greater productivity. Lower costs. A gentleman in the back asked about the cost. This is not about that cost. This is not about the cost of the software. This is about the cost of your time producing the drawings.

And I'm also not saying that this is an opportunity for us to downsize our firms. That's not at all what I'm getting at here either. What I'm getting at is that if normally we might have four people working on a project in AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, maybe we only need two people working on it in Revit.

Once again, it does not mean that I get to take two people off my books. What that means, is that that job that I keep pushing back on the back burner until it becomes a fire, and I have to deal with it, I can have two people working on that. Or I could have more projects in my firm. than what I can currently handle today, because of a lot of these production opportunities, and coordination issues that are taken care of.

So you can be a lot more efficient if you're a bigger firm, and you can seem like a much bigger firm if you're not. And that's how it's going to lower your production costs. We'll get into those other costs in a bit.

Visualization. All right, the bells and whistles, the candy shots. The ones that, when we moved to AutoCAD Architecture in the first place, they're saying, hey, look what you can have. Aren't these beautiful? How many of you use 3-D visualization in AutoCAD Architecture? OK, just a few of you. Is it simple to do? If you know how, reasonable. If you know how. Got to put a little investment into that. You have to put a little investment into Revit, but not as big of an investment.

Once again, here's an example. You can take shots-- interior, exterior views-- at any point during the design process, which is invaluable. It's working in a project that was originally done in AutoCAD.

It was a renovation to a school, where they decided that they wanted to create what looked like a coffee shop for students who weren't really making it in the traditional classroom setting. It was still going to be teacher-led, but it was going to be more of an independent pace learning. So they originally laid it out in AutoCAD, had a beautiful hand-rendering done. I love the way those look-- I still do today. I love the way the hand-renderings look.

But the school board didn't get it. They couldn't quite visualize how this is supposed to look. How many times you had a problem with your client being able to visualize what your end goal is? Yeah, just once or twice, right?

So they asked me to put this in, in Revit. So what I did was I referenced the AutoCAD in, and this is how you're going to have to do it if it's an existing drawing. I referenced the AutoCAD in, and I traced it with Revit objects, so that I got the layout proper. Once I did that, I was able to create an interior space.

Basically what I did, was-- potato potato-- families. So the families are same as blocks. Fortunately for me, the manufacturer what they wanted had created 3-D objects. Not Revit families, not AutoCAD blocks, but 3D objects. So I was able to bring those into my Revit environment. And then I took some quick interior camera shots to show them where we were at, and what the design process was.

So once they kind of saw that, they said, hey, let's add a little color to it. All I had to do was change my display configuration, one button in my Revit interface, to shaded colors. A little bit more information. They liked this, they said, hey. Why don't we really paint the walls, put some floor pattern on the actual stuff now.

Can you do this in AutoCAD Architecture? Yeah, if you know what you're doing. But it was simple. I'm just basically using a tool.

I can either do it at the wall style level, I can create the wall style that has the paint color on it, or I can do what? I could actually paint it. It really works well. So I got the real colors, and I did a rendering right inside of Revit, a quick rendering. That's Revit. I didn't take that anywhere else, that's not Max or anything.

I put some lights. This is all-- other than the furniture, this is all out of the box. There's nothing special here.

So now we went in front of the school board. Now they're actually starting to understand something.

AUDIENCE: Could you back it up one slide again?

TOM TOBIN: Maybe. Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: Yes. Yeah. You're talking about-- yeah. And actually, that's a TV. So I put some sports on there.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: I just used canned Revit lights that had lighting properties to them. Now, really, is that really the foot candles you're probably going to get? Probably not. No, we're just trying to get a concept.

So we go in front of the school board with this. Now they're going, hey, I'm starting to understand but that's way too open you can you change that? Boom. There's some walls for you. Just came back, put some walls in.

Now, one of the reasons why they wanted me to do this was because, once this model is built, I can take shots from any different direction, and we did that. So after this, they decided they wanted to paint some things different colors again, and move on with the project. And I'm going to show you a different angle, simply enough-- you'll see why I did that.

So here was the last version of this that I did. Look in the other direction, but we painted the walls. Once again, once I built the architecture, this stuff was very simple to do. It's just taking shots, running it through the rendering.

So my project manager, he went out and took this real picture. He just tried to match up with one of the other views. Now, who would have thought that you'd actually build what they thought it was going to look like?

This was huge for the school board. They loved it. Very easy to do in Revit. Now, can you take this into Max and other stuff, make it better, do all kinds-- sure you can. But this was just a proof of concept, proof of design.

So we won the job by putting it into Revit, showing them different views, then showing them the renderings of what it could look like. The worst part of the whole process-- and seeing how I'm supposed to be encouraging you to transfer over-- was actually the rendering time. The rendering time in Revit-- Revit is not a great rendering image machine. So it takes longer to do that.

But once again, with nothing extra, I could put that out. As long as I rendered it at night, and it's a one, two shot thing, it's not too bad.

So, real opportunities. All done in-house-- I didn't have to send it out to anybody. I didn't have to get that hand-drawn sketch at one particular angle with an artist's representation of what it's going to be.

Facilities management. How many of you dabble in that at all? OK, there's a couple of you.

Everybody keeps talking about building a life cycle. This is the future. Facilities management. If you're not doing it, you should look into it. It can be a revenue stream.

And there's a whole bunch of things that these models can do. We're way past thinking of our digital designs as 2D printed out flat pieces of paper that we then stick in a drawer and hope that they come back for renovation, right?

I mean, I mentioned pin bar drafting. We would stick these in the drawer, and then we would do what if the customer came back? We would create a sepia. How many of you know what sepias are? I love being able to talk to people who know what I'm talking about! So you basically burn the image, and then you can erase part of it, and you can redesign on it.

Those days are gone. Now what we want to do is, we want to have this building go on maybe into the construction phase. And once it's in the construction phase, we can use it to maintain the building. We've got spaces in. How many of you use spaces in AutoCAD architecture?

Those of you who are using Revit, have you put spaces in? Fairly similar, right? It's pretty simple. Really, you just kind of drop it in and there it is. So you can track anything.

Revit links out to other third party packages. Can Revit do facilities management? Sure. Is it designed for facilities management? Not even a little bit.

Well, OK, maybe just a little bit, because you can add costs and numbers, but those numbers change, and once you put them in the model, they're kind of static, right? And you always have to go back and change it. Well, you can link these out to a product like Arquebus or something.

How many guys are familiar with Arquebus? It's a nice product. Nice thing about Arquebus is you can link the model in.

You can make changes in Arquebus. And it will go backwards into your model. You can make changes in the model, and the information will go out to your reports in Arquebus. So we can still continue to use the model to get other information, like people, carpeting, paint, maintenance, equipment. Whatever it is that you want to track, you can do that.

There's other packages besides Arquebus. It works with FM systems, which is an AutoCAD package, or there's other packages out there too. So this is kind of like part of the frontier of our building lifecycle.

We can continue-- all our owners want these models, right? Basically, that's part of your contract, now you have to turn the models over. This is what they're thinking. They don't quite know how to do it. But this is what they want to do with it.

So we have these opportunities that are available to us in Revit. And I'm sure that you're sitting there going, well, when I switched to AutoCAD Architecture, they said that I would get to do all this in there too, right? Sure. And those of you who are using AutoCAD Architecture fully, as AutoCAD Architecture-- you may be achieving some of this. There's the guy.

Revit can actually do it a little better. It's just a little easier. Once you drink the Kool-Aid, once you get into the environment, you're going to find that all those things that you had to do to get these results in AutoCAD Architecture-- you're getting them almost immediately in Revit. I know you may not believe that, but it's true.

We talked about this bi-directional parametric modeling. I've mentioned it a few times now. Well, when we're working in AutoCAD, we basically have a separate DWG for everything, don't we? Yes, no? Yes. Thank you. That creates a fragmented file system. That means if I want to put the whole model together, I basically have to stack them on top of each other, or use my project navigator. How many of you are using your project navigator? OK. I hated using the project navigator. I have to admit, I didn't like it. But it was effective. It worked well. If you did it properly, everything worked well.

Then there's those who are the Renegades script, and we're going to do all of it in one DWG, which leads to a whole bunch of other headaches and scripting and customisations. Because Revit is all in one database, it just works. It's a database-driven system. And we can share it out. We can still share out and have multiple people work on these projects.

That's why, in those examples I gave you, it didn't matter where I made the change. It affected it everywhere. If I was in AutoCAD, AutoCAD architecture, I had to make that change in my floor plan, gone to my view, or my drawing to have my elevations in it. Regenerate the elevations, put those over, and so on and so forth. So, this is power.

Remember, it's your attitude. It's your attitude! OK, it was in a Kinks song. As you saw from the videos, I'm still sort of thrown back in the '60s a little bit. But your attitude is everything.

So how do we really implement this into our firm? One of the things that I used to talk about specifically in going from AutoCAD to AutoCAD Architecture was a phased approach. Because AutoCAD Architecture, those of you who are using it-- it's a monster, right? You can't go back and throw a light switch and say, hey, guess what, we're doing everything this way. You won't be able to do it.

So I'd say, start with walls, doors, and windows. And maybe add elevations, roof plans, schedules. And before long, you're using this much of the package.

Revit's pretty much the same way. We don't have to use all the aspects of the product today. We can phase things in. Now, the timeline for phasing things in, when we're in AutoCAD Architecture, could kind of go out. It could be elongated, and we can be very productive without having to phase a whole bunch of things in right away.

We're actually going to find that in Revit, we're just going to phase them in sooner, because it just makes sense. It's just easier. I'm going to give some examples of how we can do that.

Nice little quote I'd like to put up is that the first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. You guys are all aware. You've been aware for a while now. How many of you haven't moved to Revit-- because you're waiting to see if this thing was really going to catch on.

Well, it's caught on. You're aware of this. Now you just have to decide to do it, to move forward with it. You already understand it, more than you think you do. So, let's go ahead and get into it.

Now, one of the things I wanted to show you, when we were talking about looking at the software, and I said, let's phase things in. Back to my building here. One of the things that we can do that I like to phase in-- how many of you actually have a fantastic, detailed library? OK, a good detailed library?

So, you have a lot of pre-made AutoCAD details. That's what I'm getting at. Maybe they're already placed on a sheet. Do they have a lot of that?

And you put the sheet in just about every job. Sometimes you x out what isn't supposed to be there, or whatnot. Why can't I leverage that? Why do I have to do all my details in Revit, when I'm making this transition? I've got a really good AutoCAD Architecture library.

I'm with you. Let's leverage it. Let's use it. Let's phase in doing details in Revit later.

So the example I'm going to give you is actually how to leverage that. How to use an AutoCAD detail in my Revit environment. Now, what some people do-- how many of you have actually created CDs in Revit? OK, a couple of you. Do you use the indexing tool? It's actually pretty nice, for your cover sheets and whatnot, set that up.

And so what some people would do, they would create dummy sheets so they would show up in their index of what their AutoCAD sheets are that they're going to insert. To me, that's just a pain. And also, you don't have to create dummy sheets to make your index show up right.

But then what happens if you do that? You're right back into that thing that I told you we can eliminate in Revit, which was that coordination issue. Because now you've got all these details already numbered on a sheet, so now when I put a callout in, I have to actually manually add text, and then I have to coordinate that and make sure it's right.

Well, how can I use my AutoCAD information, and still have the intelligence of Revit? Anybody already do this? OK. So we got one or two people-- you guys will like this.

All right, so here's my project. I'm going to bring an AutoCAD detail into here. We're going to place it on my sheet. So, just showing you where I want to put this, I've got a spot there after 9. This detail isn't really architectural where I'm going to put the callout. This is just an example.

So the first thing I'm going to do-- I'm going to go to AutoCAD, AutoCAD architecture-- here it is. I'm going to put a floor construction joint in. Detail already exists. You may have these already in AutoCAD in your world.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go up to my ribbon, and I'm going to create a new view. What type of view am I going to create? I'm going to create a drafting view.

So I give it a name-- I'm just going to leave it this name right now, but you can call it what it's going to be. Now, this may seem like we're going through a few hoops, but this is how we keep everything smart. Most important thing was, I made sure that the scale was the same as the detail I'm bringing in.

So, now it's just basically a blank view. It creates the view in my project browser for me. There it is, drafting view. There's still nothing there. So now I need to bring in my AutoCAD detail. This actually works best if I have my details in separate drawings. But I can do it the other way if I want, but it works best.

So I'm going to import a CAD file. Here's the ones that I have. My DWG. I can pick different-- I can pick DGNs, DXFs, even SketchUp. Let me make few changes, I want to keep the colors. Do I want all the layers that are in that drawing, or just the ones that are visible? Just a few clicks. How do I want to place it? Just have it come in. I'm going to place it because it's a detail manually in my environment. I'm going to say OK.

And then, just like real world, I'm going to sit here and wait. OK, my connections weren't the greatest when I was doing this. So this actually doesn't take as long as it's showing here, and it's not too bad as it is. But there it is. For all intents and purposes, for AutoCADism nomenclature, it's a block reference. Essentially, that's what this is.

So I brought this in. I put it in this drafting view. I didn't have to redraw it. I did have to do a couple things, I had to create the view space for it.

Now I'm going to put a callout in. This is where I am now going to use AutoCAD and Revit, and it's going to be smart. So I'm going to go back up to my views. I'm going to do a callout. What type of callout? We'll just put a rectangular one. The sketch one is if I want an odd shape.

I'm going to switch to my properties. I can do a few different types of callouts. I want to make sure this is a detail.

And as soon as I create that, you're going to see that my option bar changed. And it's referenced to another view. I created that view already. I brought the AutoCAD reference in. It's listing every view that's in my database, in my project.

So everything is listed here. I can see it, and I can reference this callout to it. What I really want though, is I don't care about the reflective ceiling views, or the floor plan views. I care about the detail views. Yes, the list can get long. Organization is a key.

So I'm looking for that detail-- I believed I called it detail one, or drafting one, or something like that. I think that's it. But just in case I'm not sure, I can go back to my browser, double check the name. I think when I did this, I couldn't remember what I called it. This is what you wouldn't call your real slick canned demo. I just did it as I would do it.

So there's my callout. You can see that it's still empty. Why is it empty?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TOM TOBIN: It's not on a sheet. That's right. So now I'm going to take that out of the view, and I'm going to place it in this sheet. I don't know why I felt the need to stretch all those up and down.