Friday, November 1, 2013

Cold Dead Revit Eyes

I could barely contain my amusement at an e-mail I received the other day from our #1 BIM idiot having to do with new state standards.

The makers and users of Revit (and other packages) had already been successful in convincing various federal and state agencies to start requiring projects to be modeled - and now they get to reap the reward of having those agencies take off on their own and develop standards that everyone has to comply with.  This was mostly the work of self-important assholes who really thought they were being awesome by working with these agencies to develop these standards - forgetting that once you get any kind of government bureaucracy started, it will soon run out of control.

Some of the more hilarious items include requirements for 'as built' BIMs (yes - they pluralize BIM, thinking it means 'Building Information Models' when it would actually make it 'Building Information Modelings').  Imagine how much fun it would be for a firm that has already taken a beating on a project because they can no longer just 'BIMwash' or fake stuff in 3D, and have to fully utilize every aspect of the software (whether it is functional, or makes any sense to do so) - and now they get to spend even more time and money tweaking that model (and for engineers - their systems) to create a set of 'as built' drawings that (other than the hardcopies themselves) will probably never be seen again.

I've mentioned before the hilarity that will be coming soon (if it hasn't already started) wherein a set of Revit drawings that is more than 3 years old will no longer have an option to open without going through what can be an extremely long and drawn out conversion process to the newest version (with mixed results).  None of the people who are asking for these models understand that fact (nor do the vast majority even have licenses for the software that would be necessary to open them in the first place).

Even more hilarious is that when/if they tried to hand these archived models off to another firm to do renovations/additions - that new firm probably won't use them for anything but a go-by as they develop their own model from the ground up (nobody is going to trust a model that came from some other firm - not even Revit idiots).  And to add an extra level of irony - within a few years, software will have changed to the point where these archived models would be of little to no use to begin with.

With any luck - we won't even be using Revit anymore.  It's taken a lot of tightly closed eyes, fingers in ears, and people going 'lalalala I can't hear you' to get Revit to the point where it is currently at, and people are becoming more aware on a daily basis of how far removed from reality the average Revit user really is.  It's already eaten into profits, and caused massive amounts of undue stress and frustration - now with this latest list of requirements, there is a very good chance it could drag to a standstill (or drag us backwards as we lose money on every single project).

Reading over the list gives a very interesting look into the minds of the people involved - they are full of 'buzz words' but tap-dance around the subject of why any of this is necessary, or how they really think it will benefit anyone.  Obviously they have any number of defenders who (again) think it's really awesome that this is happening, but it's only because those people are too stupid to see the freight train coming at them.

As always - Fuck Revit, fuck it's users, defenders and apologists, fuck bureaucracies - and if you don't like it - fuck off and eat a dick!  (Hell, eat two while you are at it).

No comments:

Post a Comment