issues with exporting from Revit to Autocad

[davidwlight]

Has anybody come across this problem before....if you create a family in Revit, but give the object a surface pattern of solid, when you export out a view to Autocad the surface comes across as a part of the block but not on a different layer. You can't then turn the hatch off, unless you explode everything & delete the hatching or change it to a different layer from within Autocad. This is causing us a lot of problem when we issue drawings to consultants.
Another problem which is also related to the above, is when you export from Revit to Autocad, it xrefs out everything ( which works very well ) , but when you issue the drawing you have to open the exported drawing in Autocad & bind all the xrefs, this is ok if you have one or two drawings but if you have say 30, it is taking an age. This is a big problem when you have a large project which needs to be issued in dwg format rather than dwf or pdf. Does anybody have a lisp routine or script that they use, which automatically does this for you, any suggestions would be grateful.

[Yman]

Yes, I have the same problem with solid fills. I have to do what you do. I haven't had the xref problem though. I figure the consultant always has to reload/ bind the xrefs into the project when they get them from me. I used to have to do this when I worked for an engineer when I was in college. Sometimes I would just create a temporary path that matched the clients xref path and then the xref would load automatically. Worked about 95% of the time.

But your right, it should be something that needs to be fixed by Revit.

Y

[Scott D Davis]

We just send consultants the xrefs for use as backgrounds. They never need the whole sheet with titleblock. If they did, I would just send them all files (titleblock and xrefs) without binding. As long as they put them all in the same folder on their network, the xrefs will open.

[davidwlight]

The problem is that the client (a well known fashion retail house) requests the drawings be sent in dwg format, so we are in a no win situation. We are doing all of the retail work in Revit with some excellent results. What used to take a couple of weeks to produce in Autocad is now taking a matter of days, since all the furniture has been drawn with all standard details included as well as being fully parametric. You could argue that we've now got time of our hand; so binding a few drawings is no big deal. But the inclusion a simple function to bind / insert xref's when exporting doesn't look like a differcult function to add into Revit, but then I'm not a programmer.

[jbalding48677]

Binding your drawings should not be necessary if you give them all of the drawing files. The xrefs should all work fine on their end. Now, there could be some issues with pathing but that is fixed when you set up a start in directory and soft pathing.

If that doesn't suit you, you might look into a pack-n-go scenario. I think the acad command is pack. I can't be too sure I have been out of acad for a long time now ... and loving every minute of it!!!

Good luck -

[aaronrumple]

I think you should be able to mass bind the files using adsk's xref manager app. Haven't used it in a while but I think it had that capability.

The hatching issue isn't perfect as it is a nested layer in a block. (AutoCAD's issue in my opinion...) You can set up different export layers, but yes you may need to redefine or explode some objects.

If they don't want the hatch - set up view without the hatching in Revit. That's how we deal internaly with mechanical backgrounds.

[davidwlight]

Thanks guys! I'll try the various different options you suggested.