Revit 3.0.(Revit Technology CAD package)(Software Review)(Evaluation)

Revit 3.0

PRICE: $199 per month MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: Windows 98/NT/2000; Pentium II; 128MB of RAM, 100MB of free disk space

Revit Technology Corp.

www.revit.com infoNOW 76

Savvy software buyers steer clear of "1.0" versions of any product, on the reasonable assumption that the developer's eagerness to ship something, anything, typically outweighs the prudence and polish that comes with mature products. Version 1.0 of Revit, a parametric modeling program for architecture released in April 2000, seemed to break that pattern. In its initial release Revit behaved like a child prodigy, talented far beyond its tender age. However, upon closer inspection and with a bit of hindsight, Revit 1.0 appears to have been more like an idiot savant--brilliantly capable of complex and arcane feats, yet quirkily incompetent in the mundane details of ordinary life. Fortunately for Revit Technology Corp. and for architects seeking intelligent, object-based CAD tools, Revit 3.0 has outgrown its childhood infirmities.

Revit's strength was and is the fact that it takes a "parametric change engine" approach to architectural design, in which all parts of a building model--even the dimensions and annotations that document and describe the model--are linked to and from all other parts of that building model. This two-way interconnectedness, also known as bi-directional associativity, enables designers to edit any entity in any view with confidence that the effects of their edits will ripple appropriately throughout the model. Coordination, or the tedious process of checking and ensuring that floor plans, elevation views, section cuts, and so forth are properly aligned within a set of drawings, becomes virtually automatic. The weakness of Revit's first release, however, was that there wasn't much to show in those nicely coordinated views.

In Revit 3.0, the ability to model and detail real construction materials and assemblies has caught up with the program's ability to manage changes to the model. Walls, floors, and roofs in Revit 3.0 now can be composed of any number of layers and thicknesses of diverse material representations, directly corresponding to physical building construction.