The Worlds Largest REVIT project to date

Expanding the Panama Canal

It’s been called one of the seven wonders of the modern world. A century after it first opened, the Panama Canal continues to be a vital shortcut for global commerce – but now, almost half the world’s cargo ships are too large to fit through it.

This year, MHW Global’s redesign will change that.

Revit Model

 The Project

Expanding existing channels:

Widen -   21.3m / 70ft

Deepen -  5.4m / 18ft

Lengthen - 121m / 400ft

Create a new channel, with 3 new lock chambers on each side. Raise the maximum operating level of Gatun Lake, the primary water source for the locks

Check out the challenges at http://www.autodesk.co.uk/customer-stories/mwh-global

Learn more about some of the products MWH Global used to design the Panama Canal Expansion Project

            

New : Autodesk Live visualisation service

This month Autodesk - launched Autodesk Live, a visualisation service that turns a Revit model into an interactive, navigable, 3D environment with a click of a button. Once a designer has created a comprehensive 3D view of a model, they can send their project to the Autodesk Live cloud service, which will process it for real-time display and return an Autodesk Live file to their computer that is ready for navigation.

Users can select a landscape template to add context to their models, and convert rich, photorealistic content—people, vegetation, furniture, birds, and other entourage—into 3D objects for inclusion in the rendered environments as well.

Autodesk Live demo courtesy of Autodesk. See the video in full screen here

Revit models that are geolocated, users can toggle on sun controls to see how their project will experience daylight and shadows at any time of the day, any day of the year. Users can also turn on electric lights, assuming their Revit model incorporates fixtures and their layout, and access the BIM information of any object in their model while in Autodesk Live.

The objective of this software is to provide the interactive experience exported for viewing in Microsoft Windows or on the iPad with the free Autodesk Live viewer app.

Autodesk Live culminates the company’s 2015 updates to its rendering software 3ds Max and game engine Stingray.

Autodesk is developing the program to support VR technologies, such as HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, according to the company’s press release.

Contact TMS for more information.

What's New in Revit 2017

New Features Videos - Start with these videos provided as part of the help documentation if you prefer watching videos to reading my blog post.

Help Documentation links for What's New in Revit 2017

Architectural Enhancements in Revit 2017
Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing Engineering Enhancements in Revit 2017
Structural Engineering Enhancements in Revit 2017
Multi-Disciplinary Enhancements in Revit 2017 (called Platform in the past)
New in Revit 2016 R2 (features released with R2 late last year)

TOP FEATURES

Depth Cueing -
This allows you to apply a gradient override to make it more obvious which elements are farthest away compared to the elements that are closest to the cut plane of the view.

It applies to model elements, and graphic display effects, such as shadows and sketchy lines. It is not applied to annotation elements, line weight, line work, background images, or background color. When you've turned on and adjusted the settings you can export the view to an image file, print the view (uses raster processing ONLY) and/or add the view to a sheet (print/export that instead).

 

Hosted Railings-

You can now host your railings to the top faces of floors, slabs, slab edges, walls, and roofs.  Everything, such as balusters, will adjust accordingly.  All you have to do is select your host when sketching a railing... 

The main reason this is number two on my top-three is simple: emails.  I cannot tell you how many emails I have received in the last seven years asking why a railing can't be hosted to "X"...  Well, now you can host your railings to a few more categories! 

Global Parameters

We can associate global parameters with a type property for an element and with instance or type project parameters. They can also be assigned to a group (parameter group in Properties Palette). They can be moved and sorted within their assigned group(s). A schedule can be Filtered by a global parameter to find all elements that have a global parameter association or are missing that association.

Reference Planes - We can now create different Reference Plane sub-categories which can be given different graphic properties.

Have fun and explore all of the new exciting features available to enhance your workflows.