Mixed Revit & Autocad

[DanielleAnderson]

Much to my utter chagrin, my current project has been turned into a two-headed monster of revit randomly mixed with autocad (oh that I had more authority here) and I need to substitute some autocad interior elevations for the revit ones that are currently on the sheet (I know, someone out there has a mouth gaping open in horror)--I'm not quite sure what the most efficient way of doing this is so that I can keep the sheet references on tags and such. If I had no life, I suppose I would go through the revit model and redraw stuff in the style of the autocad drawing, but I have been specifically asked to leave it alone and not do that. Help? :screwy:

[Simon.Whitbread]

I know the feeling well, and this is one way round.

Import your AutoCAD dwg into the elevation view, align it with the building. Then using Visibility / Graphics, TURN OFF all the model elements so you are left with the dwg. You still have the same elevation view on your output sheet.

[jbalding48677]

Quick answer, without trying...

Link the AutoCAD elevations into the Revit views and turn off the Revit model. The symbols will still reflect the sheet and drawing number and if you link them, you can update them. Turn the model elements on to verify boundaries then off to plot.

Just tried it, it works. You need to be mindful of the workplane you set it on if you want to go back and use some of the model geometry.

HTH -

.

[DanielleAnderson]

Thanks guys,
seems like a logical way of doing an illogical task... ;-)

[jarod.tulanowski]

all you need now is a little microstation files and some Architectural Desktop and you can have a stew haha.

[Wes Macaulay]

all you need now is a little microstation files and some Architectural Desktop and you can have a stew haha.Funny, but still:veryevil:

Danielle, choose to link the DWGs, and uncheck current view only: then you can place them on a 3D plane. If you do not link the DWGs Revit forces them to "lie down" into plan mode rather than being "flipped up" to be viewed in elevation.

Put them in a workset that is NOT visible in all views. You'll have to turn on the workset to get the elevations visible.

[sbrown]

Wes, I would not recommend linking elevations as you have suggested, they will show up in everyview as you indicate. I have found the only way is to use the current view only, this places them on the elevation plane and then they don't show up in other views. We typically, create the elevation view, export, work on it in autocad, then import/link it back in, current view only. Otherwise you are guarenteed someone won't put it on the turned off workset and someone in a section will see a line and delete it, unknowingly deleting the dwg file.

[SCShell]

Hey there,
I have also found that Plan views should be brought in as "Current View Only" because they show up as really heavy lines in all other sections, elevations etc. as a ground plane looking element.

Steve

Oh, and I import DWG details as "drafting views" individually, re-label and then reference them when placing the callout.

[Allen Lacy]

Wes, I would not recommend linking elevations as you have suggested, they will show up in everyview as you indicate. I have found the only way is to use the current view only, this places them on the elevation plane and then they don't show up in other views. We typically, create the elevation view, export, work on it in autocad, then import/link it back in, current view only. Otherwise you are guarenteed someone won't put it on the turned off workset and someone in a section will see a line and delete it, unknowingly deleting the dwg file. Couldn't you set up view templates to turn off the DWGs in all views except elevations?

[sbrown]

You can, but what happens when you create a section or another view and you aren't the one who put the elevations in so you don't know that you need to apply a view template. I'm speaking from experience on an interiors job with 80+ interior elevations that were done in acad and brought into a project. if these had been brought in anything other than current view only, they would have in one way or another shown up in every view in the project and have had to been turned off. Just a warning you can do as you describe but it won't be fun.

[hand471037]

Just a warning you can do as you describe but it won't be fun.

When is working in both AutoCAD and Revit at the same time on a Project ever fun? :veryevil:

Just kidding. :D

Not really. :(

Just got a call to help a firm out with a very complex Revit-AutoCAD hybrid project, and it's going to be painful (they have to meet a very demanding AutoCAD standard, so the simple exports from Revit won't fly)...

[sbrown]

Not to beat a dead horse, If the delieverables have to be autocad and in a format cad users are used to, you really should do the production in autocad. I hate to say that, but in my experience the amount of cleanup time required to take an exported revit set of documents and make it compatable with an established cad system will far out weigh the time savings occurred in the drawing creation. I've started being very clear with everyone I work with that we aren't using autocad and the exports are for background use only and the printed sheets(dwfs or pdfs) are the delieverables not the cad files. Good luck.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Scott,
not to get too far off topic but...

where have the problems occured in your exchange with consultants? Is there just not enough control over export to satisfy them (not enough separate layers for Revit wall objects for example) or does mapping layers to object styles just not work in your experience?

[DanielleAnderson]

Not to beat a dead horse, If the delieverables have to be autocad and in a format cad users are used to, you really should do the production in autocad. I hate to say that, but in my experience the amount of cleanup time required to take an exported revit set of documents and make it compatable with an established cad system will far out weigh the time savings occurred in the drawing creation. I've started being very clear with everyone I work with that we aren't using autocad and the exports are for background use only and the printed sheets(dwfs or pdfs) are the delieverables not the cad files. Good luck.


Yes--this has been our headache from the beginning of our revit use: pretty much all of our projects, but one that I can think of, are for government agencies with very strict CAD standards. It has made it very hard for members of our firm to commit to Revit. The benefit of it though is the ability to solve complex geometry problems in 3d, the drawback is that even if you re-write the autocad export txt file to conform to standards, there is still a lot of cleanup to be done. I guess life will improve when government agencies decide 3d is better for documentation, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

[dfriesen]

where have the problems occured in your exchange with consultants? Is there just not enough control over export to satisfy them (not enough separate layers for Revit wall objects for example) or does mapping layers to object styles just not work in your experience?
An individual block definition for each and every instance of a family, regardless that they are all identical!!! This hasn't come up as a problem with consultants, but it sure has with me!

[hand471037]

Not to beat a dead horse, If the delieverables have to be autocad and in a format cad users are used to, you really should do the production in autocad.

Oh no, I told them that. I told them that it might be best to just drop Revit on this one, and go AutoCAD. Problem is that the Project has some very complex elevational coordination issues that have to be 100% dead on otherwise heads roll. They are concerned that doing the Project with AutoCAD 3D coordination problems will creep in and hurt them greatly later on.

So it's a tough one, do they eat the time of working in Revit and then converting everything in AutoCAD to match a complex client-mandated standard to defer future unknown Project problems that would cost a bundle, or do they drop out of Revit, work in AutoCAD, be possibly more efficient in producing the DWG deliverables saving money in the short term, but yet not be able to trust the drawing set itself and possibly really pay for it later on?

As for why the post-export conversion, the client demands that all annotation blocks within the CAD files are their standard blocks they provide, which are AutoCAD Blocks with Attributes. And lots of other things like that. Revit's DWG exporting, while great, can't match the client CAD standard, which was done many years ago, and is rather, well, clunky and complex. Revit's DWG exporting was meant for sending backgrounds out to consultants and producing AIA-standard document sets, it's not yet flexible enough to match any standard of any kind...

[Steve_Stafford]

Dimitri,

While working with WATG I wrote at least three reports about this issue for development. I've posted one of them in the forum in the past. I'll see if I can find it to give you a link. The merge collinear lines feature is a direct result of our input and other firms as well. They are naturally targetting other parts of the report in future versions.

On some level it reduces Revit to a dwg creator which is not where we want to go...

I'd like to see AutoCAD be smarter about displaying Revit data instead and if DWF gets us there, fine. I'd like to see Export to DWG vanish from our vocabulary. I'd like to see AutoCAD get an import RVT command and give them tools to display symbolic representations of our rich data instead of reducing it to lines on layers. Same goes for DWF...

My 2 pence..

[Danny Polkinhorn]

On some level it reduces Revit to a dwg creator which is not where we want to go...

I'd like to see AutoCAD be smarter about displaying Revit data instead and if DWF gets us there, fine. I'd like to see Export to DWG vanish from our vocabulary. I'd like to see AutoCAD get an import RVT command and give them tools to display symbolic representations of our rich data instead of reducing it to lines on layers. Same goes for DWF...
Steve,

One of the few times that I'll disagree with you (and I'll probably regret it ;-) ). As Revit is creating views, in a sense, it's already creating 2D representations, and especially when it prints. For AutoCAD to develop an interpreter for Revit's "rich data" would take eons. The 2D output from Revit is already close to what it should be.

Having said that, I really like your DWF idea, and from what I gathered at AU it seems they're heading in that direction as a drawing exchange format. However, for Revit to create a 2D DWF versus a DWG, there's probably not much difference in terms of development effort.

[sbrown]

I don't have any issues(not major) with consultants. Its only an issue where another architect needs to take a revit project at the DD phase and go into cds in autocad.(we do alot of design only work then pass it on to a local architect, since much of are work is in a diff. country). Backgrounds are not a problem. i haven't personally encountered the govt standards, but I can imagine if you your contract stated you were to provide dwgs to specific layer strategy and xref strategy it would be hard to deal with.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Thanks for the reply Steve. Is this the post you are referring to?http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=8877

When I did my search I came across another thread from 2003 you might be interested in.


No disrespect intended...if "you" reference my floor plan into "your" hvac drawing why do "you" need to do anything to it at all except force all layers to your grayscale color. You are only going to draft your work on top of the reference, true? (assuming I properly export a floor plan with the display you expect)

I would not expect nor encourage anyone to spend any time on a consultants drawing except to control it's plotting condition and if it is unmanageable I'd request one that was. I work with every trade here (in house) and this is how we operate.

I realize that there are other approaches and only comment from my perspective. From my perspective, the multiple line segments and occasional redundant lines in a Revit export do not adversely affect our trades documents or the process by which they are created. We are not providing exported files to other architects. I recognize whole heartedly that an export like we've been discussing would be distressing for another architectural cadd operator expected to produce tight drawings with the dumb 2d linework and I'd discourage that practice strongly. (worth noting I primarily export to Bentley's dgn format, so perhaps "mileage varies" for the dwg??)You seem to have changed your tune over time. :wink:

Not being on the receiving end of exported dwg's I'm only going by what my consultants have told me and they don't seem to have any major issues up to this point. I can see where multiple instances of blocks could be an issue as well as blocks with complex attributes.

[DanielleAnderson]

Thanks for the reply Steve. Is this the post you are referring to?http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=8877

When I did my search I came across another thread from 2003 you might be interested in.

You seem to have changed your tune over time. :wink:

Not being on the receiving end of exported dwg's I'm only going by what my consultants have told me and they don't seem to have any major issues up to this point. I can see where multiple instances of blocks could be an issue as well as blocks with complex attributes.


Way to kill the thread Dimitri. ;)
I actually do have another question related to the original subject:
If I import dwgs into the model and link them in (just getting all the information here)--can one export a view or sheet that has imported linked acad files in it? I have had some problem with this in the past, so I am just curious what others suggest.

[hand471037]

Way to kill the thread Dimitri. ;)
I actually do have another question related to the original subject:
If I import dwgs into the model and link them in (just getting all the information here)--can one export a view or sheet that has imported linked acad files in it? I have had some problem with this in the past, so I am just curious what others suggest.

Huh. Haven't tried that in a while, but IIRC, you'd get a DWG within the DWG as a block or something. I'll have to try that out again...

[kpaxton]

ARRGHHHH! Don't EVEN get me started on the topic of Hybrids. :veryevil: (It's been a bad week for Hybrids).

As was stated earlier... it's a necessary evil. Until we get these issues of compatibility resolved we're going to have to put up with this a while longer, I regret. Personally I'd be able to live with my consultants bitching there were 4 lines in the wall over one another as long as I can have a bit better depth-linework control on my elevations (rather than having to resort to the linework tool).

Actually, I rather enjoy Steve_Stafford's comment as to Autocad having an "RVT import" button. I know we're the minority on the block, but hey - ADT's already 'stolen' some look and feel from Revit, why not import the RVT views?

It's late and I won't get into the other mini-topics in the thread - although the meeting of certain governmental cad standards is an interesting topic. I wonder what it would be like if the governmental agencies all of a sudden jumped on the Revit bandwagon? What would the Autocad users dooooooo? :O

Peace,
Kyle

[Steve_Stafford]

...You seem to have changed your tune over time. :wink: Sort of :wink: more like changing employer's and their needs were really different! As backgrounds I stand "firm" with my original thoughts. As dwg data handed off to another architect to use as starting point to finish the work in dwg form, it doesn't fly well.

Danny...it's just me tossing my thoughts around. I just want Autodesk to find a way to avoid turning Revit data into "dumb" data. Far more likely that we'll see DWF take on this role given what we saw at AU eh?

[Wes Macaulay]

Wes, I would not recommend linking elevations as you have suggested, they will show up in everyview as you indicate. I have found the only way is to use the current view only, this places them on the elevation plane and then they don't show up in other views. We typically, create the elevation view, export, work on it in autocad, then import/link it back in, current view only. Otherwise you are guarenteed someone won't put it on the turned off workset and someone in a section will see a line and delete it, unknowingly deleting the dwg file.Huh. Used to be you had to link them in 3D to get them to appear properly? Ah well. You learn something everyday...

[sbrown]

I remember that too Wes, but now you just check current view only and then its not flat, note that you may have to use the bring to front tool as it will be behind you model to start.

[Wes Macaulay]

Yeah, so now I'm a Revit dinosaur... "Oh yeah, you couldn't do it that way in 8.0" :lol:

[brd]

Why do I always find these threads a day late? We had this exact same discussion in my office just yesterday and decided to do the same thing that was recommended here. It does give us a little sense of validation that others recommended the same decision we made.

On the topic of linking only into the current view, we decided to uncheck this option box solely for the reason of being able to callout information in the link. We just hired a new person in the office who isn't Revit trained yet, so the only way we can get his details is by importing CAD files, so we import his building sections (and make sure they're visible in every view) so we can place a callout bubble on the building section so that the information reads in the wall section and detail section. If we had more time left in the project budget, we wouldn't have to do it this way, but we don't always have that luxury do we?

[DanielleAnderson]

I just want to add--at the end of this potentially dead thread--that after having spent much of the day back in autocad dealing with things like dim/text styles/layering/ctb files, I am SO grateful for Revit...