Autodesk adds generative design capabilities to Revit 2021

Posted on April 21, 2020 at March 8, 2021 by AEC Magazine

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2021 release also includes support for slanted walls, higher quality real time visualisation and the ability to create custom workspaces

Having started out in Project Refinery, generative design has now made its way into Revit 2021, but is only available to subscribers of the AEC Collection.

Generative Design in Revit 2021 is designed to make generative design much easier to use. Users simply load up a model, select the appropriate design study and define the goals. The software then returns a range of options which can be visualised via 2D lists and interactive 3D thumbnails and ranked by certain criteria. Once the best option is chosen it is directly populated as elements into the Revit model.

Generative Design in Revit currently includes three sample design studies:

• Maximize Window Views helps score the quality of views to the outside from any position in a room.
• Three Box Massing creates simple massing models and calculates areas.
• Workspace Layout enables more effective placement of desks in a room based on user-selected criteria

Autodesk will add more sample files in the future and on the Generative Design Primer. The Dynamo visual programming environment can also be used to create custom design studies.

Other features for Revit 2021 include support for slanted walls that can ‘instantly handle’ slanted doors, windows, and other wall-hosted geometry; the ability to create custom Revit workspaces cased on discipline and job role; and improved interoperability between Revit and Inventor to offer better support for design-to-fabrication workflows.

Revit 2021 also includes higher quality real time visualisation with more realistic materials and lighting. Autodesk claims view navigation is much faster and smoother, performing over 10 times faster than previous versions.

There are also a whole host of enhancements to steel modelling, rebar detailing and electrical design. Full details of what’s in Revit 2021 can be found here.