Revit Roadmap Update – April 2018

It’s been a while since we’ve posted a roadmap, so with the release of Revit 2018.3 and 2019 we wanted to give you an updated glimpse inside the Factory. We’re thrilled with the capabilities in the new releases and we hope you love them too. We’ve also added some great functionality, including a few Revit Ideas, to the roadmap. Let us know what you think!

A few ground rules:

This roadmap may make statements regarding future events and development efforts for our products and services. These statements reflect our current expectations based on what we know today. Our plans are not intended to be a promise or guarantee of future delivery of products, services or features and purchasing decisions should not be made based upon these statements. We do not assume any responsibility to update this roadmap to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the publish date of this roadmap.

To better explain the roadmap, we’ve grouped our plans by theme:

• Design
  • Efficiently create models that capture design intent
  • Engage in a delightful, intuitive, and contextual experience
  • Model to a high degree of accuracy and detail
• Optimize
  • Analyze, simulate, and iterate to optimize designs
  • Work more productively with software that automates tasks
  • Have more time to design with reliable and efficient software
• Connect
  • Connect project teams with AEC-focused collaboration tools
  • Enable multidisciplinary workflows to help deliver projects
  • Extend BIM to all phases of the project lifecycle

We use themes, colors, and icons to keep track of the roadmap details.

Delivered with Revit 2019

 Revit Idea Delivered with Revit 2019

 Planned (Some features may be available for testing in Revit Preview

 Accepted Revit Idea (Some ideas may be available for testing in Revit Preview)

DESIGN

The Design theme encompasses better tools, capabilities, and experiences for authoring of project data.  This is where you spend the bulk of your time, so we want to make it easier for you to create the models you want, to the level of detail you need, with the documentation required, all in a more enjoyable way. It won’t be easy, but we know this is an area we can make a big impact.

One way we can make design more efficient is by better capturing your intent. In Revit 2019, OR Rules in Filters allow you to more quickly customize your views to your requirements. On the roadmap – extending that capability to support more flexibility with true multi-category filtering. For complex piping, 2019 brings multiple improvements for hydronic separation of systems, making it easier to get more accurate systems calculations.

We’ve also invested in creating a more delightful, intuitive, and contextual experience. One example of this is the addition of uncropped perspective views in 2019. Together with the edit in perspective functionality added in 2017.1, if you’re an Architect, you can now do your work in perspective. Another new addition – Levels in 3D also supporting more modeling in context.

We also know it is increasingly important to model to a higher degree of accuracy and detail. For that reason, we have worked to increase our ability to model steel structures with greater level of detail and accuracy  with standard and custom connections in particular.  Revit 2019 also continues being a design to detailing software product for precast and reinforced concrete with the enhancements which extends the scope to support even more complex concrete model objects.

OPTIMIZE

Through the Optimize theme we’re looking for opportunities that enable you to do MORE and do it BETTER. In other words, improving the ease and productivity with which you can work, while also helping you work towards delivering better buildings.

For example, since Views are one of the most fundamental interactions you have with any model, we’ve made significant improvements through the addition of tabbed views and multi-monitor support, both top Revit Ideas. Yes! You read that right – you can finally drag your Revit views onto a second (or third) monitor!

Automation is a growing area (who doesn’t love getting more done with fewer clicks?) where in 2019 we’ve added more things to the automated, rule-based Design to Fabrication precast concrete workflows. On the roadmap – expanding the Structural automation capabilities even further through automated design of steel connections. We’re also continuing our work on the Forge Design Automation API for Revit which will enable cloud-native solutions to work with Revit data.

Likewise, analysis and simulation are also key aspects of creating better, more efficient buildings. For example, in 2019 you can now more comprehensively analyze fully connected hydronic networks helping to save a lot of time versus manual takeoff. The roadmap contains even more automation and optimization opportunities in areas such as mechanical system zoning and equipment selection and sizing. Another new addition to the roadmap is the calculation of travel distances to help you make more efficient decisions earlier in the design process.

CONNECT

The Connect the importance of connecting project teams and creating better multi-product workflows.  Our goal is to improve the processes in which you collaborate and exchange information to get things done.  In this area, we focus on building better experiences for sharing data across Autodesk tools, supporting industry standards like IFC and PDF, and giving project teams tools that allow them to work better together.

One example of this is the work in this release is the introduction of next gen Collaboration for Revit (aka BIM 360 Design). By allowing Revit Cloud Worksharing to connect to BIM 360 Document Management and BIM 360 Design Collaboration, we enable project teams to work better together by exchanging data through a common data platform and supporting project delivery workflows for both internal and external project stakeholders.

We also now make it easier to get data in and out of Revit. For example, we want to make it easy to link in a PDF file into Revit without using workarounds, so we’ve added PDF Underlay, one of the top idea requests, to our roadmap. We are also looking at improving our Sketchup import to support the latest file format.  Further, we continue to enhance our IFC capabilities, are pursuing IFC4 certification, and see IFC as an important part of our offerings to help facilitate the delivery of projects. Alongside these investments, we are also continuing our research into making Revit data more openly accessible outside of Revit.

On the workflow side, we are continuing to look at how we connect Design to Make by investing in support for fabrication modeling improvements and connecting to fabrication directly with shop drawing automation and CAM export.  This work is a key step to extending Building Information Modeling into all aspects of the project lifecycle. Finally, we are continuing to invest in improving how civil engineers and architects can collaborate better on the site design process to improve the sharing of information, support accuracy, and help reduce re-work.

Many of the areas we are investing in for Connect are about allowing as many people as possible to participate in the BIM process and to improve the workflows and experiences as they do so.  We’ve prioritized these areas as a critical part of our strategy not just for Revit, but as Autodesk as a whole.

HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?

There are a variety of other discussions and work related to connecting workflows from design to fabrication and beyond.  If you don’t see something listed here, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t on our radar. If you have specific suggestions for ways we can make the product better, we encourage you to submit them to Revit Ideas.

If you would like to provide feedback on these capabilities, we would be happy to involve you in our beta program (Revit Preview).  Reach out to revit.preview.access@autodesk.com to join Revit Preview.

We continue to post updates periodically, and your feedback helps!  Let us know what you think.

Thanks!

The Factory