BIM The Mechanical Pencil

I’ve been following the excellent What Revit Wants blog for a couple of years now and appreciate its approached to BIM. So often when faced with answering hostile questions about why REVIT does things in such-and-such a way I simply can’t answer frustration with a shrug. I agree with blogger Luke Johnson’s suggestion from the article: ”You really need to commit to using Revit. Yes, it can be a difficult learning curve. The initial excitement quickly wears off, as you are faced with numerous choices you don't really understand, and this long list of "I don't know how to do this" tasks. But you will learn. You have to. Revit is not going away.”

If anything the article focused too much on introducing beginners to Revit and not enough on exploring the power user’s mindset. And for myself, it’s this quality which advances BIM design the most. Though I’m in a bit of a privileged position in being able to both love drafting and adopt an iconoclastic position with no deep ties to AutoCAD. Every once in a while I come across someone in industry who prefaces my whole view of BIM as the software owning me. I’m not sure how I ever gave that impression being hyper-focused as I am on the constructability of buildings regardless of drawing medium but I’m in agreement when the writer states: “Revit can seem daunting at times, but in the end, it is a tool for accomplishing work. You are in control of it, not vice versa.”

REVIT is nothing more than a fancy mechanical pencil and it is there to do what I want. I would not want to be in the line of fire should someone suggest I have nothing left to learn about BIM because it’s a worthless advance in building technology. If I thought even for a second I could build more with CAD over BIM I'd be using it. But as desirous as I am to build a lot; What Revit wants is an excellent rallying cry to the cause.