Revit 2010 News

Revit Architecture 2010 box

I’ve been seeing a number of new blog / news posts about the new Revit 2010 suite.  (Autodesk Press Release here)  Not a whole lot of information available at the moment, but that’s not too surprising considering its still over two months till release.  Still, a few new things to mull over. 

The biggest feature that I’ve seen in the promotional materials (and the thing that’s hardly been talked about, so far as I can tell) is enhanced functionality of curtain walls/systems.

new curtain wall tools?

I haven’t seen much of a description of what’s going on in the above image (taken directly from Autodesk’s press release), but what I’m seeing is the ability to do triangulated curtain walls, at the lease, and perhaps even non-rectangular curtain walls in general.  The bottom left image suggests to me that what’s actually going on is allowing the 3 sides of a panel to shift around into different shapes.  How will this affect making custom curtain wall panels? I don’t know.  I’m hoping that it will mean really enhanced parametrics on the part of the family editor, allowing us to really take advantage of the massing tools.  Up till now, if you had a non-rectangular curtain wall, you could only use system-family panels (ie Glazing, Empty, Solid, or Wall) in the non-rectangular panels.  Anything triangular, or even trapezoidal was severely limited.

One of the other big things, and what’s been getting more attention from what I can see, is the changes in user interface.  Revit will now join AutoCAD and a host of other pieces of software in integrating the new ‘Ribbon’ toolbar configuration.  I haven’t particularly liked it in acad and the Microsoft products I’ve seen it in so far, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it over time.  Who knows, maybe it really will offer enhanced productivity/efficiency like they suggest.   (Video tour of the new Ribbon here)

I’m looking forward to seeing this when it comes out.  I haven’t looked through the material for MEP and Structural yet, but I’m hoping they continue to evolve faster to get closer to the level of development in Revit Architecture.  What do you all think?