Long Time No Blog ..........

I’m sorry for the absence of regular postings to this blog site…

In May this year I moved to a new company that currently does not have Revit (Ok I’m working on that one.) There is the recession on (opps can’t call it that call it a “credit crunch” sounds less threatening) the fear of the workload dropping and the whispers of companies laying off engineers, graduates and draughtsmen.

I can understand that belts in the industry are going to be tightened until we see what the future brings, and there is a lot of financial difference between using seats of AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and Revit with the cost in training and implementation etc etc.

One of our Major clients insists that we use a particular 3D drafting package for there work so, we also have seats of that for their work as well as seats of AutoCAD, LT Civils etc.

I still attended the London UK Users Group run by Excitech (despite not getting paid for the day, booking it as unpaid leave) because I believe the future is Revit shaped.

I’m biting the bullet and installing the Trial version of Revit Structure 2009 to continue up the Revit Learning Curve, but there is only so much one can do without the facility of being able to save and then reload your tutorial work and continue.

During the last couple of weeks I started on a project with an Architect who bought Revit Architecture, went on a three day course but due to pressure of work is still pumping out drawings using AutoCAD and has not made the transition. It’s no good going on any kind of software training if you don’t use the package before and more importantly straight after the training.

He discussed the possibility of re taking the course (as it’s been well over a year since the last one) and trying to make the move again, the Partners where I work are obviously interested in Revit and lets face it the cost of Revit Structure Suite which comes with AutoCAD is not a lot more than just plain Full AutoCAD if you need to upgrade of buy another copy of Full AutoCAD that is.

That’s the problem justifying the need for Revit or a Full AutoCAD then getting Revit off the back of the purchase. Slowly slowly catche Monkey as my old dear departed Dad would say.

The Architects building would be a challenge in Revit purely because it is curved and you could not use gridlines. I’ve not seen a lot of non –rectangular or rectilinear building detailed in Revit. This building is curved on plan and terraced, looking as if it should be in Spain or some other holiday spot not in the centre of London.

So if there are any Revit heads out there that have curved masonry building on plan I would love to see them.

Email them to alan@cadalot.co.uk