It’s not uncommon for companies to use Revit for BIM deliverables generation and collaboration with design disciplines while also using AutoCAD for certain components of a design or a project. It’s not uncommon for Revit and AutoCAD to work alongside each other or even integrate into each other to some degree – but their purposes are still drastically different, as well as their list of situations where they can be used. This is where our previous comparison of BIM to CAD comes in handy – Revit is a solution tasked with supporting all phases of a construction project that deal with either design or documentation, while AutoCAD is a widely applicable drawing tool.

The main difference you can think of in this context is that Revit is BIM software, while AutoCAD is CAD software. Now that the difference between the two is more apparent, it is time to address the troublesome task of comparing AutoCAD to Revit.

with both the insight about a project in question, as well as the tools to perform the entire lifecycle of a project – including planning, designing, constructing and management. Alternatively, when it comes to BIM – you’re creating an entire model of a building that can be used to create drawings.Īt its core, CAD is a Computer-Aided Design that provides engineers, architects, and other professionals in the field to generate precise drawings of a project in both 2D and 3D – which means automating a process that previously involved a lot of manual drafting and drawing.īIM, on the other hand, is Building Information Modeling – an intelligent multi-functional process that’s based on a 3D model and is capable of providing experts like engineers, architects, AEC specialists, etc. In the most basic terms possible, you’re generating drawings when using CAD for various projects. However, to start working out the confusion that is Revit vs CAD, we have to address the elephant in the room – the difference between BIM and CAD. While both belong to the Autodesk family, their purposes are quite different. However, the truth is that AutoCAD and Revit are quite different from each other.

For example, it’s not uncommon for people to confuse Revit and AutoCAD since they don’t know the difference between BIM and CAD in the first place. The advent of CAD (computer-aided drafting) software led to many new terms being used all over the world.

Autodesk revit software