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Revit: The Next B&V Frontier

It's happening, Board & Vellum is taking the leap into adopting Revit, a BIM software. So, what is that, and what does it mean, Sara breaks it all down for you here.

Sara Emhoff

January 20, 2015

We here at Board & Vellum sometimes get questions about the naming of our firm. Because we live in a digital world, the idea of returning to the basics of architecture – a drawing board with a sheet of vellum and some lead – seems like a somewhat counterproductive way to share ideas with clients and provide the documentation required to permit and build our projects. It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t so long ago that architects and designers conveyed their ideas to clients and provided the documents to make them a reality in just this fashion. How this information is conveyed has changed rapidly, and for our firm, knowing the right medium to use at any given time provides us with flexibility and great ability to move through projects quickly and efficiently.

When I first joined Board & Vellum, most of our production work – the drawings that are used for permitting and construction – was done in AutoCAD. AutoCAD (CAD, by the way, stands for Computer-Aided Design) is a work horse program that most of us in the field know like the back of our hand. It allows the user to draw lines and arcs to create shapes that represent every part of a building. These lines and shapes are sorted into layers, given line weights, or thickness based on colors, and turned on and off to create greater graphic legibility.

On the whole, there is ongoing love/hate relationship with AutoCAD. It has always performed admirably in the realm of traditional 2-dimensional drawings, which is the most important for construction documents, but try as it might, AutoCAD never could figure out how to be successful at 3-dimensional drafting. To make up for this lacking, Board & Vellum have used SketchUp to assist in providing clients with a better understanding of their projects in the design development phase of design. SketchUp is great at creating quick models that are great at conveying intent but still work with lines, arcs, and planes, and the use of two different forms of software created a sometimes cumbersome task of moving back and forth to produce technical documents.

Over the last 10+ years, a more comprehensive process of producing documents has developed. Building Information Modeling (BIM) trades out the lines and planes and replaces them with 3-dimensional objects that are put together to create a building. Modeling instead of drafting is a whole new level of awesome, and combines the best part of 2-D drafting with visual tools of SketchUp and other 3-D drawing products

While there are many BIM software products out there, we, and many others in our field, have gravitated to the sister product of AutoCAD: Revit. Rather than drawing two lines to represent a wall in plan, in Revit, we can create a wall with thickness based on how it is assembled, give it heights and materials and tell it where to sit in space. This then allows us to look at the wall from every angle, see how it interacts with other walls, openings, floors, roof forms and the site that surrounds it. This process allows us to quickly compile a simple, holistic view of any given space, and be able to share this space, make changes, and discuss options all during the course of a design meeting. Even better, what we see in the model exists in plan, elevation, section, and every other view needed to create the technical documentation needed for permits and construction.

I have been a huge proponent for our transition to Revit since joining Board and Vellum, and am so excited to see it’s implementation! We completed a pilot project in Revit this summer, and are currently developing 4 projects in Revit, with plans to have more this upcoming year. Meanwhile, we are busy getting our entire team educated and engrossed in the wonders of the program. I look forward to sharing this progress and a more in-depth look at how Revit works in coming posts!