AutodeskCares@Autodesk.com

April 23, 2009 A message from the Autodesk Building Industry Director about the Revit 2010 release. The following message is from Nicolas Mangon, the Building Industry Director at Autodesk regarding the recent release of the 2010 Revit products: We were excited to ship the 2010 version of Revit last week. In an effort to reduce the learning curve and increase productivity we introduced a new user interface this year that allows users to leverage their skills and knowledge across Autodesk products. Over the past few years you’ve consistently told us that the Revit user interface was dated. In fact, the methods used in the old user interface such as, menus, toolbars, the design bar, and options bar were no longer scalable to support current and planned future product enhancements. We’ve also heard that the most significant barriers to Revit adoption are the availability of trained users and the cost of training new users. For these reasons, our focus in developing a new user interface for Revit was on the creation of an extensible UI framework that is easier to learn and to use. By adopting a ribbon style approach, we accelerate learning by allowing new users to apply concepts learned elsewhere. Enhanced tooltips make discovering tools and understanding their use easier, and the quick access toolbar allows you to place the tools you use most frequently in a convenient location. The process for developing the UI was highly comprehensive and included over 18 months of iterative design that incorporated user testing and performance benchmarking. In early testing, 86% of Beta testers responding to a survey said they would recommend this version of Revit to a friend, and according to Usability Sciences (an independent testing firm): “In general, users quickly adjusted to the interface and were able to complete most tasks with relative ease and speed.” You can learn more about the design and development methodology here on Inside the Factory. There are a variety of resources that have been made available to help users transition to the new user interface. For example, Revit Architecture has integrated the following learning tools directly into the product: an interactive user interface overview, a user interface video tour, and a menu location tool to assist users in locating commands that may have been moved. The video tour can be accessed here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=12945494. This new UI is part of a larger initiative at Autodesk to make it easier for you to transfer your knowledge from one product to others, making it easier to choose the best tool for the task at hand and to become productive quickly. We’re also working on making it easier to move data between applications and to enhance the visualization capabilities of our products to enable new and exciting simulation opportunities that will increase the value of your designs. In addition to the new UI, the 2010 release of Revit has some very important enhancements. The new conceptual design tools in Revit Architecture, integrated Heating and Cooling Load Analysis within Revit MEP, slanted columns in Revit Structure, and support for 64 bit hardware across the Revit platform. We also made enhancements to the API that will allow 3rd party developers to create functionality related to analysis, process automation, fabrication, cost estimating, etc. Other non-visible investments in the platform include technologies that will allow Revit to support global trends such as Sustainable Design, Large Team Workflow and dispersed teams, Fabrication, and large and complex models, etc. Your perspective on these issues is very important to us, and we are taking a new look at how we communicate with you about your needs and requests for enhancements. For example, we are going to better align the AUGI wish list voting process with our development cycle so we can more effectively incorporate your requests. We’re already planning for ways to incorporate the current wish list items in the next release of Revit. Please stay tuned for more details about this over the coming months. Finally, we’ve created a new email alias for you to share your ideas and suggestions about Revit directly with the product team: Autodeskcares@autodesk.com. Thanks for your continuing support and passion for Revit Nicolas Mangon Building Industry Director