CAD User Online Article Archive

Review

Revit 6

From CAD User AEC Magazine Vol 17 No 03 - MARCH/APRIL 2004

David Chadwick looks at latest version of Revit from Autodesk

Take away the drudgery of design by giving an architect a parametric modelling tool like Revit, and you will rejuvenate his creative urges, allowing him to range through his artistic heritage and impulses, and testing and developing different concepts and styles. Harness the creative output of a roomful of architects, all working on the same project, and select, from them, a series of alternative design options, and you have provided the best possible solution for your client.

Autodesk has recently released Revit 6, a major upgrade that opens up the exciting possibilities outlined above, as well as providing an array of enhancements that improve collaboration and productivity. The two most important additions are the ability to create alternative design schemes inside a single project file, and multi-user element borrowing, allowing remote design teams to work together on the same building project.

Design Options
Design Options changes the way architectural practices are able to approach the challenge of interpreting the clients wishes. Different members of a design team can all work on specific aspects of a project - the design of an atrium, say, or the layout of a gymnasium - each incorporating their own design concepts, choosing different materials and objects, without reference to each other. Each design is included in the same file as an option set, and presented in a single file to the client, with the main option under consideration promoted as the designated design option having a closer relationship to the model, and visible in all views.

Different views can, however, be created showing the alternative options with modified visibility properties so that they can be compared to the preferred design. Each design option is accompanied by its own schedule, so that clients can view all aspects of the design, including costs. Once a design has been selected it is accepted as part of the main model and all others are automatically deleted.

Enabling Revit to maintain total integrity between the main model and all of the different design options is a major task for the software, its parametric capabilities having to filter any change down to each option. One or two issues that arise in this process, such as wall clean-up between walls in the main model and secondary models, can cause confusion, and require a bit of guidance from Revit in its documentation.

Multi-user element borrowing
Simplifying the process of collaboration on a single project and leveraging the capabilities of each member of the design team has been enhanced with the inclusion of element borrowing in worksets. If an architect wishes to change part of a design being worked on by another team member, to facilitate a design change in his own workset, it has to be released by the second architect, loaded alongside the first, and changed. The design process is disrupted whilst this is going on, and the first architects system has an extra burden.

Using multi-user element borrowing, only those elements to be changed need to be 'borrowed', not the whole workset, enabling the second architect to continue working, and eliminating much of the checking in and out of worksets. Conflicts that may occur are prevented by having the first architect ask the second for permission to use those elements that are needed. If this does not conflict with the latter's own work, the elements can be released. Where the workset under review has not been checked out permission is neither needed nor sought.

The downside to such an important feature is the need to use external means - telephone, email - to request elements from a workset. Presumably Revit is working hard to incorporate some form of automatic requests for a future release.
Design Options and Multi-user element borrowing are just two aspects of Revit 6 that are encouraging forward looking firms to take the software on board, recognising its ability to enable them to compete more effectively in the market. It allows such practices to differentiate themselves from the competition and win new business by developing projects faster, making more informed decisions sooner - in closer communication with the client.

Developing an entirely new way of working inside a practice, burdened with ongoing projects, has constrained many from taking the plunge. Those that have are soon convinced of their wisdom. According to Larry Rocha, VP and CIO of Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, "Revit is winning us new work and helping us deliver the best possible quality to our customers - it is also helping us turn existing clients into repeat clients."

Presenting alternative design proposals to a client is not only enhanced by the improved documentation and presentation tools of the latest version of the software, but by its ability to show the clients some of the thought processes behind the proposals, increasing their understanding and acceptance of the proposal.

Revit produces, right from the start, models containing complete building information, producing quality construction documents. Its parametric capabilities ensures that documents are constantly being automatically updated throughout the process, eliminating co-ordination mistakes and re-work that are such a source of irritation with so many conventional systems.

With Revit 6, co-ordination is improved with a more powerful and customisable project browser. Users can set these up to cater for their own needs, filtering them out so that they only show documents relevant to a particular project, or grouping them together reflecting building phases, view types and so on. Secondary groupings can be created and sorting orders arranged. As part of this process, 'phase aware' rooms can be created that correspond to different construction phases.
The browser can also be used to provide design views that correspond to conventional documentation standards, and more powerful scheduling, supporting filtering and calculation fields.

Phase aware rooms are an interesting concept, where room schedules can be computed for each phase of the construction, simply by specifying the walls of each room in the phase and allocating different colour schemes in the model. These can be used for individual calculations within the project, enabling designers to create and maintain detailed information about specific rooms and spaces.

The ability to produce detail drawings has been enhanced, using Detail View, which allows users to show finer views than are shown in the parent view, containing supplementary information specific to that part of the model. Detail Views are listed in the browser. Another new tool, Repeating Detail, makes detailing easier, providing automatic insertion of repeated detail found in tiling, decking and so on.

Schedules can be computed on demand, dramatically reducing the time it normally takes to create and edit them, and can be created from any appropriate view of the building. Any change made to a schedule will, parametrically, make an appropriate change in the model. Filtering schedules with Revit 6 enables users to show only those elements needed, and, for the first time, designers can enter computed fields into the schedule containing formulas that work on values in other fields.

Further Enhancements
A number of specific building design features have been added to Revit 6, enhancing its already comprehensive set of tools. The use of structural grids has been improved so that, for instance, the layout of curtain walls can be achieved more quickly by defining complex grid patterns in the wall definition. Structural grids can now be used to include curved and radial grids. The range of stairs has been enhanced to include more formats and construction types, including the creation of monolithic stairs. To accompany this, users have a wider choice of railing types and can create railings with complex patterns of rails and balusters and specify start, end and corner conditions.

Draughting and documentation has been improved in a number of areas. The production of ellipses is now possible, and for the semi-literate amongst us, Revit has supplied us with a Spell Checker that can be used with a drawing. A new Plan Region command has also been introduced that can be used to display split level plans, and to display inserts above a cut plane.

Conclusion
Revit 6 provides significant enhancements that will encourage its users to become even more creative. It remains a highly intuitive tool - easy to use and appreciative of the basic disciplines behind the architects creative needs. The amount of work that the software has to do, though, to retain full parametric capability whilst working on a single building model - with added design options - takes some toll on its performance, and although major products are currently being successfully completed with the software, the resources needed to accomplish this are growing. CU
www.autodesk.com

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