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"new ability to import and visualize massive datasets captured from reality as point clouds. If you are a modeler, you can view point clouds in true color in the 3ds Max viewport, interactively adjust the extent of the cloud displayed, and create new geometry in context by snapping to point cloud vertices."Coming 30 September 2013

Two new videos on Autodesk Building Solutions Channel. The first one shows how to use features of 3DS Max to quickly add animated people to an animation of a Revit model. Nice!



This one is about updating linked Revit models in 3DS Max:

Interesting post with some helpful graphics, images and videos from Payette:


Read the whole post:
Workflow for Iterative Design: Revit and 3ds Max

This is a great post / video from pedroeron on RFO.  It essentially shows you how to hide the edges of imported geometry (such as from Sketchup), so that when it imports into Revit, you only see the shaded surfaces - not the ugly triangulated surface edges.  Nice!

Also, this video shows that it is possible to Link a DWG into an inplace Component family - some interesting possibilities arise from that.


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From 3ds max to revit without viewing triangles edges

EDIT - the steps are basically:

1. In 3dsMax, Use ProOptimizer Modifier to get your model to less than 32000 faces (so that it can be exported to DXF)
2. Convert to Editable Mesh
3. Use Mesh Selection - Edge tool
4. Select all Edges and change to invisible
5. Make one or two triangles visible (so that you can select the model in Revit)
6. Export to DXF 2007 version
7. Import into Revit

Note - you can also go Export to 3DS, then import to AutoCAD (using 3DSIN command) and divide object by Material (creating a new layer for each material), then go to Revit from there.  You may experience some geometry issues through this multi-handling of the data.

From Jeffrey McGrew on RevitForum (I've underlined key parts):
"While I respectfully disagree that rendering in Revit is a waste of time, for there are still times we do so, I totally agree with what you're saying here. If you want to produce renderings from Revit models using anything but the built-in Mental Ray (and it's vast limitations) then your best bet really is to link the Revit file into Max.

The new model linking in Max 2013 works very well, so we simply link our models, continue to do the 'real work' in Revit while we simply swap materials / plants / lights in Max and then use Octane Render to produce the images.

We've tried just exporting OBJs out of Revit or Max & bringing those into Octane Render, and the lack of control over UVs, instancing, entourage, etc. drove us back to using Max.

Just to be clear, I HATE Max. The UI drives me crazy, and it's so crash-tastic that it's a wonder we get work done sometimes. I'd much rather work with another program, but the Revit linking works so well, and the Octane Render plugin works so well, that well, I just suck it up. ;-)

I've tried several rendering plugins for Revit, and run into the same problems. Even if there were a Octane Render plugin for Revit, I don't know if we'd use it, unless it was as well integrated as the Mental Ray one is...

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2012: Maxwell for Revit

1. File - Save As - Archive
2. This will make ZIP with all the resources.
3. If you want to view them all in one folder, use 7-Zip, Extract Files... with no pathnames (this will put all the files in one folder)

If you have exported a file from Revit to 3ds Max Design (perhaps using Suite Workflows), this is a good way to capture all the texture and material resources that are needed and put them in one easy-to-use location.

This may allow you to export more easily to other formats and use the associated bitmaps in those other formats (like OBJ or similar).