Revit hangs on Acad Export

[christo4robin]

I am preparing a client presentation - have created many perspective views that I am exporting as .dwgs with the intent to squiggle them, then add color, notes, etc. by hand.

I figured I could do a mass export - place the views on sheets and then export. However... regardless of how many views are on the sheet (varied from 1 to 9) Revit appears to hang. I let it grind away for 10-15 minutes with no results, so I bailed on the process and am resorting to PDF printing, opening in Illustrator, saving as dxf, then squiggling.

QUESTION... Am I missing something that is causing Revit to hang on Export? I have exported previously (different project and 2D views) with no problems.

[christo4robin]

So, Illustrator 10 read the pdfs as raster files somehow. Squiggle sees them as a bunch of pictures and doesnt work.

I'm downloading the latest build of Revit in the hopes that it will help.

C

[aggockel50321]

My experience is that perspective (3d) views tend to get rather large when exported to dwg or dxf, especially if the views are set to shaded or shaded with edges. Any hatches (shingles, siding, etc) add to the problem.

Stick with hidden line, & do each view individually, & see if that doesn't work better.

[sbrown]

I don't think you can export perspectives, just the 3d model(iso default 3d view), then regenerate the perspectives in autocad and squiggle.

[christo4robin]

Scott, re: a previous post I read, placing a 3D view on a sheet in hidden line mode, the xref that is created on export is a 2D line drawing. Thats the one that I grab and then squiggle. (By contrast, if I export a 3D view directly, then it is a 3D acad drawing that results.)

And, after I downloaded the most recent build, the export appears to be working with a single view on a sheet. I'm off to give a go to multiple views on one sheet now.

Cheers!

C

[aggockel50321]

placing a 3D view on a sheet in hidden line mode, the xref that is created on export is a 2D line drawing.

That's been my experince.

[Cathy Hadley]

As an alternative to squiggle you should check out Sketch up ... free demo download... takes about 10 min to master and you can get all the views you want with lots of nice *designy* feels to them.

CZH

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I agree Cathy, Sketch Up is a great tool. The biggest bonus is the 'instant' shadows you get. One caution, keep the model simple before you export. As soon as you geta lot of info into the model it causes really sluggish response times in SU. From SU you can export to jpg and dump that right into a Revit sheet view.

[christo4robin]

Update...

3 sheets, 9 views per sheet for the 1st two and 3 on the last for a total of 21 3D hidden line views (10" wide x 6"high) took a total of about 5 hours to export as AutoCAD 2000 .dwg files. I'm running the latest build of Revit on an XP Home machine with 512mb ram and a P4 2.4GHZ processor.

Interestingly, I did about the same number of interior elevations and they exported in about 1 minute.

C

[Allen Lacy]

I suspect that the surface patterns are causing the long export problems. I have had this happen when I have exported a floor plan with floor surface pattern on. Only workaround would be to turn off surface patterns, export, then add hatching (if necessary) in AutoCad.

[christo4robin]

Excellent suggestion re: the surface patterns. I did another full export and it took less than 30 minutes.

Thanks Allen!

[LRaiz]

Most likely there is something imperfect about a model that causes such long export times. Usually it is a result of interpenetrating but not joined geometry. Try to look at your views in hidden line or shading with edges and see if all edges between surfaces are drawn as expected. If some edges are missing and surfaces have patterns then export is forced to process lines of patterns one by one as opposed to treating them as a combined surface region. Thus considerably longer processing times.