The First-Ever Public Revit Roadmap

sasha.crotty
Community Manager
95513 Views
13 min 37 sec read

At Autodesk, we know that feedback from you is what makes our products better. Not only do we want to hear your thoughts about what we've released and shipped so far, we also want your feedback on our plans.

 

While we've always tried to share our product roadmaps, it's not necessarily been easy information to come by.  But times are changing, and we’re excited to have the chance to try something new: we’re sharing our product roadmaps with all of our customers, publicly.

 

Before we dive into the roadmaps, let’s establish some ground rules: 

 

  1. We're sharing some of the highlights of our product development roadmap to give you a sense of the general direction Revit is headed. There's a lot more work going on behind the scenes and this roadmap doesn't reflect everything our development teams are working on.
  2. We plan to periodically update the roadmap because it is subject to change. When we can, we'll also share videos that show off some of the work-in-progress software.
  3. Roadmaps are plans, not promises. We're as excited as you to see new functionality make it into the products, but the development, release, and timing of any features or functionality remains at our sole discretion.
  4. These roadmaps should not be used to make purchasing decisions.

 

To better explain the roadmap, for each discipline, we've grouped our plans by theme:

 

  • Create: Efficiently create information that captures design intent.
  • Optimize: Optimize designs for best results.
  • Connect: Empower teams by connecting workflows for team-based project delivery.
  • Automate: Boost productivity by automating tasks.
  • Extend: Support the full project lifecycle.
  • Modernize: Create a modern and effortless experience.
  • Strengthen: Build a solid foundation for product reliability and efficiency.

 

We use disciplines, themes, and colors to keep track of the roadmap details. 

 

rr1.png

Delivered in Revit 2017.1

rr2.png

Planned (Some features are currently available for testing in Revit Preview)

 

Next, let’s dive into some of the exciting work happening in the Factory!

   

 

REVIT CORE

 

“What is Revit Core?” you may ask. Revit Core (often referred to as Platform) is the glue that holds Revit together. It includes technologies and features that are common across disciplines. It is the part of your everyday Revit experience that helps you get your job done.

 

When we imagine the future of Revit Core, we see a robust toolkit that doesn’t get in your way. The tools you need are there. They do what you want. This leaves you time to focus on creating better designs - time to be an Architect or Engineer, not a software wrangler. We believe that this future is powered through a cloud-connected experience that enables efficient collaboration and massive computational power, and by software that understands you and what you need to get done.

 

With that in mind, let’s explore some of the functionality that will help us get there.

 

Automate

 

rr3.png 

One of our key goals is to help you be more effective. To boost your productivity, we strive to create increased efficiency of design that is proactive, captures design intent, and eliminates tedious workflows.

 

To begin, we want to capture design intent in the model. By embedding the logic that you previously had to reapply every time you made a change, we can help you spend more time designing and less time managing changes. Next, we want to help eliminate tedious, repetitive tasks. We do this by providing tools that automate your workflows and simplify painful multi-step processes. Further, we provide our partners with access to Revit data, so they can develop tools to help you get your work done.

 

Connect

 

rr4.png

The future of making things is a team sport, and we know a large part of your job involves working with other team members.  That often requires sharing data between multiple products, across disciplines, with teams located around the world. We believe BIM’s future lies in connecting project teams together by supporting integrated, accessible BIM data regardless of product. 

 

At Autodesk, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to optimally connect teams and the products they use. It’s a really challenging problem that’s aggravated by file formats and geometric incompatibilities. We believe the solution to this problem lies in making Revit data more accessible to other products both through improved APIs and direct access to data.

 

Additionally, we understand the need to reference non-Revit data in your designs. We seek to provide connected workflows that incorporate data from other products in lightweight and project-centric ways.

 

Modernize

 

rr5.png

A big part of our future for Revit is to create an experience that puts you, the customer, first instead of putting you in a position where you need to fight with the software.  We are investing in creating a modern experience that understands who you are, makes the tools you need available when you need them, and allows you to focus on your model instead of dialog boxes.

 

We are focused on supporting the hardware that you already own, with multi-monitor support and support for high resolution monitors.  We are also investing in how properties of elements are displayed and enabling better contextual access to tools for elements. Further, we are investigating ways to allow you to work better in 3D. 

 

Strengthen

 

rr6.png

As we invest in new functionality to extend Revit Core, we cannot lose sight that we must build an infrastructure based on a continuous focus on our customers.  It is therefore essential that we strengthen the core by maintaining an emphasis on creating high-quality solutions that address customer needs.

 

We are thrilled to add a few top Revit Ideas requests that address gaps in Revit Core to our roadmap. Thank you for sharing your feedback on the Idea Station. Please keep up your submissions, we are listening!

  

 

ARCHITECTURE

 

For this part of the roadmap, let’s take a look at the features and functionality we are investigating for architects.  The major focus here is to enable designers to fully model and document their buildings and leverage of the power of true Building Information Management.  Our goal is to give architects the power and flexibility to design the way they want to design and remove software barriers to creativity. 

 

Connect

 

rr7.png

We want allow architects to focus on the things they care about and at the same time, ensure that they are working in a collaborative way with all project stakeholders.  For architects, connecting with others is about capturing design information and collaborating without having to redo work.  

To start, we are looking at how to connect conceptual designers better into the Design development phase of projects.  This is about allowing modelers to use their tool of choice and not lose information when it is brought into the BIM environment. 

 

We also are looking at how architects can better collaborate and share design information with civil engineers and surveyors.  We are striving to allow terrain to be accurately shared to ensure that both engineers and architects are working with the “same dirt”.     

    

Create

 

rr8.png

In the Create theme for architects, we are working to better allow architects to capture and document their design intent by supporting high detail, complex modeling, and letting architects get started with their models fast.

 

Starting with stairs and railings to support multi-story stair towers, we are investing in making it easier to model larger buildings. We want to ensure that when changes are made to the height of the building stories in the project, the stairs and railings update in a truly BIM way.  At the same time, designing stairs and railings can be difficult, so we are investing in small usability improvements to make it easier to get your modeling done.

 

Another aspect of creating that we are investigating is how to make modeling in Revit more immersive and allow you to design within the context of your project.  We are focused on modeling in perspective views so you can better understand the impact of design decisions.

 

Optimize

 

rr9.png

Optimizing a design is a key part of the iterative workflow that architects use throughout the course of a project.  We believe that we can help you by providing better access to simulation and visualization tools so that you can better understand your design and work in a truly iterative way.

To start, in Revit 2017.1 we delivered an integrated experience with Autodesk Insight 360, making it much easier to utilize energy modeling to optimize your designs. Further, we are working on integrating the newest tool for immersive visualization from Autodesk, Autodesk Live.

  

 

MEP

 

Let's look at some of the things we are investigating for MEP customers of Revit, Plant 3D, P&ID, and our Fabrication products.

First, a brief introduction:  The Systems Engineering group is made up of several teams that work together to streamline workflows across multiple technologies (the MEP functionality within Revit, AutoCAD P&ID, AutoCAD Plant 3D, CADmep, ESTmep, and CAMduct).  By harnessing the power of the cloud, these interactions can become very transparent.  So while you may be a Revit MEP, Plant 3D, or CAMduct user, behind the scenes you may be using technology from a mix of these products, along with other capabilities that many other teams are developing within Autodesk, like Collaboration for Revit and BIM 360 Docs.

 

Create

 

rr010.png

These are modeling activities related to capturing the intent of your design or detailed model.  They can be related to physical elements, like duct and pipe elements, or analytical data, such as energy settings and circuiting.  The information created is used downstream and consumed by activities in the remaining themes.

 

We’re continuing to refine the fabrication capabilities in Revit to improve its ability to produce construction ready models. Some of the work we have planned in the Connect and Extend themes will improve the processes by which that model is utilized for downstream activities.

We’re also starting to re-focus on analytical data modeling.  So far, our work has focused on improvements for circuit analysis and improvements related to the building energy model.

 

Optimize

 

rr011.png

Optimization is the process of refining your model to create a more efficient system.  This optimization can be related to the energy efficiency of the delivered solution, or efficiency in terms of construction processes. 

 

Over the years, feedback has indicated that the larger the connected model, the slower the modeling interactions become. To address this, we’re moving to a paradigm where process-intensive computations, such as flow and pressure drop, are computed in the background on additional processors, giving priority to modeling interactions. 

 

We're also replacing the computation engine with a fluids solver, previously known as Dalton on Autodesk Labs.  This solver provides simulation in addition to analytical capabilities.  While we aren't making direct use of the simulation capabilities yet, we are leveraging the engine to provide more robust analysis.  For example, we’re refining the workflow to incorporate mechanical equipment to be more tailored to their purpose, such as pumps reporting their flow and head requirements, and pressure drop being computed through the entire pipe loop (instead of being divided between supply and return). 

 

Connect

 

rr012.png

Project data is created using a variety of products, whether it is energy analysis using Insight 360, process diagrams like P&ID, physical model representations like Revit, or isometrics in Plant 3D.  Connecting this data enables project participants to contribute their expertise and allows information to flow more easily, without having to import, export, or re-enter data created by other project stakeholders.

 

We’re creating the foundation on which engineering data will be shared across project stakeholders.  This will start to enable Revit, P&ID, Insight 360, and related workflows to share information and communicate more transparently.  This isn’t about providing new ways to import and export data. It is about eliminating manual tasks related to data translation.  By connecting the project through cloud-connected experiences, schematics and models can be intelligently connected, information can be easily shared across stakeholders, and data can easily flow through the project lifecycle across a variety of products.

 

Extend

 

rr013.png

Various project stakeholders use the data authored and optimized during modeling for a variety of downstream tasks, like creating spools for pipe fabrication, outputting CAM data for sheet metal fabrication, creating reports for procurement of material, and tracking project elements.  The Extend theme is all about leveraging the connections to the data created and optimized during the authoring phases of the project, and providing workflows to keep stakeholders apprised of information relevant to them.

 

One of the first areas we are focusing on is to extend the connected technologies to streamline workflows for generating piping isometrics from detailed fabrication piping models.  Currently, it is possible to export a MAJ file from Revit, open that file in CADmep, write the result out to PCF, open that PCF in Plant 3D, and then generate DWGs that can be printed for the shop for pipe fabrication.  Possible, but not practical.  We plan to streamline this process and provide a workflow to generate isometrics utilizing Autodesk cloud services for document management.  We’re very early in this process, but the feedback has been positive.

 

 

STRUCTURE

 

This part of the roadmap is focused on structural workflows from Design to Fabrication, supporting the key construction methods for Steel, Reinforced Concrete, and Precast Concrete.

 

In this space, Revit is considered as a multi-material modeling and documentation authoring environment to capture both Design-intent and Fabrication execution as appropriate.

 

Create

 

rr014.png

These are modeling and documentation investments related to capturing the intent of design and providing detailed instruction for further production and construction execution.  The information created is used downstream and consumed by functionalities in the remaining themes. The purpose is to enhance Revit so that it can help in transitioning from traditional 2D CAD documentation tools to BIM-based modeling and documentation authoring. Our goal is to let designers and engineers provide accurate design intent models and give engineers and detailers the ability to develop models to a higher level of fidelity for fabrication and installation purposes. In a nutshell, our investments are focused on making modeling easy.

 

Optimize

 

rr015.png

Optimization is the process of refining a model and making it aligned with several criteria related to quality and completeness, structural analysis, code design and constructability. Our investments in this area are centered around BIM-centric structural analysis and code checks, as well as structural contribution to the generative design and parameter-driven optimization of forms and model configurations. This includes a fabrication level of detail.

 

Connect

 

rr016.png

We are looking at ways to facilitate project-centric collaboration among structural stakeholders, from the conceptual phase through to detailed design and fabrication. When this focus is combined with the instant connectivity that cloud, social, and mobile technologies provide, successful hand-offs between stakeholders involve integrated model data. As part of the focus on collaboration, we seek to understand and support each stakeholder, recognizing their unique perspectives and concerns, their needs for differing levels of model fidelity, and their review approval processes. By improving structural workflows across products and by consolidating functionality around key platforms to provide a higher level of automation, we are working to streamline the overall process and support more effective collaboration among structural stakeholders.    

 

Extend

 

rr017.png

Our main goal is to support the full project lifecycle, extending from the office to the shop and the field. That’s why we’re making investments that enable model information consumption for manufacturing and installation. This includes support for paperless design to construction processes, as well as working to make fabrication and installation instruction delivery tasks modern and automated. This will enable broader accessibility to information across the full project lifecycle.

 

 

IN CLOSING

 

There are a variety of other discussions and work related to connecting workflows from design through to fabrication and beyond.  So, if you don’t see something listed here, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t on our radar.

 

We’ll post updates periodically, and your feedback helps!  Let us know what you think. If there are specific areas of interest, you can submit requests through Revit Ideas - http://www.autodesk.com/RevitIdeas  

 

If you would like to provide feedback on these capabilities, we would be happy to involve you in our beta program (Revit Preview).  Reach out to revit.preview.access@autodesk.com to join Revit Preview.

 

Thanks!

The Factory

Sasha Crotty is the Director of Autodesk’s AEC Design Data team. Her team is focused on increasing the accessibility of AEC data to enable more efficient workflows and greater design insights. She joined Autodesk, Inc., in 2005 as a developer for Revit Structure. She went on to lead the Revit Structure Development Team before switching gears into product management. For the next 10 years, Sasha was responsible for an increasing portion of the Revit platform & services, including Revit's multi-disciplinary tools, the Revit API, Revit Cloud Worksharing part of Autodesk BIM Collaborate Pro, and the launch of the Forge Design Automation API for Revit. Sasha holds a BA in Architecture and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MBA from Boston University. In her spare time Sasha enjoys growing miniature orchids and traveling around the world.
99 Comments
Anonymous
Not applicable

thank you Smiley Happy

releasing the roadmap is the best thing you have done, its like treating your clients as if they are shareholders.

plesseym
Contributor

Wow. !! I love this.

 

Now that the Revit team has started this magnificent gesture of sharing, is it too much to hope that the Autocad team will follow suite.

frank.pepping
Enthusiast

Thanks for being open to the Revit community by sharing the information what we can expect in future release(s). Keep up the good work. Smiley Happy 

DarrenP
Consultant

yes awesome

i would recommend joining the Revit Beta so you can hands on with any future features

MZouheir_MSDL
Community Visitor

Thank you Sasha we appreciate !

maher.chebaklo
Explorer
Thank you Sasha.
Just wanted to add that MEP are 3 letters for three disciplines but somehow Autodesk always ignores the one in the middle.
Show the E some dev love.
jtaft
Explorer

Thank you Sasha, for the look ahead. As an electrical engineer, you may have noticed the large gaping holes in the Revit MEP product for electrical engineers.

 

1. Revit's handling of Lighting Controls is total inadequate in today's construction environment. We have relay panels, room controls, wired, wireless, line voltage sensors, low voltage sensors, wireless sensors. Who is the person that heads this up, do they talk to anyone that actually makes controls?

 

2. It looks from the road map the the single line diagrams issue may be finally get resolved. Don't screw it up and think power distribution is the only thing electrical engineers need to diagram. Telecommunication systems & instrumentation loop diagrams are just a few examples that could benefit. Make it flexible enough so that it doesn't become a half useful feature, that no one ends up using because of its incompleteness.

 

3. Controls, PLC and instruments, why do you keep forcing us back to autocad, If you don't want to build it, give us the tools so that we can build it ourselves. (that means being able to define new categories, family parameters, etc)

 

4. Supports and hangers for conduit and cable tray.

 

5. User definable cable tray. (Ladder, Solid, basket, etc.)

 

6. User created systems for electrical conduit and cable tray. (Normal, Emergency, Critical, Telecommunication, HV voltage, other, etc)

 

7. Fix the vertical justification (top and bottom) for conduit issue, Electricians don't measure from the abstract trade size they measure from the exterior of the conduit or to the center.

 

8. Light fixtures have had muti-tap voltages or universal voltages for most of the last half century. Why do I have to creating different types for each voltage system? I'm not buying different items, it is literally the same item being used but we accommodated Revit instead of Revit accommodating us. Of all the major engineering firms in my area I can not think of a single one that uses Revit for the light fixture schedule.

 

9. Footers for Schedules, seems obvious but yet we don't have them.

 

There are so many more issues but it is lunch time and I need to run.

mjnowen
Enthusiast

Revit Rendering API?

jeremytammik
Autodesk

Thank you, Sasha!

timwaldock5907
Advocate

Thanks Sasha,

It is great to see Autodesk being more open about future directions - it can only be a positive thing for customers and developers.

 

When I see a big tick on a green box, I am sure that it must be satisfying for your team, as it looks like a completed task.  Yes it often is, but in many cases it is only the first step on the road to introducing new tools.  For example I see "SAT and Rhino Import" in v2017.1 - this is a good start and an improvement over previous capabilities;  however, we hope to see it taken a step further, so that we can apply subcategories and materials to the imported models (or parts of the models).  I have seen many, many new features introduced, which needed further refinement but often have not gone anywhere after that first release - leaving the Autodesk Product Managers with a big tick against a product but the customers only partly satisfied or even worse, frustrated.

 

I do realise that this public roadmap needs to look clean and readable, so you may not be able to include subtleties such as ongoing tweaks to new features.  Keep up the good work and please continue to keep us informed in public forums such as this.

timwaldock5907
Advocate

Following on from my previous comment, it is really good to see the features listed under "Strengthen", which are a direct response to user voting on the 'Revit Ideas' site.  In the past we have seldom seen this link between what users request and what Autodesk decides to work on. The top voted 'OR in filter rules' will be hugely popular if this is implemented.

 

Can I suggest that you explain what some of them mean - eg. 'Multiple Selections'.  The simplest way might be to put a hyperlink on the image to the description in 'Revit Ideas'.  Some of the other 'Squares' could do with an explanation - I'd love to know what 'Shared Terrain' means.

anthonygelatka
Community Visitor

Any news on whether Revit will be able to background process over other computers? Be great to have this much requested functionality

mansellred5
Observer

I would like an easier way of using and assigning materials.

as an infrequent user, I spend ages going over the same complicated stuff.

 

please, is there a simple way.

like telling something they are red brick instead of brown brick etc, maybe with a special annotation button that can do all the complicated stuff in the background.

 

regards

geoffm

rajmirch
Observer

We have an internal Render Farm as producing more realistic renders is very important for our practice. Please can we have some indication around what's happening regarding opening the API to enable 3rd parties to develop and integrate Revit Rendering into their pipelines/products.

studiofacchetti
Contributor

implement the steel connections with all profiles also European, and perhaps it would be appropriate as part of the steel has been implemented, the part concrete is then implemented by replacing the defective Revit Extensions.
Also possibility of automation and creation of shop drawings as in Advanced Steel or Tekla. #hope

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@jtaft, thanks for your suggestions. The best place to provide enhancement ideas to the development team is in Revit Ideas. Here are our current Electrical suggestions. If you don't see your ideas there, please post them! 

lennon.mcduffie
Community Visitor

Sasha,

 

Thanks for the update. I am really looking forward to the workflow with Revit MEP and P&ID.  Using Revit for plant design lacks that element, there are others but this was big.

 

 

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@mjnowen@rajmirch, a Rendering API is currently not on our roadmap. Please vote for the idea in Revit Ideas.

JoshMason
Observer

Wow this is great! Would love to hear more about the Materials API. Cross platform? 3DMax/Maya/etc?

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@timwaldock5907. Hi Tim, thanks for your feedback. I totally understand what you mean, there have unfortunately been times in the past when our teams have moved on too quickly. In this case, however, the green checkbox is a way to let customers know about features that have recently been delivered. We often find that some customers we talk to are not aware of cool new capabilities that are already available to them, particularly with our R2 and now .1 releases. A couple of notable examples above of where we are continuing the work include Dynamo Player (inputs, script management) and Perspective Views (uncropped perspective).

 

That said, ensuring that we bring features a sufficient level of completion is a two-way conversation. That's why we've made our roadmap public - now you can see where we are going. If something is missing I sure hope it's logged and voted for in Revit ideas. I realize I may sound like a broken record here, but we are regularly evaluating what we see in Revit Ideas to determine if there are improvements we can make that are not already in our plans. It is a good way to raise visibility if we missed something important.

 

Regarding more details about the "squares." As you can see this is the beginning of a new blog. We hope to share more info with you here as we go forward. Please stay tuned. I also talked a little bit about some of these projects in my RTC presentation.

 

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@anthonygelatka@mansellred5@studiofacchetti - these all sound like great suggestions for Revit Ideas. Thanks for taking the time to share!

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@JoshMason, the materials API work is geared towards filling a significant gap in the Revit API which doesn't allow access to the properties that appear on the Materials Appearance tab. Thanks.

JanUsinger
Enthusiast

When I was reading the introduction I was very delighted to see the category "Strengthen".

However, in my opinion there does not seem to be anything major planned under this category.

 

Just like Tim Waldock already mentioned earlier, there are quite a few gaps in the software that Autodesk may have addressed in the past but with a halfhearted effort (e.g. stairs/ railings makeover in 2013, unstable groups,...). 

Yes, I and others have submitted these items already on the Revit Ideas site.

 

We would be way happier for the development team to focus more on fixing existing gaps than adding more features (with even potentially more gaps).

 

I do appreciate that Autodesk is trying to be more transparent and is listening to customer feedback. 

mansellred5
Observer

agree 100% jan,

another of thgose "gaps" has to be the clunky materials tools, creating , modifying , blah , blah, blah , too complicated.

dazza1639
Advocate

Great looking roadmap with plenty of promise. I would like to add a couple of things, 

  1. Please improve IFC import and export. The file sizes are ridiculous and the speed of importing and exporting is very slow, sometimes it is an over night job. We need to import the IFC of the steelwork to model the external composite cladding, even if we use an optimized version of the IFC, with all of the bolts and internal steelwork turned off, it can be a painful process. The same goes for the export.
  2. Structures and MEP, have had a lot of development time, and now have a great tool set. I think that it is time that the Third main sub-contract on a project got some love. Please can we have some building envelope specific tools? A good start would be a rework of the curtain wall tool to allow the creation of curtain walls, the way that they are built, mullions are not broken at every transom position. 

It is a great start and all of your hard work is appreciated, but the time has come for Revit to graduate from an Architects/Engineers design tool, to a BIM building detailing tool that can be used for construction and fabrication of the parts contained within the model.

AWZH_DEJE
Observer

Thanks for sharing the road map!

 

We miss enhancements on the electrical part of Revit....

 

Here some of them:

 

_Enhancements on System families like cable trays (Ladder, Solid, Basket, etc)

 

_Categorys like Conductor Rails and Cables in 3D. Sometimes when the cablethickness is big enough, we have to use pipes to model  bigger cables. Sometimes its almost better to Modell Cables in AutoCAD using a 3D Polyline.

 

_Link and Sync Revit information with Electrical CAD Systems. It would allow better and safer plan production in Revit. Less typing Errors less work!

 

_Enhancements of scalability of detailfamilies, symbols and text. Electrical planners have a lot of symbols in DWG Format. I suggest not to overload Revit with 2D Information like Tags and Symbols. But we still need to produce a few plans. It would be nice to have a concept similar like the Annotation scaling of AutoCAD.

 

_Category hangers is missing in Revit.

 

Regards

 

 

ttourangeau_svn
Enthusiast

Finally, a roadmap! This is awesome!

 

The most alarming thing though? Still no consideration of PDF placement on sheets

 

Here's the thing - Architects produce drawing sets. Part of assembling a drawing set involves bringing a lot of disparate parts together. Whether it's spreadsheets or other drawings or municipal documents that are required to be sheeted, the ability to place a PDF on a sheet has long been sought after as it has always been necessary, and will continue to be. Other software (namely ArchiCAD) has done this for years, and years, and years. 

 

When will you guys be putting this on the roadmap, at least? Seriously - come on. Enough already. It's one of the top voted Ideas. 

dcallowayVMPLX
Explorer

This is GREAT guys! Thanks! The only thing that I ask, is please do not forget that there is an "E" in MEP... I know you've seen the wishlist and from our point of view the few things that we're asking for for electrical 3D coordination should NOT be impossible to be done, as all we want are a few "modified" things that already exist, but they need to be system made to accommodate our trade. (Duct Banks, Busway, and Flex Conduit) And YES WE ALL NEED HANGERS!!!

Regards!

RicWeber.Design
Enthusiast

Sasha,

You've mentioned and promoted the Revit Ideas site several times, and I agree, it is a great benefit to have that input directly to Autodesk.  However, we have had input (or so we thought) for several years on the AUGI wishlist site.  We were told that those wishes (ranked by voting) were being passed on to Autodesk directly and were being used as consumer input.  My question now is, with the introduction of the Ideas sites, should we simply forego following and posting and voting on AUGI's wishlist and use only the Autodesk Ideas site for suggestions?  Is input from AUGI being taken and used along with the input from the Ideas site?  Are the two sources of ideas/wishes treated equally? 

 

Ric

 

 

 

 

Tyrone.Marshall
Participant

Thank you, Autodesk.

 

While I think this a good move to post your plans for the Revit products. I truly think there can be much more detail and innovation in how you develop this going forward. E-on software published a public roadmap, but they use Trello which engages the audience and makes it more of a lean process for their development goals:

https://trello.com/b/CH54lnry/vue-roadmap

 

I look forward to hearing more about your roadmap and more innovation regarding that process as well with more details.

Thank you,

 

 

marcin
Enthusiast

Finally!!! What took you so long?

 

One of the things which is not clearly named among the Revit improvements being done and badly needed is CONSISTENCY within Revit. It means that in different situations (e.g for Floors and Ceilings) the same tool (e.g. edge profile) should:

1. Exist

2. Work in the same way

Currently in the above and many other cases it is not happening what results in confusion among users, extra time needed for learning and overall impression of Revit as a messy and random rather then well designed software.

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@RicWeber.Design, that's a really good question! We highly value the feedback and engagement of all our user groups, especially AUGI.  We also partner and work with Revit User groups around the world to gather feedback and requests.  The Revit Ideas page is certainly not the only way to provide feedback and ideas, though it is the only location where you will see direct responses from the product team. 

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@Tyrone.Marshall, thanks for the input. It's great to see roadmap examples from other products and teams. As we start to share roadmap info more regularly we'll keep evaluating to make sure we're using the best technologies for the job. 

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@marcin, you're absolutely right. We can do a lot to make Revit easier to learn and use by including more consistency. That said, it really helps us to understand which areas are most valuable to fix first, so I hope you've filed specific areas of inconsistency that affect you most in Revit Ideas. I'd suggest adding a "consistency" tag so we can easily find them.

Chad-Smith
Advisor

I like the roadmap and overall the plan looks pretty good, there is far too much emphasis on integrating Civil 3D into Revit.

While C3D to Revit is nice, Autodesk continues to fail when it comes to providing architectural site modelling tools. Once the survey data is brought into Revit that is usually the end of the surveyors role and the start of the landscape/architect to design the site. The importance of C3D data to Revit is far less than the follow on site modelling in Revit for the remainder of the project.

 

Over the past number of releases Architecture has received the lowest number of improvements when compared to Structure and MEP. I hear this from my customers every year. But the area where the greatest set of previsouly untouched feature improvements could be made are at the site modelling level.

 

As I said the roadmap looks great, but very disappointing to still see site modelling improvements left off, and in particular I feel for the landscape architects who are left wanting to be included in the Revit platform.

marcin
Enthusiast

Dear Sasha, I have a list of about 140 problems and bugs in Revit, collected over several years. Some of them you can see on my website RE-VIT.COM, others were communicated directly to Autodesk in various ways, usually with little effect. An extreme case, which happened to me was when a bug reported to the Revit team at two AU conferences (2011 and 2012) and then followed up by e-mails took FOUR YEARS TO FIX (seriously). If you need details, I would be happy to provide.

 

So your statement that "We can do a lot to make Revit easier to learn and use by including more consistency" is not very helpful. We all know that Autodesk can and should do many things, but the point is that it has NOT been doing it over recent years. It is really surprising why you guys need "help to understand" many obvious bugs and flaws of Revit (like that Text and Dimension Types cannot be transferred from family to family). If you had a proper testing procedures and a team of building industry professionals (not programmers), who try to do real-life design with Revit, you would have come across this and tens of other problems long long ago.

 

This year things seem like slowly beginning to move in the right direction, but we need to wait and see the real effects. And it may take a lot of time to catch up with all those issues accumulated over years of moderate (to put it politely) activity in Revit development .

ttourangeau_svn
Enthusiast

@marcin YES. "If you had a proper testing procedures and a team of building industry professionals (not programmers), who try to do real-life design with Revit, you would have come across this and tens of other problems long long ago."

 

I've been saying this for so. ****. long. Revit reeks of "built by programmers". case in point: Revit Architecture. ArchiCAD is made for putting drawing sets together. So is InDesign. Revit? Not even close. If they had a real-life architect on staff who produces drawing sets (or even as a consultant), they would learn so freaking much about how a set goes together and what would facilitate it that they would realize how wrong they've been doing it for so long. That you still can't have sheets automatically name/number themselves in a drawing set (and that you even have to find your own workarounds to make a drawing set) is, to be frank, a complete embarrassment. Not to mention how cumbersome it is to place images, that you still can't place a pdf on a sheet, that you can't associate drawing sets with specific printers, that you can't even set up a sheet with limits in the intuitive way that AutoCAD Layouts, Indesign, or ArchiCAD do... the list goes on and on.

 

Yet what do they focus on? Formit integration. Civil 3D integration. Having real architects to consult (and not just blindly going to a community which is a very small subset of all users to pick the "most voted on ideas") would do so, so much for their user base and everyone's satisfaction with the software. 

Mathew.a.MIller
Enthusiast

 Thank you for sharing this.

 

Reading it I like a lot of what I am seeing, I am however disappointed with the modernization sections. You list that you want to modernize the Properties Palette but you make no mention of modernize the Project Browser(palette) I know the community has been screaming for the project browser to be updated(split into at lest three palettes) for several years. So for that not to be ob the Road map is disappointing.

marcin
Enthusiast
Matthew, the problem is that there is SO MANY areas of Revit, which have not
been touched for years and so are in an urgent need of improvement, that
whatever Autodesk puts into their "roadmap", it will always be not enough.



Marcin Klocek
Chris_D_UK
Advocate

Sasha, thanks for sharing the roadmap. It's quite a modest roadmap... hopefully that means it's your short-term road map...

 

I'm very disappointed to see that you still haven't recognised that architects design sites as well as buildings. You ignore site layout altogether in your roadmap, when it's the single greatest weakness of the program! Interoperability with Civil 3D is a side issue compared to the lack of site design tools for architects. Formit has next to no site design tools. Infraworks is a dead-end program which has no interoperability with Revit. Civil 3D isn't aimed at architects and is far too engineering-focussed for architect's site design. We can and do design our sites in Revit, but it's PAINFUL and needs serious development. If that's not even on the roadmap, then god help us all!

 

I'm also disappointed that Landscape design is still not on your radar. Autodesk don't even offer a landscape design application (never mind one which integrates with Revit), which is why AutoCAD LT remains the dominant software for Landscape design. This can't go on though, as Landscape needs to be part of site design, which needs to be part of the BIM process. Autodesk are almost BLIND to this fact.

 

Please throw us some crumbs

 

 

marcin
Enthusiast
Exactly. There are many other issues that Autodesk is blind to. There must
be something seriously wrong with the whole process of strategizing the
development, coding it and then testing. Autodesk needs to implement some
major management changes.



Marcin Klocek
RicWeber.Design
Enthusiast

If you have suggestions for the formatting of this Roadmap, I suggest that we utilize the Revit Ideas site using a category of "Documentation" and a keyword of "Roadmap".  Sasha can find it there, I'm sure. 

 

If you have suggestions for the content of the Roadmap, get out there and vote for the ideas that you like the most!  If your idea is not out there yet, add it and try to get some backing for it. 

 

Thank you.

 

Ric

 

PS, I have found that the search engine on Revit Ideas does not work with Mozilla Firefox, so I have to use IE for that site... (btw, where would I submit that issue?)

ttourangeau_svn
Enthusiast

@marcin they're basically just blind to how people use the software, and seem to focus instead on how they think people should use the software. it's set up just fine if you know exactly what you're doing from the beginning, but that's never how a project goes. 

 

@RicWeber.Design yeah, the ideas thing worked out real well for PDF importing, didn't it? overwhelming community support (let's not forget that the number of people here and in the Ideas community are a tiny fraction of the user base) for the idea, and in the end it was "Oh, sorry, it's not going to happen for the foreseeable future".

 

"If your idea is not out there yet, add it and try to get some backing for it." - you realize that the entire userbase is a group of professional practitioners, right? that's the ultimate flaw with this "crowdsourcing" approach - everyone's busy using the software, and very few people have the time or gumption to go onto a website (or variety of websites) to "build support" for a feature in a software program. I don't know how others feel, but I perhaps Autodesk should be reaching out more to actual power users as opposed to standing back passively and saying "welp, X didn't get enough upvotes so we're not working on it" -  I can guarantee you that many features are sorely needed, but the users are too busy doing actual work to complain about it.

marcin
Enthusiast

 @The whole idea of voting for what should be improved in Revit at first glimpse seems correct and just, but really is not. It looks like Autodesk has no clue at all about what should be done and what should be done first in Revit, so they reach for, to a certain extent random, advice from a group of users that happen to know about the Ideas site and happen to vote.

But there are so many obvious things which Revit lacks or which do not work that fixing them alone could keep the Autodesk Revit team busy for years (especially with the current pace of Revit development) without the need to wait for "voting". Yes, the Ideas site shows that Autodesk tries to listen to us users, but it may well be the main purpose of it - to show "Look we are really doing something!". 

What users need however are the RESULTS, not showing to us how hard Autodesk is trying. And the results over recent years were poor...

sasha.crotty
Community Manager

@RicWeber.Design, problems and suggestions for improvements to the Autodesk community tools can be posted to the Community Forum and Community Ideas respectively.

andyhandley
Explorer

@Chris_D_UK is spot on with his comments about landscape and the current site tools in Revit. As architects all our projects are based on sites and include the need to provide a complete design solution that extends to resolving context and access. We do not always have the luxury of a Civil Engineer (CE) or Landscape Architect (LA) on each project. When we do have a LA on the project they are not working in Revit because the tools don't exist. When we have a CE on the project they commonly want the architect to layout the access and establish the levels required, but again the tools are limited. A common retort to this point is, 'learn C3D', but this misses the point, the tools in Revit should be better.

I know @Chris_D_UK will disagree with me, but personally I'm not adverse to the tools being external to Revit, we just need some tools please!

ttourangeau_svn
Enthusiast

@andyhandley and @Chris_D_UK, there's also the fact that there's a desperate need for simple tools. Yeah, 100% of my projects need a landscape component... but 95% of the time I just need to make a schematic site model that simplifies the site conditions and exists just to give the renderings/imagery a bit of life. I tried to use the Site Design add-in but holy is it ever over-complicated. In the end I just ended up making a bunch of floor types.

Chris_D_UK
Advocate

@andrew.handley I'd be happy that the site tools were elsewhere in Building Design Suite, e.g. in Formit or Infraworks as long as there is a true bi-directional link with Revit (not import/export) so that we can produce coloured site plans with paving patterns, rendered 3D site views, scheduled trees and plants etc FROM INSIDE REVIT as our principal BIM authoring package. I don't want Sheet Sets in different software!

 

@ttourangeau_svn yes the Site Design plug-in is worse than nothing. It's neither usable nor stable on the tiniest of sites, and also uses non-native practices which contaminate the model.

brumloop
Contributor
Nice to see so many improvements in MEP and Structure wthin the past years.... But if Autodesk forces the architects to switch to Archicad or other programs to make THEIR work efficient, i doubt that all the efforts they make to collaboration make any sense. The average Architectural Office cannot afford tons of additional programs for thousands of $ to create a building that easy way as with other BIM software it can be done since decades. It does not look like the long waiting will end, so decisions will have to be made soon.... AD bites the hands that feed them!
ttourangeau_svn
Enthusiast

@brumloop it's nice to see that someone else gets it. I'm starting up discussions with our graphisoft reseller because Autodesk recently treated us very poorly (without apology), the price/license changes are ridiculous, and none of the improvements listed on the roadmap will make the software more productive any time soon. at the end of the day, productivity is king - Autodesk seems obsessed with their software whereas other companies are primarily concerned with their users.