February 9, 2020

AutoCAD vs Revit with relation to Interior design

Charl van der Merwe

Introduction.

A question was raised by an interior design customer using AutoCAD for their work and their company is moving to Revit. They wanted to know which is better for Interior Design: AutoCAD or Revit.

Although I understand that AutoCAD has its place and you can argue that AutoCAD is better in some cases for individual tasks it gets found out when working in collaboration with others to create the building.

Response:

The whole building industry is moving to connected BIM whereby building models are uploaded to the cloud or Bim360 area. These models are used by others. For instance, the Structural Engineers to analyse/create their construction drawings; MEP engineers to analyse and create their building services.

This cloud or Bim360 area always has the latest model to be viewed and used by any stakeholder. If a model revision occurs, the cloud model is always current and the different historical versions can be compared to show changes, new objects or deleted objects instantly.

These models could also be used by contractors and subcontractors to layout the building or to create snag lists and tasks related to each sub-industry in construction. This all happens in the cloud and tasks and issues could be assigned to contractors within the Bim360 System.

This cloud or BIM360 based process reduces time to: fix design errors, collaboration, and clash issues, management of files and emails; task and project management; resolving site issues and much more as its using a single platform accessible to every stakeholder.

If you not using a BIM authoring tool to design, it becomes difficult to be involved in this process and therefore you’ll probably work in ‘silo’. This means that you might not be knowing which architectural drawing is the latest for instance. Other stakeholders will not know which Interior Design layout is the latest etc.

There are many BIM authoring tools of which Revit is one.