A man is king of his castle, and right now, castles are scarce to come by in the US for all the kings that want them. The surging US housing market is giving rise to higher prices as demand for houses increases slightly beyond supply. Large homebuilders may be scrambling to modify homebuilding design development and update residential design drawings to cater to new, savvy consumers who know what they want and how they want it.

Holding a range of house plans in their kitty, homebuilders may need to modernize some of those plans to fulfil new building code regulations, incorporate design changes, such as weather-proofing or architectural detailing, that new customers desire or even update their plans to be green homes.

Requiring plan updates that are accurate, of high quality and can be delivered promptly, homebuilders may need to rethink their design process, right from the type of software they want to use to who they could partner with to speed up the timeline. Options such as residential Revit BIM modeling and residential sustainable design may need to be considered.

Currently, residential construction design projects almost exclusively use AutoCAD or Revit for their design stages.

So, why use one or the other?

Where AutoCAD is primarily a drafting tool, Revit is a modeling tool that identifies building components by function and develops a building model that hosts technical specifications, pricing data and more. Revit is also a BIM-enabled software tool, which makes it a design and documentation solution that fully supports the phases and disciplines of a building project.

Why does that make life a little bit simpler for US housing in terms of design documentation?

In AutoCAD, air ducts are simple lines representing dimensions and layout. Similar changes may need to be made on individual plans.
In Revit, ducts are identified as HVAC components with all their relevant corresponding specifications.
Revit can coordinate all data inputs (including CAD) to produce federated project models.
It is easier to update plans on Revit, and there is less chance of omissions.

AutoCAD

Further, AutoCAD does not recognize when the lines form a wall, or when the walls form a floor plan. It is a geometric representation of a drawing that can plotted and printed. Also:

Revit enables building design and documentation with a 3D model that is controlled by parameters and hosts a large quantity of data. Being a BIM-enabled software, Revit is popular globally for design, coordination, collaboration and documentation.

Benefits of Revit

Homebuilders who are swamped with a plethora of projects and project demands, which include plan updates, may consider seeking support from a trustworthy partner who has both the expertise and experience in working with Revit project along with experience in delivering architectural CAD services. Thus, plan updates can be completed quickly and be of high quality.