What’s New in Revit 2015

Instead of listing out all of the new features of Revit 2015, I’ll point you over to Steve Stafford’s Revit OpEd blog where he’s got the entire list of updates.  Thanks Steve for pulling this together!

Highlights for Revit Architecture are the following for me (in no particular order)…

• Sketchy Lines (Visual Style)
• Family Parameter Order
• You can now adjust the order of your Family Parameters (about time!!)
• View References
• You can now adjust the Referenced View to be something other than the original instead of redoing the Reference (about time!)
• Add Images to Schedules
• Revision Cloud drawing tools
• No more multiple picking of points, can use Rectangle and Polygon tools
• Shared Parameters in View Titles
• Allowing more customization to View Titles

Like I said, these are just some of the “high” points from what I’ve seen.  Nothing earth-shattering, but some decent enhancements mainly from a documentation standpoint.

What’s New in Revit Architecture 2014

Yep, the wonderful time of the year when bloggers all across the globe push out their “version” of what’s new in the 2014 Autodesk software.  Instead of reposting a long list of enhancements, here’s a couple posts that do a great job of showing the new features…

• As always, David Light has his great post on the new features!  Click HERE to go to his post.
• Autodesk even got into the “game” this year and has provided a page with the new features (as well as many of the existing features).  Click HERE to see Autodesk’s page.

A couple items that probably won’t make the list for new features in Revit 2014 are integrations with Inventor and Vault. 

• Inventor 2014 can now export directly to a Revit Family (RFA) file.  I haven’t been able to work with an exported RFA file from Inventor yet since we had some version issues.  Once the products hit the streets, I’ll post more about this.
• Vault integration has been updated to now include search capability of the Family properties. I’ll be posting more about this as well in the future.

I also put together a video for our (MasterGraphics’s) YouTube channel. Once we get it uploaded, I’ll create a new post with it and update this post as well.

And now the wait begins until the software can be downloaded….

Revit Architecture 2013

Well, the first few months of 2012 have been busy, which I guess is a good thing!  Since the 2013 products were introduced on March 27, I’m not going to repurpose the what’s new features for 2013….I’ll simply point you in the direction of David Light.  He’s always got a very good summary of the tools.

Here’s a few little things that I’ve run across that you probably won’t see in the What’s New Feature list…

1 – The Home tab in the Ribbon in Revit Architecture is now called Architecture.  This is more than likely to keep the naming convention consistent with the introduction of the Revit 2013 product that will be included for those that will be getting/have the Building Design Suite Premium or Ultimate 2013.  (In case you weren’t aware, the Suite products will have 1 Revit product that will have tools for all 3 disciplines)

1a – The layout of the Architecture tab vs the Home tab has changed slightly from 2012…

2 – When you create a New Project, you now get a drop-down list to choose which template you would like to start with, Architectural or Construction.  You can still browse to choose a different template.  (I’ll have a separate post about what you can do to Customize this as well)

 

3 – If you’re working with Navisworks or need to produce NWC files for Navisworks, you can now access the NWC Export tool via the Export within the Application Menu.  The NWC Export is still available via the Add-Ins Ribbon tab.  Just remember, you need to have either Navisworks (Manage or Simulate) or the NWC Export Utility installed to get the NWC Export ability.

As I run across more, I’ll report back

Vault Integration with Revit 2012

Last week I spent a couple days starting to learn the ins and outs of Vault Collaboration 2012 and it’s integration with the AEC products for 2012.  This is the first iteration of Vault being integrated with the AEC products, so this is definitely a work in progress.  At this point, here’s how Vault works with the Revit family of products for 2012…

• Archival of Central files – This process doesn’t need to happen every time you sync to central, this really only needs to happen when you want to save a copy of the central for archival purposes. There are options that you can enable so that when you sync to central, Vault will make a detached copy inside Vault.  This is essentially taking the place of a manual Detach and Save-as when you need to archive a central file.
• Family Management – This is something I can see being very handy for many firms, but I think it still needs some work.  The concept here is that a “content manager” can set families to different statuses, thus allowing the end users to only see content that is say set to “Approved”.  So while families are being worked on and aren’t ready for prime-time, users won’t see them in Vault.  There is a search function that allows users to search for families based on many different things, which is nice.  But at this point, there isn’t the ability to search for parameters that already exist in the families themselves…this is where the improvement needs to come in.  Sure, you can tag a family inside of Vault with properties, but the ability to search the parameters would be a great addition. (Just like SmartBIM currently does)

 

Overall, I think the biggest benefit of Vault for Revit at this point would be the Family integration…but we’ll see where Vault goes in the future.  As I get more time to work with Vault and really get to dig into some work-flow pieces, I’ll definitely be posting more about this subject.

Revit Architecture 2012 New Features

Instead of just replicating the new features here, I’ll post a link to a great post by David Light over at his Revit Blog.  David did a GREAT job at covering the new features with some commentary….well done David!!

If you just want a quick list of the new features, here you go…

• Revit Server (Now Native inside Revit)
• Citrix Ready Release (Cloud based Revit??)
• Autodesk Vault Collaboration AEC
• Linking Improvements (Tag Rooms, Keynote, etc.)
• Worksharing Enhancements
• Improved DWG export fidelity
• Visualisation Enhancements
• 3d Tagging (Annotate a 3D View)
• Modelling Enhancements
• Performance
• Construction Modelling
• Massing enhancements
• Materials
• Point Cloud Support
• IFC

As time goes on, I’ll be posting more about the new features as well.