That last clusterfuck was just one example of how the dickless morons at Autodesk that 'developed' Revit made it next to impossible to actually get anything useful out of their goddamned program without having to first export it to CAD.
From day one, I was amazed how brain damaged and fucked up just getting a simple piece of paper out of the fucking thing was. I was equally amazed by how the 'batch plot' could manage to bury our plotter in a pile of shit.
A Reviteer would send their project to the plotter, run the fucking thing clean out of paper, and because they never bother to actually check and see what the result of sending several dozen sheets of paper to the plotter might be - the results were usually FUBAR.
Some of it had to do with the plotters - almost every one I have ever used has to be babysat in order to keep from jamming up when it gets too many plots stacked up on it. In order to keep 24", 30" & 36" rolls in our plotter, a setting had to be disabled that would force it to stop plotting if it ran out of a particular roll.
The result was that when it ran out of whatever paper size you were using, it would make its best effort to keep on plotting (despite it being more important that the sheets get plotted on the correct size of paper/orientation than to just 'get plotted').
As long as you were aware of the necessity to keep an eye on it, then it was usually no problem - but along came Revit, (Revit Users), & batch-plotting, and you could occasionally walk into the room with the plotter to find it had run off dozens (if not hundreds) of plots on the wrong size paper, and was continuing to crank them out despite the tray in the back being so full that it was crumpling up sheets and jamming the plotter.
This problem was obviously partially the plotter, partially the way our firm was using the plotter - but was exacerbated considerably by Revit and it's idiot users. We have since replaced the old plotter with a new (albeit quite shitty) one. I could probably write a whole blog on that topic alone (in fact I might).
Now, despite the pipe-dream that crack-smoking BIM loving pedophile cocksuckers have of 'a magical time where we just hand the Revit model over to the contractor who puts it on a tablet PC and wanders around a dirty and hazardous job site and builds it without any paper drawings', there is the reality that a lot of people want to see the actual drawings, with actual *wet* signatures, to prevent some dickless fuckstick from slapping some half-ass bullshit on a drawing and making a .pdf of it.
These people include fire marshall's offices, electrical inspectors, not to mention many owners/developers, and almost every single contractor that I have ever dealt with WANTS THAT SHIT ON PAPER - even if they have electronic copies, the physical piece of paper is a guarantee to them that this is EXACTLY what was handed off to them, and that's EXACTLY what they are going to base their work on.
Since most of the Revit-Dick-Sucking-Fuckheads that I know have rarely (if ever) seen an actual job site, then I am aware that they have probably never seen the set of drawings that a contractor compiles during construction. They are immense - combining original drawings, revised drawings, cut sheets, notes, changes, unforeseen problems, etc. - and when it is all over, that stack of paper (which in some cases we get hired to do an 'as built' set from) is the real record of what happened - not some douchbags Revit model.
I do know people that have gone 'paperless' in their offices - Engineers that review, mark-up, and sign/seal drawings on iPad, but even they aren't of the delusion that once the drawings leave their department or office, that they aren't going on paper. It does save them considerable time in printing, handling, and scanning large-scale plots, but even they are occasionally forced back into the old-school way because of the requirement for 'wet' signed drawings by some states, counties, or jurisdictions.
Okay - even once you've gotten past the problems of getting Revit to plot an actual piece of fucking paper, now you've got the fact that the developers never seemed to consider that you might want something that doesn't look like total shit on that sheet.
ACAD is to blame for some of that - it was so easy to get whatever you wanted, whenever you needed it, that it set the bar extremely high for Revit. There was obviously some initial line-weight setup, but once you had that figured out, and had layers/colors that allowed you to be able to see what the fuck was going on in your drawing AND have it come out looking sweet, then you were totally rocking.
It took a long time before anyone even seemed to consider that the drawings that Revit vomited forth needed some help - and even now I never know what the hell it's going to puke up next. It has a massive amount of control in 'Visibility Graphics', filters, etc., but still pretty much gives you whatever it wants - which is total shit.
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