Hi everyone,
Sorry for the cross posting.
Our office is thinking about buying a license Revit MEP. Does anybody out
there have any experience using it? Any comments about it? I heard that it
still has a lot of bugs to be worked out and may be a bit of a headache
until the "issues" are resolved.
Also, does anybody have experience working with the supplemental energy
modeling programs that work with the Revit MEP models such as IES or any
other softwares? How do they compared to eQuest or HAP? Do the
supplemental energy modeling programs available today simulate the actual
systems drawn in Revit MEP or do they just share building envelope geometry?
Thanks for the input,
Ryan Lacey
Hi Ryan,
?
I used?Revit MEP 2008?about a year. Per my experience, the mechanical part of Revit MEP is ok to use. The major difference between Revit MEP and AutoCAD is that everything is based on 3D. The big challenge for me is that I can?t find the similar commands I used to have in AutoCAD. And Revit makes my pc very slow because it recommends having 4GB memory. You can download the most of families (similar to the "block" in AutoCAD) from Autodesk website. ?However, you still need to spend lots of time customizing?the "family" per your equipment selection. The fast way to learn it is to setup in-house training and work on real projects instead of going through the tutorials. In the first couple of weeks, you maybe want to throw your pc on the street because you are so angry with Revit. In short, AutoCAD is a good drafting tool but Revit MEP makes your 3D drawings look so cool.
Good Luck!
Shaojie?
Ryan,
I second everything Shaojie said. Our office uses Revit MEP on a
regular basis (we work with a lot of architects who are serious about
migrating over), but we only use it for mechanical design and electrical
fixture layouts. All plumbing, circuiting, panel schedules, riser
diagrams, etc. are still done in AutoCAD MEP. Revit is pretty weak on
the plumbing side, and aside from showing the location of lights and
receptacles, we consider it weak on the electrical side compared to the
tools we've set up in-house. It's supposed to be great at doing your
schedules and other back-end work, but like Shaojie said, you spend so
much time on the front end getting your families to play nice together
that we're not convinced it's completely worth the extra time and cost.
Plus, the training support is still pretty limited. We've been so
frustrated with it that we've hired a third party trainer to come into
the office and conduct classes for a couple days, but that's extremely
expensive. It's best if you have a person in the office who has the
bandwidth to become the in-house Revit guru while everyone else is
getting up to speed.
Of course, it's always a good idea to get the learning curve under way
if your budget can accommodate the license fees, but it will put a huge
strain on your production schedule if you try to switch over night. A
slow and steady migration, one project at a time, is what I would
recommend if you choose to go this route. Put a couple buffer weeks in
the project's production schedule, too.
As far as the supplementary energy modeling tools in Revit, I'm not that
familiar with them. We've spent so much time trying to get a handle on
eQUEST that we're not quite ready to start branching out into other
options yet. If I were in your position, though, I would start by
finding out if Revit's tools meet the software requirements outlined in
ASHRAE 90.1. If not, don't waste your time with it.
Thanks,
Dakota Kelley
Thank you all for your input regarding Revit MEP. It had been a big help to
us!
Ryan Lacey