IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

New Enhancements in Large Team Workflow for Revit 2011

Large Team Workflow

Linked File and Workset Visibility Improvements

With the 2011 release of Autodesk Revit Architecture, a focus was placed on improving the experience of working on large projects with worksets and links.

1. Workset Control

Workset visibility control is greatly simplified with easier access to global and per-view visibility controls at any time in your work process. Example: So even though the global setting for the Furniture Workset visibility is set to off, here in the Worksets dialog, I can override that setting on a per-view basis. When I open the Visibility/Graphics dialog, I have a tab for Worksets with settings which allow you to display Worksets based on the Global setting, Hide the workset or Show the workset.

2. View Filters

Additional granularity has been added to the control of view filters between host and linked projects, with the option to allow host view filters to act upon the linked model geometry. Now, you’ll notice that in this project, some of the doors are being displayed with a color override. They are overridden with a filter that looks for a Comment field set to “Re-use.” If I turn on the other building on my site, which is linked in, you’ll notice that none of the doors are overridden. However, I know that some of them are to be re-used
in this project. By going to the Visibility/Graphics dialog again, I can now apply the view filter associated with the host project to the doors in the Linked project. This saves a lot of time and makes managing data across multiple projects more logical.

3. Element Tagging

Revit Architecture now supports tagging of linked elements directly in the host file. This feature enables users to centralize all of their tags in one project, as opposed to managing tags for similar elements in multiple files. Another UI element I’d like to point out is the Reconcile Hosting dialog. This dialog is
invaluable if and when geometry in linked files changes and the tags no longer can find their hosts. This dialog allows you to set up graphic overrides for these tags, making it easier to discover them in your views.

Payoff (Linked File and Workset Visibility Improvements):
Managing data in large projects is greatly enhanced with the ability to better control worksets, filters and element tagging. These new features save time and enable a smoother workflow when working with multiple linked files

Please play video below; "Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Linked Files & Workset Visibility"

 

 

Analysis and Visualization in Revit Architecture 2011

In an effort to extend the capabilities of analysis and visualization, Autodesk has added several new features to Revit Architecture 2011 to help you more quickly and easily analyze and present your designs. These features will enable you to seamlessly extend your building information modeling (BIM) workflow and help you develop more compelling, data-rich designs.

Visualization Enhancements

1. New Visual Styles

In addition to Wireframe, Hidden Line, Shaded and Shaded with Edges, Revit Architecture now has two new visual styles to help improve the quality of your design workflow and your presentations. Consistent Colors is similar to Shaded with Edges except that covers the model in even lighting, so you don’t have to worry about dark areas of the model due to unintended lighting conditions. Realistic is a shaded view with ‘live’ rendered textures for all of your materials, which instantly turns a working view into a presentation view that almost looks like a rendering. This view even displays decal images without having to render the view.
(Note: you might need to re-path image files for decals in order to get view to display properly)

A couple of new options have also been added to the Graphic Display Options dialog. You now have the ability to use Ambient Occlusion in your views as well as controlling the intensity of Indirect Light without having to turn on the sun and shadows. So you can gain both a softer, rendered look in your working views and quickly adjust the overall brightness. Both of these settings offer more granular control over the visual quality of your views for better presentations and ease of use.

2. Rendering Enhancements

Now let’s have a look at some rendering enhancements. First, in addition to solid color and sky options, Revit Architecture can now use images for rendering backgrounds. Background images have several scaling and positioning options so that you can create the optimal effect.

I’d like to mention a couple of other enhancements while the view renders. First, rendering in the Revit family of products is no longer limited to the use of 4 cores on multi-processor computers. Revit can take advantage of as many cores as are available on your computer. And finally, you can create custom procedural textures based on patterns such as checker, gradient, wood, or tiles.

Payoff (Visualization Enhancements):
These improvements to both rendered and working views will help you to take presentations to the next level, as well as making everyday working views easier to understand and work with.

3. Sun Path Simulation

Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 enables you to simulate the sun path, in order to better understand the impact of the sun in relation to your project and its surrounding context.

4. Sun Path

Now, let’s have a look at the Sun Path. The sun path is a visual representation of the sun's range of movement across the sky at the geographic location you specify for a project. The sun path displays in the context of your project and includes on-screen controls for positioning the sun at any point within its range of movement. The ability to directly interact with the controls on screen makes is very easy to test many sun positions and get instant feedback.

Payoff (Sun Path Simulation):
Being able to visually understand the sun’s position in relation to your project and being able to interact with it in-canvas makes setting up your views easier and also allows you to take the first steps towards sustainable design and analysis quickly and easily, and without having to depend on other applications.

Play Video Below; "Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011 Sun Path Simulation"