3D entourage workflow

[angelo]

I'm looking for some assistance on how to efficiently get furniture, kitchen cabinets, shelving, etc. into Revit for a highly detailed residential project. There are a huge number of dwg and 3ds files out there, and I'd like to know how to get them into Revit. I have also got quite a few sketchup models to use.

I've read that in-place families aren't great, so how can these best be integrated into the model?

I want to use them primarily for layout, but also see them in sections and 3D views. I do not want to painstakingly build them from scratch in Revit!

Any suggestions or tutorials?

Thanks,
Angelo

[Justin Marchiel]

if you already have them in 3d, just create a new family (casework, furniture, etc), and import the cadd drawing. Save the family and insert into your drawing.

good as gold!

Justin

[whittendesigns]

One thing I noticed when I import models from Max/Viz, if you get too many in there the polygon count makes your Revit come to a crawl. At least on my machine it does. I've got a pretty damn good one too.

Make sure you have your settings set to bylayer and bycolor from autocad when you save the model

[sbrown]

make sure you turn off the 3d object in plan and draw some symbol lines in the family.

[angelo]

Thanks guys! Any suggestions on furniture that has fairly complex geometry--some of it seems to drop out on occasion...

Angelo

[Justin Marchiel]

any specific reason to have complicated geometry? is it for rendering only? I like to keep that stuff simple because it chews up memory for not much payback

Justin

[petervanko]

I've found that if the piece is simple enough, I re-model it with native Revit solids/voids--this keeps that poly count low. Plus, Revit handles curved surfaces much differently/better than ACAD and you can avoid occassional faceting.

As SDBrown already aluded to, the ability to utilize plain 2-d linework in flat plans and elevations is key to a good furniture family and hopefully aids in computation (reserve that 3-d model for the views that really need it!). Just one piece of advice: make sure you know the difference between model and symbolic lines.

[angelo]

any specific reason to have complicated geometry? is it for rendering only? I like to keep that stuff simple because it chews up memory for not much payback

JustinJustin,

Unlike our big commercial projects, this one is a modern residence, and I'd like to use some nicely detailed furniture/kitchen cabinets. It also helps when designing small spaces to have the actual furniture to be used laid out (to make sure it all fits!).

I've been using Maxwell, and I'd prefer to not be adding stuff in another program for entourage type stuff. At some point, I'm sure I'll have to link in this stuff or remove it completely to cut down on size, but for the schematic and design development phases, it would be great to have it all in the same file.

[sbrown]

As long as you import it into the appropriate family and set the visibility properties appropriately it will not slow down your model. You will still want to add symbol lines for objects that have lots of faces. Take a look at the Modern Materials library from the Web Library button on the open dialog box.