Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> working from revit to autocad - please help!

NancyHKA

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Our office has just started using Revit.  Currently I'm on a project team that has two people, and we're the only ones in the office using revit.  Currently, this is no problem, but the project is due in less than a month and we foresee having a "crunch" where we'll need to add extra people to the project to finish everything out, esp. where wall sections and details are concerned.  it's not really feasible to train everyone in the office on revit between now and then, so my partner suggested that we find a way for people to work on details in autocad and then "paste" them into revit.  I've had trouble making this work, because autocad and revit are very different programs and don't really want to play well together.  has anyone else on the forums dealt with this issue?  how did y'all choose to handle it?  any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated. 

thanks!

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dianajohn

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Hi NancyHKA, John A. from Brisbane Australia.

We have recently finished a medium sized 2 storey building in North Queensland which we had the same problem. All the joinery approx. 20 sheets were created in AutoCad. We exported Plans which were then Xrefed into ACAD then staff detailed over the Xref(Overlayed). We made every view Eg, Plan,Elevation,Detail etc its own dwg, then purged them down to there smallest size and linkrd those dwg's into REVIT & placed each view onto its own callout/Plan/Section etc. This allowed us to create section & details & reference them to the linked DWG's.

We ended up with a 120mb file containing 250 odd DWG's all worked well. ?? Must keep the Dwgs free of unused information.

If you need any further advised don't hestiate to contact me.

Best of luck

John A.

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KingRevit

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Joined: Mon, Oct 15, 2007
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advice from dianajohn is good. but since you seem to be new to revit i would suggest doing all 3d stuff in revit but for wall section and details export the wall details sections and details into autocad and just finish them in autocad. if your layouts in autocad look the same as your sheets in revit then just save your work to dwf and combine the sheets and layouts. this way means you don't have to worriy as about the round trip when you bring the autocad details back into  revit. as this can make the project very large.

hope this helps

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Bm3875

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dianajohn

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RevitKing's advice is valid, but if you use the system I suggested then you will be able to cross reference all views eg. plans, elevations, sections & details from within Revit & not rely on any cross referencing being done in AutoCad.

If you maintain all the dwgs in a clean state then the Revit drawing won't be slowed down very much at all, mainly in the initial start up of the Revit file, as I mentioned my document was 120mb not including the AutoCad dwgs as they were linked files and it would load up within 60 sec.

Best of luck

John A.

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KingRevit

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dianajohn & BM3845 i agree that they way you are talking about is the correct way to do it but if it is your first project and your not familiar with revit well then i still think that under tight deadlines it addes more preasure on the 2 revit users as the will have to import the dwg's and lock them in place ect. I believe that since every-one else in the office i presume are all capable of using autocad then pass the workload onto them.

 on the next project train one or two more of your staff in revit and then you can do as dianajohn & BM3845 say then on the project after that do the whole thing in revit.

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JustinT

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Joined: Fri, Nov 16, 2007
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Some stuff on detailing in Revit... as people are saying there are many ways to work with details and DWGs etc. importing into revit sections / elevation, creating drafting views (this is quite a nice option), detailing just in Revit etc etc....

http://www.revitup.co.za/main/page_tips__tricks_revit_does_details.html

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NancyHKA

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hey everyone,

thanks so much for all the responses, I really appreciate it.  I'm sure this will be a big help as we enter the final stages of our project.  I'll keep this thread open and may post additional questions as things come up.  thanks again!

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coreed

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Joined: Fri, Feb 10, 2006
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here's some advise from a top-notch source

http://allthingsbim.blogspot.com/2008/03/revit-to-autocad-for-construction.html

-----------------------------------

best regards,

coreed,aia

bmpArchitects,Inc.

"Revit has to be implemented, Not installed." 

Long Live Revit

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