Spring is in the air and so are new releases of Autodesk products.  Now’s the time to take a moment from our busy schedules to enjoy the spring weather and sit back with your favorite reading beverage while I get into my favorite new features and functionality in Revit 2022. 

This year’s release of Autodesk Revit 2022 contains over 80 new and improved features across four key themes:

• Design Productivity – Authoring tool enhancements for all three disciplines (Architecture, MEP & Structure)
• Interoperability – Workflow enhancement between Revit and Autodesk product and third-party tools
• Documentation Efficiency – Improvements to schedules, tags, and other features that spans all three disciplines. 
• Developer Tools – Additional functionality with Dynamo and Revit’s API

Let’s look at some of these new and improved features, across three of those themes.

Design Productivity:

Tapered and Slanted Walls

In Revit 2021, Autodesk introduced the ability to slant a wall without having to go down the “Model-In-Place Component” road.  In 2022 we can now “Edit the Profile” of a slanted wall.

Figure 1 – Slanted Walls – Edit Profile

Tapered walls…yes!  We can now taper walls by changing their cross-section parameter to “Tapered” (Same place as the Slanted option) then select the “Edit Type” button to change the “Cross-Section Properties” for the wall.  Plus check on the “Variable” option in the Edit Assembly dialog.

Just like a slanted wall, we can change the orientation from “Vertical” to either “Slant Along the Exterior,” or “Slant Along the Interior,” for our wall-based families like windows.

Figure 2– Revit Tapered Walls

These two new features will give us greater control over our wall geometry.

Move Rebar in a Set

With almost all new releases of Autodesk Revit there are improvements to reinforcements, and this year it was a toss-up between the “By Two Points” or the “Edit Bars” tools.  I’m going with the “Edit Bars” feature, or “Move Rebar in a Set.”  This feature allows users to move or remove individual bars in rebar sets or area and path reinforcement systems.  This allows us to avoid clashes with other elements, openings, or rebar, all while maintaining the rebar set or systems. 

Figure 3 – Move & Remove Rebar is a Set

We no longer need to split a set into multiple sets, enabling us to be more efficient with our modeling efforts.

Fabrication Modeling Improvements

In earlier releases for Autodesk Revit, justified transition and non-center taps would be removed in the conversion of design intent elements.  Now, these fabrication parts are correctly placed in their location as design intent elements when using the design to fabrication tools. 

Additionally, quick connect allows you to fill a gap between a fitting and another straight section.  And my favorite enhancement is the “Route and Fill” option.  This allows you to add parts between open connectors, giving you one or more solutions to choose from depending on the service.

Figure 4 – Fabrication Modeling Improvements

We no longer need multiple workarounds or rework to accomplish our fabrication modeling efforts.

Interoperability:

My favorite new feature is the integration with FormIt Pro. We can now translate Revit elements into a FormIt Pro session with the new “3D Sketch” button.  But alas for this article, the new feature that all disciplines can benefit from is the ability to export to 2D PDF.

Native 2D PDF Export

Yep, that’s right!  Not print to PDF… but export to PDF natively.  This new feature gives users the ability to configure their PDF export much like printing, giving familiar size, zoom, paper placement, orientation, etc. options. Plus, when choosing to not “Combine selected views and sheets into a single PDF file,” we can set up naming rules, giving us the ability to generate PDF file names automatically based on project or shared name parameters.

Figure 5 – Revit Native 2D PDF Export

So… we no longer need to rely on third-party software or free PDF printer drivers to create our PDF files.

Documentation Efficiency:

With over 20+ new or improved features in this section alone ranging from five different tagging improvements, Grids in 3D views, and the ability to show wall core only in plan view.  I’m going with one of the five scheduling enhancements. 

Split Schedules Across Sheets

When working with a long schedule we have come up with a good handful of inventive ways to get them on separate sheets.  Not only do we have the ability to split a schedule we can also specify the destination sheets for the schedule segments.

Here’s how it works…  Have your schedule you wish to split and the first sheet the schedule is to be placed with the views tiled. 

1. Select your schedule then the “Split and Place” button on the far right of the ribbon.
2. In the Split Schedule and Place on Sheets dialog box check on the sheets you wish to split the schedule to
3. Then chose to either split the schedule equally or with a custom height
4. Select the “Split and Place” button
5. On the first sheet select the placement of the first schedule
6. Revit will automatically place the second split schedule in the same location on the selected sheet(s)

Figure 6 – Revit Split Schedules

The other scheduling enhancements are the ability to have shared instance parameters within a key schedule, the ability to filter schedules by “Family” and “Type” parameters, the ability to schedule worksets, and – for my MEP folks – we now an option of Auto-shading in Two-column panel schedules. 

All of these schedule enhancements give us better control over the display of our schedules in Revit projects. 

With over 80 new and improved features, I just couldn’t cover all of my favorites without turning this into a dissertation.  I would love to hear what your favorite new and improved feature(s) are.  Please share them down in the comment section below.