Yet another problem with Linked AutoCAD files…. please read!

[gbenjamin.arch]

Yet another problem with Linked AutoCAD files….

Hey guys, I don’t post often here because a quick search of the forum usually answers most of my questions…unfortunately that is not the case this time!

I am having a problem “reloading” an AutoCAD file that has been linked in. It should be noted that this project is using worksets.

One day, I randomly got the message/error upon opening to the effect that: “Revit cannot locate following DWG, or it has been moved. Revit will display the file as it was the last time it has been updated. Use ‘manage links’ to repair the link.” I don’t really know where this is coming from, since the file has not moved in 4 four months!

I tried to do what it says: I went into ‘manage links’ and did the ‘reload from’ to manually tell it where the file is (and also was) - but the odd thing is that it never updated and reloaded. In an attempt to force it to recognize the new location, I UNLOADED (not to be confused with removed) the link, and then tried the ‘reload from’ command again. It didn’t work. It now thinks the file is still unloaded, and I can not get it to reload even the old “last save state” version.

This is very frustrating, and has happened before. The way I have resolved it before is to remove the link, only to reload and relink it in. I really do not want to do this because at our firm we typically do all of the site work in ACAD (since the site tools in Revit are not developed enough) – and this particular project is more involved with the site than some of our previous projects, and as a consequence has a great deal more graphic overrides associated with layers and I do not want to lose that information, or redo it. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? What could I be doing wrong?

FWIW – the site is drawn very close to the origin in acad, and the coordinates have been acquired and resaved backed into the dwg along time ago when the project first started.

Sorry for the long post, but wanted to explain the etire situation – since I have seen enough threads on here to know that the more info the better. Have a great day!

[Steve_Stafford]

Has the cad file been worked on during the same time frame? Have you tried to Audit the cad file? I've seen corruption in a cad file create some problems in the past. I have also seen folder permissions sneak up and interfere. The classic "nothing" has changed but suddenly Revit won't do something means "something" changed, at least something that's bugging Revit. Once when I pressed a bit harder about the permissions after being told by an "EyeTee" guy that "nothing" had changed they found that "someone" had been reviewing permission groups and some project folders were affected. So much for "nothing" changing. Something is always changing unless they literally come to work and do nothing all day? :wink:

[DaveP]

In the old (really old) days of IBM punchcards, SOP was to ask "Did you take the rubber band off the card deck"?

If you took the rubber band off, you did it because you changed a card.

Today's equivalent, I guess, would be "What's the date on the Drawing"?

[gbenjamin.arch]

File permissions haven’t changed (I would be 1 of 2 people who would know this, I put the tee in eye tee if you will) ;)

Yes, the file has been worked on in this time frame (this is why I want to reload). I tried your suggestion to audit, and purged it as well. Still does not work. It should be noted that nothing major changed in the file – just simple line edits. No moving of the origin, changing UCS (not that it should matter due to the world condition right?), etc. Surely moving a line would not cause Revit to reject a reload (although I guess you never know…). Also on that note – if there was something in the file bugging Revit – then why is the error worded the way it is? I would think that it say something to the effect that it “cannot reload file” rather than “cannot locate file”.

BTW - thanks for you replies :) Maybe we could troubleshoot this thing.

[sbrown]

Is this a site dwg file? Does it have lines farther than 2 miles apart? Try copying the DWG and renaming it and reloading the copy.

[gbenjamin.arch]

Further development…

Just ran a simple test. I copied the file and renamed it. I linked the renamed file in, and it worked. Does this mean that nothing is wrong with the DWG? This behavior makes me think something is actually wrong with Revit – yes something has changed, but it doesn’t mind it if I started over?

Remember, my old solution to this problem is to remove the link entirely and just redo it. A stated in my first post, I want to avoid this due to the heavy amount of overrides we have implemented.

Also, I think this issue started a few weeks ago when (maybe) the central file was recreated (I say maybe because I honestly don’t remember if I did it or not when I routinely audited the file). Has there been any experience with links being broken (and ultimately not repairable) due to the central file “moving”? NOTE: I didn’t move the file, this is a hypothetical.

I am just trying to figure out how to avoid this in the future.

EDIT: haha Sbrown – I must had did your suggestion while you were typing! No, the file itself is less than a mile wide and the site itself is roughly a ¼ of a mile wide.

To answer your other question, this file is a composite file from the Civil eng file and our own edits. I am fairly certain they use AutoCAD Civil, because in the past they accidently sent a file with proxy graphics (we asked them to turn them into plines to create our file). Does that make sense?

[ruthellenwilliams]

I had the same problem with a civil AutoCAD file in Revit 2008. Was hoping it was a Revit problem that would be fixed, but haven't tried it in 2010 yet. What version are you running?

[gbenjamin.arch]

Thanks for all the replies thus far!

We are runing Revit Architecture 2009. The AutoCAD is not a native AutoCAD Civil file though, it just seems to not want to update.

[brede.207016]

This is probably not going to be super helpful for your current problem, but maybe some food for thought. We also keep our site plans in Autocad and then load them into Revit. Due to problems like the one you're having and many many others (linking to autocad seems very finicky) we try to maintain a super clean .dwg file. We take care to use Revit's import settings so we do not have to override the visibility graphics. This way, we can completely delete the .dwg from Revit and re-link it when it does crazy things. Works pretty good in our office, although we've really got to stay on top of keeping that site plan really clean.

[Tyveka]

Does anyone know if this was ever resolved and what caused it?
We're facing the same issues. It works if we remove the CAD link and then re-import it but due to visibility overrides in other views, we don't want to take this step.

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[wmullett]

Did you publish coordinates from your Revit to the CAD file?

[brenehan]

We had a very similar problem with some autocad site files linked into Revit 2009 that were being continued to work on.
Someone would work on the file and then we could not reload it back into the project. We were being extremely through in regard to how we were working on the AutoCAD files. All the files were as clean as we could make them, (no errors, audited, no shape files, very few scales, only default text and line type styles ect.)

We were able to narrow the problem down to xrefs and it may have been "unreconciled layers".
Remove all the xrefs for the file and see if it reloads into your project?

Brian

[Tyveka]

No, we didn't publish coordinates.
Should we do so or should we avoid doing that? Not entirely sure...

Thanks for the suggestions. If we get this resolved, I'll post here.