Revit 2022, which was released this month, has grown in many areas as the software turns 21. To find out how Revit has flourished in this year’s spring release, we talked to with Harlan Brumm, senior product manager of Architecture at Autodesk and an Autodesk customer who had early access to Revit 2022 as it was in the works.
For starters, we asked about the number one thing users request in each release.
Three Things Users Want in Every Release
Harlan Brumm, senior product manager, Architecture, at Autodesk. (Picture courtesy of LinkedIn.)
“One of our big things that we’ve been doing in this release is improving documentation and productivity overall with things like tagging and scheduling—lots of enhancements in that area to really help our existing customers be more productive.
“And that’s a constant from all of our customers—whether they’re new or longtime Revit users, they’re always very interested in that aspect of it.”
The second area is interoperability. “We’ve been doing a lot around interoperability for a number of years with connecting the Revit product with other Autodesk products, but also third parties. And one of the big things for this year’s release is that we joined the Open Design Alliance for IFC [Industry Foundation Classes], and so there’s a lot of IFC enhancements we’re making this year, as well as connecting better to other products in the Autodesk portfolio but also even with our competition,” noted Brumm.
“We’re also connecting better to Autodesk Inventor, so users can actually take an Inventor model and use that within Revit. For that kind of manufacturing workflow for people who are designing more complex systems and who need to be able to show that in the context of a Revit model, they can do that.
“And then the third goes with the first: efficiency, or in general, ease of use. Like you said, Revit has been here for 20+ years in our customers’ hands and we’ve grown a lot over the years.… So, in general, improvements in quality and performance definitely fit into that pocket of things that make them faster and better. Simple, small things like our UI [user interface] being resizable to more complex behaviors that just clean up people’s workflows,” added Brumm.
With every release, Autodesk shuffles through thousands of user requests from the Revit Ideas forum to address the customer requests. Brumm said that this year Autodesk addressed more than 8,000 votes on the forum and that about 40 of the enhancements in Revit 2022 came from the forum. “This year in particular we have a lot of enhancements that address things that our customers have asked for on our wish list, which is the Revit Ideas forum,” he said. “We’re really trying to listen to our customers and give them value based on what they’re really looking for.”
To learn more about the specific requests, we asked Brumm to discuss some of the user-requested enhancements that went into Revit 2022.
Documentation and Productivity Enhancements
In terms of documentation and productivity, Brumm said that parameters and Key Schedule enhancements were highly requested among customers. “It really opens up the ability for them to do things around types—say, a specific door type, with parameters and be able to also schedule and tag those things. So just kind of completing some of that workflow,” he explained.
Adding to that, Brumm said, “There are some great enhancements around tagging. In particular, what we call rotated tags, where now you can just freely move and rotate any time that you want in your view. But the big one is what we call multi-leader tags, which now allow you to tag multiple elements within your project and have one tag that counts the number of things you are tagging. It kind of takes the combination of what we did in schedules and applies it into a plan view or an elevation view, letting people kind of clean up their documentation. Again, those apply across all the disciplines, so everybody benefits from things like that that we’re doing.”
Interoperability Enhancements
Autodesk continues to make good on in its interoperability commitment. As Brumm mentioned, last Fall the company became a member of the Open Design Alliance (ODA), a developer of interoperability solutions for computer-aided design (CAD) and building information modeling (BIM). Revit is currently certified by the buildingSMART International for both IFC architectural and structural export, and Revit 2022 offers IFC export out of the box. IFC export certification for mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) is also in the works.
In addition, Revit 2022 has improved Revit and Inventor workflows so that Inventor 2022 assemblies can now be exported as RVT files, enabling direct linking to Revit projects.
Plus, a new workflow between Revit and Autodesk FormIt Pro, a 3D sketching tool for the conceptual design phase, has also been introduced. FormIt is now accessible directly from Revit and users will be pleased to learn there is no add-in required. Users can now get FormIt data into Revit without launching a FormIt session. This release has added support for FormIt (.axm) files in Revit’s Import CAD dialog, replacing the former “Import FormIt to RVT” button in the earlier add-in. When launched from the 3D Sketch button in the Revit ribbon, FormIt 2022 will be connected to the Revit project from which it was launched, unlocking another highly requested feature—the ability to send FormIt geometry directly to Revit.
This release also enables users to link McNeel Rhinoceros 3DM files directly into Revit 2022, which was a request on the Revit Ideas forum.
According to Brumm, one of the biggest features of Revit 2022 that also ties into interoperability is with PDF export, where native PDF export is now is included with Revit. He said that it might not seem like a big deal, but explained, “It’s not just about having a PDF exporter that’s included in the product. It’s all about consistency. So previously our customers could do this with third parties. They could create a third-party printer or use something that came with their computer to basically print a PDF, but every single one could work a little differently and depending on what they used, they might get a slightly different result. By having a native inside of Revit, we basically eliminate that as a problem so that anytime someone’s creating an export and going to PDF for 2D workflows, they’ll get the same result every time. That was a big win, and it’s a highly requested feature for us from Revit Ideas.”
Ease of Use, Efficiency and Performance
In Revit 2022, Brumm said that there are about 20 specific performance enhancements that were added, but he wanted to note that in addition to new functionality in Revit, Autodesk really listens to its customers and is always addressing existing issues and bugs. Particularly in this release, Autodesk addressed hundreds of customer-reported issues.
“A lot of the things that we’ve added to this release are tweaks to things like quality of life. I guess a lot of our customers call it that, where we’re improving their overall workflow and just making things better. And when we talk about quality of life, we literally want to talk about quality—like, every year, we were fixing a huge amount of bugs and issues that come with Revit. You know software development is inherent with that and this year is no different.… We’re just incrementally making things better overall,” he explained.
“Our customers use our products 40 hours a week ... so even little tweaks like resizing a dialog box, where customers can read text easier than before, can be a big deal.”
A Little Something for Everyone
Brumm also noted some architectural enhancements that are worth calling out. In terms of modeling, Revit has added tapered walls, in addition to last year’s slanted walls. “This basically allows architects to create retaining wall structures that are tapered in section and also control how they model them and how they look, without having to use more generic modeling functionality that we had in the past,” explained Brumm. “They could do that before, but it was tedious and a little bit of a workaround—now it’s all built in.”
For MEP, structural detailers and designers, Brumm said that there are a lot of improvements around rebar modeling and detailing, which are “designed to make structural engineers be able to move from more disconnected tools like spreadsheets into BIM, simplifying things so that they can actually model rebar more efficiently. So, we have things like two-click rebar placement and moving rebar in a set. They [users] also are really interested in the rotate tag functionality because it’s always a big deal trying to position tagging and documentation tools for rebar,” he explained.
“And then for MEP, we’re really trying to make Revit more integrated from an analysis perspective. In a past release, we introduced MEP systems analysis, which has been a really big deal for mechanical engineers in particular. It helps them connect documenting the design in the documenting and design analysis portions of the project, eliminating the need for redundant copy models. We have some new reporting functionality that lets engineers actually get heating, HVAC sizing and selection data in a really common easy format so that they can get the outputs that they need from documentation.
“While this particular release didn’t focus exclusively on architects or engineers,” noted Brumm, “we got an architecture firm’s perspective on what they think of the latest release.”
So, What Are Customers Saying?
We spoke with early access customer Pieter Schiettecatte, director of design technology at Architecture Plus Information (A + I), a strategy-led design and architecture firm based in New York City, to gain some customer insight.
Schiettecatte’s background is in architecture and engineering, and he said that his role at A + I is to find solutions that provide the most optimal workflows and enable the company to be at the forefront of design technology. “Creative design freedom is a critical factor in deciding which tools we use,” he said.
A + I made the switch to Revit five years ago and also implemented a real-time rendering workflow. Prior to that, the company was using AutoCAD and SketchUp for design. This new workflow proved promising, as the firm won an award for its first project using the new workflow.
Schiettecatte, who started using an early version of Revit 2022 about 12 months ago, said the version he received was very different from the early access version of the software. He said the early access users, including himself, worked with the Autodesk development teams to discuss changes. “I had a front row seat to see it all come together,” recalled Schiettecatte.
We asked Schiettecatte what he was impressed with in the new release. His response is outlined below. Schiettecatte’s excitement was apparent as he discussed the new release in our Zoom call. Following are the improvements Schiettecatte noted:
- Native PDF Export was on the top of his list and apparently many others, as he mentioned it was a longstanding request— and the fourth highest request—out of close to 10,000 submitted ideas on the Revit Ideas forum.
- Shared parameters in Key Schedule was the next improvement he mentioned, noting that it was top 10 on the forum’s wish list. Now customers can use shared parameters in Key Schedule to populate and change properties on elements in their models, vastly increasing the possible use cases for Key Schedule.
- Selecting two or more elements, which Schiettecatte said he particularly likes. Now, selecting multiple elements will not overwrite other comments. “Instead of a blank field when the values differ, Revit will now report <varies> instead, making it less likely users will accidently overwrite critical data,” he noted. Users can also customize this by going to the Manage tab, then going to the Additional Settings menu by choosing the new Multiple Values Indication item and inputting their preference.
- Split Schedules Across Sheets, which enables users to split a schedule into multiple segments and place each of the segments on sheets in a project. When working with a particularly long schedule, it can be helpful to split the schedule into segments. Prior to this release, a split schedule needed to have all the segments placed on the same sheet. Now, with Split and Place functionality, users can split a schedule and specify the sheets for the segments. The schedule is split into equal segments across the selected sheets or is broken into schedule segments of a custom height specified by the user. He said this was great for large projects.
- Support for mesh smoothing and textured coordinates. Schiettecatte said that before Revit 2022, when you’d export a model, say, from Autodesk 3ds Max to Revit, it would look good in 3ds Max but not in Revit, because part of the mesh data would be lost. Revit 2022 supports mesh smoothing and texture coordinates, making it possible to bring meshes into Revit with visual fidelity. He said that previously Revit could bring in the mesh, but without mesh smoothing and texture coordinates, it would look quite different, making it incomplete. For Schiettecatte, this new workflow means less remodeling, which he is thankful for. He also mentioned that dealing with the thousands of customer requests on the Revit Ideas forum and addressing many of the top requests in Revit 2022 is an achievement in itself.
When asked what’s still on his wish list, Schiettecatte replied, “Well, there’s never a shortage of ideas.” He said that if he could have one thing from a designer/architect perspective, it would be to have a conceptual view style that would enable users to view and work better with materials in a way that is similar to the FormIt viewport. He continued, “I want to measure in 3D. Everyone wants that.” And finally, he wants a tabbed project browser with a modern search field.