Advance steel 2018

[Anonymous]

So what's new ? 

[Jonathan.Jasinski]

If I remember correctly, they will be revealing some new stuff at NASCC (3/8-3/10).  If that is the case, expect a "What's New" later this week.  I'm hoping some good stuff.

Edit:  This is why I should check first then post.  NASCC is 3/22-3/24.

[múinteoir]

All Autodesk employees and resellers will be under a non disclosure agreement, but we shouldn't have much longer to wait for the new version. I think last year it came out around the 14th March

[Anonymous]

Whatever we get in 2018 will make some people happy and some disappointed and once again we will be the final beta testers finding the bugs. So it will be an interesting few weeks ahead.

I know that I am expecting some great things which will make me happy but when they don't materialise I will be disappointed. All things will be revealed in due time...

[Anonymous]

Some info on the 2018 update is beginning to appear on the AS product page on the Autodesk Site:-

http://www.autodesk.com/products/advance-steel/features

All I'm seeing that is new at the moment is:-

1) Create a call out directly on drawing

2) BIM 360 Team Interoperability

3) Custom settings import

4) Improvements to the AutoCad 2018 platform (2D & 3D graphics performance gains)

Perhaps this page is going to be updated shortly with all the new + requested & fixed features.

Time will tell.

[Anonymous]

The call out is awesome and long overdue. There is nothing else there that looks new maybe touched up a bit. This must be a teaser because I would be in disappointment mode if it isn't.

[Anonymous]

Found another link http://blogs.autodesk.com/bim-and-beam/2017/03/21/advance-steel-and-steel-connections-for-revit-at-n...

Looks like Revit has now over 130 parametric connections too.

[múinteoir]

There are some small snippets starting to show on the AS twitter feed too

https://twitter.com/advancesteel?lang=en

[Anonymous]

We'll actually use the call out every day ! This is a good new. Hope there will be other ones...

[sdetail]

Let's hope advance steel adds a few more bonuses for steel detailers 

it seems to me that most of the focus is on revit 

the revit link to advance steel is a good avenue but please think about us detailers

It would be interesting to see how many detailers own advance and how many desisigners own advance steel?

i bought advance steel as it was supposed to be steel detailing software

The most important focus for development should be drawing output? Other than vertical grids in model

Focus should be on what is said in the ideas forum -  I do not see too many ideas about revit

[Anonymous]

Yes AS is above all a detailler software.

I think one day it will be fully integrated in Revit, as they make with Advance concrete. (http://www.autodesk.com/products/advance-concrete/overview). We don't really know Autodesk's vision for the futur of AS, but majority of the work is done for designers (dynamo and revit compatibility)

[Jonathan.Jasinski · Accepted solution]

Webinar

Link to webinar going over new features in 2018 (for those of us that didn't go to NASCC).

[Anonymous]

The link supplied is actually a future answer to the question. But from everything I can gather about the new release of AS is that we get callouts and better ways to work with Revit.

I don't use Revit and I have yet to do a project using a Revit model (yet) out of the hundreds of projects I have worked on just in the past 12 months. While I can see the long term usefulness of this, as a detailer getting models from Engineers with connections applied etc. the only purpose for Advance is numbering and drawing output (plates, beams and assemblies). The Engineers will be pricing us detailers out of the market meaning we get the trivial work of final output. The best and most satisfying part of our work is the modelling and now we won't even get to do that anymore. A full integration is probably some time in the future but I can see a time when detailers will be seen as almost insignificant to the process of steel development and our work consigned to the office junior.

The other issue is that detailers are the interface between what the customer wants and what the fabricator can build. We pick up errors in the design and work in the real world and not the theoretical world where consideration for the fabrication, transportation and site erection are of real consideration.

Adding callouts is a real time saver but does not give us anything we can't already do in other ways and is a port over from Revit that has been able to do this for a long time. I want to see the other things we have been wanting for a number of years like better control of anchors, threaded rods and related items, fix up the dialogue boxes and make them all consistent, fix up bugs, improve handrail (I think there is a wall mounted handrail option added in 2018) and stairs to bring into line for all users in other countries other than the US.

I want the development team to look at our suggestions, the things we as users are passionate about inclusion and do something about these. Autodesk have way too many products on it's books and their developers can only do so much. Do we really believe that our product is getting the attention it deserves or do we need to rely on third party developers to produce the add-ons we need and pay accordingly.

Every year we send them quite large sums of money and they return to us a handful of beans and expect us to be grateful (a bit like the Monty Python skit "The Four Yorkshiremen").

Oh well...

Gary

[iwafb]

Hey Gary,

Good post, except I'm not sure I agree about the office junior comment.

I'm sure we've all been handed "working models" from Architects and Engineers. My experience is that these are generally not worth the time it takes to download, because neither invests the amount of time and care it takes to make sure it is done properly and accurately (or maintained for that matter). Which really only adds to the frustration when we see so much time devoted to this process and so little done to provide real world productivity gains as you have suggested.

Anyway, had my rant...

Dart

[AntDrt]

Hi everyone

HELP AS2018 is now online:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/ADSTPR/2018/ENU/

let start !

[Anonymous]

So poor...

Perhaps in 2019...

[Anonymous]

Now I know how was AS delvelopers last year:

[AntDrt]

don't blame with the new release, AS and autodesk give us new features each 6months with mid-year release (ex: 2017.1 when they don't make diseappear functions (manual cut in 2017.1...))

But with Version 2018, it's true, there is no big point for detaillling, but it seems it's all for collaboration.

but wait and see.

[Anonymous]

What you say is quite true, but as Steel Detailers we are about the modelling and output and less about the collaboration. This seems to be Autodesks vision of what we need and not necessarily what we want. Read the Ideas Station, this is the users saying what we want and there is little to no requests for better collaboration with Revit and vice versa. We are asking for new tools and new tools that work properly. Dig deeper into the Ideas and you see the same things coming up time after time over many years and these aren't complicated things but are essential and totally necessary for our work.

For example bolting and threaded rod assemblies for connections or anchors, this was implemented in Prosteel 8 years ago and we have been asking for it for at least 3 years. Simple things that will make a lot of users happy and feel that the thousands we spend every year is helping us.

There is so much to like about AS but there is still a long way to go if it want to be on par or better than Tekla. Advance Steel is used by detailers for use in or for fabrication companies. That is my customer base as I am running a detailing company, I have difficulty seeing any other uses for it. Revit can now do 130 connections so Engineering firms will not need it. Architects are not interested in this area of the project, so all that is left are detailers, which are us.

I would like to hear from anyone who can really see the benefit from all this collaboration or once again have we been ignored.

Gary

[iwafb]

I think production and collaboration are both important. The issue is that 2018 seems to be ALL about collaboration and productivity gains have been ignored. Sure, we have model view enhancements and callouts. But this is a very small drop in a very big pond.

Don't need to look further than ideas station. Nearly 400 ideas posted and 29 implemented. Out of these, some were bugs or already included in the software, so a misleading stat, and only 3 out of the 29 had more than 6 votes. Yet the std reply for knocking back ideas is: Sorry, but you didn't get enough votes...

Is the purpose of the Ideas station to get feedback from users (detailers)? Should it not be the actual AS users who help drive the development of Advance? If so, then should we not be seeing a conservative 60-80% implementation rate (as opposed to current 7%, although realistically less than 5%)? Should implementation of Ideas Station items itself not be part of the roadmap?

As with most other users, we love AS, but the frustration brought about by the fact that it could be so much more, as well as the amount of time wasting which could, in a lot of cases, be so easily solved, is taking its toll...

Document manager improvements - Why are we still having to sort through thousands of files to find the relevant files for the current issue of drawings.

Batch plot improvements - Why, after sorting through all the files in document manager to revise drawings, are we then forced to do this all over again? Also, publish is not a good option! You should be able to process all your revision and plotting needs based on what you have isolated on the screen and in one step! These are not isolated cases, it's everyday life...

Anchor bolts - Plenty of requests on this...

Drawing editing tools - Every time we create a drawing it needs to be edited. This is where most of the time is wasted. Perfect drawing styles are simply NOT possible.

Cloning - I know this is a big ask, but not impossible...

As Gary said, a lot of these (and others) have been consistently requested over the last 3 years and still no go