How much does it cost to make a Revit Addin?

How much does it cost to make a Revit Addin?

We get this question a lot and the answer is not always easy. You always need to start with a problem that prevents you and your colleagues from doing your best work. To reduce the challenge of scaling you can choose to build on your current platform of Autodesk Revit. You might not have the capabilities inhouse to build what you need, or those experts might be vital for something else right now so you decide to partner with another company. How much will it cost? That depends on several factors. Let’s review them!

Engagement model

You need to decide how you will engage the company you’ll be working with to make a Revit Addin.

One approach is to describe exactly what you need and request a price for the scope you have in mind. By scoping it out you place more risk on the company making the Addin and the price is likely higher because they need to factor risk into the picture. You’ll still need updates when there is a new Revit version and support if users struggle to understand something so the fixed scope can be a bit of an illusion.

Another approach would be to enter into an ongoing partnership with an external comapny like Reope. This is likely less costly because you take more responsibility for the scope. It also allows for a more iterative approach where you build out some functionality, test it and then build more if you need it. Additionally it also allows you to learn as you go along and take in your new learnings into the scope.

Partner experience

An experienced partner might be more expensive per day or month, but might waste less of your time getting to a result. This is fairly obvious especially when comparing the working experience with someone familiar with architecture and engineering versus someone still getting up to speed in the field. While both paths have their challenges, helping a software developer grasp the full depth of architectural and engineering contexts can sometimes take more effort than to turn an architect or engineer into a brilliant software developer. For this reason your Revit Addin will probably be less costly if you engage a partner with experience from the industry.

Transferrable code

Some partners might have made something similar before. They might be able to build on their existing IP which would make the add-in drastically less costly than starting from scratch. Often the challenging part about making a Revit Addin is building the conceptual model of the tool rather than just writing and implementing the code. An experienced partner who has gone through all the questions and challenges of solving the problem, will go though a much more efficient workflow at developing a custom solution to solve the problem you’re facing.

Your level of engagement

If you’re able to dedicate resources to follow-up and test the add-in that’s being made, then this will also keep the cost down. Picking up a long line of code after waiting several months for feedback on testing forces the software developer to refamiliarize themselves with the code and is less efficient than having small iterations and frequent feedback.

Complexity of the addin

Some things are very easy to solve with code while others are not. A good partner will tell you this upfront and warn you from starting work that is unlikely to be solved efficiently. As an example it is very easy for users to dimension an object in Revit by clicking on it, moving the mouse and clicking again. However, to write code that finds where the user would have clicked is hard. The best addins are set up once for your project and then run in the background without you ever thinking about them. However, sometimes the best solution is to ask the user for some input to avoid overly complex code.

Summary

Let’s summarize! How much it costs to develop a Revit Addin can vary with engagement model, partner experience, transferrable code, your level of engagement and the complexity of the addin. It might come down to something as low as 5 000 USD once and then 250 USD per month for updates and support. It might cost you 9000 USD per month for a year before moving to a monthly cost of 800 USD for updates and support. At Reope we have had customers try both and many things in between.

The cost of a Revit Addin is often heavily outweighed by the benefits it can bring. It can allow you to change how you deliver projects by automating drawing creation from Revit. It can enable you to standardize information across models in a large project. It can change how you approach content management in Revit by allowing you to automatically remap images to your materials. It can allow you to continuously monitor the health of your Revit to prevent crash and loss of work. It can lead to happier colleagues, more fun and better outcomes.

Revit is a great platform for design and BIM, make it fit your work with a custom Revit Addin.