What’s New for Architects in Revit 2022, Part 1 of 3: Modeling, Documentation, and Production

It’s that time of year! Revit 2022 has been released, and the product management team is excited to highlight the many ways that your feedback and needs have translated into some major enhancements and new features for communicating design intent. There are so many updates and enhancements for architects in this release that we decided to introduce them in three installments. 

This is Part 1 — Modeling, Documentation, and Production.

In Revit 2022, dozens of enhancements address more than 8,000 votes from Revit Ideas to help you model, document, and ultimately design better buildings.

You’ll find updates big and small—ranging from increased flexibility with revision numbering, to modeling updates for walls, to enhancements for visualization—all working together to ease pain points, reduce the need for workarounds, and improve your daily use of Revit.

Customize Your Revision Numbering

Revision numbering can vary depending on project complexity, delivery method, location, and other requirements. Revit 2022 opens up a world of possibilities, enabling greater flexibility with revision numbering that does not require following a linear alphanumeric or numeric sequence.

“Whatever method you prefer to use for doing revisions in your office, Revit can now accommodate it,” says Sasha Crotty, Senior Product Manager for Revit Platform and Services.

This update is especially significant for users in locations where adherence to global, national, or local standards like ISO 19650, requires specific letters or characters in revision formatting.

Regardless of your location, if you’re working on a large, complex project that has different issuances for distinct regulatory agencies, for example, custom suffixes or prefixes can be implemented that can help distinguish different packages. It’s ideal for projects that have fast-track packages or multiple  issuances happening in parallel.

Improved Tagging & Spot Slope Elevations on Ramps

Other key features aiding in documentation are what Harlan Brumm, Senior Product Manager for Revit, refers to as “small, consistency fixing, like putting spot slope elevations on ramps and tagging elements like curtain wall mullions.”

You’ll now be able to create ramp annotations in plans, sections, elevations, and locked 3D views.

You’ll also find that it’s possible to use multi-category tags for all taggable elements in Revit, including those elusive curtain wall mullions or railings that previously wouldn’t support a multi-category tag.

So if graphic consistency across elements of different categories is your documentation goal, you’ll now be able to achieve a similar look and feel for door, window, finish, and others tags across the board, explains Cesar Escalante, Technical Marketing Manager.

Increased Design Flexibility with Tapered Walls

Walls are fundamental building blocks to any Revit model. That’s why we continue to improve support for complex geometry. That’s why we’re excited to continue our ongoing development of the complex geometry that Revit walls support.

In the Revit 2021 release, we announced the ability to create slanted walls. Revit 2022 takes this one step further, enabling you to model tapered walls — a long-awaited feature.

Once you enable variable thickness in a wall’s type properties, you can set its Cross-Section parameter to Tapered, which then enables you to define angles for both faces — perfect for modeling foundation and retaining walls with accurate slopes and thicknesses, for example, or high-profile designs that employ non-orthogonal partitions.

Additionally, we’ve also strengthened modeling for slanted walls, enabling editing of the wall profile.

Enhanced Visualization

But it’s not just modeling and documentation that have gotten a boost: Revit 2022 also comes with RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content) enhancements for those who are more focused on visualization. Revit users have long been able to add entourage families, including people, cars, plants — and now, even transportation and furniture — to their models.

“This release comes with 28 new rendering assets provided right out of the box that come with physical based materials, better light reflection, and more intelligent ways to control the parameters of assets,” explains Escalante.

You’ll be able to create an instance property, like a car with a license plate that changes per user modifications, allowing for a greater degree of dynamism in renderings and visualizations — but still have simplified representation of these objects when you’re in non-rendered views or even turned off when working in a scenario that doesn’t require RPC.

Revit is for you

Whether you’re deep in the design of a project with irregular walls or embarking on the documentation phase of a new project, this release is, at its core, designed to improve the way you work in Revit.

“All of these updates were determined based on several methods for people to give us feedback on what they need and want,” notes Brumm. “We want to make sure that our customers are heard and listened to, and that we’ve been responding in a way that makes them do their job better.”