Why hasn’t Revit Taken Over the Market Yet?

Revit is a great BIM software that has definitely revolutionized the way things are done in the construction industry since it was released in early 2000’s, but there are many companies that still use AutoCAD (and want to continue using AutoCAD). If Revit has proven to effectively increase productivity, reduce work times, be a great tool for collaboration, a workflow with less mistakes and a more efficient software in general, why do companies still use AutoCAD? Here are a few of the reasons why Revit hasn’t fully been adopted by all companies (yet).

Software Lifespan

First of all, AutoCAD has been in the market since 1982, when its first version hit the market, generating a massive revolution in the drafting industry. Since then, AutoCAD has been the leader in several sectors (although we will mainly focus on the architectural/construction one) and has been bought and used by most studios to develop their projects. This means that AutoCAD has been around for about 37 years. 37 years of professionals using it. 37 years of professionals feeling comfortable with it. 37 years of many projects developed in it and 37 years of using its commands. It might sound simple, but AutoCAD is deeply rooted in the architectural industry as of today.

On the other hand, Revit was acquired by Autodesk in 2002 from Revit Technology Corporation, the company that originally created it. Since then, Revit has proven to be quite effective in the handling of architectural projects of any size and even though the software has been around for about 17 years now, it’s still not as rooted in the industry as AutoCAD is with its 37 years under its belt.

2D to 3D Workflow

Adding an extra dimension to our workflow can certainly make things a little more complicated. 3D (Revit) definitely requires more work than 2D (AutoCAD), but once you understand the logic behind Revit, things will become a lot easier and the 3D workflow will become second nature.

Since Revit is 3D, the learning curve is a lot steeper than AutoCAD’s, making the software look too complicated for 2D users and this is where most people think Revit will always be slower than AutoCAD. Yes, there will be a period (the learning/transition period) where projects will move slower, but once you understand the ins and outs of Revit, you will be able to complete projects in at least 40-50% less time.  In other words, it’s a small investment that will certainly pay off in the future, but an investment that not everybody is willing to go through.

Decision Makers

In a lot of big companies, the upper management/CEO’s (the people who make decisions) might be more familiar with AutoCAD than with Revit. In fact, some of them might be even experts in AutoCAD, so for them AutoCAD is second nature and it has proven to work for all their projects, so they might not feel the need to explore uncharted waters, especially when the company has performed so well in the past with their current workflow. Plus, they also see a new software as an expense, which we will talk about next.

Cost

AutoCAD is quite an expensive software, and a lot of companies have invested a lot of money getting AutoCAD licenses in the past. Switching to Revit means that they would have to invest a big amount of money (again) to get things going, and this is not even considering the training they would have to provide to their employees and the amount of time it would take for everyone to be on the same boat (proficient in Revit as they are in AutoCAD). So, switching to Revit can be quite expensive.

Photo from Pexels

Smaller Companies

Smaller companies might not need all the power and tools that Revit has to offer since their projects might be simpler, so using Revit might not make much of a difference in their current workflow, plus, they can save money by getting a simpler version of AutoCAD (AutoCAD LT) than having to invest more money into Revit.

While some big companies have spearheaded the change and fully switched to Revit, many others haven’t made the decision yet, and for all these reasons, these two software programs will continue to coexist for a while, and even though Revit is definitely a better option to save time and money in your projects, some companies are not investing (or cannot invest) money in their current employees (AutoCAD users) to convert them to Revit users, but rather, they are now hiring people with Revit skills and incorporating them slowly into the workflow. The transition will happen, yes, and it will certainly benefit all companies, but it will be a slow process.