Autodesk Advance Steel 2023 Is Available Now!

Advance Steel has now been released! You can download the new version from your Autodesk account at manage.autodesk.com or from your Autodesk desktop app. Don’t worry if you can’t see it straight away, as it took a few days to show for me last year.

This blog will run through what’s new in Advance Steel 2023.

To see Advance Steel 2023 in action and to ask any questions please register for the Graitec BIMUp Global Digital Conference which is happening on the 10th, 11th & 12th of May 2022, when I will be presenting a class on what’s new in Advance Steel 2023.

• Search queries in Camera selection – Building on the great functionality added in Advance Steel 2022 where users can select objects to show in a camera, Advance Steel 2023 now allows users to add objects to a camera view based on a search query. This means that for companies working with Lot / Phases or who want to show specific items that can be found with a search, there will be a great improvement to the speed of producing GA views

• Projected Grids in Model views – Grids now have an option to show in model views. In the Grid properties dialogue box is a new tab titled “Grid Projection”, tick the option and then Grids will show in an activated model view. You can’t edit the Grids that are projected in a model view, but you can now see them. This new functionality only works for horizontal Grids, and any Grids that are not parallel to the world XY plane will not show.

• Detailed Grids in all limited GA drawings – Grids now also have the option to show in GA views even if the Grids are not included in the extents of the camera. In the Grid properties dialogue box is a new tab “Grid Projection”, tick the option and then Grids will show in GA views (Assuming Grids are enabled in the Drawing Style). This new functionality only works for horizontal Grids, any Grids that are not parallel to the world XY plane won’t be shown.

• Keep Document Manager open while in drawings – With the 2023 version, if the Document Manager is open and then you open drawings from it, the Document Manager will stay open. This will allow you to edit the drawings you are in and then to open more drawings from the Document Manager without having to return to the model and start the Document Manager again.

• Change the size of a camera using the grips – In previous versions of Advance Steel if you were changing the size of a camera manually the camera would stretch equally, i.e., if you stretch the left of the camera 200mm the right also stretches by 200mm. With 2023 for the camera symbol you now have a grip at each corner and whichever point you choose to stretch the system will now only stretch that edge.
• Scale of cut view to match main view – If users now add a cut view to a drawing the system will match the current scale unless the user chooses to override that option. This means if you have a main view at 1:15 your cut view will default to 1:15, whereas in previous versions it would have defaulted to whatever was set in the Drawing Style manager. Therefore in this example the cut view would have been 1:10 and the user would have had to manually change the scale.
• IFC Export improvements – For Advance Steel 2023 several improvements have been made to the IFC export including plate shortenings, layer assignments and plate thickness information.

As well as these new features there have been a lot of handy fixes for various issues, to see a full breakdown of everything please refer to the Autodesk Advance Steel 2023 what’s new webpage.

The migration tool which installed automatically with Advance Steel will get all your custom data, prototypes etc migrated from a previous version into 2023 (you must have the previous version still installed on your machine to do the migration).

The Graitec PowerPack for Advance Steel is a standalone installation from Graitec, and the 2023 PowerPack will be released by June 2022. It will then be available for download from the Graitec Advantage site. Keep your eyes peeled, as once the PowerPack has been released I will write a what’s new blog.

Make sure you are registered for the Graitec BIMUp Global Digital Conference as we will be doing many classes on the PowerPack and how it can improve your day to day productivity with Advance Steel.