Detail Sheets/Views

[eric.110455]

Well I made the move to Revit and I'm in the middle of my first project. I want to know the best practices to detail views when it comes to naming, organizing etc... I design homes, so many of my details remain the same and ALL details at this point are in CAD format. Now I know you can insert them into a new drafting view but it seems my Drafting views will be pretty long listed. Is there a way to separate the details,i.e Architectural, Structural, etc...? Any help is appreciated, I don't want to start down the wrong path.
Thanks

[Scott Womack]

Well I made the move to Revit and I'm in the middle of my first project. I want to know the best practices to detail views when it comes to naming, organizing etc... I design homes, so many of my details remain the same and ALL details at this point are in CAD format. Now I know you can insert them into a new drafting view but it seems my Drafting views will be pretty long listed. Is there a way to separate the details,i.e Architectural, Structural, etc...?

Create a project parameter or parameters, and apply them to views. You can set up your browser to use this new parameter to additionally filter your views into an organization that suites you.

Two things about bringing CAD details into Drafting views. 1) There will be little or no way to change them If you either partially, or fully explode them, the originally DWG definition will remain in that file, with NO way to remove it, or purge it out, without buying a third party application. This will add increased file size and decreased performance to your projects. Although time consuming, select a few of the most common details, "link" them into a drafting view, and using the arrow under the drafting lines, "select" or "pick" the lines in the underlying CAD detail, and native Revit lines will be created. Now you can add detail components, dimensions, and Text to complete the detail, and unlink the CAd file. Now you have a "clean" Revit Drafting view that can be brought intact from project to project. Next project select a few more details to "convert".

[eric.110455]

The way I'm doing it right now is inserting ALL my Cad files into a "dummy project", full explode the file, then select all the lines and use the filter to select the layers I want, then select the "Wide Lines" for example to change it to revit lines. I continue to do this for all lines, text, hatch etc... after thats complete I copy/paste into my project and/or Template file. By doing this I find its very clean and doesn't bring all the ACAD line and junk with it (it leaves it the dummy project), and it's much faster than using the original file as an underlay and selecting lines and retyping text.
Does anyone else use this approach? Is there a negative side to this approach?

[dbaldacchino]

I would highly recommend that you take your time and slowly convert them to Revit drafting views by re-drawing (link the dwg as a background, redraw, delete link). Why? Because you'll start to use detail components for repetitive parts, which makes managing details easier and makes them lighter/more efficient. Also, you can add an Assembly code to detail components, and that's not possible with detail lines (this can be used with specification generation software). And as you're re-building these views, you're also checking and making adjustments as needed. In the meantime, I would link each dwg into a drafting view and use those for current projects, and make "converting" a manageable process by tackling a few at a time as already suggested.

[ajayholland]

There’s nothing wrong with your method. Some users elect to do some cleanup in the Acad file prior to importing. For example you may decide to delete all hatches and text leaders, explode polylines and blocks, etc. One firm I worked with wrote a LISP routine to automate the cleanup.

~AJH