Revit LT vs. Revit Structure

[structuralengr89]

Has anyone used Revit LT? Do you know what the limitations are compared to Revit Structure? I'm a single owner SE and some Archs require Revit in our area now. I've thought about purchasing Revit LT, playing with it for a while until I could put out some basic plans and then purchasing Revit Structure. Thoughts?

I have not purchased Revit Structure yet primarily from all the bad things I've heard from SEs who use it. It looks like if I want to continuing doing work for Archs, I'll need to jump on the bandwagon or I'll need to find a new career path.

 

[kylesito]

Not sure what your other SE's are telling you but my company uses the full version and I won't go back to CAD if I had to. Are you sure the SE's you are talking to aren't just stuck on "I can't do everything the same way I have done it in CAD for the last 20 years so I don't like it?". I was one of those for a long time. My last company hadn't "converted" yet so I only dabbled in it which means I tried it on a few small projects but kept expecting it to be just like CAD. When I couldn't use my little shortcuts or use my "favorite" keys, I would typically give up and say something about how bad the program was. My new company strictly uses Revit so I was forced to actually learn how to use the program. It's different, there is no doubt, but in my experience it is FAR superior to CAD. The modeling aspect has saved us countless change orders and questions from contractors and has even helped us identify potential issues from a long way off in the design process.

Sorry, not really sure about LT versus the full blown program but we use the full blown version and I highly recommend it.

I will also add...my new company is a very small company (<15) and using the software has helped us compete with some of the big boys in terms of production. What I can do with my one machine takes them 2 engineers and a draftsman and I would put the accuracy of my drawing up to their's any day.



PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

 

[jaok]

I'm also a solo practitioner SE and architect. I purchased Revit LT for doing projects on my own as an architect. For that purpose, Revit LT is hard to beat given its price compared to full Revit (about $1200 plus $200 annual maintenance for LT vs. $5800 plus $1000 annual maintenance for full Revit). There are some aggravating limitations of Revit LT, mainly (1) there's no in-place component modeling, as there is in full Revit, and (2) there is very little ability to collaborate with anyone else with LT. On my projects where I'm acting as a SE, I can load the architect's Revit model into the background, but there's no real ability to control the visibility of the background model's components, families, lineweights, etc. This means the architect's background model is either on or off - you can't "freeze" layers or turn off furniture or manipulate the imported file in any way (except apply a 50% grayscale to it uniformly). This is a major limitation of Revit LT, although to Autodesk's defense (I can't believe I would ever say that), LT is not intended as a collaborative tool - it's really for solo practitioners who don't need to bring other consultants'/designers' models in, or at least do any sort of collaboration.

My SE projects are fairly small, and I'm using Revit LT basically as a drafting tool for adding structural linework and annotation. That's not really what Revit is for, but it works for me. Drafting in Revit (or Revit LT) is a bit clunky compared to traditional CAD, and less efficient. But again, that's not where the power of BIM really is. Since I can't really model anything collaboratively with the architect's model, that's really all I can do. For other architectural design and documentation, I'm 100% BIM on modeling and documentation, and using Revit LT as it was designed.

I'm fairly happy with Revit LT, given what it cost me. Is full Revit worth it, as a solo practitioner? That's a bit questionable. Actually it looks like Autodesk is pinching users and now selling only a package called "Building Design Suite," which includes all the different flavors of Revit and AutoCAD together, regardless of whether you need all that, or want it, for a flat $6800 fee. Previously, you could buy Revit Architecture, or Revit Structure, or Revit MEP, depending on what your profession was (makes sense!). Now you can only buy one giant package (at least from a quick glance at Autodesk's Store, that's what it looks like). I wish I could switch to ArchiCAD, butI have too much experience with Revit already, and I'm not really willing to have to spend the time to relearn BIM on a different platform, as long as LT exists.

structuralengr89, I would be interested in hearing what kind of structural analysis packages you're using, if any. I've used different packages through the years, but I'm a bit more picky when it comes to shelling out cash for software that's of limited use to me as a solo SE.