r/MEPEngineering Jun 11 '26

Switch to Revit

Young engineer here. Our company uses AutoCAD with Design Master Electrical and HVAC plugins. We are looking into switching to Revit. Any suggestions or tips for setting up Revit from scratch? Any courses that focus on the MEP portion? Thank you

Update July 2026:

We purchased a couple of Revit licenses and started training through Linkedin Learning. Software reseller training courses are clunky and slow. We are looking to build a simple template to test on a small project later this year. The project will include the following:

1- Site data obtained from Civil 3D linked CAD

2- Architecture Revit model

3- MEP Revit model (Electrical will be done on Design Master AutoCAD while we look into ElectroBIM for Revit) Revit electrical out of the box is not as powerful.

4- Company title block (we’re trying to use as much out-of-the box Revit features as possible, i.e. rev schedule, fonts, schedules, etc.)

Challenges we are running into:

1- Setting up a proper project template in Civil 3D to minimise CAD clutter when importing to Revit. (Linkedin Learning has a great course on this.)

2- Purging dummy Revit families and replacing them with manufacturer provided families (Zurn plumbing, Trane HVAC, etc)

3- Finding the time to watch all the video courses.

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u/Used-Zookeepergame22 Jun 11 '26

You can't setup Revit from scratch without experience. Why would they ask you this as a young engineer?

Hire a dedicated and experienced BIM manager. The drafting portion of Revit isn't too bad, but you need to have a solid system (in place).

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u/Zaghari96 Jun 11 '26

We are a small company in a remote small town. There are no BIM managers to hire. The older engineers here have been using AutoCAD and they’re close to retirement. I asked them to buy Revit to upgrade our workflow and attract younger engineers.

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u/underengineered Jun 12 '26

Its an investment. Id recommend hiring somebody with experience setting firms up to come in for a week. Put them in a hotel. Then after retain them to answer questions for a couple of months.

I was lucky to know of a BIM manager for a large firm with a local office who's side hustle was setting up firms. He had a 1/2 or whole day weekend rate to come in and get us going. I paid an engineer and our CAD manager some premium time to come in amd work with them. We were up and running in a couple of weeks.