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Review

Reviting Up!

From CAD User Mechanical Magazine Vol 21 No 05 - JUNE/JULY 2008

David Chadwick looks at the new features of Revit Architecture 2009

Did you know that any and all building schedules published in Denmark have to use BIM? Like everything else these days we have to have one eye cocked on the courts, for fear of litigation, and having the full lowdown on the building in question makes the work, and expense of your lawyers, a little bit easier to bear should something go awry.
That's just one of the issues that Paul Stefan brought up at the recent Autodesk World press day. Paul is Head of AEC marketing for Autodesk, and was pointing out the key issues for Autodesk's customers. Heading the list, unsurprisingly, was sustainable design. Paul pointed out that construction companies can save money with good design. At the simplest level, 80% of the cost of a building is committed early on in the design process - so get it right, right from the start.
Integration is another key issue, allowing different disciplines to work together, bringing in visualisation, simulation and analysis tools at an early stage. Visualisation isn’t just about what a building will look like, either: it includes the ability to view and extract information from a building model (such as costs, schedules and so on) by room, floor or model, at any time during the design phase.

Revit Architecture 2009
All of this was to set the scene for Revit, which is now positioned at the forefront of Autodesk's AEC tools. I believe I have got the nomenclature correct, as there seems to have been a good deal of juggling with the names of the different software products. Architectural Desktop has gradually subsided from view, leaving an opportunity for Revit to grab equal billing! On the Autodesk website it is classified as 'Revit Architecture, building design software, purpose-built for building information modeling (BIM)', whilst AD is now 'AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD for Architects'.

One of the great advantages of Revit is that it was designed to work the way architects think, enabling them to model in 3D using simple and intuitive commands to create, modify and place objects within the model. It can be used for all stages of the design process, from early conceptual and massing studies to complete modelling, visualisation, and detailed construction. As a parametric modeller, based on a single model, changes made anywhere within the model are reflected throughout. As a true BIM, it can be used at any stage to extract up to date drawings, BOMs and schedules. And, with true bi-directional associativity, modifications to schedules are reflected back in the model.
The latest version of the software comes with an extensive range of new and enhanced features, focusing primarily on improved design and visualisation tools, better control and flexibility, and an improved user interaction. I've picked out some of the most important of these to give a flavour of how Revit is developing.

Navigation Tools
In common with other Autodesk products, the software has incorporated the latest navigation tools, derived from Alias software, such as 3ds Max and Sketchbook Pro, which improve the user interface dramatically. These are the ViewCube and the customisable SteeringWheels. ViewCube, positioned at the top right of the display, allows users to switch effortlessly between different viewpoints of the model. SteeringWheels gives users, I suppose, a pretty close approximation to 3D Connexions’ left-handed navigation tools, but on the screen. I use a variation of the tool a lot with Sketchbook Pro and find it easy to use, flexible and very useful!

Mental Ray
Autodesk has ditched AccuRender and replaced it with Mental Ray, providing a higher quality rendering engine with a more accurately rendered appearance that reflects construction materials and finishes better, and improved lighting effects. If that isn’t good enough for you, you can now export Revit models to 3ds Max FBX format. Models are transferred as a complete package - geometry, lights, materials and cameras - enabling 3ds Max to use them directly for advanced lighting design and analysis.

Swept Blends
It may not sound like much, but the incorporation of swept blends gives users the ability to transform their modelling capabilities. A combination of the sweep and the blend tool, it allows users to add a start and an end profile to a defined path and sweep the whole path, creating complex forms that would have been impossible to create in earlier versions of Revit.

Massing Studies
Massing studies are used to check out building concepts at a basic level. Basic shapes can be imported into Revit Architecture from applications like form-Z, Rhino, Google Sketchup and AutoCAD 2008, where they can be turned into mass objects - selecting faces to depict walls, roofs, floors and curtain systems.
Revit includes tools that can even extract vital dimensions from the study, such as gross area floor calculations. Although available in earlier versions, the facilities have been enhanced in Revit Architecture 2009 to enable architects to calculate individual floor plate areas within each mass, exterior surface areas of mass, blocks and selected volumes from floor slices.

Worksharing Monitor
A couple of new items are available only through Autodesk subscription, and both relate to improved workflow. Revit has improved collaboration on models by improving the model sharing and synchronisation process. As part of this, Revit’s Worksharing Monitor brings remote model instances back into a central file, enabling project teams to create a suitable workflow structure for collaboration on projects.
The delivery of printed documents sets is transformed with Revit's new batch printing utility, which includes better print
management and document control.

Design Review
Free Autodesk Design Review software allows users to view, measure, mark-up and track changes to 2D and 3D designs - without the reviewer needing access to Revit. Integration with Revit Architecture navigation and revision management software means that you don't need to re-enter information, and that tracking changes is easy. It’s ideal for non-CAD users to get involved in reviewing projects.

A number of enhancements have been made to other features in Revit, the most notable being listed below:
Dimension enhancements are now more flexible, enabling more than just length to be conveyed in a dimension string. You can now enter supplemental text to describe a dimension, rather than just length values - without damaging the integrity of the BIM by overriding dimension values.
You can also use Mirror Project to mirror model geometry - and with it the annotation in non-drafting views, speeding up the model building process..
There is additional flexibility and control of revision schedules, with new attributes allowing you to reverse the direction of schedules. You can also decide whether to use the schedule to build models dynamically. There is a new 'Issued By Property' facility, and the ability to rotate schedules within title blocks to suit the recipient.
Room Tags come under scrutiny as well, with improved flexibility in determining how they can be used in project documentation, with quick and easy placement of tags in any 2D view, and tighter integration between rooms and tags. Another Rooms feature to be improved is the ability to set properties to a room that reflect the calculation height as a property of the Level type, rather than being project wide - e,g. reflecting similar area rooms that have different heights depending upon which floor they are on.

Sustainability Options
Finally, the ability of Revit to exchange information with energy analysis and building performance applications has also been enhanced. You can export Revit models, complete with all building information including materials and room volumes, to services such as those available from Green Building Studio, Inc, and IES Limited, using green building extensible markup language gbXML.
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