Revit 7, the best release yet!

The best release yet! I would certainly hope so. How many times has that been said? How about every time a new release comes out? Of course it is the best release - they are supposed to be improving the software. After all, who would upgrade if they marketed the software as the “worst release yet”? In all fairness Revit^® 7 is amazing. The added functionality and the enhancements to the existing features do make this an incredible release.

There are actually so many improvements in this release I don’t know that I can include all of them in this article. I will, however, touch on some of the more impressive enhancements. And, if you want to see for yourself, Revit 7 is available for download through the Autodesk website.


(A look at the new interface)

One of the biggest time consumers in Revit was changing the view properties and having to go into a dialog box each time you needed to change a scale or a detail level. Revit 7 has added a small toolbar to the bottom of the screen allowing quick, on-the-fly changes to scale, detail level, graphics style, shadows, cropping, and hide/isolate.

The most new and enhanced features lie within Families, Import/Export, Modeling, and Views. In the Family Editor, you can create a nested family with interchangeable subcomponents, such as one window family with three different shutter options. All nested components can be scheduled within the project. You can also create host sweep profiles with nested detail components.

For Import/Export, ACIS solids and regions from AutoCAD^® are now supported for import. You can also explode imported geometry to its next highest level using partial explode. There are new export to ODBC options such as wall phases, area schemes, and room associations, as well as the ability to export additional project information like design options, design sets, and project information.

Modeling enhancements have made Revit that much more flexible with the addition of the ability to use arcs to define slopes on a footprint roof. Walls can now be embedded within each other and you can also create vertically stacked walls by combining different wall types on top of each other.

Section views can now be segmented to show portions of your design within one view. A new type of view has been added called legends which allow you to create symbol legends. There are additional revision tracking tools. Arrays are now visible in all views so you can access arrays from any view, not just the one it was created in. Shadows have also been included in the view enhancements. You can define sun settings like time and location to control the intensity of the shadows.

These are just a few of the many great features and enhancements in the new Revit 7. Some additional areas of improvement include sketching, dimensioning, massing, editing and many more. I highly encourage you to check out these new features by downloading a free trial version of Revit 7 from the Autodesk website. If you are lucky enough to have received Revit 7, there is additional new feature information located in the help file.

I guess it is the best release yet!