and beyond

Revit 2022 and beyond

From the number of features and enhancements in the new release of Revit, it’s clear that Autodesk is attempting to placate customers who complained so publicly at the BIM tool’s lack of development, writes Martyn Day

In July 2020 Autodesk had a some- Navisworks, Revit and 3ds Max. None of pened to answer one of the points raised what rude awakening, coming in these products can really be described as by the group and was championed by the the form of an open letter from a having high development velocity. company to show they were listening, collection of over 25 architectural Autodesk’s executive team reacted with Autodesk had been negotiating this before practices based in the UK and Australia some explanatory blog posts and obser- the Open Letter came out. (tinyurl.com/adesk-letter). The letter raised vations on the issues. They accepted some Post Open Letter, those watching many issues around Revit, the company’s of the points raised and rejected others Autodesk closely noticed an increase in flagship BIM tool, including years of woe- but reached out to set up a series of listen- the number of jobs advertised for Revit ful lack of development and increasing ing engagements with the customers and development and much higher visibility costs. The letter also raised licensing Autodesk execs and AEC strategy team. of the Revit development team on social issues, pernicious customer audits over A core part of this process was an media platforms, as well as its own non-compliance, and lack of good interop- exchange between the Revit development forums. Revit’s future roadmap became erability. It really was quite the broadside. team and the firms in the Open Letter an open-source discussion for input and

A few months prior to this, Autodesk Group, giving them an opportunity to engagement and at Autodesk University, had announced the end of perpetual discuss what features Revit desperately CEO Andrew Anagnost explained how licensing and the removal of proud he was of the Revit network licences with the introduction of named user licences, which meant every ‘‘ The fundamental question of ‘what is the team in reaching out to firms of all sizes, not just listening to the loud mid to large ones, user had to have their own future of Revit?’ has not gone away. Autodesk to collect and prioritise fealicence even if they only has ruled out a next generation and the ture requests. used the software on occasion. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back- yet more licence models, yet company is ‘betting the farm’ on the cloud ’’ With the launch of Revit 2022 this April, we had our first insight into the renewed development focus of the more cost. The Open Letter went global needed for them to get the jobs done. post-open letter period and on the face of and over 200 firms eventually signed it. Following the exchange between the it there has been a whole lot of enhance-

Revit is 20 years old. While in its various groups, Autodesk announced ments and additions and it reads as ceryouth, significant upgrades were neces- that it had expanded access to Revit tainly the kind of eclectic release that sary to flesh out the product’s capabili- licences five versions back and pushed would indicate that it had indeed been ties, as it entered maturity, it’s fair to say back the removal of network licences for driven from broad customer input. the development velocity tapered off. another year, before named user became However, the cost of ownership did any- mandatory. While Autodesk did not cred- Revit 2022 thing but. The Open Letter stated that it the Open Letter Group for these chang- The new release of Revit contains anythey had seen, on average, increases of es of policy, I doubt they would have where between 35 to 60 enhancements, 70% in the cost of ownership over five come about had the group not raised depending on how you want to count years. Within that period, firms were also them so vehemently. them - which is probably more than was running up to five different types of Subsequently, Autodesk also delivered in the last three releases comlicence models at any one time and, on announced it had licensed the ODA’s IFC bined. Customer reactions have varied analysis, out of the 39 products in their library, which is an industry standard and from ‘oh my God it feels like Christmas’ suites, they typically used only four should help improve most of Autodesk’s to ‘about bloody time’, to ‘this is like rearapplications regularly - AutoCAD, IFC exchange capabilities. While this hap- ranging deck chairs on the Titanic’. It

Is Revit development coming out of the cold?

really depends on if the updates have positively impacted features you use regularly, or perhaps didn’t already have workarounds for.

There is definitely something in there for every user but then there were those who were always hoping for a deeper more meaningful rewrite. It’s going to take a number of releases to convince customers that Autodesk is serious about maintaining the development velocity they have been expecting. I think it’s only fair as well to consider that while Autodesk had a roadmap for Revit development, it has devoted additional time and energy to engage/listen to users over last summer and autumn and then accommodate additional features at relatively short notice, in development-cycle terms.

At the moment in the industry there is a lot of concentration on the conceptual design phase. Autodesk has picked up on this and now Revit supports the linking of McNeel Rhinoceros 3DM files. There is also a new round-trip capability between FormIT Pro and Revit.

Autodesk’s manufacturing tool, Inventor has also been upgraded to export assemblies as RVT files, better linking architectural design with digital fabrication, another long-term aim for the AEC division.

A built-in PDF exporter for 2D views and sheets is now included, it even does batch export. Prior to Autodesk buying

1 Revit 2022 includes a built-in PDF exporter for 2D views and sheets 2 Sloped and tapered walls can now be created ‘quickly and easily’ 3 Revit 2022 offers better interoperability with Rhino and FormIt Pro

Revit, it could export PDFs but this was removed as a feature. I seem to remember that this was about Autodesk promotion of DWF as an alternative. 20 years later and it’s reappeared!

Generative Design tools get a raft of enhancements, such as new study types to enable the distribution of objects in space such as grid object placement or random object placement. There are new dynamo tools.

Last year Revit got slanted walls; now it can model tapered walls. Non-core layers can be switched off, making walls easier to document. There have been number of visual additions, such as support for better quality RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content) when rendering in realistic views. It’s also now possible to control the visibility of Grids as 3D planes in 3D views.

Other notable enhancements:

• Support for multileader tags • IFC4 architectural and structural export • Custom revision numbering for PAS1192/ ISO-19650 • Enhanced tag rotation • Phase parameters in view filters • Revit schedules support CSV Export • Curtain wall mullions can be tagged • Improved colour palette as the default colour scheme • Enhanced Dynamo nodes • Support for spot slopes on ramps • People content and People Flow

Toolkit included for egress analysis • 2D performance of Rebar improved in zoom and pan • MEP supports ASHRAE 90.1 Code

Compliance • API enhancements • There are also lots of subtle changes to the UI and dialogues across the application This isn’t what I’d call a meat and two veg update, it’s a tapas tsunami with lots of mainly small enhancements that add up to something potentially filling.

It’s interesting that after 20 years Autodesk decides to add a PDF export tool. It’s been so long that customers have developed workarounds for this glaring omission. While customers may be asking for this feature from Autodesk, one has to wonder if Autodesk’s time could have been better spent creating features which no other developer could do for Revit?

For a full list of individual Revit 2022 features Niall Kelly’s 8020 BIM has a comprehensive list at tinyurl.com/8020BIM.

Conclusion

It’s clear from Autodesk’s reaction that it knows it dropped the ball on Revit development, introduced too many dramatic licensing changes and didn’t provide

value for money in the eyes of its larger ling and asking for more funda- Revit now works with Autodesk to stray too far away customers, who are seeing their historic discounts shrink. mental changes. It’s almost as if Autodesk chose to drown out grids in 3D views to reduce the need for additional views from the existing roadmap, leaving a number pondering if

Anagnost admitted to Wall Street ana- those who were complaining, they should migrate to somelysts that they had put many customers with those who were not complaining, thing else and stop investing in what in ‘licensing hell’, managing multiple biasing development towards those who was clearly a legacy system. I don’t think licence types. In this context, the expan- aligned with the existing product road- the contents of Revit 2022 have changed sion of access to five versions back and map and who would have lower expecta- that mindset. renewed emphasis on Revit software tions of depth of new functionality. The fundamental question of ‘what is development are welcome but customers It’s not widely known, but the Open the future of Revit?’, has not gone away. are also looking for price stability and Letter Group were not the only ones com- Autodesk has ruled out a next generation consistent licensing policies. It also plaining. A few weeks after the Open and the company is ‘betting the farm’ on seems moving to named user licensing Letter went public, a number of signature the cloud. We have heard about trials is no guarantee that you won’t get audit- architects approached Autodesk private- which involve streaming Autodesk’s ed, or transgress and become desktop applications, such as non-compliant. The fundamental issue will be how deep, beyond the outer ‘‘ The fundamental issue will be how deep, Revit, direct to desktop and mobile machines, which requires running Revit as a layers of Revit’s ‘onion skins’ of beyond the outer layers of Revit’s ‘onion non-optimised application in a functionality, will the develop- skins’ of functionality, will the virtual machine on a server. ment team be willing to go. The deeper the functions to the development team be willing to go This is one possible future for nearly all Autodesk’s desktop core, the greater the chance of causing serious regressions ’’ applications and solves a temporary problem, to get legacy and bugs in any reworking. So, it’s ly, backing-up the complaints on the lack applications quickly on the cloud, on unlikely that a big rewrite is on the cards, of Revit development and to express aspi- demand, ideally co-located where cusbut portion sizes of features in new rations for a next-generation design sys- tomers design data is stored. releases are more likely to resemble Revit tem. From what I can tell, they too were Over the longer term, these flagship 2022 than Revit 2018. put in the same engagement loop to col- desktop applications could be broken

It’s also handy to have so many custom- late feature requests, with regard to feed- down and rewritten using Forge to ers who want small enhancements. ing into the existing roadmap. enable thin client variants to be served While Autodesk made a big effort to As both groups were asking for more up anywhere on the planet but this is so engage with its smaller customers, it was comprehensive and fundamental rede- far from what’s available now, it could be a bit odd, considering it was the serious, velopment, I sense there was disappoint- many years away. mature Revit customers who were rebel- ment at the lack of commitment from ■ autodesk.com/revit