Every year, Autodesk adds new features to its powerhouse building information modeling application, Revit. A growing list of features has helped cement Revit as a must-know piece of software for professionals working in computer aided design, and gives CAD professionals lots of new tools to try out on a yearly basis.
When studying to become a CAD professional, you will do a fair amount of work with Revit, and may benefit from being able to use new tools and tricks as they get released.
Curious about what new features were released in 2017? Here are a few of the most useful examples.
1. Depth Cueing Can Help Students at BIM College Judge Distance in Their Models
One of the main advantages that BIM has over traditional drawings of buildings is that you can draw something once with BIM, and then manipulate the design to look at it from multiple angles. This is a great way to get an idea of what a design will look like when it is actually built.
The 2017 Revit update adds to this by introducing a “depth cueing” feature. By adjusting this setting, you can have the lines of objects look increasingly faded when they are farther from your viewpoint. This can add a greater sense of realism to the building designs you work on at BIM college, and make complicated models a bit easier for you to look at and understand.
2. In-Canvas Text Notes Make it Easier to Add Thoughts to Your Models
Whether you are working on a complicated project, or just like to keep your thoughts well organized, being able to include notes with your models can be a useful tool. For 2017, Revit gained the ability to include notes directly in the canvas. This means that wherever you like and whatever you want to include, it’s possible to stick useful notes in alongside the lines of your design.
Text is scalable, wrappable, and is visible while editing. You can make numbered and bulleted lists, too, which can be handy for organizing several thoughts about a particular element of a design.
Using these new note-taking features can be very helpful for keeping track of instructions, progress, or thoughts when you are working on projects at school. Try them out if you want to make your classwork look nice and organized.
3. Revit’s Improved Energy Analysis May Prove Useful to Students at BIM College
A major advantage to using a software program like Revit for designing a building is that you can run simulations within the program to see how the building behaves in real life.
One notable example is the “energy analysis” simulation. This lets you view how the design and material choices made in a project affect energy efficiency, and the estimated cost of supplying a building with energy—information that can prove valuable when making choices in the design of a building.
This feature got a bit of a boost in 2017. Now, users can simply input a location—like a city, for example—and Revit will automatically calculate energy efficiency, with relevant information about the outdoor conditions inserted automatically. This offers added efficiency for students in a building information modeling program. If you ever want to get a look at your projects’ energy efficiency, it will take you much less time to do so in 2017.
Revit has made many improvements to simplify and streamline user experience in 2017. Features like depth cueing, improved note-taking capability, and automated energy analysis will make it easier than ever for you to complete the modeling work you do for school, and in your BIM career beyond.
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