Introduction
AutoCAD was developed during the mid 1980s as a Drawings & Drafting tool to help designers and drafters draw technical drawings on a Computer.The software was designed as a general Drawing and a Drafting tool for all those who needed to create Technical Drawings. It does not matter if you are an Electronics Engineer creating a Circuit Diagram or a Landscape Architect, creating Planting Plan. Both can use the same software. This is perhaps the reason, why CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) and AutoCAD (Developed by Autodesk) became so popular and continue to do so.
Advantages AutoCAD offered
The software essential replaced Drawing Board. However, the process of making drawings and Drafting remained the same. The advantage AutoCAD offered was higher level of accuracy and speed. In addition, you did not have to bother much about quality of linework. AutoCAD has the capability and allows one to produce drawings of consistent quality, across an organization.
Revit
- Revit is a Modeling Tool that uses real-life Building Elements such as Walls, Floors, Roofs, Doors, Windows and creates an intelligent 3D Model.
- These elements have embedded information such as area, volume, material quantities and thermal properties. This information can be extracted in schedules.
- Revit creates a 3D model, Plans, Elevations, and Sections etc. are views of this 3D Model. Any change in one automatically reflects in other views, therefore, Elevations and Sections will always coordinate with Plans.
Schedules extract information from Model, any change in Model will automatically update schedules. - Easy to implement and ensure Standards compliance
AutoCAD
- AutoCAD using Geometric elements such as lines, circles, Polylines etc. called entities to build a Drawing. These elements contain geometric information such as start and end points, an angle in three-dimensional space, the center of a circle and its radius.
- Plans, Elevations, and Sections are separately drafted manually. If Plan changes, these have to re-drafted to coordinate with updated Plans.
- Schedules such as Door & Window Schedules can be extracted using Attributes. However, if there is a change in Plan, these have to be extracted again. If you miss out on this, your schedules will not relate to your Plans.
- Difficult to implement and ensure compliance.
