The ASCENT team has been working hard to get our Autodesk 2023 learning guides updated. As we do every year, we recently presented our What’s New webcast. The webcast was a great opportunity to highlight our newly released guides as well as explain our plans for the coming months. Click the image below to view the webcast recording.
The webcast discussion was organized into content categories that align with the courseware developed by our instructional designers. One of the key changes across all categories was that all images with Autodesk branding have been updated. Here is a summary of some of the other changes that we discussed:
General Design & Visualization (content developed by Renu Muthoo)
In AutoCAD 2023, there were no significant changes to the software features, and we were able to promptly complete the updates to all three AutoCAD learning guides. In the AutoCAD 3D guide, Renu has added helpful notes to many of the practices to better aid some of the steps. Also of note is that this year we will not be releasing an Update class for AutoCAD as there were simply not enough changes. We are happy to share that AutoCAD Fundamentals, AutoCAD Advanced, and AutoCAD 3D have now been released (both Mixed units and Metric).
Renu also develops our 3ds Max learning guide. In preliminary investigations, she anticipates some functionality changes in chapter 1 and 4 that will respectively cover using the Autobackup tool and adding the new method for adjusting the working pivot. There could also be substantial changes in chapter 10 due to the Arnold renderer now defaulting to Physical materials. Renu aims to release a blog on this topic if major changes are made.
Manufacturing (content developed by Jennifer MacMillan)
Significant image replacements were required for all Inventor learning guides. This was for Autodesk rebranding; however, the bigger change was that all Model Browser images were replaced because the default model state and view names have changed to Primary to follow current trends to avoid sensitive language in all publications. Additionally, the new Home page had to be incorporated to explain how users can open files. Like for AutoCAD, there is no update class this year for Inventor as there were very few software changes made for 2023.
Data Management (content developed by Barb Nash)
There were both new functionality and software enhancements in Vault 2023. The new default theme will be used in some of the guides. Additionally, information on Vault Gateway will be included and also some new functionality will be added for creating and managing markups, and for displaying Inventor Instance Properties.
Building Design (content developed by Cherisse Biddulph)
As many of our instructors are already aware, there are similarities in the Getting Started phase of Revit whether you are using the tools for Architecture, Structure, or MEP. With the release of 2023, we are aiming to better align the opening chapter content across our Revit books. To achieve this, the opening phase will be renamed to Revit Tools and Project Setup and will include the same chapters 1-5 for all Fundamentals guides.
Here are a few more details:
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The change involved moving the core Revit topics into this phase. This will include the tools to create basic models like Introduction to interface, Starting a Project, Working with Views, Revit Families, and Basic Sketching and Modification Tools. The chapters will have the same content, practices, and instructional content that were in the 2022 guides, except for columns. The Columns content has been taken out of the Starting a Project chapter and has now been made into its own chapter. This is so that columns can be talked about in more depth in the specific disciplines that use them. For example, only in the Architecture and Structure courses.
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The final two phases in all the guides will remain unchanged and are still called the Design Development phase, and Construction Documents phase, and will contain learning content specific to the guide’s focus.
Datasets also had to be rebuilt for Revit Architecture this year due to the changes Autodesk has made to the Analytical Data. And finally, there were several functionality changes specific to Revit Architecture that were added (measure in 3D, new element selection feature, new features for linking/importing CAD files, and sheet changes, among others). At the time of the webcast, we had only released Revit Architecture Fundamentals. If changes to future software releases are substantial, Cherisse will release an ASCENT blog post to help explain.
Civil 3D (content developed by Jeff Morris)
With the release of our first Civil 2023 learning guide, you will see a significant change to how Fundamentals will look. We are excited to share that in this year’s release, the Fundamentals content has been split into two separate courses called Essentials and Beyond the Basics.
Here are some notes to help explain:
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Over the last several years, we have been incorporating more and more content into this book, and as a result, the 4-day training class has just become too crammed. We have been receiving feedback that customers were teaching it as five days or that instructors had to skip too much material in it to complete the class in 4 days. The other main driver for this change is that the content in some chapters were a mix of both fundamental and advanced topics, which were overwhelming for some new students.
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Our plan for this guide is to still have Fundamentals available this year as a recommended 5 days of material as we know that schools and our ATC partners might need some planning time to jump to a new structure. But for those of you that are agile enough to roll out 2023 in the new split format, that will also be available.
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In Fundamentals (single book), the first 10 chapters will be focused on the essential skills that users need and then the final 8 chapters will go beyond these basic skills once students are really comfortable with the software.
Once the course is released, Jeff Morris will post a blog on our ASCENT website to give more details. It is definitely something that you will want to mention to your trainers or if you are a trainer, that you will want to check out yourself. Trainers will need time preparing to teach this new layout as there are content differences with the instructional content and practices.
As always, please let us know if you have any questions about the ASCENT 2023 products. And don’t forget that you can review our roadmap by clicking here.
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