Should Architecture Students Use Revit?
Oct 02, 2016
When I was in college, no one used Revit. That was quite a few years ago, so things should have changed since BIM is now mainstream. Right?
It turns out that it is not the case. Looking at resumes and portfolios of recent graduates, Rhino, Sketchup and Grasshoper are high on the skill list, but Revit is rarely even mentionned. I brought this up with friends involved in architecture schools: they told me Revit is considered "not cool" on campus.
I wanted to know if that was true or not, so I asked college students on Reddit to find out. Here is what they told me:
Most users report professors are generally not enthusiastic of Revit in college:
A lot of students think it is an important tool, but that it should not be used in the studio:
Most students think that Revit is good for technical work, but not for design:
Other students saw an opportunity to get ready for the workplace:
The few students that used Revit in the studio were quickly spotted:
So it is confirmed: it's not cool to use Revit in college. It makes you look like a boring drafter, especially when the guy next to you is using Rhino and Grasshoper to create curved parametric blobscrapers.
As described in this post, I think Revit can be an excellent design tool. It would be easy to blame students for not realizing this. But if you put yourself in beginners shoes, you realize Revit design and presentation capabilities are obscure and hidden.
When opening Revit for the first time, everything seems very technical. You can understand why the few students that use it in the studio get stuck on pre-made components, building projects with default families.
Professors keep this first impression of Revit and don't want it anymore in the studio. Obviously there is an education problem here, most of these professors probably never used Revit themselves. They are unaware that if used correctly, Revit can be a great design tool.
Maybe Autodesk can help with this problem. They should make their design and presentation tools more obvious. They should also revamp the problematic Model In-Place tool to be more "sketchup-like". Why not integrate some of FormIt capabilities directly in Revit?
I am not advocating for Revit to be the sole and only program used in college. I think it should be part of the many tools you learn, as should be hand drawing, physical models, Rhino and Sketchup. College is an opportunity to immerse yourself in different mindsets and experiment.
But at some point we need to reduce the gap between the workplace and college. I would really like to see Revit more often in resumes we receive from graduates.
It has to move both ways: college should be less reluctant towards it and embrace BIM tools, while Autodesk should be more proactive with the design capabilities of Revit.
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