Technology
Revit 2022 and beyond From the number of features and enhancements in the new release of Revit, it’s clear that Autodesk is attempting to placate customers who complained so publicly at the BIM tool’s lack of development, writes Martyn Day
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n July 2020 Autodesk had a some- Navisworks, Revit and 3ds Max. None of pened to answer one of the points raised what rude awakening, coming in these products can really be described as by the group and was championed by the the form of an open letter from a having high development velocity. company to show they were listening, collection of over 25 architectural Autodesk’s executive team reacted with Autodesk had been negotiating this before practices based in the UK and Australia some explanatory blog posts and obser- the Open Letter came out. (tinyurl.com/adesk-letter). The letter raised vations on the issues. They accepted some Post Open Letter, those watching many issues around Revit, the company’s of the points raised and rejected others Autodesk closely noticed an increase in flagship BIM tool, including years of woe- but reached out to set up a series of listen- the number of jobs advertised for Revit ful lack of development and increasing ing engagements with the customers and development and much higher visibility costs. The letter also raised licensing Autodesk execs and AEC strategy team. of the Revit development team on social issues, pernicious customer audits over A core part of this process was an media platforms, as well as its own non-compliance, and lack of good interop- exchange between the Revit development forums. Revit’s future roadmap became erability. It really was quite the broadside. team and the firms in the Open Letter an open-source discussion for input and A few months prior to this, Autodesk Group, giving them an opportunity to engagement and at Autodesk University, had announced the end of perpetual discuss what features Revit desperately CEO Andrew Anagnost explained how licensing and the removal of proud he was of the Revit network licences with the team in reaching out to firms introduction of named user of all sizes, not just listening The fundamental question of ‘what is the licences, which meant every to the loud mid to large ones, future of Revit?’ has not gone away. Autodesk to collect and prioritise feauser had to have their own licence even if they only ture requests. has ruled out a next generation and the used the software on occaWith the launch of Revit company is ‘betting the farm’ on the cloud sion. This was the straw 2022 this April, we had our that broke the camel’s backfirst insight into the renewed yet more licence models, yet development focus of the more cost. The Open Letter went global needed for them to get the jobs done. post-open letter period and on the face of and over 200 firms eventually signed it. Following the exchange between the it there has been a whole lot of enhanceRevit is 20 years old. While in its various groups, Autodesk announced ments and additions and it reads as ceryouth, significant upgrades were neces- that it had expanded access to Revit tainly the kind of eclectic release that sary to flesh out the product’s capabili- licences five versions back and pushed would indicate that it had indeed been ties, as it entered maturity, it’s fair to say back the removal of network licences for driven from broad customer input. the development velocity tapered off. another year, before named user became However, the cost of ownership did any- mandatory. While Autodesk did not cred- Revit 2022 thing but. The Open Letter stated that it the Open Letter Group for these chang- The new release of Revit contains anythey had seen, on average, increases of es of policy, I doubt they would have where between 35 to 60 enhancements, 70% in the cost of ownership over five come about had the group not raised depending on how you want to count years. Within that period, firms were also them so vehemently. them - which is probably more than was running up to five different types of Subsequently, Autodesk also delivered in the last three releases comlicence models at any one time and, on announced it had licensed the ODA’s IFC bined. Customer reactions have varied analysis, out of the 39 products in their library, which is an industry standard and from ‘oh my God it feels like Christmas’ suites, they typically used only four should help improve most of Autodesk’s to ‘about bloody time’, to ‘this is like rearapplications regularly - AutoCAD, IFC exchange capabilities. While this hap- ranging deck chairs on the Titanic’. It
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