Revit, Revit LT or Revit Viewer

28 / 12 / 2015

It’s a recurring debate, especially when the difference between one product and another is €4,000 or $4,000. Personally, and considering that subscription-only licenses will soon be available, this debate will be simplified, as the purchase price will be offset over several years… but that’s a different topic.

Returning to the question posed, there are different approaches to this: workflow, subprojects… I prefer to focus on the fact that if you need any of the following features, you need the full Revit. Let’s analyze them by discipline or area:

AT THE LEVEL OF COORDINATION AND PRODUCTIVITY:

Subprojects, essential for working with several people.
Interference Detection
Revit Server
Using lungis (third-party APIs). I think this utility is especially important in certain work environments.
Views: filters, link visibility control
Importing point clouds

AT THE LEVEL OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN:

Stairs by sketch
Conceptual masses
Adaptive components
Renders in the program (not in the cloud)

AT THE FACILITY LEVEL:

Air conditioning modeling
Plumbing modeling
Sanitation modeling
Electrical and lighting modeling
Energy analysis and MEP

AT THE STRUCTURAL LEVEL:

Structures: inclined and reinforced pillars
Structural analysis

The approach of a small office or freelancer:
If we analyze from the perspective of an office that needs to optimize costs, Revit LT would allow for several important issues:

For a freelancer, this is a more accessible way to work with legal software that can be scaled later. It’s often said that licenses are very expensive, which in my opinion they are, compared to other countries, or the US, for example, which is almost 40% cheaper.
This allows studios to achieve a better balance between Suites and significantly cheaper LTs, allowing them to have more complete positions without wasting licenses, or even allowing positions to be left unlicensed, which would make certain roles dependent on a single position for simple tasks like printing.

The advantages that LT can give are:

For project managers or managers who do not work in the model, it is useful for reviewing, printing, checking, measuring, etc.
For technicians working on projects with central files, it helps them easily create any exportable or importable elements, such as planning tables, project standards, and system families.
Or elements that can be copied and pasted aligned to the current view: any annotation family, linear dimensions, height dimensions, element labels.
The creation of component families: furniture, sanitary ware, etc., etc.
Create plan lists, etc. etc.

You can consult the official Autodesk comparison: http://www.autodesk.com/products/revit-family/compare/compare-revit-products