Revit Public Roadmap Update – April 2020

This month we’re celebrating 20 years since the release of Revit 1.0. What a wild ride!!! Thank you so much for your loyalty and support over the years. As all we shelter and work from home, rest assured the Revit is still thinking about what we can do to make your work better in the future.

We’ve just released Revit 2021. We hope the hope you enjoy the new enhancements in the release.  For information on what is available in Revit 2021 – please check out our blog post and release notes.

The usual roadmap 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.

This time around we’ve decided to shake things up a little. Instead of the Create, Optimize, and Connect themes, we’re organizing this update by discipline. We know, it’s revolutionary! We hope it makes finding the info you’re looking for easier.

We’re still keeping the stickies though. Green stickies represent newly added capabilities. The blue stickies represent items on our roadmap.

 Delivered with Revit 2021

Revit Idea Delivered with Revit 2021

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

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

FOR ARCHITECTURE

Revit 2021 has a lot of long-requested and powerful features for Architects.  Generative Design for Revit, Slanted Walls, and Enhanced Realistic Views are just the highlights.  2021 of course contains all of the functionality released in the 2020 point releases as well.

We are planning on making some notable investments in Architecture going forward.  These investments fall into two major areas: architectural modeling and documentation. Architectural modeling improvements include the release of elliptical walls in 2020 and slanted walls in 2021. Modeling improvements remain critical as we continue to improve walls, with tapered walls and improved wall layers on the roadmap. We are also focusing on making documentation of your designs more efficient. We are adding some long-requested tagging improvements to our roadmap. Watch for future roadmap updates for more coming in this area.

Immersive Design and visualization improvements will continue to be important as well. With the 2021 release of new and improved realistic views and fly mode in 2020.2, we have made it easier to visualize and navigate your design while you are working. The next area of investment is making it easier to adjust the sun and artificial lights in your model, so you can better understand the impact of light on your design.  We also know that you need more ability to communicate your intent and present what’s important to your clients and design teams. With that in mind, we want to make it possible to create easier conceptual visualizations by giving you control of the materials you show in your view by overriding materials with view filters. This way you’ll be able to make your view of the model (or some of your model) be in “paper mode” or create other visualizations you need without impacting the information in your model.

FOR SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

For MEP, having released the new Systems Analysis features for in 2020.1, we’ll be continuing to make improvements to the speed and ease of automatic analytical model creation, support for different system and analysis types. We are keen for any and all feedback about this new features a it will help inform our plans going forward. If you haven’t already seen or heard about this new capability check out this release post, webinar and recent AU class recording.

With Revit 2021, we’ve made big changes in electrical, starting with more flexibility that enables easier Revit adoption in global regions with the new Circuit Numbering functionality.  Additionally, improvements to single-phase panels and switchboards provide a better load tabulation results in panel schedules, and these improvements incorporate some suggestions from Revit Ideas. We are also beginning to plan for BIM-based electrical analysis workflows to better connect to the design process.

In MEP Fabrication, we’re continuing to invest in the management of the fabrication databases on Forge. This will enable wider sharing of fabrication content in controlled ways that supports Revit users and enable our partner ecosystem to better meet specific fabrication workflow needs.

FOR STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Revit 2021 makes rebar detailing easier by delivering several features that empower engineers and detailers to create more rebar shapes and shop drawings containing more fabrication data. These help increase the modelling fidelity and the quality of the coordination with the bar bending shops. These enable an easy transition from 2D to BIM workflows and accommodate increased rebar detailer productivity. Precast users will also experience simplified access to the precast features as they are now integrated into Revit. Further on, we will focus on the ease of detailing of reinforcement layouts with new methods to facilitate fast design intent and clash avoidance with other objects.

For engineers who do high-precision steel modeling for better collaboration with fabricators, we’ve added additional tools to better express design intent and make models more accurate with steel connections and detailed parts like stiffeners. We are also continuing with initiatives that will help structural engineers to quickly populate their design models with steel connections based on their best-practices and regional guidelines.

The structural roadmap also includes significant improvements to structural analytical modeling in Revit to enable efficient collaboration across structural physical and analytical representation of models in order to ultimately connect analysis workflows and therefore engineers to BIM.

FOR EVERYONE

In this section, we’ll cover improvements that help all disciplines. For example, we know that everyone manages a lot of Revit content. That’s why better content management and delivery is on our roadmap.

Now that the Design Automation API for Revit (aka Revit IO) is officially launched we’re eager to see what you’re going to build with it. The Design Automation API connects Autodesk Forge cloud services and BIM data together to help automate building workflows. This service is transformational because it allows cloud services and applications to work with Revit data anytime, anywhere. Want to learn more? Check out our intro and technical AU class recordings. Next on the roadmap for Design Automation – the ability to open and edit Revit cloud models in BIM 360 Design.

In Revit 2021, we’ve added striped rows in schedules on sheet. One super powerful small improvement – the ability to assign a “Cuts Geometry” parameter to voids. No more tedious workarounds or duplication of families for varying types. Continuing on our PDF work from 2020, we’ve also added the ability to link PDFs and images instead of importing. Still on the roadmap – enabling 2D PDF printing from Revit. Improvements to PDF printing include both in-Revit functionality and enhanced BIM 360 PDF workflows.

We also want to make Revit easier to learn and use. In Revit 2021 we’ve made it possible to customize and filter the user interface based on what you are doing or your role (Architect, Engineer, Contractors, BIM Manager, etc.).  We see this work as important to make Revit easier to use, for both new and existing users in the areas that have been Revit’s strength, but also so that new roles, traditionally outside of the BIM workflow, may be able to start to feel more comfortable using Revit as well.  A goal of this project is to make sure we don’t cause disruption to Revit experts’ workflows.

New to this roadmap are cloud-based parameter definitions. Shared parameters are hard to actually share, so we’re looking to help you define them in better ways that will allow you to share definitions with your team, your company, other companies you work with, and to connect your definitions to industry standards. We want to help you better manage, standardize, and reuse your data and this is the first step towards a more reusable BIM data future.

FOR WORKING TOGETHER

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 and giving project teams tools that allow them to work better together.

To better connect manufacturing and AEC personals, we are working with the Autodesk Inventor team to make it easier to connect Revit models to Autodesk® Inventor®. In the Inventor 2021 release, we’ve made it possible for Inventor fabrication designs to be created with the context of the Revit model – making it easier for Inventor users to leverage the data they need from Revit projects.  We think this connection between building design and manufacturing will better support the convergence of Manufacturing and AEC.   In this update, we added an item for improving the connection from Inventor to Revit as well.

We are also continuing our investment in Civil Infrastructure workflows for Revit, specifically in Bridge related workflows and how Revit connects with Autodesk® Infraworks® software and Autodesk® Civil 3D® software to deliver bridge projects.  In the last update, we continue to work on the three items added in the last update. In Revit 2020.2, we released the ability to see the internal origin of Revit projects and links. In Revit 2021, we’ve added new infrastructure categories that allow better control of infrastructure designs and documentation in Revit.

For Revit Cloud Worksharing (the in-Revit part of BIM 360 Design), we have exciting news for our customers working with European clients. Revit 2021 now supports Revit Cloud Worksharing on European BIM 360 Accounts. There is no change in the Revit UI – you’ll now just see European projects as an option for Initiate Collaboration/ Save as Cloud Model.

On the Revit Cloud Worksharing roadmap, we’re maintaining our emphasis on resiliency. This is especially important as  many of our customers have turned to BIM 360 Design to help them work from home. For this roadmap update, we’re also adding a few customer requests: an API to initiate and link models so that it’s possible to help automate project creation or migration, managing the size and location of the collaboration cache, publishing nested links, and working with the BIM 360 team to better support ISO standards. We hope these enhancements make it easier to manage projects in BIM 360 Design.

We also continue our work on IFC 4 certification. This is a lengthy process that requires a lot of collaboration with buildingSMART to check that our IFC output complies with the IFC standard.

Last but not least, we are adding Shared Views to the roadmap. You may have seen this functionality in other Autodesk products and we’re looking to add the same sharing experience to Revit. With only a few clicks, Shared Views allows you to share your designs with stakeholders and see their feedback.

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 consider your participation in our beta program (Revit Preview).  Reach out to revit.preview.access@autodesk.com to request to join Revit Preview and we will review your request.

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

Thanks!

The Factory