Problems with Toposurface

[haraldbrynlund]

Hello,

I am a pretty fresh and new user of Revit Architecture 2010. And I use it for some smal commissions that I recieved through friends. But it is very sad and very annoying that I cannot make a toposurface/site mass with Revit that is visible in the 3D-view or in any of the elevations and sections!

I have several times now tried to create a toposurface on top of an imported raster image showing the map of the site with contours. The site is sloping from around 35 meters in the top and coming down to around 20 meters above sea level and this does not come out in the views of the toposurface?

What is wrong?
- The volumes/house does not have a set/fixed project elevation?
- The contour lines won´t render threedimensional because of??
- A bug?

Best wishes and thanks in advance,

Harald,

Bergen in Norway

[cliff collins]

You will have a much easier time making a toposurface from an Imported Cad drawing
that has the topo contours in it at their proper "Z" elevations.

So--bring the raster image into Autocad, scale it to proper scale, and then trace over the contours with polylines, giving each polyline its proper Z value. The contours MUST be at the proper elevation in the Cad dwg.

Save the cad dwg, then Import it into Revit.

Next, select the Imported Cad dwg., and use the Site/Massing tools "create Toposurface from Imported"--simply click the dwg and Revit will make the 3D toposurface, which will appear in all views, when the model category for topography is on.

cheers..............

[haraldbrynlund]

You will have a much easier time making a toposurface from an Imported Cad drawing
that has the topo contours in it at their proper "Z" elevations.

So--bring the raster image into Autocad, scale it to proper scale, and then trace over the contours with polylines, giving each polyline its proper Z value. The contours MUST be at the proper elevation in the Cad dwg.

Save the cad dwg, then Import it into Revit.

Next, select the Imported Cad dwg., and use the Site/Massing tools "create Toposurface from Imported"--simply click the dwg and Revit will make the 3D toposurface, which will appear in all views, when the model category for topography is on.

cheers..............

-- thanks alot.

i thought about that option, but i am not very capable or fluent in autocad - so i choose to try out the toposurface from points/raster image as from the video at this site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZA7Zsz8zFg&feature=PlayList&p=1CC22C7CAF74E36C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=42

but - i will have a go at the procedure you described.
one question though:

- the .dwg created in autocad and then imported to revit, it will have surface geometry/quality - or will revit fix this itself?

h

[cliff collins]

Yes--you can make it from "points"--or tracing the raster image.

The dwg will not have a surface /mesh--just the polylines.

Revit just needs the 3D info from the polylines to create the 3D toposurface.

When prompted, select only the "topo" layer in the dwg file when creating the toposurface in Revit.

cheers......

[haraldbrynlund]

hello,

very sorry to bother you (or someone else) again - but it seems that i cannot display my imported .dwg on the revit views.

- what can be wrong? i get no error messages..

- i have attached the file.

h

[cliff collins]

Make sure that Imported categories are turned on in the view.

Also, try turning off view crop and crop region and then zoom full extents.
Does the cad dwg now appear?

In RAC 2010, there is a 2 mile limit for the origin of the cad file as well--do a search on this forum for that, if that becomes a problem--and there is some good discussion and solutions here. That will go away in RAC 2011--it will increase to 20 mile limit for the cad origin.

Also, try going to an elevation view, and see if the cad dwg is at a large distance up or down in the "z" direction from your revit model/Level 1.

If so, you can move the cad import up to Level 1. There are a lot of important methods
regarding Shared Coordinates when using a cad dwg and revit--do a search here for that as well.......

cheers

[haraldbrynlund]

thanks, thanks.

i have found it, but i have to alter it something. i did fix the polylines to specific z-values, but forgetting to scale the x and the y accordingly (or scaling it wrong!), so the polylines are now almost on top of each other.

i reckon that i manage to scale it properly in autocad now.
thanks! :)

h