We’re back!
Two years ago Inside the Factory went… well, inside the factory for a while. Recently we took a walk around the old place, blew off the dust, and did some remodeling, because we wanted to offer some news about what we’ve been working on.
The Building Authoring product team at Autodesk, (which includes Autodesk® Revit® and its nifty trademark symbols that Autodesk LegalTM loves so much) will be using this blog to provide updates on Autodesk’s Building Information Modeling (BIM) product lines. A number of folks on the Revit team will offer insight from the Factory floor into what we're working on and introduce you to some of the people behind the products.
To get things started, we’re providing everyone within reach of this blog the opportunity to test drive a hosted release preview of Revit called Sundial.
Autodesk Revit Sundial provides enhancements to Revit that are not currently included in the commercial release. We will be highlighting the many improvements in blog posts over the next days and weeks.
For those of you who try the release preview, please drop in here at Inside the Factory and let us know what you think. The hosting technology we’re using for the preview is itself experimental, so if you run into issues accessing the test, we’d like to know about those as well.
The quantity of available simultaneous sessions is limited, so you may run into delays if there are many people trying to access the preview at once. We'll keep the preview available for a few weeks, so please try again if you can't initially gain access.
Because this is an early in-progress release, there are no guarantees all the features you might see or read about will appear in a future release of Revit. Please keep this in mind when making any future purchasing decisions.
Anthony A. Hauck
Senior Product Line Manager
Will there be change logs for new enhancements available within Sundial posted anywhere?
Posted by: Alex Reyland | August 06, 2014 at 03:59 PM
Hello Anthony,
When I first looked at the post I thought it was add-ins regarding solar analysis and other similar things. It is only when I first started the software that I realized that Sundial is basically running Revit through Citrix.
I was, in my humble opinion and based on my Autodesk reseller, likely to be to only architectural firm (DMA architectes)in Montreal who's converted nearly 90% of its staff on Citrix, even employees running Revit and Autocad.
I have now switched to another firm but I truly miss it because we were getting so much flexibilty and power, it was amazing. I have to say however that after having tried the sample file it seemed a bit more jerky than when I used it. I was able to run Revit from the Iphone or Ipad (even on 3G) with similar performance. I even had a great exsperience working from home with high speed internet from a regular ISP, with results in performances equivalent to be working in the office.
With Autodesk partnering with Citrix in the recent years I always wondered how long it would take to develop that new market where you could be selling both licences and "hardware" therefore increasing revenue on the long term.
Anyhow, I'm glad to see that's coming and curious to see if it will pickup.
Cheers!
Posted by: Sebastien Dubois | August 06, 2014 at 04:48 PM
I like this idea of a publicly accessible Revit sandbox.
What I've tested so far:
'Load into Project and Close'
Simple idea, but I think is needed. Simply saves a small amount of time having to switch back and close the family when done.
'Reveal Constraints'
I originally looked at this tool in the basic sample project. I found it a little confusing, maybe due to the elements I was selecting.
So I fired up a new project and added a few basic elements and constraints and tried again.
This actually made some more sense.
Once I knew what I was looking at (the constraint and the associated 2 elements) I found the tool much easier to understand.
My only comment so far is that the revealed constraint could be made more bold. It gets a little lost in the geometry.
Posted by: Chad | August 07, 2014 at 05:22 AM
After reviewing Revit Sundial with the basic sample project, my MEP firm's electrical department is excited with some of the features presented and would be thrilled to see them integrated into Revit.
+ 'Sequence for power circuits'
We currently have a work around, but being able to choose the default to be odd/even is cool.
++ 'Most recently used panel circuiting'
This eliminates so many extra unneeded clicks. Would be even more awesome if it went one step further to be able to select specific available circuits on the fly!
+ 'Moves circuit'
Very nice offer to simplify rearranging circuits on panel.
As for multi-discipline offerings:
++ File upgrades
+ Edit/load a family
++ PDF export enhancements
+ Export Models with Lines that Coincide
Posted by: Andrea K | August 07, 2014 at 04:20 PM
the load in to project and close options would be even more great if you get a question to save when you modifyed the family..
Posted by: Chris | August 11, 2014 at 08:07 AM