Modify DWG/DWF Export Setup

[artgurlie]

I am at the final stages of a project in Revit. The client wants ACAD files as well but they have very specific ACAD standards. I have changed some of they layers in the Modify DWG/SXF Export Setup and have tested a drawing by exporting it to ACAD. I have encountered several issues. Some Families mostly annotative export as blocks and do not really take all the properties specified in the Export Setup. It takes the new layer name but not the color. It ends up as White instead of ByLayer. You have to go in and edit the block to be put on Layer 0 to take the properties of the layer. Also another issue I have found is the grid bubbles take the property of the grid line. Is there a way of setting that all up in Revit to minimize the changes needed in ACAD? I have researched the layer modifiers and nothing really comes up that explains it well. We have over 200 drawings for this client and we cannot spend half a day per drawing cleaning up exports from Revit. Any help would be appreciated.

[jsteinhauer]

Sorry to say, but our best guy has spent about two months cleaning up Revit to Acad for a customer. He has used everything at his disposal to automate the process, but it's still very time consuming. Worst of all, we knew the final deliverables were going to be in CAD from the onset.

Jeff S.

[artgurlie]

Thank you Jeff. How large of a project was is? I need to let the PM know so we give ourselves ample time to work on the deliverables. If it took you 2 months on a medium/large size project I cannot imagine how long it's going to take us for this one.

AFS

[david_peterson]

I also worked on the project that Jeff was referring to. It was a sizable project (250ksft+) 7 story tower with 3 existing structures, demo plans, shoring plans, many consultants. Some were working in Revit some in CAD. The majority of the time spent converting the project was figuring out how to write a script to deal with text. Depending on how the text was created in revit, (and what version you were using) we needed to develop several scripts to fix text height, font,..... and then overall size of the text box. Then there were several more scripts that went in to all the blocks to convert them to the correct layer/color/lineweight settings. Then there were the script to remove all the ref planes objects. Now new for 2013, you can select to not export unreferenced section/elevation marks.
In short we were given a very strict cad standard (state of WI). Total project that we (Arch and Struct) needed to convert was about 500 sheets. I'm going to guess that about half of those were done in CAD to start with. Those worked out well and went pretty smooth. The Revit files on the other hand..... not so much. I should also mention that this project was start in 08 and was upgraded to 09, 10, 11, 12 and 13 so that may have had something to do with some of the complexity. Text is not your friend when converting files.
In short I'd say he spent about 140 hrs writing scripts and about 40 more hours to process the files, but that's just a guess.
Hope this helps.

[artgurlie]

Wow, thank you Dave for your advice. We adopted Revit a little over a year ago and this is the first project coming to an end that has strict client specific CAD standards. We tested this in the very early stages of out Revit training/use and have not done anything with it until now. I have been frustrated with this trying to get things to export properly. I will probably have to get some scripts written to acomplish what I know will take a whole lot of out time (TEXT, can we say nightmare?).

Thanks again!

AFS

[david_peterson]

I should also mention that while we were able to get our drawings to pass the smell test from the cad standard side, the drawings ended up looking like a 4yr old did them.
Depending on what your client standards are, you may run into things that we didn't have to deal with. I know one point of contention that we had was the use of their title block and the attributes it contained. Many of our large clients use some type of a drawing management system that pulls data from the title block. That's one of the harder things to accomplish. So good luck with that. I think hatch patterns were another thing that came out looking bad.
Long story short; IMHO your PM needs to understand what doing a project in revit means and they need to convey that to a client. First question I always ask is "What are the clients expectations with our final deliverable?" When I get the deer in the headlights looks, I simply ask are record drawings in revit or cad and what's the standard.
While you CAN export revit to cad, IMHO the drawings are just about useless, but I understand the need. Most clients wouldn't want to spend the time and money so they can upgrade a model yearly since you can only keep 3 versions of revit on one license and you can't jump upgrades (or at least it's a really bad idea to) you'll need to continually go through that process.
Hope this helps and let your PM know that if the client want a project to be delivered in CAD and they have a strict standard, you should be starting with that standard and use CAD. This is were I say you shouldn't use revit just because you can and it still has that new car smell. Use the tool that gets the client what they need (ie what they are paying you for), or at least let them know what they'll get in the end. Some of our clients have realized this and are OK with us just pressing a button and exporting to the OOTB AIA layer sets; and whatever comes out is what they are going to get, along with our revit model.
It also helps to have a small bottle of your favorite adult beverage somewhere nearby to help eliminate some of the hair pulling.