Capture Design Intent Faster with Autodesk Revit 2016 R2

About a month ago I attended a press briefing on the new Autodesk Revit 2016 R2, a release that builds on product performance and makes Revit perform faster.  The release looks at how to empower architects and engineers to embed design intent in their model by building smarter tools. It has a lot of professional productivity enhancements, and product managers believe it’s their best Revit yet.

Revit 2016 R2 updates room, space, HVAC zone, duct, and pipe color fills using multiple CPUs. Image courtesy of Autodesk.

Revit 2016 R2 is a full subscription release with no file format change, so it is completely compatible with the Revit 2016 April release. It works with any flavor Revit you have for any maintenance or desktop subscription customers. So for those who have Revit already, you can have this functionality and install it right away.

Core platform enhancements apply across every Revit product. The enhancement called Draw Visible Elements Only is a GPU-based feature that hides elements within the Revit model that aren’t being drawn. This occlusion calling leads to 30-40% performance gain on complex models with lots of geometry. This improves performance models with many elements that may be hidden.

There is always a “smarter, better, faster” element to every Autodesk release, and this one is no exception. The following are descriptions of the various enhancements in the new release from today’s blog post by Sylvia Knauer, Industry Marketing Manager, Autodesk:

Faster:

Revit 2016 R2 features continued improvements to software performance and scalability: 
o Orbit, pan and zoom more quickly with the new Draw Visible Elements Only option. Revit improves navigation speed by working only on displaying the visible elements of a view. This occlusion culling is especially beneficial with complex files and views in which regeneration of a significant amount of content is suppressed.

Orbit, pan and zoom more quickly with the new Draw Visible Elements Only option. Image courtesy of Autodesk.

 Revit 2016 R2 features continued improvements to software performance and scalability: 

• Orbit, pan and zoom more quickly with the new Draw Visible Elements Only option. Revit improves navigation speed by working only on displaying the visible elements of a view. This occlusion culling is especially beneficial with complex files and views in which regeneration of a significant amount of content is suppressed.

o Keep working during update of color schemes and the associated color fills with Color Fill Background Processing. Revit 2016 R2 updates room, space, HVAC zone, duct, and pipe color fills using multiple CPUs, which alleviates model interaction delays associated with these computations.

Smarter: Revit 2016 R2 has new and improved tools to help users better-capture and embed design intent in a model.
o Embed design intent in a model by using project-wide parameters to drive dimension and element instance parameters with the Global Parameters feature.  A global parameter can measure dimensions and calculate formulas to drive dimensions and parameter values in other elements in the project.
Embed design intent in a model by using project-wide parameters to drive dimension and element instance parameters with the Global Parameters feature.  Image courtesy of Autodesk.
o With Family Visibility Preview, get a better view of design intent by filtering out geometries that are not viewed. Work more quickly by previewing geometries and making adjustments before loading a Family into a project.

Better:We’re always striving to improve Revit based on user feedback. Over 20 user-requested enhancements include:
o Unload links per user to increase performance and improve memory usage without affecting other project team members

o Copy/Paste commands in perspective views

o Cancel print or export of multiple views and sheets with one click

o Filter solids/voids in separate entries to more easily multi-select the geometries to make bulk changes

o Enhanced rotation controls and insert part option in fabrication part modeling

Embed design intent in a model by using project-wide parameters to drive dimension and element
instance parameters with the Global Parameters feature. Image courtesy of Autodesk.

Revit R2 is an incremental install, so is less disruptive for users and administrators because it spaces out changes vs. incorporating larger annual updates. Any downtime or disruption to work processes can be more easily out-weighed by the gains in performance, usability and stability.

Availability
Autodesk Revit 2016 R2 is available to Maintenance and Desktop Subscription customers worldwide starting today, October 22, in the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

*Autodesk Revit 2016 R2 is available to current Subscription customers of Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium and Ultimate, Autodesk Infrastructure Design Suite Ultimate, Autodesk Revit Collaboration Suite, Autodesk Revit Architecture, Autodesk Revit Structure, Autodesk Revit MEP, Autodesk Revit LT and Autodesk AutoCAD Revit LT Suite software.

Other Autodesk product announcement blogs:

Infraworks 360 Release Offers Improved Productivity Enhancements and Performance

Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, architecture, AutoCAD, Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk University, BIM, building, building information modeling, CAD, Cloud, collaboration, construction, design, engineering, engineers, infrastructure, reality capture

Categories: 2D, 3D, 3D PDF, AEC, AECCafe, apps, architecture, AutoCAD, Autodesk, BIM, building information modeling, Cloud, collaboration, construction, engineering

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2015 at 7:25 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.