• WHAT’S NEW IN REVIT ARCHITECTURE 2024.1

    BY: Mahsan Omid

    The latest version of Autodesk Revit (2024.1) is just out!

    Soon after the last release of version 2024 in April this year, Revit 24.1 continues to promote some of the most intriguing and much awaited enhancements. This release includes features and enhancements for data management, visualization capabilities, more accurate documentation, design efficiency and reduce re-work. Let’s take a look:

    Search and zoom in the project browser.

     

    The latest update introduces improved zoom functionality in the Project Browser by utilizing the CTRL key + mouse scroll. This allows users to easily zoom in and out, providing a seamless and consistent zooming experience throughout the application.

     

    2- Up/Down navigation after searching in Project Browser

    Explore Project Browser search results using the Up and Down arrow keys. Get faster to a selected search result.

    3- Apply Area Rules setting

    In Revit 2024.1, Revit now remembers the “Apply Area Rules” settings shows up in options bar when creating or modifying Area Boundaries. The remembered values is stored in the Revit.ini files, under the ‘AreaBoundary_ApplyAreaRule’ variable.

    4- Add visual style in type preview

    To better visualize how an element is displayed in your model, apply a visual style to the element in the Type Properties dialog.

    Use the control in the lower left corner of the preview pane of the Type Properties dialog to change the visual style of the preview.

    5- Site Design- Simplify Toposolid

    You can adjust the number of internal points in a Toposolid by inputting the percentage of points to preserve.

    Input number ranges between 0-100% Revit will provide instant point number changes responding to the input text. Input 0% will remove all the internal points, but please note the points on boundary will be preserved and remain untouched during the simplify process.

    6- Site Design- Add Split Line enhancement and Chain Line Selection

    Now users can have consistent behavior between Add Point and Add Split Line

    Split Line Enhancements

    You can create Chain lines Along the surface with the same offset to create Path along the existing Topo. ​You can create Chain lines with Absolute height to easily shape the Topo to a flatten area.

    Chain Selection on Split Line

    In the previous version of Revit, you were limited on selecting the uppermost split line in a triangulation facet, or select a triangulation facets. ​

    In Revit 2024.1, you can Chain select any split lines. The splines do not need to form a closed loop. You can also modify the elevation of a chain line selection at once.

    7- Export Patterns to a .pat file

    In Revit 2024.1 you can export drafting and model patterns from your model to a PAT file.

    In the Fill Patterns dialog, accessed from the Manage tab, select a pattern or multiple patterns to export to a PAT file. The exported file contains pattern definitions of each pattern selected. Drafting patterns and model patterns must be exported to separate PAT files.

    8- Performance improvement on placing

    Provided a fix to reported lag when placing, pasting, and moving floor-based families and room, area and space tags

    9- Enhance Link IFC fidelity

    Autodesk is using ATF (Autodesk Translation Framework)  to better support the resolution of external geometry for large IFC models, and accurately represent geometry edited with Boolean operations.

    10- Change text alignment property for multiple selected elements using the ribbon

    This improvement allows users to the control text alignment property for multiple selected text elements – this could be done previously in the properties palette, but that was difficult for users to discover and had difficult drop downs without icons.​

    11- Warning for Delete Views in workshared models

    Deleting views in a workshared environment cannot be undone.

    To prevent any accidental loss of data, Revit now displays a warning for deleting views from the Project Browser. The warning message can be optionally disabled.

    If you want to learn more about Revit feel free to Contact us 

    AutoCAD 2024

    Well, it’s that time of year again when Autodesk bestows us with the latest release of their flagship drafting application. Click here for Autodesk’s documentation. Read on to see which features speak to this blogger.

    File Format

    This is probably the most-asked question, and I’m happy to say that there is yet again, no format change. We are still on the 2018 format. Happy news for everyone!

    Activity Insights

    Changes or actions made to your drawings are logged in a database so users can verify elements of a drawing’s history. One interesting thing here is that one can see that their drawing has been XREFd to another drawing.

    Pro tip: There is an option in AutoCAD to specify where to place the database; if you’re in a corporate environment set this to a shared folder so edits are tracked for all users that edit the file.

    Smart Blocks

    Place blocks with ease. Machine learning is used to learn how you place blocks. Blocks can be placed automatically in a room corner, for example. Replace blocks with another block and the software will hold rotation and scale values. Replacement blocks are suggested; AutoCAD uses machine learning to suggest blocks similar to the ones being replaced.

    Markup Assist

    This feature has been enhanced this year to automatically align a markup file (PDF, JPG, PNG, etc.). Also, AutoCAD text can be replaced with markup text as well as fading markups to help track which ones have been addressed by the user.

    PDFSHX

    This is a setting in AutoCAD for users who still use SHX fonts such as ROMANS or SIMPLEX. Historically, these old fonts have proven problematic with PDF viewers like Bluebeam Revu. They bloated PDF files and users could not search for text when SHX fonts were in use. PDFSHX is not a new setting. In previous releases, when turned on, it allowed text to be searched even if SHX fonts were in use. Each text object was a unique comment or markup in the PDF editor. Thousands of “markups” could be created, bloating the PDF. This setting now has 3 possible values:

    • 0 = off
    • 1 = the previous behavior
    • 2 = the new behavior. PLEASE use this one. Text is stored as “hidden” comments AND nothing special must happen in the PDF to be able to search. Is the PDF still bloated? In my limited testing, yes, the PDF is bigger when this is set to 1 vs. 2.

    See the Author in the PDF “markups”? (this is the old behavior = yuck!)

    AutoLISP

    LSP files can be loaded and run within AutoCAD LT. There are certain limitations; see the documentation for the list of what is and is not possible. This does not work with AutoCAD for Mac, only Windows.

     

    To learn more about AutoCAD, feel free to  contact us and one of our representatives will reach out to you shortly.