Casey Chaisson
Collaboration and coordination workflow improvements across Revit and Navisworks with better connections to the Autodesk Construction Cloud
Global launch at Autodesk has brought an exciting wave of new product features and offerings across the AEC Collection, including the major release of Revit 2022 and performance enhancements with Navisworks 2022. Continued improvements to our legacy BIM solutions, combined with powerful integrations to the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, are making big impacts for virtual design and construction teams this year. See what’s new!
Revit 2022: there’s something for everyone
Revit 2022 is the release many design teams have been waiting for. Based on your feedback and popular requests, we are delivering more effective design to documentation workflows, improved interoperability for your project teams across all stages of design, and a raft of design productivity enhancements that will raise your quality of life when working in Revit. Some relevant features for VDC teams include:
Phasing parameters in view filters
One of the best ways to control the visibility and color of elements in Revit is to use view filters. The Revit 2022 release introduces new filter rules to help manage the display of phases on your project. This makes it easier to visually locate elements and understand their phases in your model—an update sure to provide efficiencies for VDC teams creating detailed construction phasing plans. Learn more here.
Concrete
For VDC teams conducting detailing work for concrete trade contractors or self-performing general contractors, there are many updates in Revit 2022 surrounding rebar design that you’ll want to learn more about. These include:
- Model Rebar Using the Real Bar Diameter
- Move Rebar in a Set
- Remember Settings when Placing Rebar
- Rebar Placement by Two Points
- Select Shape Code for Custom Bent Free Form Rebar
Link Inventor Assemblies as Revit Families
New Revit and Inventor workflows connect manufacturing processes with BIM. Inventor 2022 assemblies can be exported as RVT files, enabling direct linking into your Revit projects, and building a greater connection between design and fabrication. Read more about What’s New in Inventor 2022.
Learn more
To see more video highlights from Revit 2022, check out the official Autodesk Revit 2022 What’s New Playlist and subscribe to Autodesk Building Solutions.
Navisworks 2022: better quality performance
The latest release of Autodesk’s project review software, Navisworks 2022 includes over 550+ enhancements and fixes. These changes are aimed to increase productivity for VDC teams through improved software interoperability and performance.
Here is an overview of the noteworthy features included in this year’s release:
IFC performance improvement
Autodesk is committed to providing enhanced data interoperability across our BIM solutions—and Navisworks is no exception. With a team of engineers dedicated to developing IFC readers and extractors for Navisworks, users will benefit from significant performance upgrades. While you can expect continuous upgrades in future releases, many improvements have already been rolled out with Navisworks 2022. For instance, with the latest release, we’ve updated the IFC file reader to use the same open-source code as Revit to handle IFC files, with added hierarchy, property sets, and data enhancements.
File readers
Autodesk Navisworks provides file readers to support a variety of CAD and laser scan file formats. When you open a CAD file in Navisworks, an appropriate file reader is automatically used. If necessary, you can adjust the default file reader settings to improve conversion quality.
Here are the file reader improvements included in Navisworks 2022:
- Intergraph SmartPlant 3D (.vue) files are now supported without the need for the “SmartPlant 3D Loader for Navisworks” plugin.
- As a result, a VUE page has been added to the Options Editor dialog > File Readers node.
- The JTOpen file reader now supports the latest version of JTOpen files.
- The JTOpen file reader now includes the option to use either the Y or Z axis as the world up vector.
- There is improved support for Parasolid files. As a result, the Parasolid file reader no longer has any adjustable options and does not appear in the Options Editor dialog > File Readers node.
- There is improved support for SAT files. As a result, the SAT file reader no longer has any adjustable options and does not appear in the Options Editor dialog > File Readers node.
- There is improved support for STL files. As a result, the STL file reader no longer includes an option to override normals.
- A new “Convert Model” option has been added to the DGN file reader. This enables you to choose between loading the last active model or the default model. This only affects DGN V8 files and later.
- The Inventor file reader now supports the ability to override iProperties on assembly parts.
High resolution monitor support
An option “Enable UI Scaling” has been added to support high resolution monitors. When this checkbox is selected (default), the UI will attempt to scale correctly. Deselect the checkbox if the scaling doesn’t work properly, or if you don’t want the UI to try to scale.
Additional improvements:
- DataTools performance
- Support for Microstation iDGN files
- Properties formatting
File support
Navisworks now supports the following file formats:
- OBJ files
- SolidWorks 2021 files
- Siemens NX files – version 1872
- Binary STL files
Issues integration with Autodesk Construction Cloud
One of the most important workflows for VDC professionals before a project breaks ground is to identify and resolve clash and constructability issues. ‘Issues’ can comprise of questions, clarifications, notifications, descriptions, and alerts across the entire project team. An issue tracking system provides a mechanism to document issues, assign responsibility, and view the status of how the issue resolution is progressing.
With recent upgrades to the Revit and Navisworks issues tracking add-ins, design and preconstruction teams can now streamline their model authoring and coordination processes with a connected workflow to the Autodesk Construction Cloud.
This is valuable to VDC teams, giving them the ability to seamlessly share issues between Autodesk Revit, Navisworks, and BIM Collaborate/BIM Collaborate Pro—allowing the best features of these products to be used in tandem during the coordination stages of your projects and providing a single source of truth for your entire project team.
Navisworks Coordination Issues Add-in for Navisworks 2022
The Coordination Issues Add-in for Navisworks connects VDC managers and trade partners to other project team contributors in the Autodesk Construction Cloud. Integrated with the Model Coordination module of Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Navisworks users can work with single-source-of-truth model data. Using the full breadth of Navisworks capabilities for project review and clash detection, you can now track and communicate problems through a unified issues system. With this round-trip workflow, issues are created in either Autodesk Construction Cloud or Navisworks, and actionable in both, bringing the best of each environment to your next project.
Append model workflows
You asked and we listened! With the upgraded issues add-in, users now have the ability to append additional models from a Model Coordination space to their already opened set of models within a Navisworks coordination space. This will increase the efficiency of your coordination meetings by allowing users to immediately update your .nwf files as new model files arrive from project design teams.
Download
You can download and install this add-in from the Autodesk App Store. Once the add-in is installed, you can start Navisworks and navigate to the Coordination tab:
Issues Add-in V2 for Revit 2022
The Revit Issues Add-In locates and displays issues assigned in Autodesk Construction Cloud, simplifying design and constructability reviews across the entire project team. Use the add-in to view, resolve, and closeout Autodesk Construction Cloud issues through direct interaction with the Revit model (not yet supported in Design Collaboration module).
Download
You can access this add-in from the Autodesk Desktop App or from your Autodesk account. Learn more on the Autodesk Knowledge Network.
Autodesk Docs included in the AEC Collection
New to the AEC Collection, Autodesk Docs enables the organization, distribution, and sharing of files on the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform as well as the BIM 360 platform. Docs is a centralized document management service, with review, markup, and approval workflows, issue tracking and distribution.
Customers who subscribe to an Autodesk AEC Collection now get access to Docs, which is a great benefit to VDC teams that are responsible for connecting BIM and design workflows downstream to construction stakeholders.
With Autodesk Docs, you can:
- Reduce errors and rework
- Save time with streamlined review and approvals
- Mitigate risk at handoff between design and construction
Learn more
Find out more about Autodesk Docs as well as what’s new for construction and VDC teams in the AEC Collection for 2022, including updates to AutoCAD, 3ds Max, InfraWorks, and more.