Tuesday 26 March 2013

Revit 2014 Release

Autodesk has released it's 2014 product line.... and it's suite based, no surprise there.
So far all I can see is the AutoCAD 2014 download so we'll have to wait and see when the suite will be released.

As usual David Light's blog Revit has posted a detailed list of what's new in Revit 2014.
you can also click on this like to check out what's new from the Autodesk web site Autodesk Revit - Software for BIM

I watched the official launch this morning and here is a brief summary of the presentation and whats the latest on the Building Design Suite Premium.

Autodesk has re-branded and now have a new "look" which is based upon Origami which the Japanese art of folding paper and is now a traditional art form being used in a modern form.... someone at Autodesk has been doing some deep thinking! 

Here is their new Logo:

Note the folding paper look.... you'll see this continue throughout the rest of their new logos such as the new Revit logo.

The big push is to use the Suite products in combination with Autodesk Cloud, Autodesk has spent a lot of resources building and improving their Cloud capabilities and you can go to the Autodesk 360 web site to see what tools they have available. You can now buy more cloud capacity.
Autodesk 360 is free!  Which they are pushing along with the Suite products. Which really makes sense, you get so much more value for your $$ being a Subscription member....

Suite ownership is leading to more people using multiple products... leading to a much higher satisfaction rate amongst Autodesk customers. 

Here is a summary list of some of the new features in Revit 2014 (in case you didnt want to read the 20 pages of Davids detailed summary but still worth reading)

  • Displaced Views: This tool will allow you to tear apart your model as an exploded view. It's View specific so it doesn't affect your general model.
  • Dockable Windows Framework & Enhancement: Not what I hoped here... you still cant separate model views onto separate screens, but you can now combine the Project Browser and the Properties palette into one palette with tabs to select for Properties or the P Browser.
  • Materials UI: Ya hoo, they have changed the 2013 Materials UI and it's now much easier to navigate and understand... :-)
  • Non Rectangular Crop regions: About Bl%%^y time! Not every project is a box! Works on any crop region including plans, elevations, sections and yes!! Details and Section callouts!
  • Room Calculation Point: This reminds me of AutoCAD Architecture where you can drag a point that is linked to an object and move it to another space and it'll recognize what space or room the point is in. 
  • Schedules: What else can they do with Schedules?? Well they added more categories so you can now schedule Architectural Columns, detail items, generic models, grids levels, pads, roof soffit, and more structural elements... You can also schedule phases and there are now more formatting options, very much similar to Excel.
  • Selection: There are now four selection options, way too complicated to summaries so go read Davids Blog.... Lets just say you can pick stuff... differently....
  • Split Elevations: Yeah! Now we can split elevations just like we can split sections. 
  • Temporary View Templates: Allows you to create a view template that can be assigned temporary to your view, you can access this in the view control bar making it easier to access and apply.
  • View Navigation: Autodesk are continuously working on improving Revit's performance and this release is no exception. Graphic performance is now improved by automatically turning off graphic intensive effects during navigation.
  • Object display order: You can now pick multiple objects and control the display order.
  • Stair and Railing: After last years big change I dont expect much change here, maybe just tweaking the tools a little bit. A precast stair can now be joined to a floor slab, and there are a couple other annotation changes. Temporary dimension are now available in component based stairs. 
  • Double Click: WTF were they thinking... how many times have you inadvertently double clicked on a family.. it opens up... you close it and get back to what you were doing....WE can now EDIT the double click option (like shut it off!).
  • Point Cloud: I've played with Point Cloud data using a Faro Scanner and it's software. Now you can bring in a colour point clouds (it's actually based upon digital photos and assigned to the cloud points). works great when working with existing site conditions... very cool stuff.
Check out Davids blog for more detail.

My only concern is with more "Options" in Revit the more complicated the program is... When Revit first came out you couldn't even move the palettes and have Revit remember where you put them, it would default back to the original settings every time you opened up the program... 

The more complexity and options you put into a program the more likely it'll break. 
Remember when AutoCad was simple... then after years of adding this feature and that option, it's like starting up a Jumbo Jet every time you want to run down to the corner store for milk. 

That's my rant... otherwise, all is good.

Sc

Update: Check out some of my upcoming Blogs where I'll go over the list in more specific detail.


2 comments:

  1. "...like starting up a Jumbo Jet..."
    Love that statement!

    oh, in the Revit 2014 list you forgot the "Switch join order" function. A really good improvement!

    kind regards,
    Jo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Try and look a bit further... Nemetschek's Allplan Engineering is simply put way ahead of Revit.

    EX-Revt user

    ReplyDelete