Revit BIM consultant, Gavin Crump has released a vlog complaining how the incompatibility between Autodesk Revit releases impacts projects and the general lack of updates
Gavin Crump is a BIM consultant based in Australia. He trades by the name of Aussie BIMGuru and runs a community BIM vlog, covering all things to do with Revit – usually sharing tips and tricks and how to get the most out of the software, which he confesses he is a massive fan of. In his latest post however, he has decided to highlight problems with Autodesk Revit version incompatibility between releases and how this impacts multi-year projects, together with issues on lack of development.
While Autodesk Revit is market dominating, it is 20 years old. Over the past five or six years this development has slowed and firms which rely on it for their BIM solution have become increasingly frustrated by increasing cost and small portions of new functionality.
Crump embodies the views of many architects who spend most of their days designing in Revit and coping with the challenges it brings. While projects span many years and within lifecycle, decades, Autodesk Revit version incompatibility means that access to old versions is business essential.
Last year an Open Letter to the Autodesk CEO, Andrew Anagnost, from 25 UK and Australian based architects, asked for a dialogue on Revit’s development, costs and other business practices.
The letter attracted global backing from hundreds of other Revit customers. The group has had a series of meetings with Autodesk executives and product developers. This dialogue has led to some changes in licensing policy and an ongoing debate over roadmap features.
Crump’s post focuses on some of the issues the group raised, which actually did see Autodesk adding greater access to previous releases, now 5 versions back, where before it was only 3. Crump wonders if there is less development, can there be bi-annual releases of Revit to break the format less regularly? Autodesk Revit version incompatibility would be less of an issue.
