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Architecture firms to Autodesk: We're no longer happy with Revit

Issue #1,063   |    July 27, 2020

 

Reporting and opinion by Ralph Grabowski One of the good things today is that, with the Internet, you can effortlessly band together with like-thinkers when you don’t like how things are going. Some of the world’s largest architectural firms earlier this year banded together, because they don’t like how things are going with Revit. They had waited patiently for Autodesk to update the 20-year-old Revit, just as Autodesk had done with 20-year-old Inventor in creating Fusion for mechanical design. In 2016, Autodesk did announced that a new Revit would be forthcoming, code-naming it Project Quantum. It would operate as BIM-in-the-cloud and pass data to modules as they needed it. Later, it was re-code-named Project Plasma; then, so far, nothing more.    During the Revit launch event at Harvard University, April 5, 2000 Competitors didn’t stand still. During this time, Vectorworks smoothly replaced the entire kernel of its 35-year-old architectural software with Parasolid, giving it new capabilities. Bricsys wrote a BIM module from scratch for BricsCAD. Graphisoft, whose ArchiCAD BIM modeler is 38 years old, this year completed, in three years, Project Everest. In it, applications (including non-Graphisoft ones) get from the BIM model only the data they need to do their analysis, and then return it to ArchiCAD quickly. Together with Graphisoft’s BIMcloud server, the Everest concept is similar to what Autodesk had hoped to deliver with Quantum. Something at Autodesk, it seemed, was amiss.   The Survey & the Letter Architectural firms in England and Australia, some of whom work globally, had standardized on Revit, partly due to government mandating it for its own projects. Waiting four years for the promised neo-Revit became, for them, long enough.   And so they conducted a survey amongst themselves to find that their level of satisfaction with Autodesk and Revit ranged between 1 and 3 -- out of 10, the highest. This tells me that there is a great deal of anger, when survey respondents aren’t giving a "could do better" 5/10.   So they wrote a letter to CEO Anagnost, listing their concerns. It is signed by the IT design directors at 17 firms, including Zaha Hadid Architects, and not signed by eight more*. In it, they described their experiences with Revit since 2015: BIM models that must broken up, because Revit cannot handle today’s large projects well Lack of a data pipeline to handle the many sources of data in use today Limited Revit development in modern concepts like GPU processing, multi-cores, and virtual PCs Lack of a road map assuring users of a definite development path Enduring up to five different license models, with a sixth on its way  Up to a seventy-per-cent increase in Revit license cost between 2015 and 2019 Lack of trust in storing their intellectual property on Autodesk's cloud services (*) Fear of retaliation from some parts of the Autodesk organization The survey and letter are being made public today.   What Ralph Grabowski Thinks We have had hints as to why it seems Autodesk isn’t matching the architectural development strides of the likes of ArchiCAD. It may be its perception of near-monopoly (in some parts of the world) giving a sense of success; it may be its new emphasis on the much larger, potentially more lucrative construction market; it may be a difficulty in converting Revit to a modern code base – these are some of the hints.  The letter released today seems to indicate that 25 design firms don’t want to leave Revit (perhaps they can’t) as much as they want Autodesk to keep its promise of delivering better software, quickly, for architects who work nationally and globally. If nothing else comes of it, the survey and letter publicly expose an undercurrent of discontent with Autodesk. Perhaps others will add their names to the list of signatories.  Conceivably, the more serious problem facing the firms is this: what if Autodesk is unable to deliver a neo-Revit? It is not inconceivable. The firm failed to put all its software on the cloud by 2015, as held by former CEO Carl Bass. Among its competitors, Dassault Systemes, following years of determined announcements, never shipped a long-awaited program dedicated to architectural design. Architects understand their needs better than do software-only houses, and so perhaps a neo-IntelliCAD effort is necessary. This is conceivable, as large architecture firms already retain programming teams engaged in customization and who work regularly with ancillary software, such as the collection of crucial-to-design programs from Robert McNeel & Assoc. To it, add a BimRv backend and change-control API from the Open Design Alliance, throw in ARES-based 2D RVT/IFC drawing generation from Graebert, host IFC 4.x data on Bricsys' massive-data-handling BricsCAD -- and a new open-BIM star may be born in less time than it takes for Autodesk to come up with its next code name for neo-Revit.  Autodesk may be keen on capturing a portion of the world’s largest industry, but construction needs feeding from capable design software. The future, according to large architectural firms, is all about the conceptual stage of design, with AI to handle the detail work, and then pipelining data to automated construction machinery, much of it off-site. The future, in this scenario, may hold no place for Revit. - - -   For additional background on the events leading to today’s customer uprising, as well as the complete survey, letter, and list of signatories, check out AEC Magazine at aecmag.com/comment-mainmenu-36/2046-autodesk-aec-customers-demand-better-value.   Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Ross Goulter  Ken Anderson: "I appreciate your dedication and honesty. Refreshing in an industry that used to be a tight community. Reading for more that 20 years." To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

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Q&A With the CEO: The Future of Vectorworks

Issue #1,062   |  July 6, 2020

 

by Ralph Grabowski Over a Zoom meeting facilitated by Vectorworks Senior Media Relations Manager Lauren Burke Meyer, CEO Dr. Biplab Sarkar and VP of Product Development Steve Johnson discussed with me their plans for Vectorworks, near and far. - - - Ralph Grabowski: What are you planning for the next release of Vectorworks? Steve Johnson: We are making improvements in a number of areas: Improvements to the user interface, including Tear off palettes A quick search for tools that are then executed at the cursor Smart Options Display that brings recent tools and controls from the perimeter of the screen to the cursor (it works across multiple monitors) Providing users with suggestions for the workflow We continue to expand upon our conceptual modeling solutions from the last several releases that made Vectorworks an alternative to SketchUp and Rhino, and so the next release has the last piece: draw a line to split the face of a solid to manipulate the geometry using push/pull.   It will have history modeling that provides direct modeling interaction with history-based modeling features. For interoperability, we are adding Excel import and export, and publishing worksheets to PDFs. Smart Markers are annotations that work across all our software, with reference links to view details in viewports. They create hyperlinks automatically when exported/published as a PDF. When you click on a marker, it links to the page in the PDF document that it is referencing. These live hyperlinks can also be viewed in the Vectorworks Nomad app, as well as any desktop PDF viewer. For structural grids, the layout is more automated and can be customized so that users can determine how the grids show up in viewports. Vectorworks needs to handle larger and larger models with more data, so we have more support for multiple cores to take advantage of the hardware that our users are running. Navigation between scenes in large models is improved. We are integrating and taking advantage of new technologies, and on the road to employing Apple's new Metal graphics system. For our Vectorworks Architect  product, we added a materials resource with graphical and physical attributes that can be attached to any object for better quantity take-offs, like volumes of materials in walls. As an architectural tool, we are best suited for data that falls under the architect’s purview. This includes STC [sound transmission class] ratings, fire ratings, U-values, daylighting information, run-off coefficients, and so on.  Data Visualization shows all data in the model, in multiple ways and now supports Materials, too. We re-engineered the lighting device to better support focusing, and to handle multiple lights at one time. We were part of a group that defined a new specification for exchanging lighting fixture data between different software programs -- GDTF [General Device Type Format] -- and so the lighting device provides better support of GDTF. (See figure 1.) Figure 1: Data flow using DGTF For Landscape, we added support for components in the Landscape Area tool. Components define information such as a layer of topsoil on top of a base material. This lets us get proper sections.  Biplab Sarkar: Landscape is catching up with BIM! Grabowski: When do you plan to release Vectorworks 2021? Lauren Burke Meyer: We plan to release it mid-September. Grabowski: How deeply do you plan to use the APIs developed by the Open Design Alliance for Revit, Navisworks, and IFC files? Sarkar: We added the first level of Revit compatibility three releases ago. This release has a second version of Revit export: first, we exported models as mesh geometry, now as solids.  We use Solibri for mixed format project files, so we don't need Navisworks. As for IFC, we use our own IFC export/import routines, and we were the first to receive IFC4 Reference View 1.2 Export Certification. (See figure 2.) Figure 2: IFC data in a Vectorworks model (image source Vectorworks) We will implement the Civil3D API from ODA in our landscape software, Vectorworks Landmark .  Grabowski: What are some of the long-term goals you have in mind for Vectorworks?  Sarkar: Our vision for Vectorworks is for it to become the all-in-one software for designers around the world.  Currently, Architect supports the needs of our interiors market. However, we’ll be building upon this and soon adding an interior design module, driven by a new rendering engine. (See figure 3.) Real-time rendering is important, and we already have live scenes. Future releases will add TwinMotion architectural rendering [from Unreal Engine] and Maxon's new real-time GPU-powered rendering system, Redshift.  Figure 3: Interior design renderings (image source Eastlake Studio) Last year, we began modernizing the UI and UX [user experience], and we will continue on that. We are working on a high-performance engine so that Vectorworks can use as many cores as are available.  Interoperability is important, as our customers bring data into Vectorworks from all kinds of other products. We plan more partnerships, such as last year's link to Esri [for mapping], links to more real-time rendering engines, and to other companies under the Nemetschek umbrella. (See figure 4.) Figure 4: Placing GIS data from Esri into Vectorworks (image source Vectorworks) Grabowski: I recall some talk about moving data more easily between Nemetschek products; how is this progressing? Sarkar: We have always been a proponent of Open BIM [for compatibility with other BIM software]. We have been working on tighter integration with Nemetschek products, and are targeting direct interoperability by March 2021. Grabowski: You use the Parasolid kernel from Siemens. At its user event last month, Siemens spoke about the advances it has made in convergent modeling [mixed solid and mesh modeling]. Does it have a role in Vectorworks? Sarkar: Certainly! Convergent modeling is useful for any architectural modeler, being able to mix a solid design with a meshed chair from an online library. We are prototyping it [working on implementing it]. Grabowski: Apple is switching the CPUs in its computers from Intel to ARM. As Vectorworks runs on Windows and MacOS, how will the switch affect you? Johnson: We have already been looking at what is involved. We will not be using Apple's Rosetta [Intel emulator], as we don't want to sacrifice any speed, no matter how little it might be. It will likely take us only a week or two to compile the Vectorworks core code for the new Apple silicon using Apple's development toolkit. We will be working hard to prepare Vectorworks for the new Apple hardware, which is reported to be hitting the streets at the turn of the year. www.vectorworks.net   And in Other News The following posts appeared in recent weeks on my WorldCAD Access blog: Nobody owns 3dconnexion Siemens Media Conference, Day 1 Siemens Media Conference: Q&A Thank You, Readers Thank you to readers who donate towards the operation of upFront.eZine: Kathleen Maher (corporate donation) Trent Barrow To support upFront.eZine through PayPal, then the suggested amounts are these: $25 for individuals > paypal.me/upfrontezine/25 $150 for small companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/150 $750 for for large companies > paypal.me/upfrontezine/750 Should Paypal.me not operate in your country, then please use www.paypal.com and the account of [email protected]. Or mail a cheque (US$ or CDN$ only, please) to upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 34486 Donlyn Avenue, Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada.

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