Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Converting from AutoCAD to Revit

DeliaEX4

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I am helping my firm convert from AutoCAD to Revit. We already have what we call a detail library in AutoCAD '17 that is essentially a .dwg library of 2d lines that make up our detail drawings (these also contain annotations). What I am trying to do is save each detail as a family that we can bring in to each project as needed. I'm also trying to make this as easy as possible because I'm already running into issues with the layer colors and lineweights (I was able to fix those) but I'm looking for a standard way to do all of this. Any ideas?

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WWHub

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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
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DON'T - If you browse through our history of similar threads, you will see this is not a new discussion.  It looks like you have already started down a path that will make your life very complicated and possible defeat your adoption of Revit.   You need a better understanding of the program before you do what you are suggesting.

If you are going to switch to Revit, then do that.  You need to set a path that will get you to all revit.

• You do not want to make families of your CAD details.  Either you are using the wrong words or you don't understand.
• Initially, your best process is to temporarily put each CAD DWG into a unique 2D view.  These can be saved in a library project that you can select from and import into your project.  I say temporary because importing CAD is a bad process that will cause you a lot of future problems.   Eventually, you should work at cleaing up each of these CAD details by converting them to Revit entities and removing the CAD.  I understand that you may have a large library - think of this as a long term project that you need to follow through on.
• Now we get to a big 'convert from CAD to Revit' thought process.   If you want Revit to work then quit trying to apply CAD rules.  Revit does not work like CAD and you will always fail if you try to make it.  This is the hardest part of the CAD to Revit transition.  Embrace Revit and learn it's rules.  That means forget about CAD lineweights and layers.  << THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST THINGS ABOUT REVIT! You don't manage this at all! - Quit thinking that way.   Instead think in a simplfied way.  Think more in terms of hand drafting.  In every view you need thin, medium and heavy lines possibly in multiple linetypes like hidden, solid, phantom etc.  Every view should be built using those very few simple lines - just like you would if you hand drew it.  Most of us still don't print in color so forget that completely.  Revit is WISIWIG - The relative lineweights will show on the screen.  Revit will handle the plotting lineweights based on the view scale you set.  Print a small scale plan and the thin line will be a certain pen weight.  Print a large scale plan and that thin line may be a little larger pen weight based on the view scale settings.   I suggest you start with the default and don't change them at all for at least a years worth of use.   We never changed them in 10 years.

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DeliaEX4

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Thank you so much for the feedback. Pardon my phrasing, you're probably right and I'm simply phrasing things wrong.

After a couple of hours messing with it I finaly found a conversion in lineweights from what the firm uses in CAD to the Revit equivalent that automatically happens every time I import. What I did for the meantime is create a drafting view and then import a .dwg detail in black and white and then place that on a sheet. This seems to have worked well, but I agree with you that this seems only like a temporary solution. That, however, is what we are looking for. A way to get these details into Revit and be able to manipulate them there, leaving AutoCAD behind.

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WWHub

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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
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For importing detail views from a library project that holds all of your detail views - organized and placed on sheets for easy review, read this:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2014/ENU/?guid=GUID-8DC49C5E-E0B0-41A1-8933-B62755A2FA07

Don't worry that this is the 2014 Help - still the same - I just happened to have 2014 help open.

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