The Revit Experiment III

Translating standard details from AutoCAD to Revit:

Now, you can import DWGs into Revit and not do anything else to them. You can also scan details and import them as images but we completely translated our details from PowerCADD to AutoCAD to Revit by way of DWG files so we could improve on their graphic quality once they were imported. Some things we noticed when importing DWGs:

1. Things that don't transfer well from AutoCAD to Revit include: text and leaders, dimensions, and hatch patterns. We typically remove dimensions, text, leaders and hatch patterns before we import DWGs into Revit.

2. We import (not link) the DWG into a Drafting View. If the "Link (instead of import)" option was checked when you imported the DWG you'll have to go to File... Manage Links... Import if you want to explode the dwg.

3. After importing a DWG we explode the detail. When you explode a DWG, Revit generates new (often unwanted) linestyles and names them according the the layer each object was originally assigned to. We typically reassign the imported linestyles to linestyles we created in Revit. We then add Revit's dimensions, text, leaders, and filled regions. When we are done we purge the unwanted linestyles that were imported from our DWG files when we exploded the DWG (File... Purge Unused).

4. Some might argue that you can PICK lines but we find exploding and reassigning linestyles much faster. By PICK lines I mean that you can place Revit Detail lines by essentially tracing over the imported DWG with the PICK lines tool.

5. After you get some experience translating a few details you should decide if re-creating a detail in Revit is faster than importing the DWG... might be for simpler details.

6. Non-ploting layers like Defpoints are not available in Revit.

7. If you save all of your roof details (as an example) into one project file you can later import these drafting views into any project you're working on. (from your project file just goto File... Insert from File... Views to import drafting views you've generated in other projects)

8. If you decide to import a DWG and you don't want to go through the trouble of translating it to a Revit detail consider setting up your DWG Import Settings to preserve lineweights (File... Import/Export Settings... Import Lineweights DWG/DXF).