Hello All,

I am new here but have been reading some entries for a week or so.  Our company is trying to determine what and if we are to purchase a 3-d steel modeling software package.  I have looked at revit structure suite 2011 and understand that the program is not going to work wonders over night and that it in fact will take a while to get efficiency going strong.  The cost of Revit to us would be a $2500.00 auotcad license upgrade fee for the software and $7,400.00 for 40 hours worth of customized training that would supposivley include setting up the program to suiute my companies standards etc.  So basically $10,000.00 minimum total for one seat and training.

A little background on what we are doing now.  We are a multi-discipline consultant industrial engineering/design firm with 70 total employess in the 3 offices on the east coast.  We basically work in industrial factories desigining new process lines with new mezzanines platforms and other type of misc. steel/concrete strutures with occasional steel fabrication drawings.  I would say 85% of our work is smaller in nature adn does not necessarily require 3-d at all and simple Autocad will suffice.  The other 15% of our work includes larger jobs where clients are specifically asking for 3-d models so that they can "see" everything and make decisions along in the process of design.

When we have these jobs we are currently using CADWORX to build the 3-d models.  CADWORX is a mech. based program with a very limited steel add-on meaning we can do the 3-d steel models (no concrete - concrete is done as extruded autocad shapes meaning it is not a smart object).  This is fine for the modeling but we have to create seperate 2-d drawing packages that can be constructed from (2-d stick figure steel drawings).  Typically we do not have the budget or schedules to draw things twice (once in 3-d and again in 2-d).  If a change occurs in the process it must be changed twice.  Typically our clients want the structural drawings done quickly as they want to get construction going while they finalize their plans for the mech process.  For example the project we have now the steel and concrete are almost all the way constructed (structral drawings were issue for construction back in october) and the mech drawings have not been issued for anything yet.  The cadworx program allows the mech group to create their drawings using the 3-d model so they like it and I dont see us going away from that.

I guess my point is $10,000.00 is alot of moeny for us to throw away.  All other programs i have looked at online are based in the U.K. and I cant just find out roughly how much they will cost and if they provide training.  Am I safe to assume that 10,000.00 is porbably going to be the cost for pretty much any other route we could potentially take?  Also does anyone else out there do jobs like i described?  It seems to me there has to be a more efficient way and that Revit Structure or some other BIM system that does both 3-d and 2-d stick drawings is the way to go.

Thanks,

Matt