1st impression from Revit 2010...

[dpasa]

1. The ribbon is nice, not hard to learn... Getting a bit dizzy while opening and closing menus but it will get better soon...

2. The new tools although I haven't tested them, are like no other modeler and this is not good because what is the meaning to make a UI that looks like all other Adesk apps and have a modeler that is 100% different from any other I've seen... I didn't like the new tools but is too early and I am a bit tired so I will add to this comment after some days...

3. Rendering is almost the same but I don't like it anyway so don't take my opinion seriously, I use other renderers.

4. The splash screen sometimes shows that it is not responding...

5. The family editor is just the same, nothing improved... no new tools, no better looking families... and I must say that Revit models are ugly...

6. DirectX is nice and generally Revit 2010 runs ok, maybe better than Revit 2009

7. The additions and the changes in general don't justify one year's work, and a subscription fee of 700€. Let me give some examples of some new features that Adesk is selling as improvements...

a. New UI... Nice to look at but nothing better than the last one, not less mouse clicks or better window handling.... How much can we celebrate the fact that now we can resize the properties windows?

b. New spell checker... We have zero text tools and we worry about the spell checker?

c. Massing tools.... You will be surprised how Revit team found a way to make models like no other app, not even close to what their own Max uses... Of course there are revit experts that can do very nice things but they want to sell Revit to everyone, not just to 100 guys... and if I have to learn something it would prefer to learn better ways for presenting my project while modeling would be easy and powerful... No need to say that 99% of the users won't use it...

d. Do you have Max, or Civl3d? Because Adesk assumes we have both, since the only export options except dwg are these... FBX and ADSK... Of course FBX is special too, just for Max and not any max, just for Max 2009 or 2010.... Obj and 3ds are unknown to them. Of course there is also DGN.... (!)

e. Divide and pattern surfaces look nice but not for every day's work too...Actually they look impressive, I don't know how easy and practical they are...

f. So, did they do anything for everyday's work? One year after? Let's see...
Family editor is just the same, the new Form making tools are not there as they should...
Visibility and Graphics area is probably what they worked on and they did a nice job there but this is not modeling.
The new spot slope is nice but as it says to known issues it is not for ramps or rails... I guess this was too hard to do or they don't know that the first thing we show when making ramps is the slope...
Ok, let's not forget.... they improved the documentation..."Architectural Workflows" (???)

g. Revit content... Compare every model in the Metric or Imperial library folder (modeled by expert Revit users I suppose) to hundreds of thousands models (many of them are free) from misc sites like turbosquid or companies like evermotion etc... Then you HAVE TO admit that Revit models especially for furniture, sanitation, kitchen, closets etc... are ugly... Not only that, but you CAN'T use all these nice models unless you can find them in dwg or dxf and this is not easy... not even 3ds is allowed.
But even if you could, you would probably never be able to render them because Revit couldn't assign materials to them.

If you read the "What's new" section of Revit2010 help file, that's all... there are 4-5 sections but no "New modeling tools" or "Modeling improvements"...So, let's celebrate, it seems we have the perfect modeling application that needs no improvement...
I really hate to be mean but I like Revit, it is an expensive software and I would expect to se more serious development after all this advertisement... And please, erase the wishlist forum, I feel like an idiot, posting there....

So, let's wait for Revit 2011 for site tools, improvement of Mental Ray, family editor with new modeling tools, probably fixed UI issues, and whatever bothers you...


Thank you for your patience reading this long post....

[m20roxxers]

your forgeting about the family API, conversion to Direct X is alot of work and will have big benefits in the future, if you haven't knuckled down on the panelisation then your missing alot of the benefits of the facade options.

[jeffh]

Couple of things I want to clarify.

ADSK file is not only used from Revit to Civil 3d, it is also used in the Inventor to Revit workflow. There is no assumption Revit users use all of these applications. Both FBX and ADSK files intend to facilitatie workflows between the Autodesk family of products.

The improvements in the documentation was not limited to "Architectural Workflows" This was a new section designed for brand new users to Revit so you may not find it helpful. This section does however contain some animations. we are expermenting with ways to include more of these and this new section was a way for us to introduce them to understand their effectivness and see how they can be included in other sections moving forward.

The other sections of the help were worked on as well but they are not called out specifically as "new"

The entire set of tutorials was re-written. 2 of the tutorial lessons were also animated this year as part of the move to include this more in our documentation. Moving forward we are also planning additional tutorials covering more advanced topics than we have covered in the past.

[SCShell]

The entire set of tutorials was re-written.

Hey there,
I bet I know who to thank for those!
Thanks!
Jeff, do you think 2010 64bit is going to be faster than 2009 64bit on my new i7 quadcore machine?
Steve

[sjsl]

Well I guess Revit's competition has nothing to fear with this release (yawn). Aside from the UI you are right, please get rid of the Wishlist, it is of no value.

Plain and simple this release is appears to be nothing more than a positioning release, so why do we have to pay for it. It should be a interim release after they give us 1% of our Wishlist first.

Unless, my clients ask for it, I will wait until 2011 to udgrade, I for one have no use for anything they put in this release, sad really.

[dpasa]

I have to apologize for my attitude but believe me, like many others here, I work many hours for every single euro that goes in my pocket so I hate to see that I get nothing that I really need...
I have to apologize to Jeff too, I am sure that people in Autodesk also work, they don't drink coffee for 8 hours, however, it is obvious that there is something wrong with the result... Nothing like we need or expected to be... So, why don't they fix what we want not in the next ten releases but today, and add slowly the tutorial animations and the documentation improvements... This can take 2-3 releases, nobody will complain and I am sure that every one here get's much more help from these forums than from reading the documentation...
Not to mention the useless error reports and the stupid dialog that goes with it... I think that this should be fixed before the tutorial animations....

Let's face it... Autodesk can't have the luxury of giving animated tutorials when they can't even explain an error when it happens (this would really help the new user) and when they don't first make us who have been paying subscription for 3-4 years happy....

[iankids]

First Impressions........

1. The Ribbon: In of itself, not too bad. As with dpasa, I will probably get used to it in a shortish while. However what is a major pain in the butt with the ribbon are two issues.
(a) The lag from when one clicks command to when the command begins is something I think become very irritating very quickly for me. I don't want a smoooooth transition - just get me there so I can model the wall or place the window etc.
(b) When saving, from time to time, the whole ribbon simply disappears off the screen. It may go missing for several seconds where in its place is a white blank area. When the save is complete, it will reappear - but it is very disconcerting nevertheless.

One of the possible benefits (although I am sure not intended) of the new GUI is that it may force us to become more diligent in learning the keyboard shortcuts.

One improvement which has come with the GUI is the ability to be able to view components within the model as icons. If you click on a window for example, the properties dialogue box will show the icon for that window. If you wish to change this for another type, you can scroll through the ones loaded in the project and get an icon for each. I like this aspect very much.

2. General Speed: 2010 certainly seems faster than 2009 (but not as light on resources as 2008 ), and so is more pleasant to use particularly in 3d shaded mode (which was unusable in 2009)

3. New Massing tools: I will never use them, so have no comment one way or the other.

4. New slope tool: Yep it's nice, will use it very single project. It will save me about 1 minute of typing per project.

5. Rendering - pretty much the same - not good, not bad

That's about as far as I have delved in the 30hrs I have had it on the box. Will keep playing and maybe come up with something else, but for now C- is the score

Cheers,

Ian

[iankids]

Couple of things I want to clarify.

ADSK file is not only used from Revit to Civil 3d, it is also used in the Inventor to Revit workflow. There is no assumption Revit users use all of these applications. Both FBX and ADSK files intend to facilitatie workflows between the Autodesk family of products.

.........................

Jeff,

I actually think that that was the nub of dpasa's complaint that Autodesk facilitates (or if one was less polite - pushes) users to other programs within their product range whilst at the same time excluding export options which are, if not industry standard (obj, 3ds), are at least very widely used, to ensure users are not tempted to use programs which they may prefer such as Kerkythea, Artlantis, Accurender etc.

Wikipedia describes obj as:

"OBJ (or .OBJ) is a geometry definition file format first developed by Wavefront Technologies for its Advanced Visualizer animation package. The file format is open and has been adopted by other 3D graphics application vendors and can be imported/exported from Cheetah3D, Daz3d's Daz Studios, e-Frontier's Poser, Autodesk's Maya, Softimage|XSI, Blender, MeshLab, Misfit Model 3D, 3D Studio Max, and Rhinoceros 3D, Hexagon, Newtek Lightwave, Art of Illusion, GLC Player, Wings3d etc. For the most part it is a universally accepted format."

You will notice that Autodesk allows the import of obj into Maya, 3dsMax.

I have no problem with Autodesk promoting their products by ensuring good interoperability between them, however I am disappointed that I am unable to export to common formats to try other rendering programs if I wish. This lack of export options is why software houses such as Accurrender, Artlantis and others (Kerkythea may offer in the next release) have a plugin module to provide an export to their programs.

Cheers,

Ian

[Alex Page]

Anyone noticed that when you go to the element properties and you select a material the material 'editor' doesnt default to the material assigned to the element?

Im finding it a bit of a pain, if I want to tweak the material for, say, rendering purposes I have to remember the exact name and then go looking for it...

[BomberAIA]

I am so use to Revit it's hard getting use to the Ribbon. I like the old Revit. I installed 64 Bit Vista on my Mac Pro using Boot Camp, then I installed Revit 64. I have 13 gigs of Ram. Once I updated my ATI 1900x Video card drivers for Vista 64, Directx worked fine in Revit. The performance improved a lot. Now I have to installed Revit on my MacBook Pro using Parallels. I will update when I test the performance. I haven't used 2010 much yet, but I will on Monday.