This week, Autodesk dropped the latest version of Revit on the world – Revit 2011. While much fanfare and excitement has been raised about its new features (and rightfully so), I am more excited about the super-duper sneak peak I got at the new features for Revit 2012, internally being called the “Apocalypse” edition.

Everyone knows that the world will end in 2012, and that gives us a whole year to use the exciting new features in Revit 2012, or until the impending planetary crisis and destruction allows the electric infrastructure to keep our PCs running! I for one, plan on getting a nice big generator, to keep posting blogs and tweeting, because when we are faced with the end of humanity, who wouldn’t want to keep reading about design software!

To be honest, the “experts” can’t agree on precisely HOW the world will end. Being a forward thinking company, Autodesk is thankfully working on new features that can help the survival minded work with many of these potential catastrophes:

New floor design type – The “Hull” floor building tool will allow designers to barrel-curve their floors to allow free-floating buildings, in case of global flooding.

Enhancements to walls – An additional wall function type has been added. “Bunker” can be used to create exterior walls for structures that will be integrated into mountains or at least 100′ below ground.

Integrated building analysis tools for hermetic seal – Quickly analyze your Revit model to see if it’s airtight. No one wants a pesky zombie and/or flesh eating virus sneaking in to your safe house.

Enhancement to phases – The current phase model in Revit allows designers to show conditions from previous work. But what if the Large Hadron Collider, or some other combination of solar flare and electromagnetic pulses, creates spacetime distortions? The new Minkowski Phase option allows you to see the ramifications of your design decisions pushed through a fluid four dimensions or other potential spacetime ripples.

Additions to solar tracking tool – The new sun tracking system is nice, but a smart designer needs to pay attention to all the planets and other heavenly bodies. The “Extraplanetary Tracking Tool” includes orbit and tracking data for over 100 planets, comets and stars, so you can safely align your building along proper astrological lines of power.

Numerous new components:

Over 200 new models of generators

Stand-alone turret or tripod mounted defense weapons

Baseball bat, chainsaw and other excellent zombie stopping devices

Nuclear-blast grade doors

This is just a small sampling of the new features. I’m sure that this is bittersweet for the software team. After such a strong showing, you’d want to keep working on the next release! However, they realize the futility in this, and how difficult it will be to work on Revit 2013 when the planet has been destroyed.

In the meantime, I’m certainly enjoying all the new goodness that is in Revit 2011, in between the time I spend building my bunker.