The best new feature of Revit 2023 (maybe!)

The 2023 release of Revit have been out for a few months now and we've had time to go through the new features and work out which ones are the most useful to us.

There is lots of features in Revit that are nice to have, including:

• Being able to taper walls.
• The improvements to linking CAD models.
• The improvements for rebar.
• The ability to swap views on sheets.
• The ability to add parameters, tag and schedule groups and links.

And those are just a few of the many new features to the 2023 release of Revit.

But a feature that can have a big impact on workflow and result in real time savings is in the shape of a checkbox which, when selected, enables the “Filter by Sheet” function for schedules.

The ability to add information via parameters onto objects in the model, as well as the nature of the object-based modeling itself, has led to the whole Building Information Modelling revolution in the Construction industry.

Being able to create a schedule for all the objects in the model, and to have any of the parameters, be they built-in parameters or custom defined parameters, listed in the schedule has been a real game-changing feature when moving over from traditional CAD workflows.

The time spent creating schedules based on 2D CAD drawings is virtually unimaginable now compared to the few minutes that it takes to generate a schedule in a Revit model.

However, we still need to spend time adding the correct information into the objects, and it’s likely someone still needs to check that all the information is correct. Although automation can check if specific parameters are present and have been filled out, it cannot check if the information is correct. Someone with experience and knowledge of the project must do that.

Back to schedules in Revit and yes, they are very quick to create, even on large projects with hundreds of objects to schedule. Thinking of the number of doors and windows that could make up even an average size project, or the amount of furniture, equipment, lights, smoke detectors, etc. that go into most projects, it’s easy to see the list stretch into thousands of objects.