The designer is dead, long live the DBA!

The other day I was in a training session for a database report generation platform called Crystal. As I was listening and trying this new (to me) piece of software I found myself drawing parallels and comparisons to Revit over and over again.
It was in this setting that I realized why so many designers (engineers, architects and others) have so much trouble with Revit. Nothing in their training or normal work processes has ever prepared them to work with databases, much less a database connected to their drawings.

My professional architectural design experience has almost always been in the context of Revit. Prior to that as a student I was, like most people, a CAD guy. Or more accurately a CAD and Sketchup guy. Unlike my classmates, who didn't know a database from a spreadsheet, I had worked with database-like structures in personal projects during undergrad and grad school. But for my classmates, there was just no call for them to use databases; they weren't studying to be software engineers or anything similar.

The design profession isn't much different. Databases are generally the forte of IT professionals, finance, marketing or admin. Not designers. Databases weren't their venue.

Then along came Revit.

Revit is essentially a database of building information that displays that information graphically and has a graphical model interface for adding new data entries.

Revit is still a great design tool, and it can be utilized for nothing beyond creating construction documents. But not taking advantage of its plethora of tools would be like using Photoshop only for cropping and sizing images.

So what is my point?

As designers, we have become caretakers of so much more information than we have been in the past. There is danger in this for the careless or inexperienced user. There is also opportunity for the wise, adaptable user.