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As someone who used Revit for 5 years before moving to develop and maintain custom Revit API apps full-time, I have many horror stories I could share (feel free

As someone who used Revit for 5 years before moving to develop and maintain custom Revit API apps full-time, I have many horror stories I could share (feel free to AMA). I can say that the latest version of Revit (R2025) is largely a single-threaded application, and has only just upgraded their back-end from .Net Framework 4.8.1 to .Net8.0. The company continuously and openly takes breathtakingly blatant advantage of their user base and is at worst adversarial to their users. The software captures and exchanges a surprising amount of data during usage (to the point that Revit itself is hard to distinguish between malware by network cybersec software). Autodesk is a walking-talking timebomb of an antitrust suit waiting to happen. With that said, Revit does a lot of things well and there are no realistic alternatives. Personally, I have always found community responses on forums very helpful while autodesk support has ranged from helpful, to useless, to simultaneously counter-productive and insulting. Jeremy Tammik (officially affiliated with Autodesk these days) and his “The Building Coder Blog” is a very nice reference for Revit API and he is somehow EVERYWHERE on the forums. edit: the open letter posted here by another user does a very good job detailing many broad issues (with Revit in particular); every point it makes is accurate in my experience.

sota_pop 2y ago
As a follow-up, it is always sad to see large volumes of community-driven content deleted especially when the motives are likely for selfish or nefarious purposes. Being somewhat familiar with the latest releases, Autodesk has been pushing their cloud services (Forge, or whatever they’re calling it this month) and AI. They are probably deleting the content after having fine-tuned an LLM on it and patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
> With that said, Revit does a lot of things well and there are no realistic alternatives. Vectorworks? Archicad? I'm really only familiar with the former, full disclosure I used to work at Vectorworks, and we certainly considered ourselves a competitor to Revit.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  maybe folks 'in the industry' have heard of those, but revit is the one people outside the industry have heard of.
  - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    I was suprised parent had not heard of them as someone who used Revit for 5 years.
- tylerflick 2y ago
  Oddly enough I remember Vectorworks and Archicad were (are) owned by the same company but were fiercely competitive. Also, hello fellow former Nemetschek coworker .
- sota_pop 2y ago
  Ok - definitely fair. While I HAVE heard of VW and ArchiCAD, (I suppose I might toss Bently into the mix as well) I don’t have extensive knowledge of these programs. Therefore, take my opinion as just that. However, from my understanding, those others focus more heavily on a CAD-like environment (SketchUp is another common one here) as opposed to “BIM” (where I would define BIM as essentially a database driven type of CAD with OOP bolted on). So in that sense they are certainly suitable for drafting and may compete for the same market share, but are fundamentally different. My use case was from the perspective from an ElecEngineering team operating within an AE firm in the US. I also understand ArchiCAD is more popular outside of the US.
- sota_pop 2y ago
  Also I suppose this is part of the issue with “software alternatives” I find most architects by-and-large extremely _discerning_ people, composing an industry where nuance is king. In that sense if the software doesn’t do “exactly what I want, exactly how I want to do it” then it’s tossed aside as “not viable”. This is, in my view, another thing Revit does “well” - it is incredibly opinionated. For better or worse it means if you fight its intended workflow, achieving what you want is difficult or impossible. On another note, care to share your experience at VW? I’m interested to hear anything you’re willing/able to share about your time there! I know someone on the NXOpen team who has spoken highly of that team/product.

sota_pop 2y ago

As a follow-up, it is always sad to see large volumes of community-driven content deleted especially when the motives are likely for selfish or nefarious purposes. Being somewhat familiar with the latest releases, Autodesk has been pushing their cloud services (Forge, or whatever they’re calling it this month) and AI. They are probably deleting the content after having fine-tuned an LLM on it and patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

> With that said, Revit does a lot of things well and there are no realistic alternatives. Vectorworks? Archicad? I'm really only familiar with the former, full disclosure I used to work at Vectorworks, and we certainly considered ourselves a competitor to Revit.

Suppafly 2y ago
maybe folks 'in the industry' have heard of those, but revit is the one people outside the industry have heard of.
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  I was suprised parent had not heard of them as someone who used Revit for 5 years.
tylerflick 2y ago
Oddly enough I remember Vectorworks and Archicad were (are) owned by the same company but were fiercely competitive. Also, hello fellow former Nemetschek coworker .
sota_pop 2y ago
Ok - definitely fair. While I HAVE heard of VW and ArchiCAD, (I suppose I might toss Bently into the mix as well) I don’t have extensive knowledge of these programs. Therefore, take my opinion as just that. However, from my understanding, those others focus more heavily on a CAD-like environment (SketchUp is another common one here) as opposed to “BIM” (where I would define BIM as essentially a database driven type of CAD with OOP bolted on). So in that sense they are certainly suitable for drafting and may compete for the same market share, but are fundamentally different. My use case was from the perspective from an ElecEngineering team operating within an AE firm in the US. I also understand ArchiCAD is more popular outside of the US.
sota_pop 2y ago
Also I suppose this is part of the issue with “software alternatives” I find most architects by-and-large extremely _discerning_ people, composing an industry where nuance is king. In that sense if the software doesn’t do “exactly what I want, exactly how I want to do it” then it’s tossed aside as “not viable”. This is, in my view, another thing Revit does “well” - it is incredibly opinionated. For better or worse it means if you fight its intended workflow, achieving what you want is difficult or impossible. On another note, care to share your experience at VW? I’m interested to hear anything you’re willing/able to share about your time there! I know someone on the NXOpen team who has spoken highly of that team/product.