Architosh Staff ([email protected])

25 Oct 00

MacAEC News:Revit gets $6 million in third round funding

Architosh has mentioned Revit before, often in contrast to BOA, the Macintosh's version of Revit. A week ago this company, located in Waltham, Massachusetts, not far from BOA in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received $6 million in additional venture capital, bringing their total venture funding to $30 million.

To be sure Revit has sprung onto the architecture stage with quite a force. A notable relationship between Revit's technologies and Parametric Corporation (ProEngineer maker) exist. Many Mac architects may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Some of it is because of its high profile funding, others because of its claims—Revit claims to be the first parametric building modeler—and yet others because of its relations to ProEngineer technology. Revit has gotten good coverage in the media as well.

What Will Revit Do to the Market?

Revit's chief competition in the architectural and AEC CAD market is Autodesk's CAD giant Autocad 2000. For the last three or five years a number of rising CAD stars have been laying siege to the Autocad imperial fortress. Chief among these have been such Macintosh superstars as MiniCAD VectorWorks (now just called VectorWorks) and ArchiCAD. Both of these programs grew up on the Mac, and continue to excel on the Mac.

Once Mac developer (once everyone developer) Bentley and its CAD powerhouse Microstation has also laid heavy damage to the Autocad fortress. Microstation has taken a turn for the worse in terms of platforms but continues to pound Autocad's market share. ALLPLAN in Germany is another rising star with significant market share.

Having VectorWorks and ArchiCAD gain significant market share at the hands of Autocad has not hurt the Mac in the CAD world. In fact, having any CAD program hurt Autocad's market share dominance is probably good for the Macintosh in the CAD world, since the perception that CAD is Autocad and Autocad doesn't run on Macs makes the equivalent, but false, perception that CAD doesn't run on Macs. This isn't true, of course, and there are lots of great CAD programs that run on Macs. Many of the best ran on Mac first!

Revit doesn't run on Macs either (at the moment of course). Things can change, and let's hope they do. For if one CAD program for Windows-only is succeeded by another (and it is completely possible that Revit can be the new CAD King) the perception that CAD doesn't run on Macs doesn't go away. In fact, it could get worse.

A New Type of CAD King: Or No King At All

If there ever was to be a new dominant CAD program, like Autocad today (and maybe we really don't want that), we would naturally wish it to be one of our favorite Mac CAD programs, like VectorWorks, Vellum or ArchiCAD. Most likely a dominant program would need to be a general CAD program, but not necessarily.

BOA is in every way a Revit competitor, but only on the Mac side of the equation at the moment. There is a Windows version coming as well, but the developers are pro-Macintosh all the way. Like Revit, BOA is an industry specific CAD solution, but one that has a specific advantage. It will be a cross-platform solution and was planned to be. This might be its key advantage over Revit, ultimately.