Revit 2011 New Enhancements – Design & Documentation

In my last post I talked about "User Interface Improvement for Revit 2011". In this blog I will talk about Revit 2011 New Enhancements in Design and Documentation for Revit Architecture 2011, Revit Structure 2011, and Revit MEP 2011.

Revit 2011 New Design Enhancements

These features will enhance the everyday design workflow by adding new capabilities, as well as making simple tasks easier to accomplish.

Temorary Dimensions

Revit gives you the ability to control temporary dimension font size and background display (transparent or opaque), thus allowing you to control the custom look and feel of the on-screen display.

3D Alignment

In 3D views, the align tool can be used independent of the active workplane and can be used to align patterns on non-coincident surfaces. This behavior is intuitive and makes it even easier to work in 3d views, which is very powerful for the design workflow.

Structural Tools in Revit Architecture

Several features formerly available only to Autodesk Revit Structure software customers are now available in Autodesk Revit Architecture, such as the ability to create curved beams, slanted columns, beam copings, trusses, metal deck profiles, and more.

The Span Direction tool enables you to interactively control the span direction of structural decking in a Revit Architecture project. After placing the span direction symbol, it is very simple to adjust the direction by interactively aligning the symbol to different edges of the slab or other guiding
elements in the view.

DWG Visual Fidelity

With the 2011 release of Revit Architecture, the framework for display, print, and export of AutoCAD DWG Drawings has been unified into one. Users should see increased visual fidelity in viewing, printing and exporting of AutoCAD files from Revit.

Payoff (Small Enhancements – Design):
These additions and enhancements will improve the experience with everyday tasks by extending the capabilities of Revit and making design workflows more fluid.

Below is a Movie by Autodesk on "Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010 Design Enhancements" :

 

Revit 2011 New Documentation Enhancements

The following features can enhance your everyday documentation process by helping you make your drawings look the way you want and by enabling you to better organize your project sheets as well as your consultants’ sheets.

Custom Elevation Tags

Elevation tags are now fully customizable and can be designed according to your company standards. They can contain any graphics you want and can align to any number of orientations necessary for your project.

Text Notes and Leaders

Several enhancements have been made to text and leaders. These enhancements include the ability to display a border around text notes, control the Leader/Border Offset, control the vertical alignment of leaders and create lists with bullets and numbered formatting. In addition, familiar keyboard formatting shortcuts, such as Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U can now be used in Revit, saving your time and improving usability.

Sheet Improvements

Sheets Lists (formerly named Drawing Lists) can now include placeholder sheet rows for sheets that have not yet been created or will never be created in your project. This is helpful when you want to include your consultants’ sheets, for example. So you can have rows in your schedule without actually creating actual sheets in the Project Browser.

Placeholders can be easily converted to actual sheets in the project and the conversion can be done as a batch operation. Simply click on the New Sheet button and you’ll see that the New Sheet dialog now lists all of the placeholder sheets, which can be selected as a group. When you click OK, you’ll see that all of the sheets have been created in the Project Browser. This workflow can save a lot of time and frustration when creating sheets

Sheet Guide Grids are a graphic option on sheet views which allow you create drawing alignments across multiple sheets. Extents and grid spacing can be easily adjusted for individual sheets, depending on the sheet layout. Reference elements in your views, such as Levels, Grids and Reference Planes can be
snapped to Guide Grids for better positioning of your views. If specific adjustments have been made to a named Guide Grid, those adjustments can be applied to additional sheets simply by selecting the named Guide Grid in the Properties Palette for that view.

Payoff (Small Enhancements – Documentation):
These additions and enhancements will greatly improve your documentation process by enabling more customization and providing tools that will assist you in making your drawings look the way you want them to.

Below is a movie by Autodesk on "Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Documentation Enhancements":

Stayed tuned to see Revit 2011 Family Editor Enhancements.

Comments

[Rich]

Great article on the changes and updates to the 2011 version. I work with the McGraw Hill Sweets Network, who offers a great variety of autocad drawings.