DWG Export & Text Leaders

[Mr Spot]

Hi everyone,

We have an issue with some of our exports using a clients dwg export layers file (which is pretty much the standard AIA layers). The Text leaders in revit are set as lineweight 5 and it seems when we do an export they are not correctly using the associate text layer and color.

That is when we export the text and leader are on the correct layer however the leader exports out on Color 10 (which isn't assigned in our clients CTB file so prints in colour) instead of the correct Color 2.

So i figured i'll try the export with no overrides option, however then all our dimensions export very ugly which is worse.

Does anyone know if there is a way to assign these forced layers color in the export process? OR why revit chooses to use Color 10 or Color 50 as it sometimes does.

Or should I be posting this as a SR? :banghead: :screwy:

[dbaldacchino]

Chris, if you select to export with no overrides, shouldn't the text end up on the A-Anno-Text (if that's the layer you have assigned) and with the color specified (typically 2)? What I don't understand is why your dimensions are coming out "ugly". If you set your export settings correctly, shouldn't the dimensions also find themselves on the correct layer with the correct color?

When your text and leader export on the correct layer but overriden with color 10, is it because the text in your view has been overriden to use color 10 or is it doing this on it's own?

[Mr Spot]

G'day David,

Yes it should do that but its not...

For some reason overrides are required to be ON for the dimension styles to work correctly. For instance if they are turned off the witness lines all stuff up, the text is no longer Arial Narrow and any repositioned dimension text is repositioned back to its original location. They are on the correct layer and colour just lose all formatting with the overrides off.

The text in the view has not been overridden at all, its just standard text and in the text properties the leader is set to use lineweight 5.

I really think this is a bug, but i just wanted to confirm before posting as SR.

Cheers.

[dbaldacchino]

I guess I never ran across this issue since when we export to dwg for consultants, we don't give them any dimensions; just backgrounds of our floors for reference. I'm going to test some things out and post back.

[Steve_Stafford]

What happens when you use the third option - All properties BYLAYER, new layers for overrides?

[dbaldacchino]

Well mate, I can replicate the exact same things. With no overrides, the Gap to Element is ignored, as is the font and the location of moved dimension text. So I can see your problem. Another thing I noticed is that if I export with overrides, my dimensions show up with the same font as set in Revit (Arial in my case), but if I touch the dwg dimension, the text reverts to txt.shx and formatting goes away. In fact, in both export cases, the font definition is exactly the same (font and all). The only difference is that it displays correctly when you open the file, but if you click on the witness line end and click in the same place again, the overrides go away.....weird.The overrides don't seem to be permanent. I'd describe them as "fragile" in thic case!

As for text and leaders, mine are exporting on the same layer (A-Anno-Text). First I left the text and leader as black and both exports were on the A-Anno-Text layer, ByLayer (color 2, yellow). Then I changed the text to another color (red) and expoorted both cases again. Interestingly, the thumbnail shows a red leader and text in both cases, but the result after opening the dwg is the same as before! (I'm sure you noticed that the thumbnail colors never match the final resulting dwg). So I cannot replicate your text issue for some reason. Oh by the way, I'm using 9.1 at the moment.

[dbaldacchino]

Tried the third option....I got the same result as the one with no overrides and a lot more extra layers. The text and leaders still show up ByLayer even though I set the color to red. Also, even though the test file has non-overriden walls, doors, etc, the third option caused the walls to go to A-Wall-1 for example, which has a description of "Architectural - Walls - Phase 1". Actually all objects are on these phased layers (A-Door-1, etc), but it still created non-phased layers, which have no objects on them.

All exports also created an A-Anno-Dims-96 with nothing on it! What's up with that? I'm glad we don't have to export for production purposes; this would drive me nuts! By the way, all my tests were of an exported plan view in RB9.1.

[Mr Spot]

What happens when you use the third option - All properties BYLAYER, new layers for overrides?
We end up, as David described, with tonnes of extra layers we don't want and the leader is still exported to colour 10.

I might try changing the lineweight of the text leader back to lineweight 1 or 2 and see if this resolves the issue...

I've been aware of these exporting issues for quite sometime - most of which are outlined on my blog however it could do with an update was written for 9.0 from memory so they may have been some improvements.