Revit vs AutoCAD

Revit is a powerful design tool. Revit begins where AutoCAD reaches in its stretches to reach in the 3-D domain.
In Revit you work in 3-D, right from the get go.

Collaborative Effort of the Design Team
In a design team, everybody works on their own Revit file.
For example, if you want to design electrical system for a building for which an architectural Revit file already exists, you will start from a new electrical template Revit file and then ‘link’ (pretty much like xref in AutoCAD) the arch Revit file.  You can then start working on your electrical design viewing the arch setup.
Revit families are like AutoCAD symbols, and Revit has extensive families.  Suppose you are working with the floor plan and say you want to show a transformer on your drawing, you will find transformers of different ratings in the transformer family. You drag and drop the transformer of your choice. As soon as you drop the transformer at a particular place in your drawing, the software
will ask you for the 'offset'--the third dimension (height) that you are currently not looking at in the floor plan.  In essence, all objects are placed in three dimensions and all views are coordinated.

Coordinated Views
If you are looking at an elevation view and change the place of a certain object, all views (floor plan, elevations, etc.) will automatically be upgraded to show the new location of the object you have moved.

Seeing Sections is a breeze in Revit
Revit makes it super easy to see sections.  In Revit, you DON'T make sections--they are already there, you have already drawn things in 3-D.
All you have to do is to drop the section line to see what a section across a space or object will look like.




Revit makes it easy to make schedules of material

If you are an architect
Every time you put a door on the drawing, Revit takes it into account.  When you opt for the door schedule all the information about doors you have used is automatically populated in the door schedule.

If you are an electrical engineer
Every time you put a transformer or distribution panel on the drawing, Revit takes it into account.  When you opt for the transformer or panel schedule all the information about the equipment you have used is automatically populated in the schedule.
The program even warns if you if a distribution panel is overloaded.

If you are a mechanical engineer
Every time you put an air device or a VAV box on the drawing, Revit takes it into account.  When you opt for the air devices or VAV box schedule all the information about the equipment you have used is automatically populated in the schedule.

The program even sums up the air flows, making you see if the sum of all air provided in a zone equals the air coming out of an air handling unit/FCU/VAV box serving that zone.