Revit 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack

Today Autodesk announced a new Subscription Advantage Pack for Revit 2011 products. There are a good number of enhancements across the Revit collection. As a long time AutoCAD user, I'm personally very pleased to see enhancements between major release versions. It keeps me new and excited as these new features are hot new tools and toys. It will get me thru the next 6 months of dry time...


So what is new? Well for starters there is a new conceptual energy analysis module that can be used as a precursor to Ecotec. For those that do daylight and sun studies, this will really let you do a lot from within the Revit file. Using Ecotec requires porting out to another file for use in that product. It's cool stuff... pardon the pun. Location Weather and Site is another new thing. Basically Autodesk is providing localized temp, wind, etc, statistical data for just about any location in the world. This is then used for analysis. Another enhancements is dealing with masses and surfaces. If you are in the architectural arena, these features will be a great interest.

The next big thing, one that will be of benefit to any Revit user is what is called Revit Server. In a nutshell it allows are a central file to be used remotely at a level of performance that is truly usable. Whoa... this is really, really, big. I don't know about you but worksharing over a WAN is almost a death sentence. I know I feel I lose "life units" when saving to central across a WAN. Now, how does it work? You got me, it just does. But I do know that it will make some hardware solutions somewhat null and void. I have heard of many going out and buying hardware that mimics this sort of functionality. So from now on you don't have to decide on buying hardware to make remote work better, or getting a new application. You can now go ahead and just get that application.

So what is it? You have a central file in San Francisco on a Central Server. Then you have local server in your location. This has your local central file. Then by making a copy as you do now you work with the project file via the local file. Now qwhen you do a reload latest, that info comes from the local server. Then the local servers and central server talk amongst themselves, and keep each other up to date with elements and permissions. Ok, so you get more efficient use of your bandwidth. Only the new stuff is moving back and forth. And lastly you getting the infrastructure for future growth, out from behind the firewall. Can you say collaboration?

So who is going to be your Revit Server Adminstrator? I see some power struggles coming.