Working with files from CAD - Revit Tutorial

- [Instructor] It is often the case that you will need to collaborate with folks who are using software other than Revit or at the very least that you'd need to access files that were created in other software. So Revit supports a number of other file formats for both import and export. Now, I should point out that import and export is different than a direct connection. Revit doesn't read and write these other formats and it doesn't convert its geometry to and from these other formats, but it is able to interpret files in those other formats and bring them in dimensionally correct, and so on. So what we're going to do in this video is a couple really simple examples. We're going to import in a file that was created in AutoCAD and then we're going to export one of our views here to AutoCAD just so you can see the process. And we'll be using the AutoCAD DWG format, but you can do similar things with other formats in Revit as well. So it does support many other formats. So let's go ahead and get started. Let's say that we have a signage designer that's working in AutoCAD or not working in Revit at any rate and maybe we've got a logo for the cafe and we want to incorporate it into the floor design, you know, like a floor pattern in the floor here. So how do we bring that file in? All right, so I'm going to go to the Insert tab and use this button right here called Link CAD. And what I want you to see is that there are several file formats supported here. Okay, so we're going to be working with DWG, but you can see that there are many other formats. And if you're working with any of those other software packages, then you should be able to have some degree of interoperability between that package and Revit. And they welcome you to try some of those other formats on your own. So I'm going to select this logo that I have right here for the restaurant. You can see a preview over there, and I'm going to accept pretty much all of the defaults that appear in this dialog, save for one. The positioning is going to default typically to something that we don't want for this logo. It's often going to use origin to origin or possibly center to center. What I want to do is use manual and then origin. And the reason for that is that will put the cursor at the origin of the CAD file, but allow me to place it manually in my file. If I use origin origin, then it's going to try and line up the origin in the CAD file with the origin of my building. And those two don't have any relationship to one another. So this is why I want to do it manually here. Okay, so I'm going to choose manual origin, except everything else is a default. Click Open and you should see the logo appear on your cursor. And as you can see, the origin is at the lower left-hand corner there. So what I'm going to do is place it just to the right of the door here, like so. Click a point to place it, then I'll come back and select it. Go to my rotate tool. The rotate tool is using a rotation point in the center. So what you can do is click this Place button right here to place that origin point somewhere else. So I'll place it at the corner of the logo. I want to start rotating from the bottom edge. So I'm going to snap along the bottom edge and then I'm going to tip it down 90 degrees and click and rotate it like so. And then I'm just going to move this slightly to make it a little closer to the doorway. And that's really all there is to it. That is now a CAD file brought in here. You can see that it comes in dimensionally correct. So if we were to take a measurement of the size of this logo, you can see it is five feet square on both sides, so it did come in at a true size, and you could see the colors that appear there. So CAD files are typically organized in layers so it preserved those layers and their colors. And in all other ways, this is part of my Revit model now. It's just that the kind of object that this is is an imported DWG file. Okay, so these are not Revit elements. It's just simply line work that was generated in CAD, okay? Now, if your logo designer happens to change this file, then you can go to the Manage tab and there's a Manage Links button right here. You can click that, come over here to CAD formats and the logo will be listed there and then you can simply reload it and capture those changes. You can also unload it from here. You can remove it from here. So if you no longer need the logo, then that's how you could get rid of it, okay? So it's pretty versatile, even though it's not actually converting it into any kind of Revit category. All right, so that is importing a CAD file. Okay, so now we're going to direct our attention to exporting a CAD file. Now we could stay right here in this same view and export this view, so that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to export this entire floor plan as a CAD DWG, okay? So we're going to go to the File menu for this operation and then come down here to export. And then up here you've got CAD formats. And once again, several formats are supported. So for this example, I'm going to do AutoCAD DWG, but you're welcome to try one of the other formats if you choose to do so. So I will choose DWG, that will preview the file here and we will see up at the top that we're using the in-session export setup. Now, what I'm going to do is just click this little Browse button here and just point out to you a few features of that in-session setup, but I'm not going to change anything about it, okay? So I'm going to click that and probably the most important thing that your recipient will care about is the layers that are assigned to the Revit file. So what's going to happen is all of our Revit geometry is going to be flattened down into two-dimensional line work, okay? So it's almost as if you take a snapshot of the screen and create CAD geometry from that snapshot. So it won't be 3D, the walls won't know they're walls, each edge of the wall will be an individual line, but it will all be organized on a series of layers. So all of your Revit categories will get drawn on this collection of layers here. Now I'm using the American Institute of Architect Standard, but there are other standards that you could choose from as well. Now, a similar thing is going to happen for lines, for patterns, for text, for colors, for solids. So there's a number of settings here that you could explore that can be customized to change the behavior of how this conversion takes place, but do keep in mind that it is a conversion. Now, perhaps the most important setting that you're going to care about is what file format you're exporting it to. So these are the formats that are supported. So you just make sure you check with your recipient to see which version of AutoCAD they are using and what they need here. So I'm not going to change anything, as I said, I'm just going to OK that, I'm going to click Next here. It's going to suggest a name. I'm going to accept that. I'm going to put this on my desktop and then I will click OK. And it's honestly that simple, okay? So I don't have AutoCAD installed on this system so I'm not going to open it in AutoCAD to show you the result. But if you happen to have a copy of AutoCAD, then when the file is finished, you can, of course, open it up in AutoCAD and take a look around. So whether it's importing something from AutoCAD or some other software, or whether it's exporting to AutoCAD or some other software, you could see that Revit has tools to allow both of these things to occur. And so it allows us to have some degree of interoperability with other popular software that's in use in our industry.