How do you combine single line text?

[cadkiller]

Group;

I imported a DWG file for my titleblock and exploded it to be able to edit the text. Now I want to combine the single line text back into paragraphs. Can this be done?

[Scott D Davis]

Tedious, but Cut-n-Paste will work. Double click the line of text to add to the paragraph, highlight the text, Ctrl-X. Double click the line (or paragraph) of text to add to, go to the end, Crtl-V. Repeat for all lines.

[hand471037]

Might be faster to jump back into AutoCAD, combine the line there, double-click on it to edit it, highlight it, and then jump back to Revit & paste it (you can cut-and-paste text between programs and Revit like this, as long as it's highlighted text into a Revit bit of text).

[beegee]

You don't even need Autocad. You can cut / paste and combine into a paragraph in any word processing program.

Useful for large amounts of text.

[hand471037]

oh totally. But if the text is already in AutoCAD, there is an express tool for taking single-line text and making it multi-line. Just thought it might be faster.

[cadkiller]

Wow something so simple becomes so tedious and time consuming. Why don't they have a command to group text entities back together after they are exploded? I will go crazy importing details and editing them in Revit! I also shouldn't have to use any other program to be able to edit or combine text objects. This is really going to drive me to drink some serious stuff! Very frustrated at the moment!

[Dimitri Harvalias]

You really should create a Revit titleblock. It shouldn't take too long and it will save time in the long run. Import the AutoCad file and just trace over it. Create new labels for all the tblock info, save as a family and it's available for other projects.
As for details, try just importing the geometry and doing your annotation in Revit. That way you can re-insert the AutoCad stuff if you have someone edit it outside Revit and you don't have to muck with the text all over again.

[hand471037]

What are you doing? Legend Notes or something? Maybe putting all the text on a Drafting View, and just leaving it single-line, would be a better approach...

[Scott D Davis]

Why don't they have a command to group text entities back together after they are exploded
Because exploding is an AutoCAD thing.... :-D

In all seriousness though, I think the best suggestion (since you already have AutoCAD) is to open the AutoCAD file with multi-line text, edit the text, highlight all, Ctrl-C. Thengo to the Revit file, open a single line exploded AutoCAD text imported into Revit, and just paste over the single line. Then erase the other single-line text that you don't need.

I think ultimately what you are looking for is a wishlist item:

AutoCAD multi-line text should remain "paragraph" style in Revit upon import and exploding.

[cadkiller]

HCSL;

That's what I'm trying to do is create a Revit titleblock and will save as a family for future use. I have several different clients and they all have different titleblocks that they want me to use; so I will have to make many different ones of several different sizes. I wish I only had one type, life would be so much easier.

Jeffery;

I just have some general notes on my titleblock and would like to reuse them just to save some time. I also will be importing many details in the near future with a bunch of multi line text attached to leaders. I don't want to just import the geometry and have to annotate all the details over again. My detail annotations change from job to job and will need to be edited quite frequently.

The wish that Scott mentioned is what I really need. Multi line text shouldn't be exploded to single line text.

[aaronrumple]

Place general notes in a group, legend, drafting view or even a family... It all depends on how they will be used. If they exist on just a single sheet - a drafting view will do. A group can be used effectively four notes if you are placing them on multiple sheets and need a single editing operation to update all notes. A family might work better for notes that are shorter and have some theme and variation. Groups and families are easily saved out for loading into other projects. Drafting views and legends should be built into your templates as copying them to another project will require opening the host project.

For existing details - I do suggest that you make a long term goal converting them to revit details. However this doesn't have to be done all at once. I suggest to get the best use from an existing AutoCAD dwg, spend a little time in AutoCAD cleaning up the drawing. Erase leader and dimensions. Revit's dimension and leader tools are far better and easily applied to the imported objects. Separate the graphics and notes into separate files with the Wblock command. This way the linework can remain unexploded. You can then explode the text and work with the notes freely and add leaders that match the rest of the project. I also run the Overkill and Flatten commands to make sure I'm not importing a bunch of garbage. You might also want to apply hatch patterns within Revit. Again this takes little time with the pick tools and helps the imported drawings look better. Later you'll be able to explode the linework and make this a true Revit detail.