Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> How to combine multiple Tiny CAD files into 1 family?

Gitaroo

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Hi, Im new to revit, right now I am trying to put a few furniture layout from some cad files into 1 family so if I load up the family it will be in the drop down list. They are not parametric nor need to show up on any view beside the plan view. Can someone guide me through? I am using revit 2012.

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teafoe5

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Joined: Fri, Nov 12, 2010
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Are you trying to put the furniture pieces into revit or multiple layouts of furniture?  If you need the furniture to just be in plan ar they just going to be lines or actually modeled?  If it is just lines you could make a template file with all of your different furniture layouts made into GROUPS then just insert them in from your template file into your project. 

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Gitaroo

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ya, they are all 2d lines from cad with different furnitures combinations and layout for different office such as manager office, regular officeI inserted them and group them and save them as rfa files but they are each individual files however. The thing is I am trying to put them all in one family so in the current and future projects soI can pick different layout from the family tree/list. That way I can swap things around easier when I deside to change the office type.

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WWHub

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Joined: Tue, May 16, 2006
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A bit of advice first because CAD will severly bog down Revit if not used correctly.

1. Wherever possible use Revit elements. 
2. If you need to import CAD, clean it up first in CAD deleting everything not needed.
3. If it is being imported into the project, consider linking instead and place on a seperate workset not visible in all views.
4. If you are importing into a family, I suggest you explode the CAD dwg, delete everthing you don't want, change the CAD lines to appropriate Revit family category lines, then in the family, delete all the line categories that were created from the CAD file.  <  This is done very quickly.

If these are furniture elements, they should be done in seperate families.  In the project, they can be grouped for multiple placement.

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WWHub

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Just saw your answer.  Groups can be selected just like families - from the drop-down.

The advantage of different families annd the different goups is file size. 

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Gitaroo

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thanks for all the replies. I am new to revit so I don't really know how much of a performance hit I am going to get when I use CAD files directly. However I did some clean up in CAD before I imported them. So they only have things that I needed. Each files ise about 250kb. I tried exploding them but some of the lines disappeared. So would importing  and drawing on top of them be a better option? I am trying to create a family with a drop down list of furnitures so I can use them for future projects. They are all simple 2D plan view graphics, I am not ready go make any dynamic/parametric families yet.

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WWHub

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No lines will go away in Revit unless they are below the Revit threshold ... no real tiny line segments.

If there are not many lines, you can just point to them to trace and if you use the tab key when you point, it will pick connected CAD lines as one selection.

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Gitaroo

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ok, can someone tell me how to put all of them into 1 family in a drop down list?

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