Personally, I think it's a mistake to characterize any software platform as better or worse for Design. Design comes from thought. Software is just a tool... the pencil. 2B, HB 2H... Rapidograph..charcoal... What is most important for Design is that the tools you explore it with are transparent to your process. As in, your thought goes into the design investigation rather than the operation of the tool. In my early career, my tool was a pencil. This was the most transparent path from my brain to the documents i needed to create. I could think about content, form, connection, quality rather than regen, trim, extend, rotate, offset. From Pencil to Pen to AutoCAD to MiniCAD to ArchiCAD to FormZ to Truespace to Revit, Maya, and on.. the critical element is the thought process and whether the tools enhance or impede the process.
Microsoft Excel is better for design if that's the transparent lense through which you can create form, solutions, design.
My point, is that every tool has its strengths and what tool is best for design has far more to do with the user and their thought process than the tool itself.
What can be argued, however, is the capacity of the tool to enable efficient document production. This involves the ability to transfer in and out data from various formats, coordinate and store information effectively, and enable collaboration and communication. In this arena the true BIM tools like ArchiCAD and Revit are clearly winning, but the definition of our deliverable is still changing in relation to BIM... I'm not sure how much longer producing coordinated E1-sized sheets will be relevant to building. In terms of storing the model, there are some aspects of Revit that I see as more future-proof, mainly the underlying file structure, which is an ODBC-compliant relational database, and their Microsoft-like ownership who will continue to absorb competative ideas and dominate the marketplace and create defacto standards. I think the future of design-delivery will look more like a database than a sheet of details.
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Jon Anunson AIA
URS Corporation
Grand Rapids MI
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