With the advancement of technology, different sectors are evolving to produce quality work, one such sector is the civil engineering sector which is the backbone of infrastructural development. Designing and constructing buildings, houses, railway platforms etc is not an easy task and requires a lot of resources and time, so to ease the designing and modelling work many companies released different software, two of the most used software in this field are Revit and AutoCAD. They are used in modelling, designing, and drafting different civil infrastructures so we will see a detailed comparison between the two.
Revit is a computer application for building information modelling. It was developed by Charles River Software which was later renamed Revit Technologies Corporation. It was built using the C++ programming language. Initially, it was released in 2000 and its stable version was launched in 2022. It is available in different languages and comes with a Revit rendering engine for smooth rendering.
Advantages of Revit
- It comes with a huge library of pre-built doors, roofs, walls etc to ease modelling work.
- It supports multiple file formats like RVT, RFA, RTE, RFT, DGN, DWG, DXF, IFC, SAT, BMP, PNG, JPG, JPEG, TIF etc.
- It allows modifying 3d elements to 2d designs easily.
- It has advanced tools to make precise buildings and calculate different features like area, volume, etc.
Disadvantages of Revit
- It is available for Windows Operating systems only.
- It lacks in backward compatibility means models designed in the older versions of Revit are not supported in the newer versions.
AutoCAD is computer software which helps in drafting and designing different types of computer applications. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design. It was developed by Autodesk. It is compatible with different operating systems like Windows, MacOS, iOS etc. It was first released in 1982 and its stable version was released in 2021. It is available in many languages. It provides robust tools for easing the work of designing.
Advantages of AutoCAD
- It comes with advanced features which help in the accurate and precise designing of civil infrastructures.
- It allows importing files from other platforms to work on pre-built designs.
- It allows to easily share files without any data loss to multiple parties simultaneously.
- Calculation of Area, Center of Gravity, Mass, Volume etc is very easy.
- It provides enhanced image tracing functionality which helps in converting handmade designs to digital designs.
Disadvantages of AutoCAD
- It is not suitable for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
- It supports limited file formats to import into this software.
- It is heavy software which requires high memory and disk storage.
Following is a table of differences between Revit and AutoCAD:
|
Revit |
AutoCAD |
|
| 1. | It can be understood as a Building information modelling software used by many engineers like structural engineers, mechanical engineers, architects etc. | It can be understood as computer-aided design software which is used in construction, designing, and drafting 3d models. |
| 2. | Originally it was developed by Charles River Software which was later acquired by Autodesk. | It was developed by Autodesk. |
| 3. | It is expensive as compared to AutoCAD. | It is a cheaper software as compared to Revit. |
| 4. | It supports Windows but does not support Mac operating systems. | It supports both Windows as well as Mac operating systems. |
| 5. | It designs each component separately. | It supports free form design. |
| 6. | It saves files with the .rvt file extension. | It saves files with the .dwg file extension. |
| 7. | It is not available for mobile platforms. | It is available for mobile devices also. |
| 8. | It has a small number of plugins as compared to Revit. | It has the Autodesk Exchange App store which provides a large number of integrations. |