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What’s new?

So what else does Revit 2013 have to offer? This review will focus on the Revit platform enhancements as well are main architectural functionality; I will leave structure & MEP toolsets to others who are far more capable in providing an in-depth review than me! So as well as Onebox we have specific improvements to:-

View & view templates

DGN v8 import & export

DWF & DWG tweaks

IFC

Materials

Further Construction modeling enhancements

Worksharing

General usability improvements

Massing – repeating & dividing

Visualization & Graphics

Stairs & railings

Get a view

I have always been a big aficionado of view templates; to be honest I am probably guilty for not using them enough. But for view consistency they are great. However, they had a minor flaw & it seems to catch users out all the time. If you applied a view template to a view, one assumed if you made a change to that template it got automatically applied & updated. Wrong; you had manually reapply the view template. Fortunately the improvements in 2013 ensure that if a view template is updated it does indeed automatically update the view. If a view is controlled by a view template, then it is locked to the template, so then only way to make changes is via the properties embedded within the view templates management dialogue. The old school functionality of applying template properties to a view is still possible, so you have the best of both worlds.

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future. But I do wonder, as it seems to continue to have a head to head battle with Navisworks. Although they do compliment themselves well, with Navis being able to link DWF files into its environment. Improvements to DWF in Revit 2013 mean that phasing information is exported in the DWF format & you can manually name multiple views / sheets when you export as a single DWF file.

IFC interoperability

IFC short for Industry Foundation Classes, the answer to interoperability or just a pipe dream? So I have to be honest with you, I have a love hate relationship with IFC! It’s a great idea, but in the case of Autodesk, I’m going to kick them hard, their implementation of IFC has been poor. Even round tripping from Revit to IFC back to Revit produces total nonsense! But in Revit 2013 I am encouraged by the amount of work which has taken place to improve IFC import & export. My understanding is that there were some limitations within the code & these have been remedied & over time will allow Autodesk to adopt IFC4 compatibility. Listed below are “some” of obvious the IFC export enhancements in 2013 if you are interested & these are straight from Autodesk development team:-

2D Plan view export no longer offset from 3D Geometry

True North will always be exported to the IFC file, even if True North is the same as Project North.

Beams never extruded upwards

Better Geometry splitting for elements allows for fewer surface models

Floors, Railings, and Room geometry exported as solids or surfaces (not extrusions) will have a coarser geometry than default.

Doors with nested openings export opening

Assemblies will now export as IfcElementAssembly,

IFC export will no longer silently fail when a filename with multi-byte characters (e.g. Chinese characters) is used.

If any of the PSet_BuildingCommon parameters are in the Project Information, we will export the standard IFC property set "PSet_BuildingCommon".

Export Parts - If "Current View Only" export is chosen, and the view has Parts visibility on, then parts will be exported instead of the original element geometry.

Export Uniformat information as IfcClassification and IfcClassificationReference

General optimizations to reduce IFC export file size

Better GSA support

Light Source no longer exported for lighting fixtures

MEP Plumbing Fixtures exported as IfcFlowTerminal

Slab base quantities are only exported for COBIE or QTO

On the Import front, some of the improvements include:-

Better wall joins

Different representations have their own elements and sub-categories

IFC import now properly handles faces that are almost planar.

More materials imported

IFC import now does more checks to ensure that illegal faces do not get created on import.

Space geometry not imported as in-place family solid

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user productivity benefits. Slowly but surely each release of Revit sees improvements in primary functionality.

If I am truthful, there are aspects of Revit development which have managed to keep up with the pace of industry BIM developments. The Assembly & Parts tools are a case in point, but there are others tools for whatever reason are lagging behind & are starting to show their age. My hope is Autodesk recognise this & address these short comings. The lack of development in the site tools is unbelievably irritating.

One other major concern I have is that often functionality is released which on the face of it seems only partially complete. The staircase improvements are a good example of this. Whilst the new stair tool addresses some specific requirements, which is pleasing to see, in others areas it falls short. Why is this a concern? It relates to training. You now have to train two methods for creating a stair. This can be confusing to the new user & equally frustrating to the Revit expert. The number of hidden dialogue boxed & parameter settings you need to fight your way to customise a stair is truly amazing. It’s certainly not discoverable & goes against everything I believe Revit should be. It may not be a big deal for some, but as I have said many times, moving people to a BIM centric workflow is about changing hearts & minds. I don’t see why the experts have to continually justify why some tools are not finished or why there are two different ways to create the same element. I understand things take time to develop & there are only so many man hours during a yearly development cycle, but a maybe a modular approach could be the answer to ensure things get to a better completed state? It’s a careful balancing act between providing value to the existing client base and ensuring continued dominance and further growth of the Revit platform.

BIM is no longer a pipe dream or something for the earlier adopters or technologists; therefore we need a suite of tools that can deliver at all levels. I do feel that after 10 years, Revit 2013 is going back to its original roots as a solution for the AEC industry.