Autodesk updates Revit 2016 to R2
Last week Autodesk announced an update to Revit 2016 called R2, building on the speed and improvements that are the hallmark of the Revit 2016 release. Much of this relates to performance, an area that Autodesk has been criticized for with regard to very large projects in particular.
While a list of all the new R2 features can be found at the link below, some highlights include the use of occlusion culling which is a technique exposed in the underlying graphics system. Essentially, the graphics system only draws elements that are actually visible in a particular view. The technique has been around in OpenGL for quite sometime and many developers are still just implementing this option. Rather than have the software calculate the geometry for items that are actually hidden or obscured in view by elements in the front of them, the work is not calculated—omitted—in order to focus all calculation work on visible in view geometry instead.
The process is actually quite elaborate that involves a rapid sample rendering first to see what geometry is “occluded” from the scene and then to implement the final render. Mind you, this all takes places in super tiny fractions of a second.
01 – Trimble’s SketchUp division is hosting the annual 3D Basecamp event for the global SketchUp community.
Revit 2016 R2 gets deeper on the use of background processing. Now color fill background processing takes places. Room, space, HVAC zone, duct and pipe fills all can use multiple CPUs or CPU cores to speed up the process. These are just two areas in R2 but make a significant improvement of performance and workflow. To learn more read on here.
SketchUp 3D Basecamp is Coming
Trimble has announced the dates for the upcoming 3D Basecamp 2016 for the global SketchUp community. 3D Basecamp is where the smartest minds in SketchUp Land get together to teach, share and inspire others.
In addition to going the folks at Trimble’s SketchUp division are also accepting proposals for speakers for this year’s event, taking place 13 – 15 June 2016. The conference takes place in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. You can learn more and register here.
Lumion 6 Coming
Architectural visualization software, Lumion, is coming out with its version 6 release in a few days on 3 November 2015. The product has been making big waves and offers the market a slightly different and more streamlined approach of architectural visualization. Some might say it is a radically easier approach.
The details for version 6 are not clear unless you are a company insider. The Lumion blog doesn’t offer visitors much guesswork for what version 6 may offer. To get a look at the visual quality of version 6 check out the vimeo video above.
Lumion is available only for Windows at the moment but the company told me at AIA National 2015 that they are getting requests for a native Mac OS X version. However, no plans for a port have been announced to our knowledge.