24 minute read
Cover story: The future of Revit
The future of
Autodesk’s recent admission that there’s been a multi-year lack of development of Revit because of the concentration on cloud and construction has left many frustrated architectural practices wondering what the future of this 20 year-old BIM tool will be. Martyn Day examines the tea leaves
Autodesk acquired Revit Technology Corporation (RTC) with its Revit application in 2002 for $133 million cash. While RTC made a lot of noise, and its core parametric technology was innovative, it did not generate much revenue and, in fact, had few customers. Up to that point Autodesk had been trying to morph AutoCAD into a full-on architectural modelling tool with the unfeasibly complicated ‘Architectural Desktop’ variant.
One of the underlying key driving factors to the acquisition was that five years previously Autodesk dropped out of buying mechanical CAD (MCAD) tool Solidworks (Dassault Systèmes paid $310 million) which then went on to dominate desktop MCAD as users moved from UNIX to Windows.
Autodesk’s CEO at the time, Carl Bass, didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Had Autodesk bought Solidworks, it would not have spent millions on developing Inventor and then Fusion and would have been the number one player in desktop MCAD. The Revit acquisition protected Autodesk dominance in AEC and eventually proved to be a savvy investment.
The excitement of innovative code and doing things much better than previous generations of software is typically reserved for the early phases of development. Updates can be frequent and big; the potential can be seen. However, this furious initial phase typically slows down as a product ages and competition subsides. There is a lifecycle of software and to understand this better it helps if you can think a bit more like a software developer.
To generalise, the CAD software industry, on the micro scale, appears to have evolved to deliver the yearly evolution of authoring tools, executed on rolling 3 - 5 year development plans, along with equally evolving business models. For instance, we had perpetual licensing, where customers bought the perpetual right to access a version of software. Now the trend is for subscription licensing, where customers lease the right to use the software over a set time. The future looks to be heading towards a pay-peruse or subscription hybrid.
However, eventually software applications age; years of new layers of features compound to make products cluttered. The internal ‘wiring’ gets messy and fundamental changes can cause ‘regressions’ bugs in features that used to work but now don’t. At this point software companies need to make important decisions on how to maintain their success.
In the software world, a ten-year-old software program is deemed old. If a software package is extremely successful, the common-sense thing to do is to stretch it out and to do enough to retain the loyal base and keep the competition at bay. If
The future of Revit
you do a good enough job, there are few, if any, competitors and software is ‘sticky’. But even here, at some point, software developers usually take the risk of writing something new from scratch, or they acquire a start-up that has done that work for them as it’s better for them to kill their most successful products, rather than have a competitor do it.
In this case, Autodesk decided to buy the next generation to kill Architectural Desktop, and switched BIM horses.
Development velocity If you want to understand where your chosen CAD product is in its lifespan, look at the development velocity. The less that is added each year, the more likely it is very mature. If new features appear to be ‘onion skins’ to the application, as opposed to fundamental core rewrites or big new dollops of functionality, it’s most likely that the team don’t want to dig into
the product’s guts for fear of playing Buckaroo with all the dependant code.
Another option is to redevelop applications on the fly, rewriting core features sequentially and doing a lot of under the bonnet work while keeping the same interface and file format – a case in point is ArchiCAD which had good multi-core support added at a platform level and AI added to rewritten features like the stair tool. While this may keep the code refreshed, fundamental principles remain the same and this can come unstuck if industry workflows change or a new upstart comes out without decades of baggage.
Moving to the macro level, every ten or twenty years the fundamental underlying technologies are renewed, and that could be hardware (like processors), operating system (DOS to Windows NT) or the change we see today, to cloud. At each of these technology boundaries, firms and market leading products can lose market share, even go extinct, if the software firms fail to manage the transition by having planned for change and being the best to leverage the new technology platform. This is why we are seeing so much concentration on, and development around, cloud-based apps, despite the majority of users being fairly happy on their desktop PCs.
Historic examples that spring to mind are PTC, which was the leading desktop MCAD player with UNIX-based Pro/ Engineer. It was severely mauled by the new Windows upstart Solidworks because PTC failed to get to Windows quickly enough and kept its prices high. Autodesk had a serious wobble when it went from AutoCAD R12 to AutoCAD R13, from DOS to Windows NT, completely rewriting the code in C++, adding in solids and then trying to build vertical applications on constantly-moving, buggy base code.
Autodesk was lucky that nobody was complain at price hikes. some admissions on its lack of developthere to really pick up on the company’s Architects in Australia/NZ, Hong ment of Revit and gave a commitment to self-inflicted errors, but the effects lin- Kong and South Africa had all attempted address that. Its other defence, that it gered long into AutoCAD R14 and partial- to engage on the same subjects. It seems needed to allocate resources to BIM 360 ly led to the decision to develop Inventor, that in private Autodesk had more than and Construction Cloud, was perhaps which was Autodesk’s first new in-house enough warnings that its best and most less persuasive to architects. developed code-base since AutoCAD to mature Revit customers were all feeling Autodesk engaged directly with the tackle the MCAD market and specifically very frustrated and sought a collective Open Letter Group and has since had two Solidworks. These generational changes response. meetings, one with the executive team, the are major hurdles for software firms to The Open Letter movement (letters-to- other with the Revit development team. negotiate and not everyone gets out alive. autodesk.com) now stands at 166 global The first executive call was described as a firms directly signed up at the board level listening meeting, where the Group preThe open letters and as we were going to press, Brazil’s sented their grievances on a wide range of Coming back to where the current AEC National Association of Architecture and topics (pricing, licence changes, interopermarket is within these various develop- Consulting Engineers (sinaenco), repre- ability, Suites/Collections ‘product stuffment cycles, and we find ourselves at one senting a whopping 30,000 firms, also ing’, development, non-compliance audits) of these key inflection points, as the plat- released a similar open letter after its and the second revolved around wishlists form transitions from desktop to cloud. members took part in a questionnaire and features. Both are ongoing conversaThe prime BIM authoring tool in many which backed the sentiments of the origi- tions which will hopefully have some posgeographies is Revit, which has revolu- nal UK/Aus letters group. itive impact on licensing, product developtionised AEC design, democratising the It cannot be said that these grievances ment, productivity enhancements and adoption of model-based methodology. are just the feelings of a few practices in non-compliance ‘audits’. Firms that sign However, it is 20 years old, has a low the UK. This is a pandemic in the mature up to support the letter can be involved in development velocity and doesn’t really Revit base. These formal and informal this process and be kept up to date on the make much use of modern multi-core groups are now talking and sharing progress. computer architectures. experiences and opinions. We are essen- While I do think Autodesk is listening,
Revit’s yearly development velocity for tially seeing the ‘unionisation’ of BIM- the one area in which I think there will be the past six years has disappointed many of its biggest fans / most mature users, despite ‘‘ It’s most likely that the Revit no change is that of cost of ownership. It’s the one area Autodesk has pushed back on there being no shortage in development team don’t want to dig into and in conversation with Wall requested features to add. This has long concerned Revit cus- the product’s guts for fear of playing Street analysts Anagnost described the complainants as tomers, especially when they Buckaroo with all the dependant code the ‘privileged 20%’ as they see Autodesk spending over $1 billion developing and acquiring technology for its ‘Construction focussed architects and engineers as they ’’ had ‘moved from maintenance to subscription and have really pretty deep price protections, relative to Cloud’ offering as an attempt to digitise openly address issues with Autodesk’s the rest of the base.’ and sell tools and services to the current- product development and a range of busi- The first thing to point out here is that ly in vogue construction market. ness practices. this privileged minority who moved from
Devoted Revit customers have been maintenance to subscription would by frustrated by this slow pace of develop- Autodesk’s response definition be long paying, mature cusment of the A in AEC from Autodesk. We have seen a number of public tomers who would have made significant Prices have also risen and licence models responses from Autodesk, mainly from investment in Autodesk, its products and changed, too frequently, which have Amy Bunszel, Autodesk vice president of services by buying perpetual licences - increased cost of ownership. digital engineering products, and licences which Autodesk first priced up
On 22 June 2020, something snapped. Andrew Anagnost the company’s CEO. and now is seeking to move to 25 UK and Australian practices wrote an Firstly, there was recognition that archi- Subscription. open letter to Autodesk’s CEO, Andrew tecture has not been a strong focus of The second point is the PDF generated Anagnost to raise the issue of Revit’s lack development. Anagnost stated, “the pace by Autodesk are in constant USD, hiding of development, the increasing cost of of Revit development has slowed over the the currency fluctuations and correspondownership, its lack of interoperability, last five-plus years,” admitted there were ing price hikes that happened in countries Autodesk’s constant licensing changes “some areas where we need to improve like the UK, and is not representative of and treatment of customers with audits. and take steps to fix,” and “our architec- the historical cross-grading and upgrade On publication, it was quickly shared ture functionality didn’t progress as costs provided by the Letters Group. on social media and in the architectural quickly as it should have.” I think customers can work out for press (including this magazine’s in-depth Anagnost gave a vehement rejection of themselves if they are paying more and if coverage tinyurl.com/autodesk-letter). Then the criticism of Revit price increases, stat- they are seeing value. The concern at the the group started to be contacted by other ing Revit pricing was ‘reasonable’, pro- increasing cost and the value of Revit is ad hoc architectural groups from around ducing a PDF of historic evolving Revit something that is felt globally, from single the world which had similarly banded prices, given in constant USD (income together to ask Autodesk what was happening with Revit development and to free foreign currency movements). The positive is that Autodesk made u continued on page 22
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u continued from page 19 development of Project Quantum (tinyurl. com/quantum-aec). The idea was a centralcalled Plasma anymore). The question will be what is the focus of ised cloud system, in which all AEC par- the new system - architecture or construcusers to Enterprise Business Agreement ticipants would work and be able to see tion? From conversations with Autodesk customers - it’s not just the privileged few. the real time geometry changes of other developers the primary focus will be on I don’t think there will ever be agreement users. This was a great concept and the construction, not design, and this does between users and Autodesk on how dream was that all project participants have good reasoning. To design a workmuch is too much, until customers leave could work on a single model, a data cen- flow, you need to know the output and for alternative platforms. tric approach. when defining a software application for The problem is it seemed to vanish, AEC for the next 20 years, digital fabricaThe future with the excuse being made that the tech- tion must be at the core. It’s not something In talking with the group, one of the most nology was in some way re-appropriated that can be added in as a patch later on. interesting aspects of discussion is ‘what is to a different team. Talking with Anthony A single design system that can take the future of Revit?’ It’s something that we Frausto-Robledo, the owner of Architosh customers from conceptual (loose geomehere at AEC Magazine have been trying to (architosh.com) he seems to have an try) to 1:1 accurate models to generate prise out of Autodesk for many years now. Autodesk insight that Quantum was little Gcode, with everything in between, is a After years of low level development and more than a ‘PowerPoint deck’ at the time. big ask. To some extent Autodesk already Autodesk’s focus being elsewhere, custom- Roll forward to 2018 and Autodesk has has the architecture market with Revit, ers have a right to wonder what’s the plan? Project Plasma (tinyurl.com/plasma-aec), but it wants to concentrate on cracking Will the current Revit be rewritten to which built on some of Quantum’s core construction. As there isn’t anything out make use of modern processors and principles, expanding to embrace digital there to buy, Autodesk is developing itself. GPUs? Will Revit be able to handle larger fabrication. Here the future was a central models? Will there be a Revit 2.0? cloud database, with thick and thin cli- There is no Revit 2.0
We have seen in the MCAD space ents accessing the data simultaneously Autodesk has been clear; the developAutodesk already make another new mod- and while catering to the needs of current ment work it will be doing to Revit, based elling tool called Fusion, which will even- design and build workflows, it would be on the current roadmap (tinyurl.com/revittually supersede Inventor as its feature set designed to drive digital fabrication, off- road), does not involve a bottom up grows, utilising the cloud as a data backbone. Unlike applica‘‘ Autodesk is technically ‘gapping’ between rewrite. There is no next generation rewrite of Revit coming but tions that run in the cloud through a browser, so called ‘thin client’ generations but is now desperate to try and reassure the Revit base that all is well. I’m not sure there is a commitment to improve the roadmap to include some of the applications as the exe- whether promising them that the same tool will be input from customers. cutable on your machine on Windows 2030 is an incentive to stay or go? The question will be is small, Autodesk has settled on ‘thick client’ technology which provides a bigger sized site construction and modular. ’’ how deep into the guts of Revit will the development team go to improve performance and desktop app which synchronises with the I got the impression that Revit would functionality. ‘Low hanging fruit’ cloud host. somehow first be hooked up to the cloud, enhancements that do not require a lot of
In this market Autodesk competes with the database load would be lifted off the re-engineering work will be more appealOnshape, now owned by PTC, and while desktop app and eventually discipline- ing. The question is will this be enough to Fusion and Onshape offer much promise, specific apps would evolve to dissolve the keep mature, advanced users happy? Will they are still a long way from replacing need for the historic, monolithic Revit the development of Revit be rapid enough their more mature and powerful desktop desktop app we have today. Much of this to feel like it has velocity once more? competition (Autodesk Inventor, Siemens is based off the work Autodesk has put The Revit that is available today is the NX, Dassault Systèmes Catia). Given into Forge, where applications can be only Revit that there will be. In a recent Fusion was launched in 2012, this move quickly built from web components such ‘Inside the Factory’ video, featuring the to the cloud for data authoring in MCAD as viewers, clash detection tools, docu- Revit product leads, Kyle Bernhardt, is taking a long time and AEC has yet to ment management, generative design, director of building design strategy at start the journey. DWG tools etc. Autodesk, was asked by a customer
In Autodesk’s Q1 2021 call with analysts When we talked to CEO Andrew “where will Revit be in ten years?” He Anagnost explained, “We believe that rela- Anagnost in October 2019, progress had replied, “It’ll probably be running on a tively modestly sized to thick clients with a been limited. It was clear to hear his frus- Windows machine of some variety, Revit, really robust cloud backend are the future. tration at the slow development and he as you know it today, in a much more Fusion has a thick client. But it has a very, stated that the essential data backbone inter connected cloud ecosystem of tools, very, very fine-grained multi-tenant cloud work had still to be completed and would and will be able to deliver projects in a data infrastructure hidden behind it. take till Q2 of 2020. The good news is way that no system has ever allowed Fusion’s cloud will get thinner - client will that this work seems to have happened as them to do so before. Revit is not going get thinner over time. You could also see in another Wall Street call, Anagnost away, it does some very useful things for an evolution with Revit that’s similar to hinted that at this year’s AU virtual, the world, like AutoCAD does some very that. That’s going to take a little longer.” something would be shown from the useful things to the world today.”
In 2017, Autodesk announced the Plasma development (and that it was not He added that Autodesk is exploring
how to decouple some of Revit’s sub services to work better with Autodesk’s Construction Cloud. He then went on to claim that Revit is being ‘modernised’ and ‘broken up into parts’.
Years away Reading this, Revit customers could be excused for wondering what on Earth is going on? Unless there has been a dramatic change of heart at Autodesk in the last week, there is no next version of Revit, no new generation, no fundamental rewrite. The Letters Group, while their input to the development has been welcomed, have had their expectations tempered to not to expect to see any radical rewrite of Revit.
Autodesk’s historic lack of Revit development seems to have many reasons, a switch to construction, a switch to developing cloud services, while maximising the amount of money it can get (and value for shareholders) for doing as little development work on Revit’s old code.
Thanks to the industry collectively calling Autodesk out, there will be some redress to the development and roadmap situation, a near-term win. This does not answer the long-term question of how can skilled architecture practices move beyond what’s possible today, when they feel limited by their 20-year old tool?
The lack of development and focus gave the distinct impression that Revit was in, at best, maintenance mode and raised the question of its imminent demise. Conversations with users tended towards reciting the Monty Python ‘Dead Parrot Sketch’. The reality according to Autodesk, is that it was ‘only resting’.
While ‘Plasma’ architecture might have a data back bone and new name now, it will be shown in some capacity at AU this year. However, this seems to be very early days and may well take a significant period of time to reach the market and then mainly for construction firms, not architects or design. The speed with which it can be brought to market will be a test for Autodesk’s Forge development system, which should enable accelerated delivery of tools and workflows, but as I said, this is a massive undertaking.
The Autodesk plan seems to be to try and keep Revit customers happier, in the meantime build the Construction Cloud, under the hood integrate Revit desktop subsystems to better work with its cloud services. Then over time, replace Revit with thick client applications for architecture, MEP and structural. My estimate is this could take a timeframe of six to eight years to complete. I do have serious concerns how the current Revit desktop, even with more development, can be stretched out to keep the attention of demanding architectural users.
Conclusion There is no Revit 2.0 and the future appears to be some kind of slow absorption into a cloud-based construction system with new thick client applications eventually replacing the single monolithic Revit application. Autodesk is technically ‘gapping’ between generations but is now desperate to try and reassure the Revit base that all is well. I’m not sure whether promising them that the same tool will be on Windows 2030 is an incentive to stay or go?
Autodesk’s development focus is clearly on construction; the plan for architectural seems amorphous and not fully fleshed out. Without the intervention of the Letters Group, I doubt we would have seen the Revit product owners so visibly engaging with their users.
With regards to licensing and costs, Autodesk has picked up that customers want pay per use (PPU). Looking at their current Token system, after 8 mins you get charged a whole day’s worth of tokens. 8 mins is the same as 23 hours, 59 mins 59 seconds. Most firms have Revit models that take upwards of 20 minutes to just load. So it costs a day’s worth of tokens to see your own model in Revit, let alone do any modelling.
In PPU I’m hoping that Autodesk is looking at better granularity on this, but I have concerns about cloud and PPU in general. Software companies will charge you to create your design, to store your design and then will make money from your supply chain accessing your design and using their tools on your data. Your data becomes a commodity in a pay to play system. This has all sorts of data protection and monetisation issues which need to be addressed.
This moment is clearly a time for architectural firms to reassess BIM strategy, its usage, the workflows, the workarounds, partnerships, deployment, product mix. I am seeing clear trends where architects are reclaiming the design portion of the process and pushing BIM tools to the documentation phase, almost to the extent that it becomes a discrete process.
BIM is too constraining for early stage design and seems to have not really delivered in automating the drawing process which was its main objective. From talking with the Letters Group it’s been really thought provoking discussing what comes next for design.
This is something that the Letters Group will cover in detail in an unmissable panel discussion that will take place during AEC Magazine‘s NXT BLD Virtual conference next month (8-14 October 2020 – register free at nxtbld.com).
In talking to Autodesk’s competitors over the last few weeks, many asked me, if Revit customers were so upset, why did they decided to write a letter and not just move to another system? It’s a good question. One of the firms involved in the open letter, described it as ‘having dug a hole so deep, that when you have serious concerns as to the direction you have travelled, and the costs now involved, you look up and see how far it is to get out, and the question is, whether you should climb out of the hole and start again, or keep on digging, in case it gets better.’ In many respects, the multitude of issues that the Open Letters group addresses take this beyond wanting a better Revit, it wants a better Autodesk.
VIRTUAL PARTNERED WITH PARTNERED WITH FREE TICKETS ONLINE CONFERENCE with LIVE Q&A nxtbld.com 8 -14 October 2020
