App Crapp

Anyone paying attention knows I complain a lot about how Revit sucks donkey balls, but it pales in comparison to the horrible programming that goes into various online or phone/tablet based 'apps' - up to, and including the ACAD app (which has apparently since morphed into Autodesk 360 - I have to admit, these people do stay fucking busy rearranging deck chairs).

While hunting around on the Google Play Store (I don't frequent the Apple store - fuck those people) I ran across what appears to be Autodesk's attempt at a sketchup style program called 'Formit'.  Pretty impressive for an app - but there are always going to be trade-offs, even if you let cloud computing do the heavy lifting for you.

I never used Sketchup (past just playing with it), and won't be using Formit (same) - at least not for work, since neither are intended to address the specific needs of the Electrical discipline, but it brings up an interesting point.

If Autodesk was really thinking from the perspective of an 'ecosystem' (see the Revitbot article I posted last time), they wouldn't be developing dozens of sets of software (although the other option would be to have Revit absorb all of them into one broken piece of shit).

While pondering the reasons that Revit users might be so dead-fucking-set on using it to fuck up every single project that comes through their door it it got me thinking about how few of the most hardcore ones have any real concept of how to approach the various complexities of their discipline.

For example - a Revit Monkey designs an Architectural model, and it can look 'perfect' with everything all detailed out, and the client can 'ooh' and 'ahh' and 'I think I just came' while looking at it, but it's not until someone with the correct mix of experience and institutional knowledge gets a look at it that the cracks in the facade start to show.

The vast majority of Revitbots have never seen a building built - and almost none have had any actual experience building anything past scale models (if even that).  The fact is - they are dependent on Revit to hold their hand through an extremely complex and detailed process.  I, on the other hand, am not dependent on any piece of software to either help me engineer or design construction documents.


We had our server up and eat itself yesterday (and took down all of our Autodesk software with it).  I opened up Visual, whipped out a file that I had in my e-mail, started doing photometric layouts, and didn't miss a fucking lick while they got the server back online (only to have it promptly fail again).  I tend to blame Revit for everything, but there is no fucking way that all of the massive bloated files it generates and then requires constant synchronization (even before you get to auto-saves - and remember 2015 defaults to 15 fucking auto-saves, each one taking up as much room as your main model) aren't contributing heavily to the problems.

Now - even to work in ACAD, I am dependent on a functioning computer, license server, file server, and network to have my shit work correctly.  Imagine the day I get to add an internet connection, cloud storage/processing, etc. into the mix.  Any time any one of those were to have a glitch, it has Reviteers sitting on their asses until everything is corrected (and then for another 15-30 minutes while they get their files back up and synced).

Then take the whole fucking mess, and make it hinge on an web application operating properly - 100% of the fucking time.  If it is browser based, the browser OR servers on the other end can crash, if it is cloud hosted - who the fuck even knows what the fuck is going on at any given point in time?  I haven't quite grasped how people can trust their incredibly important shit to technology that note a SINGLE FUCKING ONE OF THEM even knows the first thing about.

Since Revit is already such a laggy piece of shit, it can be difficult to tell when it starts taking a serious crap.  I've thought I was doing something wrong on more than one occasion, only to find out that it was Revit diddling itself - with no indication as to what it is doing at any given point in time (like the ACAD text window does).

I really do hate to tell all of the Revit dreamers out there to get their fucking heads out of the clouds (rimshot) and back down here on the ground where shit needs to get done.  Their faces always change to quizzical expressions 'why you no Revit?'

What I don't mind doing is telling them to go fuck themselves, along with Autodesk, and anyone propagating the Revit machine.

Fuck all of them - twice.

-SF