Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

11 Apr 2001

Revit says Mac not "unimportant", but no Mac plans yet

Revit, for those who don't know yet, is a new parametric model-based architectural CAD product which has receive a lot of attention in the AEC world. A technology spin-off of sorts from Parametric Technology Corporation's leading ProEngineer, Revit Corporation, located near PTC in Massachusetts, is en entirely new entry into the AEC CAD world and is—at least from a marketing or PR perspective—the biggest threat to Autodesk's Autocad empire.

However, and to be completely fair, Revit doesn't even show up on the radar map yet in terms of marketshare and it would be more correct to mention ArchiCAD and VectorWorks as the real forces chipping away at Autocad marketshare in the AEC world, especially for architecture firms. And in terms of parametric and modeling technology on the Macintosh BOA CAD is a serious contender to Revit. So the Mac is not left without.

Will Revit Come to the Mac?

However, Revit is "hot" and at the request of dozens and dozens of emails asking us about Revit's Mac plans we finally contacted a Mr. Richard Rundell AIA, a contact Jonathan Cohen had given us, and he kindly answered our questions.

Anthony,

Thank you for your note. It's always nice to hear nice things about our product!

We have no plans to port our product to the Mac, though I know the Mac is enthusiastically supported by many architecture firms. It's really a question of focus and resources, not that we think the Mac is unimportant.

--- Rick

So there we have it. We think Revit is probably made up of a bunch of good guys (not Mac bashers) and for them, right now at least, it is important to watch their venture capital spending carefully. That's understandable.

We also asked about their modeling kernel and discovered it was developed in-house. This may or may not affect Mac development in the future if the opportunity should arise.

Thanks to Jonathan and Richard for the info.