Learning Revit. Dang!

[Bill Gilliss]

I haven't been contributing here recently mostly because I've been immersing myself in Revit. I got the word in mid-August that my university department had sprung for a broad upgrade from ACA, including Revit, Inventor, 3D Studio, etc., so I had just a couple of weeks to immerse myself and throw together a syllabus, a classic case of staying a few weeks ahead of the students.

Let me say that I had really, really resisted having to learn a whole 'nother huge piece of software this late in my career, but the unanimous vote of our advisory panel (architects and interior designers) was that this was what they wanted their incoming employees to know how to use. Hard to ignore.

Anyway, once I dived in, with the help of Greg Demchak and others' Mastering Revit Architecture 2010, it has been simply exhilarating. It hasn't felt like "having to learn" at all -- more like "what cool stuff will I find out today?" Kid in a candy store.

I haven't done much in the way of final renderings yet -- my energies are still directed at the modeling tools, families, etc. -- but I'm looking forward to comparing the Revit version of nXt with the built-in rendering engine when I get to that point.

Just wanted to share my enthusiasm. Anybody else straddling the fence?

-Bill

[akinlolu olugboji]

I should but kept postponing it.

[Ros. Riha]

Glad to hear this, Bill:-)
In our office, we got couple of licenses, but we are still looking at the fence and gathering strength to start straddling.
Couple of months ago I held a speach on CAD convention. I was describing some tools and practices we created over years of using ACA. After the speech, there was a discussion, where I was told by plenty, that these issues we solve in ACA do not have to be solved or even thought of in Revit... In other words, Revit seems to be far more advanced than ACA.
Before we start implementing Revit here, I would like to know - if you or anybody else would be so kind to help - some answers. In order of iportance:
1. Is nXt implemented into Revit to full extent of nXt capabilities? last time I looked, it did not seem so...
2. How does Revit support teamwork? Last time I looked, it seemed not so good as in ACA: in ACA, we frequently have some 6 people working on the same project: 3 people are working each on different construct (floor), one guy is fiddling vith nXt on view (all constructs combined into whole building), one guy is generating sections from another view and last guy is creating sheets (actual drawings to be printed out)...and the marvel is that everything happens almost in realtime - once anybody saves a construct, other users are immediately notified and are able simply to reload to see most recent changes. As we are usually on clock, I would not like to lose this ability to cooperate truly...

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

No, the nXt implementation is not nearly as complete. I need to talk with the guys at Render Plus to see where we are in the process-- 2011 had presented some technical problems.

[martin]

just out of the blue, is there chance to use accurender with autodesk inventor?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

No-- not as a plugin anyway.

[martin]

thanx for the quick reply we are doing renew on our software and it may be inventore instead of autocad and a we quite like what accu does for us we trough just ask.
Ta

[Peter Milner]

Inventor comes bundled with AutoCAD mechanical which includes vanilla AutoCAD.
This is what I have.

[Jan Verzelen]

Starting to explore the great world of revit here also. Everything becomes so easy. Even exporting to dwg and rendering in acad with nxt

[Eric B]

 

I just found out that my old University has officially dumped AutoCAD training for its Architecture students in lieu of REVIT classes. (They actually phased it out over 2 years starting in 2009)

That means that AutoCAD as part of the curriculum lasted from 1996 to 2010. They had AutoCAD classes prior to that (1985) but they were optional computer studios vs. just drafting board studios.

Our office is about to make the big push to REVIT.

Have already done the export to AutoCAD from REVIT and then render in AR5, it works OK so long as you don't change the model and have to re-import it again. The lack of a trustworthy material assignment makes for this sort of drawing exchange labor intensive. (Much like Lightscape was back in 1997)

[Albert D Hart]

Rich Hart put out a new version of AccuRender nXt for Revit this week.

 

Quite a few things are working well.

 

Take a look at the AccuRender nXt for Revit forum

 

We posted a new version for Revit 2011, with these fixes:

• Added a dialog to assign Lighting Channels by the Lighting Family names. See Lighting Channels.
• Artificial Lights were not working in the last version posted.
• Fixed RPC rendering for some RPC families.
• Decals were not working in the last version posted. Also fixed Decals to correctly display transparent PNG files with an alpha channel.
• Added several post-processing filters and we now allow nXt Image editing in the Render Window. See Filters
• Fixed a problem where some incorrect Materials Reflections values were being exported from the Revit model.

The new version can be downloaded from: Downloads

This model has 2 ceiling lights, in addition to the 3 lamps shown. It also has daylight illuminating through the windows in the wall behind the camera.

Here are several decals placed on 2 walls in a Revit model.