Project Vasari 2.5

Those chaps over at Project Vasari have been working hard to produce an update to their now famed conceptual modelling & analysis tool.

Vasari 2.5 is set to be released on Autodesk labs very soon. Release 2.5 includes a number of exciting enhancements, these include:-

• Perspective View
• Extrude Face
• Improvements to auto-zoning
• Ecotect Solar Radiation – automatically update on export

The major focus for Vasari 2.5 is around modelling & general usability enhancements.

Perspective View

The new Perspective view type allows you to edit in Perspective.This is different to a camera view, where you place a camera to generate the view. When enabled, a new view type is placed in the project browser. To create a Perspective working view, go to the manage tab & select the Perspective icon. Alternatively, go to the QAT & select Perspective.

Working in Perspective can also be enabled in the rfa environment by once again creating a view via the manage>view and QAT access points.The ability to work in perspective is something I have been crying out for ages & its brilliant in my humble opinion.

Extrude Face

The new extrude face tool is very similar to push/pull tools of other 3d modelling packages. To access the tool just select a face inside the Mass editor and hit the space bar to toggle to the extrude face control.  Use the rectangular handle to extrude without edges and the circular handle to extrude while keeping edges. You can also control the extrude face between the local & global coordinate system. There are some limitations on this functionality, these are listed below, but don’t be put off, just be aware.

• Only faces of Form Elements with planar and parallel top and bottom faces can be extruded
• Only faces that lie between profiles can be extruded If the extrude direction is not in the plane of the top/bottom face, the face cannot be extruded
• If the face is moved so that it intersects other faces of the form, the operation will fail gracefully
• If the face is highly curved in the profile plane (normal cone is larger than 90 degrees), it can't be extruded

The code base is still based around Revit 2012, so Vasari 2.5 files are still compatible with the current release of Revit. So keep an eye on twitter as well as Autodesk Labs for the Vasari 2.5 release date.