30 Revit Productivity Enhancements You've Missed!

JASON BOEHNING: All right, guys, welcome. This anybody's first AU? Anybody here for the first time? Awesome. Welcome. I hope you guys have a great week. As one of the first classes, we're going to have a good time. And then we'll all head over to the keynote. So this is 30 Revit Productivity Enhancements You've Missed My name is Jason Boehning. This is my colleague Katie Watton. So we're with 4D Technologies. We helped develop the CAD learning products. So, essentially, we create learning content to help people and performance support to help them in their daily jobs using Autodesk products related to building design.

So, just a quick note before we get going. Our company is doing a giveaway, a 3D printer giveaway. There should be a poker chip on your seat. If you sign up for a 30-day trial, completely free, then you'll be entered to win to get this 3D printer. And you'll have access to our content for 30 days. So, real quick, before we get into this, I kind of want to explain what we're doing, and give you a little background, and make sure this is the right class for you.

So when we created this class, the reason is because we worked with a lot of different firms all over the world. And we know that companies are working in multiple different versions of Revit. And so they may have a project in 2015, and 2017, and who knows how far back. And usually the people that are working in Revit have a certain way they like to do things. And they just-- whether it's 2014, 2015-- they just keep doing things the same way.

And so they'll ask, hey, how do you guys do this? Or, what do you think the best way to do this is? And we're like, well, use that tool. And they're like, what? What does that-- I had no idea that even existed. And we're like, well, it's a new feature. A couple of years ago. Anyways. So we thought we would do a class and cover those minor enhancements, just those little things that people may have missed. And so we're not going to be covering some of these big enhancements like global parameters and the things that were highly publicized, if you will, in each release. So we're going to cover those minor little updates that maybe fall through the crack that people don't see when the release comes out. And hopefully you can pick up some things that will be beneficial for you.

So before we jump into this, if you're like, OK, this is totally not what I was expecting, feel free to get up and go to another class. It's not going to hurt my feelings. So I know that your time is valuable. You guys paid money to be here. And so I want to make sure that this is the right class for you.

Everybody good? Not going to hurt my feelings. Last chance. Otherwise, you've got to stay. Just kidding.

All right, so here's how we're going to do this. Basically, it's going to be fast-paced. We have 60 minutes to go through 30 enhancements. So it's going to be kind of rapid fire. So I encourage you, if you have any questions along the way, just jot them down. I'd love to chat with you afterwards, but it's going to be pretty fast and furious here.

So essentially what we're going to do is we're going to throw up a new feature in PowerPoint. We're going to have our little number from one to 30. And then we're going to have what the actual update is. We're going to have a quick description and maybe an image that helps support that.

And then also, if you can see here, we're going to show what that release is so that you can see when it was first available. And for some of them, we'll go into a live demo and actually show you how it works and what it is. And then another thing to keep in mind is that all of these enhancements persist to the most recent release of Revit. So we're not going to show you something that popped up in 2016 and then they took it out in 2017, and then-- yeah, we just don't want to do that to you.

So sound good? Everybody ready? All right, let's do it. OK, so the first one is images in schedules. So this was first available back in 2015. And essentially, for schedules, you can add any image you want. So let's kind of walk through a quick example here. I'm going to kind of move over to the other side here.

So let's take a look at doors. So like, when you select a door and you go into the Properties palette, you'll see that image parameter. I can't even see it. So basically when you click that little More button in that row, it's going to open up your Manage Images dialog.

So any image that has been imported into the project, you can add it to that component. And the image name will show up there in the Properties palette. And then when you click Edit Type, it's going to open up the Type Properties dialog and you'll see a type image parameter.

And so this is for system families and loadable families. All these have these image parameters. A quick note, for loadable families, if you can go back to the Type Properties dialog, you can see that the type image parameter is unavailable. For loadable families, you have to add that type image in the Family Editor. So just keep that in the back of your mind.

All right, so now when we go to create a schedule-- and we already have a schedule view here-- you can schedule those properties just like any other parameter. And the image name will show up here in the schedule. But then when you go to a sheet, you're going to see that actual image.

And so basically what this allows you to do is just add a little more detail to your documentation, so whether it's a door or window schedule. Or maybe for MEP folks, it's air terminals or, you know, furnish-- whatever it may be. You can add an image to it just to help portray your design intent a little bit better. And even for system families such as walls, it could be maybe a cross-section or maybe some surface patterns that you throw in there.

All right, so that's number one. Number two, add links to the Manage Links dialog. So this was available-- once again, we're still here in 2015. So this little Add button popped up in the Manage Links dialog.

So who remembers before this where say you have 10 Revit models and, like, 50 CAD files you need to link into a project? It's, like, insert ribbon, link Revit, open, insert ribbon, Revit, open. And you spend hours, right? I mean, that's a waste of time. Who has time for that?

Well now, there's this little Add button-- boom, add, boom, add, boom, add, boom, just rock and roll. It saves you a little bit of time. This is for Revit models, IFC files, CAD formats, point clouds. Add as many as you want right there in Manage Links dialog.

Number three, when you're printing to PDF or a PDF export, there's a little bit of functionality that's available there. And I know it's no-- well, maybe I won't mention any of the third party apps for PDF. But it's nothing like that, obviously.

But there is a little bit of functionality in that there's a table of contents where you can easily flip through the multiple views or sheets that you have in there. And then also, these view tags have become hyperlinked. So basically, it's just a quick update to help you flip through that PDF quickly.

Moving right along, the search features. Do you guys know how much time this can save you? Do you have any projects where you have hundreds or thousands of types, anybody? Or you guys work with projects with, like, three types?

So say you're creating a wall and you have 2,000 wall types that somebody created and then purged out. And you're scrolling through, and you miss it the first time through. So you go back and you're looking for it, and you're just getting frustrated because you can't find it and you're in a bad mood.

Yeah, OK, all that has changed now because now you have a little search bar up at the top. You can just begin typing in there, find exactly what you want. It'll filter the list down, and you can rock and roll.

So this is also available-- sorry, let me back up real quick. So this was available in 2015 R2 in the type selector. And also, there are several other little drop-downs that have this available.

Sticking with number four, because I don't want to gyp you on 30 enhancements here, in 2017, this search feature was added in the Family Types dialog. Same thing, who has families with more than 100 parameters? That's pretty typical, right? I mean, you've got to have parameters to make models work. So yeah, search feature will make your life a little easier.

Number five, all right, the background color, does everybody know you can change the background color to any color you want? This is funny. When I first saw this update, I was reminded of a little story.

When I was in college, I had some roommates, and we got a house. And we wanted to paint it and make it a little homey. And we're like, what color do we paint the walls? We read some article. Some psychologist said blue will keep you in a good mood, keep you happy.

And so I was like, oh, you could just change all the Revit users' backgrounds to blue, and they're working on Revit. They'll be in a good mood all day, right? It's the blues, you know, stimulating the brain, keeping everybody in a good mood. It increased productivity, right? Maybe.

OK, number six, the Open Sheet option. So basically what this is is when a view has been placed on a sheet, you can right-click that view in the project browser, and there's this Open Sheet option. So once again, we work with large projects, I'm sure.

And even on small projects, you're like, hey, what sheet is this view placed on? And you can right-click it, Open Sheet, and go right to that sheet. It saves you from having to open up all these sheets and figure out what's going on.

Next one, selection boxes. So I thought this was a pretty cool feature when it first came out. I don't know how much it's being used. But essentially, here's an example.

Like, let's zoom into this bathroom group down here in the south portion of the building. When you select a bunch of elements-- let's say you want to take a look at it in a 3D view. Select those elements, and then up here in the-- sorry, where we at? OK. And there's this Selection Boxes tool.

And when you click Selection Boxes, what it's going to do is it's going to open up a 3D view, and it's going to basically isolate those elements. And the way it does that is it enables the section box, and then it clips out everything except those elements that you have selected.

So we work with 3D models. We're always wanting to view, navigate around the model. This is a quick way to select elements, take them to a 3D view to visualize them better. And then once you're in that 3D view, you can adjust that section box and just, yeah, view what you want to do.

A quick note here on this one, it does this in the default 3D view. So whether you are in a floor plan view, it's going to open up that default 3D view. And then when you disable the section box, it will reset it. So if you actually want to create a view for your documentation, duplicate that view and rename it, and then you can continue on. All right, we're going to take a little break.

KATIE WATTON: So yeah, let's play a game, right? So the name of the game is Name the Release of that Feature. So let me get out of the way.

OK, so how this works is we're going to throw up a feature, and the first person to name the release that the feature was first available. So whoever gets it right-- or raised their hand first, should I say-- will get a Starbucks gift card. So we have a couple of those to hand out. So you all ready? So sketchy lines.

AUDIENCE: 2017.

JASON BOEHNING: No.

AUDIENCE: 2016.

KATIE WATTON: No.

AUDIENCE: 2015?

KATIE WATTON: 2015.

JASON BOEHNING: 2015, we got a winner.

KATIE WATTON: All right, so you're ready for the next one?

JASON BOEHNING: Real quick, you all remember sketchy lines? This was, like, everybody was like, that's it? Sketchy lines? That's all we get? OK, or maybe you don't remember. OK, sorry. OK, next one.

KATIE WATTON: Global parameters.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JASON BOEHNING: I think she was-- or I didn't see.

KATIE WATTON: I thought [INAUDIBLE]. Go ahead, sir.

AUDIENCE: It was '17.

JASON BOEHNING: No. I think I saw your hand up.

AUDIENCE: 2016.

JASON BOEHNING: No.

AUDIENCE: 2018?

KATIE WATTON: OK, sir back here.

AUDIENCE: 2016.2.

JASON BOEHNING: Well--

AUDIENCE: 2015 R2?

JASON BOEHNING: No.

KATIE WATTON: He said 2016.

JASON BOEHNING: So he was close. So he said 0.2, but it's actually R2. So I'll give you that one. So it wasn't until 2017 until they started the point or the dot release. I'll give it to you, though.

KATIE WATTON: I'm sorry.

JASON BOEHNING: All right, good job. All right, ready to continue on? OK, moving right along, the Revision on Sheet dialog. So we are now in 2016 R2.

So who remembers before this update when-- say you have five revisions or four revisions in a project and you want them all to appear on the title block. But only the one with a cloud is going to appear. So when you zoom into the title block, you're only going to see the revision that that cloud is assigned to.

And if your boss is like, hey, I want to show all the revisions on there, and you're like, uh, Revit doesn't do that, and they're like, get it done. That's what we need to show. Anybody been there before?

So you're going to the title block. You're putting in text, or you're creating these dummy clouds where you're creating all these visibility parameters. And yeah, it just was a pain.

Well, starting in 2016 R2 in the Properties palette, when you're in a sheet, there's this Revision on Sheet parameter. You can click Edit, and it opens up the Revision on Sheet dialog. Select the ones you want to show, and boom, easy as that. Then you can move on with your life, save you a lot of headache.

Number nine, reposition Revit links. I'm sure nobody has any issues with Revit links, right? Of course. Of course not. Nobody ever moves those things.

So yeah, in this example, we have a Revit link. And you can see where it's supposed to be, and it got moved. So when you select it, you can right-click, and there's two options, Reposition to Project Base Point and Reposition to Internal Origin. Select one of those; get it moved back.

So if somebody moves it or let's say you accidentally link it up center to center, move it to one of those points and you can continue on. Pin it down. Hopefully nobody moves it. Those options are available if they do again.

Number 10, unloading links in workshared projects. OK, I'm going to ask you guys to make some confessions here. Has anybody ever gotten in a fight with a coworker over Revit links in a workshared project? Anybody? We got a few? Like, why are you removing my link? Or your coworker comes knocking on your door. What are you doing to my model? Why are you taking my links away?

Well, now-- sorry, in 2016 R2, they added a couple options here. So when you go to the Visibility Graphic Overrides dialog, you can-- or sorry, that's not correct. In the Manage Links dialog or-- Manage Links dialog, sorry, OK, had to think a minute there.

You can either click Unload for All Users, or Unload for Me. So basically when you select a link, you can select one of those options. When you click For All Users, it's going to unload it from the central model, which is the typical option that it used to do. Now you can select For Me and just unload it for your local copy and continue working.

So I think since this update, office fights due to worksharing projects have reduced by 40% according-- OK, never mind. I'm just kidding. I don't know.

Number 11, family visibility preview. So I thought this was a huge update. Anybody build families on a regular basis? A few of you guys? So you're familiar with the, OK, let's create some geometry, modify the visibility parameters, load it in the project. How does it behave? Ugh, I missed it. Go back. Modify it. Oh, I missed that, and just back and forth, back and forth, wasting a ton of time.

Well now, let me show you this real quick. So in this column family, you can see there's multiple different lines there, different geometry. And essentially, the design is that those different geometry displays at different levels of detail. So at the coarse level, you're just going to show the stick lines and so on and so forth.

So before, this was all we got. We just saw everything. We didn't know how it was going to behave when we loaded it into the project. Now when you click this Preview Visibility option, you can click Preview visibility On or Preview Visibility Not Cut. The Not Cut option was for families that can be cut.

Basically, when you select Preview Visibility On, it's going to start to obey the view controls such as the detail level, and then also the type of view you're in. So as you switch through the levels of detail, it will show you how that geometry-- yeah, based on those settings, then it's going to obey those view controls just like it would in the project.

You're still going to see your reference planes and dimensions, but that's OK. The geometry is going to obey those view controls, huge time-saver.

All right, number 12. So this was in 2016 R2. So it was one of those mid releases that kind of snuck in there. But does anybody think that that Cancel button does not work? Come on. Come on. Be honest, because yes, for the longest time, I was like, it does not work.

And here's the story. So basically before 2016 R2, the Cancel button-- sorry. When you're printing or exporting multiple views and sheets, the Cancel button would only work for one view or sheet at a time.

So let's say you're just printing, like, five. So it's churning, cancel. You know, it's, like, flashing and you're trying to click it. And then you get it, and then the next one. And then after two or three, you're like, forget it. This doesn't work.

Well, now it does. Now it cancels the entire print operation. And so due to that, it will probably cancel out some of your coffee breaks too that you would take when you ran into that.

Oh, OK, number 13. So these, now we're getting into 2017. So now we're getting a little bit more recent than the past couple years. But I really like this update. This is the basically calculate options when you create a schedule.

So let me show you an example here where we have some foundations slabs. So we obviously have multiple different sizes, and there's two different types. Then we create a type schedule. And we're going to throw in the length and width options.

Now, before this, really the only option you had was to calculate totals. And maybe you need to calculate the total length or the total width. OK, that's great. You can do that. But now, or starting in 2017, you can calculate minimum and maximum values.

So in the Formatting tab here, you can select one of the numerical parameter, and you can calculate minimum, calculate maximum, or calculate minimum and maximum. So let's do the minimum and maximum for each one. And then now you can see, for the length and width, minimum and maximum values.

So this is helpful for this example with foundation slabs, say if you need to get a range of rebar sizes, or on walls. You create a wall schedule, and you want to see what the maximum lengths are, the minimum lengths of walls, or piping, or duct work. Or you know, you need to see if something's going to fit on a truck or whatever it may be. You can report those minimum and maximum values, give you a little more clarity into what's going on in the model.

Moving right along, calculated values and tags. So I love this because I love being able to create formulas and add in more parameters to the model, making things more parametric. So now-- or sorry, we've always been able to add calculated values to schedules, right? You can create a formula or a percentage in there.

Now, in 2017, you can do it in tags. So basically, you need to open up the tag in the Family Editor. And when you select a label, you can edit the label. And there's going to be this Add Calculated Parameter option, pretty much just the same as in a schedule.

So when you open that up, just like in schedules. The only difference is that you can only create a formula. You can't create a percentage calculated value like you can in schedules.

But Katie's going to add one here to calculate the cost of each foundation slab just so that we can tag those foundations slabs and have a calculated value in there instead of having to create another parameter and then adding another formula or something like that. So when we load this back in, override it, now you can see we have a-- and this is just a simple example-- have some total costs in there for each foundation slab.

Number 15, so this deals with point clouds. Anybody work with point clouds on a regular basis? OK. So you've obviously always been able to control the visibility of that point cloud, but now you can control the visibility and color mode-- hang on, Katie. Switch back real quick-- of scan locations and scan regions.

Sorry, go back. And essentially what that allows you to do is when you open up the Visibility Graphic Overrides dialog, it just adds a little more control over that point cloud. So you know that the different scanners, they set the scan locations for you. So you set a location and it gets so many points. Another one gets so many points. And then you can control the visibility and color mode of those locations.

Scan regions, on the other hand, that is something that's specific to Autodesk ReCap. Essentially, you can think of it like layers in AutoCAD. In AutoCAD, you select a bunch of lines and you can change the layer, which that's about all I know about AutoCAD, by the way. With ReCap, you can select a bunch of points and then change the scan region. And so, like I said, similar to layers or even categories in Revit, although you can't modify categories in Revit.

Anyways, so as she turns some of those off and then clicks OK, it just removed some of those points that have been assigned to those different regions. So just a little more control over viewing those point clouds inside your Revit model.

OK, now we're still in 2017. And if you remember, I mentioned global parameters were first available in 2016 R2. And sorry, I don't remember who got it, but you knew that.

And anyways, but there have been some additional updates to the global parameter functionality in subsequent releases. And in 2017, that is the ability to filter schedules based on global parameter association. So a quick example here is, like, say you have a bunch of walls and you associated the base offset parameter of those walls to a global parameter so that you can use that global parameter to modify your walls.

When you schedule those walls-- and this could be for project management purposes-- you can choose to filter by that parameter that you've associated a global parameter to. And then you can choose either is associated with or is not associated with, and then select your global parameter. So this just allows you to see-- like, maybe you're trying to check to see which walls have not been associated with a global parameter, or maybe you want to see all the ones that are, just kind of a project management tool that you can use, or maybe for documentation purposes too.

Continuing on in that vein of global parameters, you can show the label or basically show which global parameter is assigned to a dimension. So in this simple little model here, we have a couple desks, and there are dimensions. And when you select a dimension and the contextual ribbon-- I'm sorry, I'm not-- OK, there it is.

So you can assign a global parameter to a dimension. And in this case, we are basically just assigning a global parameter so that those dimensions will be equal to each other all the time, simple example. In a real project, you could have maybe hundreds of these. Who knows?

Well, if you want to help yourself keep track of it or help your coworkers keep track of it, you can select that dimension and then click this Show Label in View option. When you do that, it's just going to show the global parameter there in the view.

So what this allows you to do-- once again, all about saving time, right? So instead of having to hunt through and select all these dimensions and figure out which ones are assigned and which ones aren't and what all these associations are, you can just show the labels and help everybody see what it is.

All right, now we are in 2017.1, Insight integration. Who's familiar with Insight? A couple of people, OK. Awesome. Well, let me give you a quick rundown of Insight.

I'm a huge fan of Insight. So I'm sure-- maybe you guys have kind of become numb to this, but if you do use the energy analysis tools in Revit, there's a new functionality to the energy analysis tools in every single update, right? And you always see energy analysis tool, and you're like, OK, what now?

Well now, in my opinion, this makes it a lot more easier. And the reason is is-- well, let me just kind of walk you through it. So on the Analyze ribbon in the Energy Analysis panel, or Energy Optimization now, there's this Generate tool.

So instead of Run Energy Simulation or whatever it was before, you can generate an Insight. When you do that, it's going to send it to the Insight service, which is a cloud-based service. It's going to perform the energy analysis, and then it's going to send you an email when it's done.

You can then click the Optimize tool to open up Insight, or you can navigate to Insight through a web browser. So let's do that. We've got a sample model here.

So when we open up Insight-- let me move over here so I see a little bit better. Let me kind of explain what it does. So it's going to send this model up to the cloud, and it's going to perform all these different analyses.

And then you're going to have all these-- as Katie scrolls down, you're going to see all these factors that affect the energy consumption. And let's go back up to the top and select-- let's find, like, HVAC, for example.

When you open up this factor, you can see that there's several options here. So what Insight did is it said, I'm not just going to simulate what you have modeled. I'm also going to give you five, 10 options, depending on what factor it is, and then I'm going to tell you how those different options affect the energy consumption of the building.

So at my previous job, I used to do this stuff all the time. I'd create a model. I'd get all the settings. I'd run an energy simulation; get it back; see the results; maybe put it to Excel; change a few values like the systems, wall type, whatever it may be; run it again; see what the results were; compare them.

And I mean, I'd spend weeks on this stuff, literally weeks, sometimes months. With Insight, you can do this in, like, 30 minutes or less, maybe an hour at most. And you're going to get all these options. And then you can come in here and see how all these options are going to affect what's called the EUI, or the Energy Use Intensity, which is the energy consumption of the building per square foot per year.

But one thing you need to keep in mind, this EUI, initially it's calculating all the options. And so you see these little sliders down here. When Katie adjusts those sliders, you can see it update the EUI because it's going to consider everything that's inside these sliders.

So when you generate these Insights, don't just take that number, the EUI that it gives you, and say, OK, this is where we're at. You're going to have to go through-- so say OK, these options right here, these are valid design options for my project. Close it out. Go to another tile.

For example, let's just choose roof construction here. Go into roof construction, right in the middle. Right. Stop. Up one.

KATIE WATTON: Sorry.

JASON BOEHNING: And then you can say, OK, this is how the different roof construction types affect my energy consumption. And then you can modify that. And basically, you're going to need to go through every tile in order to kind of get your range of where you're at.

And then now when you scroll up to the top, you're going to see this benchmark tile. And it's going to show you where the benchmark of your building model in comparison to the ASHRAE 90.1 benchmark and the Architecture 2030 benchmark. If it's above ASHRAE 90.1, it's going to be red. If it's in between them, it's going to be yellow or orange. And if it's below Architecture 2030, it'll be green.

So I'm a huge fan of this tool just because it saves you a lot of time by generating all of these analyses at once. So it is great for early energy analysis in a project. And once again, just to clarify, that Insight is now integrated into Revit starting in 2017.1.

All right, continue on, number 18, importing 3D shapes. So essentially, in 2017.1, you have the ability to import Rhino files. Anybody model in Rhino or maybe sub out some part of the design to somebody that's using Rhino?

And then what happened when you imported it in? You just end up with some blob that was just kind of there. And I mean, yeah, I guess it's there and it's OK. But now when you import-- Katie's going to walk through the import process here. You can select a Rhino file-- and the file's a type-- and you can import that in. And then you can choose a category.

So this is nice because you can select a category that you want that shape to be a part of, and it will behave like that category in that it can be cut and scheduled, so on and so forth. So in this example here, we're going to import some stairs. And it's going to take a little bit of time to churn here.

But basically, if you are modeling in Rhino or you're subbing it out, it just allows you to bring it in and have a little more control over it as opposed to just having a big blob. So let's move it to the correct level. Now when we open the level one view, those stairs are cut.

Now, it's not going to show you the nice run lines and behave exactly like a stair, but at least it'll cut. You can view it and it's there. You can bring it in, and you don't have to export it out to an SAT file and then bring it in.

All right, number 19, we actually have a couple of these. And these are our only 2017.2 updates, which there was just a few. Basically, in the Export CAD Setup options, there's an option to specify the background color for hatch patterns.

So say you're working in Revit with a white background, or blue if you want to be in a good mood. OK, I guess that didn't work. You can-- sorry.

When you export it to AutoCAD, it may not look right. So it may be hard to see if it's a dark line on a dark background. So you can choose to specify a background color for that hatch pattern so that maybe it'll be a little more visible inside of AutoCAD.

Also, kind of along the same lines with exporting CAD files, there's a new option as far as the colors go. And you can choose to use the colors established in your Object Styles dialog, because that's usually where we go first to control how we want the colors to appear, right? So instead of ending up with all these funky colors or having to go through all these options, you can choose to use those that are established in your Object Styles dialog.

Number 20, now we are in 2018. Is anybody on 2018 yet? Awesome. So there were a lot of buzz around the multistory stairs and the railing enhancements, but there's also a few minor things in there that may have been overlooked. A couple of those are the ability to schedule model groups and Revit lengths.

And so this is great for, once again, kind of a project management tool, or even for documentation. OK, let's say you have a project with 100 groups, or who knows? Some of them have thousands of groups that I've seen and can get out of hand. You can schedule those and help keep track of them.

In addition to that, you can add parameters to those categories as well. So instead of-- I mean, anybody, does Revit provide all the parameters you need for anybody? Nobody? Yeah. So you can add parameters to those to help you in however you want to use those in your schedules.

Continuing on, number 21, getting into the final third here. So there are some updates around the building and space types. So previously, the building and space types were there, but you couldn't add additional ones. You could modify the parameters, but you couldn't add or remove building or space types. Now you can.

It's simple. These new, duplicate-- same options that are available in a lot of places. You can add additional building and space types. So even, I know a lot of architects that use spaces, especially the ones that are doing a lot of energy analysis, just due to the fact that spaces contain more energy analysis parameters.

The next one, which I thought was a pretty cool update, is the ability to link coordination models. So-- or sorry, the coordination models come from Navisworks. So basically, you can link a Navisworks file to your Revit project.

And so this is nice because Navisworks is almost like a garbage collector, right? You can throw whatever you want to into Navisworks and then you can link it to Revit. So in this case, we have this huge infrastructure model.

Sorry, let me back up. On the Insert ribbon, there's this Coordination Model tool. It opens up this dialog. And the process is almost the same as linking a Revit model.

In this example, we have this huge infrastructure model along with this sample Revit project. And as Katie's orbiting around, you can see it's performing quite nicely for as massive a model as it is. So if you were to model all that in Revit, which you probably wouldn't be able to, it would be bogging down like crazy, more than likely.

So I'm sure most of you guys use Navisworks and have other people on the team that are using Navisworks. Now you can link that up to Revit and continue on in your workflows.

Next one, symbols in text notes. So I know this is kind of a big one for people that like to spruce up their drawings and add symbols. And yeah, it's absolutely necessary.

So when you're typing text, you can right-click, and there's now the Symbols option. And it has several commonly used symbols. And you can simply select it and keep rocking and rolling. So instead of having to open up the character map or knowing some keyboard shortcut, you can just right-click, rock and roll.

There's also this Other option. When you click Other, it'll open up the character map for you. And then obviously, there's thousands of characters in there.

All right, let's play another round.

KATIE WATTON: OK, so these are going to be a little bit more difficult. So we're giving away a year's subscription to CAD-learning content. So you can have access to our Insight, Revit, and Dynamo content, plus many more. So you all ready? So the first one, reveal constraints.

AUDIENCE: 2015?

JASON BOEHNING: No.

AUDIENCE: Release 2?

JASON BOEHNING: [LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: 2015.2?

KATIE WATTON: What did he say, though, Jason?

JASON BOEHNING: Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

AUDIENCE: That's fine. [INAUDIBLE]

JASON BOEHNING: Good job. Get with us afterwards. We'll get your information. OK, next one.

KATIE WATTON: OK. So search feature for--

JASON BOEHNING: Oh, sorry. Hang on.

KATIE WATTON: Oh, sorry.

JASON BOEHNING: OK.

KATIE WATTON: Search feature for project browser, when was that available? Yes?

AUDIENCE: 2016?

KATIE WATTON: Nope.

AUDIENCE: 2013.

KATIE WATTON: No. Anyone else?

AUDIENCE: 2017?

KATIE WATTON: No.

AUDIENCE: 2016 R2.

KATIE WATTON: No. Guess a little bit more. Yes?

AUDIENCE: 2014.

KATIE WATTON: Nope.

AUDIENCE: 2015 R2?

KATIE WATTON: No. Anyone else want to give it a shot? Yes?

AUDIENCE: 2012?

AUDIENCE: 2017.1.

AUDIENCE: 2018.

KATIE WATTON: No. In the back.

AUDIENCE: 2013?

JASON BOEHNING: Yes.

KATIE WATTON: Yeah.

JASON BOEHNING: Way back.

KATIE WATTON: [INAUDIBLE] looked it up real quick, I think. All right, so good job.

JASON BOEHNING: All right. OK, now we are in-- OK, sorry-- 2018.1. So the first one we have here is the browser organization for schedules.

So once again, in the project browser, we have hundreds of views. Who knows how many views you have? Well, we also have several schedules, right? Anybody only have, like, five schedules in a project? Have several hundreds, probably.

So there's now some functionality to add some organization types to the schedules branch in the project browser. So it works just like the views branch. So you can filter certain schedules out. You can sort them based on the types of schedules, so on and so forth. So once again, it just saves you from having to search through all these schedules in your project browser by adding some organization to it. Katie's excited about that update.

All right, Dynamo Player, who uses Dynamo? Awesome. Who's using Dynamo Player? Great. Is it working good for you?

AUDIENCE: Meh.

JASON BOEHNING: Meh?

AUDIENCE: It's hard to get inputs. You have to use other node packages.

JASON BOEHNING: So he said it's hard to specify some inputs. So this is 2018.1 when they updated this. Dynamo Player was first available in-- I believe it was 2017.1. And let me show you what happened with the initial release.

So in this little model, we have some sheets here. And over here in Dynamo Player, we have a script that's going to update the sheet names to uppercase. So when we run that, it's going to do exactly that. It's going to update the sheet names to uppercase. That's how the script is created in Dynamo, and it will do it automatically. We don't necessarily have to specify which sheets. It's just going to do all the sheets.

So in the initial release of Dynamo Player, that's all you could do, is run scripts that didn't need any additional inputs. And so you just basically plug and play. But for those of you that use Dynamo on a regular basis, you know that for several of the graphs, you need some type of input.

And let's look at another example here. With this add levels above the selected level, if we want to use that script, we need to specify some inputs. We can't just click Add Levels. You've got to tell Dynamo how many levels do you want to create, what's the distance between them, so on and so forth.

So there's this little button now, Edit Inputs. When you click Edit Inputs, it's going to open up basically another little page here with all the available inputs for that graph. So now we can specify the total number of levels that we want to create. We can select the level that we want to create the levels above. We can specify the distance we want between them, and then we can run it. And it will behave just like we were using Dynamo.

But this is great because if you know Dynamo and you're creating these scripts, then you can put out some documentation to your team and say, hey, if you want to use this script, you need to specify the number of levels, so on and so forth. Instead of them having to open up Dynamo and potentially breaking something, they can use Dynamo Player, so just a little bit more user-friendliness now with this new update.

AUDIENCE: What version of Dynamo is that, 1.3 or whatever?

JASON BOEHNING: So the question was what version of Dynamo. You know, Dynamo, they're giving us releases on a regular basis. I believe-- yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think you can go back to-- I mean, hopefully most of your scripts are updated to at least 1.0. But I think everything after 1.0 will run just fine.

All right, number 26-- so this was an update in the Options dialog. So basically, there's now a-- or yeah, let me let Katie open up the Options dialog here. There's now a Hardware tab.

So you can see the graphics card on the Hardware tab, and that's where the Use Hardware Acceleration option is. That information has been moved from the Graphics tab to the Hardware tab.

And then back on the Graphics tab, there's this new option, which is Simplify Display During View Navigation. So a few releases ago, there was this update, Allow Navigation During Redraw. So basically as you're orbiting around and Revit's trying to recreate the geometry, you can start orbiting again.

This new option, the Simplify Display, it just allows you to orbit, and it's going to simplify what's actually shown on the screen as you're orbiting around. So you don't have to wait on Revit to-- it hopefully will speed it up a little bit as you're viewing a model.