Revit 2015

I have remained pretty tight lipped about Revit 2015, watching at distance to see what the reaction might be. There are a number of reasons for this; firstly I wasn’t sure whether it might come across a bit loaded now that I have joined the darkside :-). Secondly, after I was thrown under the bus by another blogger a couple of months ago, I didn’t really feel that compelled to go through the same thing again. My only real effort this year has been to help Eddie K & James V get the Mastering Revit Architecture 2015 version over the line, by assisting with the tech editing. There is plenty on the web from other Reviteers giving their detailed opinion & views of 2015; I will leave it to them to provide the real depth. These are all good links…& worth viewing…

http://revitoped.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/new-feature-list-for-revit-2015.html

http://www.seandburke.com/blog/2014/03/27/whats-new-in-revit-2015/

http://www.seandburke.com/blog/2014/03/31/revit-2015-system-requirements/

http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/my-top-4-revit-2015-new-features-plus.html

http://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2014/issue70-revit.html

http://revitrants.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/revit-2015-boring.html

Tim Waldock explains how best to get the most out of the Sketchy feature in Revit 2015.

http://revitcat.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/new-sketchy-lines-in-revit-2015.html

I would read this post by Sean Burke. Sean provides some very good strategic vision & you would do well to read this, in my humble opinion.

http://www.seandburke.com/blog/2014/03/29/is-revit-dead/

So if you want my honest opinion (you can take it or leave it & this is my own view, not twisted); Revit 2015 is good. Ok, it might not have all the bells & whistles you want, but it fixes a number of long standing features which have been a real pain. Does it fix all of them? Nope. But there is always more to come & only so much that can be achieved in 12 months. Bigger projects take longer to cook.

If I was managing projects would I upgrade? Of course I would! If you have an iphone, whilst iOS7 looked basic, I would take a good guess you still upgraded. Before you question this comment, an iphone may not be as critical as your project data, but the circumstances are similar to a degree. Data is mission critical, yet if another discipline, say the structural engineer updates to 2015 because he or she can deliver better outcomes are you really not going to join the club by holding back? This is all about collaboration. Not all projects need to be on the latest version, that I recognise, but moving this industry forward rather than sitting & waiting is not something I personally believe is progressive. But then, maybe I am different to others & am prepared to take risks?

Finally, I have been running the beta on a Macbook Air, 8 gigs of RAM running Windows 7 under Parallels & I will say that Revit 2015 runs like a dream. Whilst I only have 4 gigs set aside for Windows it will happily open 150mb models. Performance is very good & for me, when I was working on projects, performance from the model was more critical than anything. Ultimately it’s your call whether you decide to deploy 2015 & you feel you are getting the value. All I would say, is don’t judge a books by its cover, there is always more devil in the detail & plenty more to come…..