Life in a Virtual Building: Another Revit Architecture 2013 Review

Revit Architecture 2013 has been out for a while now and I have finally had a chance to look at it. I have read the new features lists and read some other blogs. There is an array of new features that cover a lot of ground, but I'm focusing on what will actually help improve my production or model management...

Project Browser Search - Halafrickenluya!!!, it is about fricken time. You can actually search the hundreds or thousands of views or families to make sure something has not already been created before you decide to create it for the big project you are working on that dozens of other people have already worked on and used their own naming conventions, and not have to manually expand and collapse all the family and view types in the single panel palette called the project browser, that takes fricken forever. (that is the longest sentence I have ever written in my professional career). It works more like a search in a word processor by taking you to the closest match, but it at least it does that. - Great, but should have been done years ago!
View Types - Create your own view types in addition to the default types Floor Plan, Ceiling Plan, Area Plan, etc (excluding area plans and sheets). Nice.
View Templates Control - Views are tied to their templates. When you modify the view template, all the views that use it will be modified accordingly. This is excellent for people who like to have predictability in their construction documents (which should be everyone) - Very cool.
Dimension Enhancements - You can now delete an individual segment from a multi-segment dimension chain. This will help speed things up a little. Wow, that must have tested the developers to do that one. This functionality was not important to do before this release? See video demo for the other new features - Helpful
Family Editing - You can edit a family by simply double clicking on it. Excellent!
View References - Add a view (detail) links in your note blocks and schedules. Before I would use a section mark and remove the flag and leader. This is way better. See demo at Revit OpEd - Very Nice
Loop Arrow Style - New arrow type in the form of a loop. I have used a custom loop leader in AutoCAD since 1989. It is nice to be able to use one again. Nice.
Stair by Component - Create a stair without sketch mode. A more logical approach to modeling don't you think? See demo at vimeo.com - Nice.
Selection Sets - You can create a selection set and isolate it, hide it, and apply graphic settings to all the elements in the selection. View filters can be created that use your selection sets. Very nice.