Introducing hsbDesign 25 for Revit® and AutoCAD®

At hsbcad, we’re always looking to push the limits of design, manufacture and assembly in construction, consistently upgrading our software solutions to bring you closer to a fully realized BIM vision. With that goal in mind, we’ve studied the latest trends, industry pain points, and advances in offsite building to bring you the new and improved hsbDesign 25. 

In case you’re not yet familiar with our hsbDesign platform, here’s a quick breakdown.

hsbDesign was built for designers who want to enjoy a fully flexible solution within Revit® or AutoCAD®. It’s the base platform upon which we’ve built a variety of feature-rich toolsets and it eliminates redundancies linked with 2D and 3D - making it easier for users to realize their true design potential.

Here are just a few of the hsbDesign features our customers love most:

  • It creates a single source of truth, improving collaboration and reducing errors. 
  • It streamlines communication, making it easier to stay on budget and on schedule.
  • It automates processes so you can focus on what matters most: your designs.
  • It’s endlessly customizable, giving you added design flexibility.

hsbDesign also holds the updates linked to all our design toolsets, enriching and enhancing their functionalities. The result? New levels of clarity, detail, and engagement in your designs.

Now that you know a bit more about hsbDesign, let’s dive into the new upgrades in its latest release, hsbDesign 25.

What’s new in hsbDesign 25?

After months of planning, testing and development, we couldn’t be happier to tell you all about our latest hsbDesign iteration: hsbDesign 25, launched earlier this month.

The new release has been upgraded for better performance, with new features and updates to take your design experience to the next level. We’ll kick things off by walking you through the upgrades in hsbDesign 25 for Revit®, followed by hsbDesign 25 for AutoCAD®.

hsbDesign 25 for Revit®

Here’s what’s new for ‍hsbDesign 25 for Revit®:

hsbFloorElement for Revit®

The hsbFloorElement toolset enables you to convert Revit® floors into framed floors, getting you from approval to production design a whole lot quicker. It gives users the flexibility to define the perimeter, chimney, and stairwell edge details, together with layers of predefined sheeting aligned to joist distribution - all combined to form an automated framed floor element. 

It also enables you to assign parametric edge definitions for boundaries, openings, and edges in floors, each customized to your building method and automatically framed based on your manufacturing criteria. Finalized outputs include detailed BIM production documents with compatible, automated, dimensioned layouts and materials lists, useful during site assembly.

These are just some of the things you can do with hsbFloorElement:

  • Turn Revit® floors into framed floors with just a few clicks
  • Build a unique library of frame styles, to match your building method
  • Design, orient, split and arrange element outlines
  • Use Persist Technology to reduce the risk of losing important work during the process
  • Create your own customised face-to-face and edge connections
  • Set up automatic design validation checks to get notified of any errors
  •  Detail the connections between walls and floors, to create your export to machine and a 100% bill of material

In addition, hsbFloorElement is compatible with hsbFlex tools like shaft, blocking and lifting holes and more, giving you an even higher level of design flexibility.

hsbStickFrame for Revit®

We’ve also made some exciting new improvements to hsbStickFrame for Revit®.

New Framing Style Editor features

The new Framing Style Editor enhancements include: add a rotation line, use an angled parameter, and use an inventory item from another element. The video below showcases the new enhancements.

New import and export feature

The new import and export upgrades enable users to move framing styles from one project to another. Click on the video below to see it in action or check out hsbacademy for more details.

A new Linked Files feature

Another new feature enables you to “link files” while setting up your framing styles and creating your framed elements, as shown in the video below.

A new Profiles feature

The new Profiles feature enables you to use Autodesk Revit profiles in combination with the framing style editor to work with, for example, steel profiles. Check out the video below to see it in action.

hsbDesign 25 for AutoCAD®

Now switching to AutoCAD®, these are some of the new exciting features and upgrades we’ve made to hsbDesign 25:

General upgrades

A new unique identifier

A unique identifier has been added to hsbDesign 25 for each object within the drawing. This GUID can be used: 

  • To identify each object in the drawing
  • In exports such as BVX

You can view the unique identifier in the property list once you have an object selected. In addition, hsbshare now sets the GUID of the drawing in the hsbsettings when a model is uploaded. This enables the unique identifier to be linked to the drawing, making actions like QR lookup possible. 

Clash detection upgrade

When running clash detection, you now have the option to split the intersecting beams, as shown below.

Split beams

Tool description upgrade

Now you can use formatting to give a description to a tool. This can be shown in the software, as illustrated below.

Adding a description to a tool

Side panel upgrade

A new “Flip Side” property has been added, enabling users to flip the reference side of panels, as illustrated below.

'Flip Side' property in hsbdesign25

Estiframe export upgrade

The Estiframe export now supports Hardware. Tsls with 3D display and attached hardware data will be available for display and marking.

Free profile upgrade

It is now possible to change from “free profile” tools to “free profile tool entity” - enabling the static tool to be modified in accordance with the dynamic tool.

Converting to 'free profile entity'

New validation capabilities and extensions

  • All dropdown option lists for extensions and validations have been translated.
  • Custom descriptions can now be added to each validation, making it possible to: 
  1. Distinguish the results of validations that have the same name
  2. Check for differences in the model 

You also have the option of adding group descriptions as illustrated below:

Validation manager – custom descriptions

We’ve also added a few new standard validations, including:

  • AutoTagging
  • Sheet Joints at Openings
  • Master Panel Compatibility Check
  • Element Replica Has Valid Data
  • Nail Spacing is Valid
  • Nail Line Is On Underlying Construction Check
  • Module Length and Width is Valid
  • Check Top and Bottom Plate
  • Frame Length and Width is Valid

Last but not least, some of the existing validations have been improved, including:

  • Find beams possibly belong to a module
  • Beam Spacing is Valid
  • Tag GenBeams in Zones

The full details on each new validation and improvement are available in hsbacademy.

Exporter upgrades 

  • The Btlx exporter interface now supports both V1.1 and V2.0 versions of Btlx ouput.
  • The nailing extension now enables users to nail sheeting zones onto beams outside of the beam zone (e.g. in battens partially outside the beam as shown below).
Nail sheeting zones onto beams outside of the beam zone
  • The DXF Element exporter has been upgraded to include openings in the dxf element outline.
  • The ExtensionGroupManager has been upgraded to include a new command to copy an extension group.
Copy groups in the Extension Group Manager

Another new upgrade creates a default Multi Element Composer export group if one doesn’t already exist. Users can also set the maximum and minimum table width in the Multi Element Composer. This is an addition to the already existing Maximum and Minimum table length.

We’ve also added a few new extensions including Align Beam and Opening Filter as illustrated below. For more details on these new extensions, check out hsbacademy.

  • Align Beam
The new 'Align Beam' extension
  • Opening Filter
The new 'Opening filter' extension

Lastly, we also made a few Excel Report Designer improvements. Using the Excel Report Designer export, users can now expose the complementary angles. The values for the cut angles are CutN, CutNC, CutP, CutPC. Where the C stands for the “complementary angles”.

hsbExcel Report Designer – auto-completion and syntax highlighting

TSL upgrades

The new upgrades include a variety of new tools and tsls. The new additions include:

  • hsbJunctionScrew
  • hsbBracing
  • Dimline tsl
  • hsbMark_LineOrGrid tsl
  • hsbCLT-Tape tsl
  • The DoveTail tsl

Details on each of these new additions can be found in hsbacademy. We’ve also made improvements to existing tools and tsls, including:

  • instaCombination tsl
  • instaConduit tsl
  • hsbview tag tsl 
  • genericHanger tsl 
  • hsbSheetDistribution tsl 
  • The hsbGrainDirection tsl 
  • hsbInsulation tsl
  • hsbElementInsulation tsl
  • hsbViewTag 
  • Simpson StrongTie Anchor tsl 
  • hsbCreateSolePlate tsl 
  • hsbCLT-Freeprofile
  • hsbCLT-MasterpanelManager tsl
  • PivotSchedule tsl 
  • hsbCreateMulitpleStuds tsl 
  • hsbAcisExport tsl 
  • ErectionSequence tsl 
  • hsbCLT-Presorter
  • The HSB_E-Identification & Marking tsl
  • The hsbCLT-Lifter tsl 

Check out hsbacademy for more details about the tsl updates listed above.

Licensing and updating

  • A new “Support Tools Application” has been created to update and license hsbDesign components.
  • A separate shortcut icon has been created for the hsb Support Tools that will control your license for the hsbExporter.
  • The privacy policy has been updated and added to myhsbcad.
  • The update notification reminder users get at startup, is now set to 14 days as a default.
  • Users now have the possibility to set this update reminder to “Never”, in essence, turning it off.

Get started today!

To get started with hsbDesign 25 for Revit® and AutoCAD®, login into your Myhsbcad account and download the setup file from the download section. You can also check out hsbacademy for more details on hsbDesign for Revit® and hsbDesign for AutoCAD®.

Download Press Release
Author:
Keith Cotter
Sales Manager