Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> The headache of Exporting Revit to CAD

titorizo

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Joined: Thu, Oct 21, 2010
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I have gone through and set up an office export for Revit to CAD but there are still some major issues. One issue is that although you can set a layer and color for things like Dimensions in the end it will colors the entire thing, i.e. the lines and text are both one color which is not the desired effect. I would like the lines to be a slightly lighter color than the text. 

Also I have created custom Elevation/Section heads to have cetain colored fills and lightweights but once again you can only export it as one colored entity thus negating all the work put in to creating a custom head. 

The same things can be said for other components. 

Are there 3rd party scripts or systems that allow you to further customize the exporting process or am I always going to have to spend the extra time editing my CAD files after the fact. 

For those wondering, I live in a sad world where most of my subs still only use CAD software and have not evolved into Revit. 

Thanks 

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Beaucoupnice

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Joined: Mon, Nov 19, 2007
93 Posts

I have suffered the same problem for many years and I have had consultants come back to me and tell me that my CAD layers do not print correctly.

There is no solution that I know of to having more control over each element in Revit for when it exports to AutoCAD as Revit is about modelling objects, not about drawing 2d lines.

This desire you have to create perfectly layered AutoCAD drawings for consultants is a waste of time and a task they should do, not you. You are in BIM now.

I have created the export template to control as best as I can the export conversion from Revit into CAD based content as based on the industry CAD layer naming standards.

If local authorities want the as-built drawings in a certain layer format, I tell them that we use BIM and what they are asking cannot be achieved unless they are willing to pay us to open up the exported drawings in a non-revit software (autocad) and convert them for them by individually going through and changing every line. They have never asked me to change it as they understand that the benefits of using BIM aoftware have more value than using non-BIM AutoCAD and this transition period from Non-BIM to BIM software is just a stage we are going through.

If my consultants complain about the layering, we tell them that our preferred software is BIM as this is the direction the industry is heading. We inform that we are already bending over backwards to export our BIM models for them into AutoCAD and that if they require the AutoCAD content to be in any other format then this is a task that they must undertake as AutoCAD is their preferred native format so why should we be doing the work for them.

If they complain that they cannot print correctly in AutoCAD, supply them with PDFs of the drawings direct from Revit.

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__________I'm the guy they come to when they didn't follow my recommended workflows.__________

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