Technology

Autodesk Brings Mesh Exports Into Revit, With New Graphics

Open-source components based on universal scene description and Hydra were used to speed up iteration and model inspection in the Revit Tech Preview released on April 2.
*Screenshot courtesy of Autodesk*

Turning a photograph or a scan into a 3D model remains a cumbersome process involving several data processing steps. This is despite reality capture being easier than ever before, thanks to drone photographs and scans, with even robots such as Boston Dynamics’ Spot able to document sites autonomously and with reliable consistency.

Autodesk’s ReCap Pro team aims to change that. A Revit plugin now comes with ReCap Pro 2026, released to subscribers on April 2. There is also a new workflow for managing mesh datasets. Adding meshed geometry directly into an architect or engineer’s Revit projects as Revit families reduces need for manual modeling and processing of mesh data.

Processing point clouds from scans has often been a resource-intensive task for virtual design and construction teams, drone pilots and other people responsible for capturing site images or meshes. They have required cloud processing or powerful desktop computers at the office. Users of the new plug-in can convert point clouds into segmented meshes using their own systems without cloud upload or computation. Autodesk also released a new Mesh Editor that allows for further refinement of a reality capture team’s mesh models. It also released an Accelerated Revit Graphics Tech Preview in its latest Revit release.

By leveraging GPU technologies that take advantage of the new generation of the more powerful graphics processing chips, the tech preview can improve the navigation speed in 3D and 2D views, Autodesk said in a statement.

“Our vision is to automate documentation so that users can focus on higher value, creative and cognitive work,” the vendor said. View-to-sheet Positioning and Automated Placement is a new workflow for documentation tasks in this release. The workflow also allows automatic positioning of views on sheets. Manual adjustments of 3D views were previously necessary.

Shared parameter use in family labels has expanded include callout heads, elevation marks, section marks and view references.

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KEYWORDS: 3D Modeling Autodesk Revit

ENR Associate Technology, Equipment and Products Editor Jeff Yoders has been writing about design and construction innovations for 20 years. He is a five-time Jesse H. Neal award winner and multiple ASBPE winner for his tech coverage. Jeff previously wrote about construction technology for Structural Engineer, CE News and Building Design + Construction. He also wrote about materials prices, construction procurement and estimation for MetalMiner.com. He lives in Chicago, the birthplace of the skyscraper, where the pace of innovation never leaves him without a story to chase.

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