New features in Revit 2017
Revit 2017 was released a few days ago.
It is good to keep in mind that the list of new features will not look as long or impressive as in past releases. This is due to the fact that about half way through the product life cycle, we are now seeing R2 versions of the software. This means that many of the features in 2017 were already seen in Revit 2016 R2.
There are definitely a number of new features and improvements in the latest build that are worth looking at. Some of the highlights include:
ARCHITECTURAL & GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
Depth cueing: A feature that changes the appearance of objects in Plan, Elevation and Section views based on their distance from the cut-plane.
Visibility of point clouds: Control the visibility of parts of a point cloud in views.
Rendering: All rendering in Revit is now via the Autodesk Raytracer. This is a faster rendering engine that still gives good results. You can now save any render settings in your view template. Rendering things like walk-throughs will be drastically reduced in time. There is also a new background option in your renders to set it to “transparent” (or Alpha channel) which speeds up post editing in graphic editing packages.
Energy Analysis: Autodesk has made multiple changes to simplify the process of generating an energy analytical model in Revit.
Hosted Railings: You can now sketch railings onto the top faces of floors, slabs, slab edges, walls, or roofs. Balusters and railings adjust to the slope of irregular surfaces.
In-Place elements: Stairs has been added to the list of available family categories for In-Place geometry.
The text editor has been enhanced to add text notes directly in canvas. During editing, text displays in the correct font and style.
Improved export of text to DWF, DWG, and DGN files: Enhancements improve the fidelity of character size, location, overrides, font, spacing, line spacing, numbering, tabs, indenting, and other text related properties.
Text orientation when rotating Project North: When you use the Rotate Project North tool, a new option allows you to specify whether text notes should rotate with the model or maintain their current orientation in the view
Multilevel lists: Lists now allow the creation of hierarchies within an ordered list of paragraphs. You can modify multilevel lists by indenting and changing increments. (refer – http://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2017/ENU/?guid=GUID-021029A6-C047-4F6C-8E60-733FA547E8D8).
MEP:
Revit Fabrication continues to be improved. There are some excellent new features in Revit 2017 that will improve the workflow and efficiency for anyone in the fabrication industry.
There have been improvements in the available parameters in MEP families, new MEP annotation families, Electrical load calculations and the way that ducts display in viewports.
STRUCTURAL:
Generic connections: To facilitate the exchange of information between engineers, detailers, and fabricators about a connection between steel framing elements, Revitsupports generic steel connections.
Split columns: To improve workflows and extend usability for fabrication models, the Split Element tool can now split vertical columns at the desired points.
There have been improvements in Column base attachments, Structural foundation parameters and there are New parameters for slab documentation.
Reinforcement has been improved with new Reinforcement connectors, Bent fabric reinforcement and Constrained rebar placement for enhanced precise rebar placement. Furthermore, Graphical rebar constraint editing now features a new in-canvas editor that replaces the Rebar Constraints dialogue. Lastly, Variable rebar distribution allows you to fit rebar for complex shapes and you can use rebar sets that vary along inclined faces.