To clear the air at the very beginning – Revit and SketchUp fall into two technically different categories of modelling programs. Revit is a BIM software, focused more on building information management. SketchUp, however, is entirely dedicated to modeling.
Overview of SketchUp and Revit
SketchUp created back in 2000 by @Last Software, and was later acquired by Google in 2006, and in 2012 it went under Trimble. It gained a lot of popularity with amateurs at the very beginning for it being free at the time, and for its easy user interface.
On the other hand, Revit was created even earlier than that, in 1997, by Leonid Raiz. It was intended for professionals at the get-go, and is intended for the all-encompassing tool for architectural projects. It is not only a design tool – it is also a medium of visualizing and coordinating the whole project.
System Requirements of Revit vs SketchUp
SketchUp 2020 will run on either a PC or a Mac with at least 8 GB RAM. A dedicated GPU with 1 GB VRAM is recommended. SketchUp is relatively much lighter and will fit in about 700MB of space on your hard disk.
However, Revit is a much more cumbersome software and requires much more to run smoothly. It needs at least 5 GB of space on your PC or Mac (larger than the operating system, in fact), and needs 16 GB RAM at least to properly load. A dedicated 2 GB graphics card is required to render the screen properly.