Dealing w/ Site Plans

[TerribleTim]

This may have been covered before, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. Sorry if it's a rehash. :?

When you guys are working with a Civil consultant that is working in AutoCAD or Civil3D, how do you deal with creating your Architectural Site Plan based off of a .dwg file? Are you iporting the CAD geometry and then just drawing over the top of it or are you doing something else?

How do you deal with updates to that civil background?

I'm looking for a "best practices" sort of deal so any help here is greatly appreciated.

[Revitaoist]

I've had problems with linked cad files and lost references, so I insert to a family > explode > convert to revit lines > change to one line style > copyclip > paste to new family > then layer with linestyles crated in the family. This makes the site plan a FAMILY, but it is all native Revit, so no problems arise from CAD. Any updates I do manually. I also keep my site plans all 2D, because 3D site stuff is a headache. This approach I created, and I don't think anyone else is doing it this way, but it works great.

[nancy.mcclure]

Lots of variables in approach, Tim. Consider each project for it's needs, and define a couple of workflows that address them specifically. Short summary examples:

CAD topo lines just as graphical background to Revit Plans:
Link in Civil dwg Origin-to-Origin (if possible, or manually position and establish Shared Coordinates). Consider placing it in a non-visible workset for easier visibility control across multiple views.

Build a Toposurface from civil:
Create a separate Site model, with Civil file inserted and used to create the topo points. Link the Revit Site into the Building file. Same comment on workset visibility.

I like Revitaoist's approach for selecting key info from the civil file and 'revitizing' it, but the manual updates could make that unmanageable on larger projects, with more complexity. Also, each firm needs to decide if they will accept the arch team recreating Civil's info for their documentation - this is nixed by several firms I've worked with.

[TerribleTim]

@Revitaoist - Interesting approach. So in the end, you're still having to manually update when your civil consultant gives you an updated background. So you would then go through all those steps each time you have to update, right?

[sbrown]

Depends, do you own any of the work on the site. Ie are you placing the parking? or is civil? If civil owns everything, I just link their site to a workset that is off by default, halftone it and put a sheet note refer to civil for blah, blah, blah, If I am designing the sitework, I'll use a mix of walls for curbs and floors for hardscape and topo for planting beds and sloped areas.

[cliff collins]

Here's a pretty good link:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=13734321&linkID=9243097

[Revitaoist]

Usually the consultants' updates are not very much, so I usually just do them in the existing site plan family, not going through all the steps to convert. Once you go through the process, you will realize it's not much work to convert a whole file if need be.

[MikeJarosz]

The core problem here is that there is no Revit civil package. And, Revit by itself isn't especially strong on sitework anyway. Better site tools are on everybody's wish list. Eagle Point software presented a pretty interesting site design add-on for Revit at the NYC User Group. Lookup eaglepoint.com (before ADesk does!)

My latest site plan was hundreds of acres in the mountains of New England. The contours of the hills were so close together they fused into solid black on zoom all.

I like the idea of making contours a separate link file. Will try it next time.