2. Getting Comfortable with RevitLooking at interface differences| 00:00 | In this movie, let's take a quick
tour of the Revit User Interface.
| | 00:03 | Now, there are a lot of similarities
between the Revit User Interface, and the AutoCAD
| | 00:06 | User Interface, they're both
Autodesk products after all.
| | 00:09 | But there are some unique differences as well.
| | 00:11 | So in this movie, I'd like to focus on those things
that are unique to Revit that you won't find in AutoCAD.
| | 00:16 | So let's start here with the recent file screen
that we're greeted with when we first launched Revit.
| | 00:21 | And we talked a little bit about this in the
previous movie, and we focused there on the
| | 00:25 | templates that are available
to us in the Projects area.
| | 00:27 | Now here on the Projects area across the top,
and it does show us the recently opened files,
| | 00:32 | so you can see those
listed over here on the right.
| | 00:34 | If you want to work in a project you worked
on previously, you can just simply click the
| | 00:37 | icon, and it will launch that project.
| | 00:39 | If you want to create a new project from a
different template, from the ones that are
| | 00:43 | listed here, you can click the new link there
and browse to it here, or you can click this
| | 00:47 | Open link and open an existing project.
| | 00:50 | I am going to go to my Desktop, and in my
Chapter_2 folder of the exercise files,
| | 00:56 | I am going to open a file called Condo Unit.
| | 00:58 | Now, if you don't have access to the
exercise files, you can really open any Revit file
| | 01:02 | that you like for this exercise.
| | 01:05 | Now when it first launches, you can see
that there are definitely some similarities to
| | 01:08 | what you see when you launch AutoCAD.
| | 01:11 | We have our Application menu in the top corner, we
have a Quick Access Toolbar, and we have a Ribbon.
| | 01:16 | The first thing I want to talk about is the
Project Browser, because you may recall in
| | 01:20 | previous movie that we talked about how
AutoCAD creates a series of separate disconnected
| | 01:25 | drawings, but in Revit
everything is in the same project file.
| | 01:27 | So, when you want to navigate around this
project file and open up the various views
| | 01:32 | that represent the different
drawings, how do you do that?
| | 01:34 | Well, you do that over here on this
palette called the Project Browser.
| | 01:38 | Now, you can think of the Project
Browser is basically a table of contents.
| | 01:42 | So just like a book has a table of contents,
that will tell you what you'll find in the
| | 01:46 | book where the chapters are and what pages
they're on, think of this the same way that
| | 01:50 | here we can see that we have a series of floor plans,
or we have some ceiling plans or 3D views or even elevations.
| | 01:56 | So, if you want to open one of those views, you
just simply locate the view and double-click it.
| | 02:02 | So here's a North elevation, here is a 3D view,
and here I can go back to my Level 1 Furniture plan.
| | 02:09 | Each of these views has a series of controls
and settings to control just that view, and
| | 02:15 | we can see that down here in the corner of the view,
now AutoCAD has something similar on the status bar.
| | 02:20 | But here, if I take this view and float it
and kind of move this over here, you can see
| | 02:28 | here is a View Control Bar for the floor plan,
and down here in the background, you can see
| | 02:31 | a separate View Control Bar for the elevation
that I have open in the background, so each
| | 02:36 | of these controls are
unique to those particular views.
| | 02:40 | Notice here that my floor plan is currently
set to quarter-inch equals a foot scale, whereas
| | 02:45 | my elevation in the
background is an eighth-inch scale.
| | 02:48 | Now, if you look carefully at the furniture
here, and I am going to zoom in slightly with
| | 02:52 | the wheel--you just roll the wheel a few
clicks to zoom in--you can see that there are labels
| | 02:57 | on each of these pieces of furniture.
The size of those is determined by the scale.
| | 03:01 | So, if I change the scale in this view,
and choose eighth-inch equals a foot, zoom in
| | 03:07 | again, you'll notice that those labels are
all now larger to accommodate the new scale.
| | 03:12 | Those are all important features and
will help you get around your Revit project.
| | 03:16 | But the big thing you're probably wondering if
you're an AutoCAD user is where did my command line go?
| | 03:21 | The command line is your primary interface
for executing commands, and getting feedback
| | 03:26 | in AutoCAD, how do we do the
same kinds of things here in Revit?
| | 03:30 | Well, of course, you execute commands
from the Ribbon for the most part.
| | 03:34 | We have those listed across the various Ribbon tabs, and
so if I wanted to draw a wall, I could click the Wall tool.
| | 03:40 | If I press the Escape key to cancel out of
there, if I wanted to add a door, I could
| | 03:44 | do the Door tool and so on,
and I will escape out of there.
| | 03:47 | Now, you may notice that when I clicked
either of those tools, that the interface changed.
| | 03:51 | So let me do that again.
| | 03:52 | I am going to click the Wall tool, and you're going
to see some distinct changes appear on the screen.
| | 03:57 | So, the part of the command line where
it's giving you feedback and telling you which
| | 04:02 | options, which settings you can configure
for the command that you're running, that
| | 04:07 | appears in a few different
places in the Revit Interface.
| | 04:11 | The first is the Options Bar
here right below the Ribbon.
| | 04:15 | You'll notice that all of the settings there,
it says Modify Place Wall, all of those settings
| | 04:20 | pertain to the wall that I am about to draw.
| | 04:23 | Now in addition to that, if you look right
above that on the Modify Place Wall tab, you
| | 04:28 | can see a little toolbox
there with a bunch of shapes.
| | 04:31 | Now finally, we also have a Properties palette
in Revit which is pretty similar to the Properties
| | 04:35 | palette you have in AutoCAD, and we can find
that right over here, and there is a variety
| | 04:38 | of settings that we can configure there as well.
| | 04:41 | Now, the part of the command line that gives
you feedback what to do next or what object
| | 04:45 | you have, that occurs down
in the Status Bar in Revit.
| | 04:48 | So, if you look at the bottom left-hand corner of my screen,
it currently says Click to Enter the Wall Start Point.
| | 04:54 | So, this is how Revit kind of communicates
back to us and tells us what to do next, and
| | 04:58 | of course that means that I can
just simply start clicking on screen.
| | 05:02 | And you'll notice that the prompts are
changing to either give me a feedback about the kind
| | 05:07 | of snapping behavior that I am doing, or
perhaps what I should do next like pick the next point
| | 05:12 | of the wall and so on, and I
am going to escape out of there.
| | 05:15 | You'll get similar behavior when you select
an object or when you pre-highlight an object.
| | 05:21 | So, in AutoCAD, you can put your mouse
over an object, and it will pre-highlight.
| | 05:25 | You can do the same thing here in Revit.
Notice that the tooltip appears on screen.
| | 05:29 | Now, that's going to go away after a second or two, but
notice down in the Status Bar, that same message still appears.
| | 05:36 | It says Walls: Basic Wall:
Interior 4 7/8 in this case.
| | 05:40 | If I highlight a door instead, I will get
a different message, Doors: Single-Flush.
| | 05:44 | If I highlighted this bed, it will
say Furniture: Bed-Standard, and so on.
| | 05:48 | So, this is how Revit gives you some
feedback of the object that you're about to select,
| | 05:53 | or feedback about what you do
next in the command that you're in.
| | 05:57 | So, when you're first getting comfortable
with Revit, remember, your project browser
| | 06:00 | is basically your table of contents, and
that's how you navigate around the project how you
| | 06:04 | open your floor plans or your
elevations or your 3D views.
| | 06:08 | And even though Revit doesn't have a command
line, all of the functions that the command
| | 06:12 | line serves are represented in Revit just
in various locations on the user interface.
| | 06:17 | So your Options Bar, Properties palette, and
Modify tab serve the function of giving you
| | 06:22 | the different options and settings that you
can do in a command, and the status bar gives
| | 06:27 | you the feedback from Revit about
what you're supposed to do next.
| | 06:32 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at interface similarities| 00:00 | Over the course of the last several releases,
Autodesk has taken strides to unify the user
| | 00:04 | interface between its various products.
| | 00:07 | So while the intended workflow and processes
between AutoCAD and Revit vary greatly, many
| | 00:12 | of the user interface items are similar, this makes
it easier to get comfortable with software quickly.
| | 00:17 | So let's just start at the top of the screen
here, with things like the Application menu,
| | 00:22 | Quick Access toolbar, and the Help system.
| | 00:24 | Here's the Application menu, it's
labeled with the big R icon here.
| | 00:28 | And it's essentially the File menu, and it's
very similar to the one that we have in AutoCAD.
| | 00:31 | You can do New files, you can open an
existing ones, Save them, Export, Print, and Publish.
| | 00:36 | So it's essentially a File menu.
| | 00:38 | If you highlight over an item the menu
opens up to give you the several options except
| | 00:44 | in the case of something like the Save or
the Close Command where there are no options,
| | 00:48 | but all the others have the
little submenus that appear there.
| | 00:51 | At the very top we have these two icons here,
which will show you either a list of the documents
| | 00:57 | and views that you currently have open.
| | 00:59 | In my case I currently just
have Condo Unit file open.
| | 01:03 | You also have this Recent Files icon right
here, and this will show you an accumulating
| | 01:08 | list of all the files that you've been opening,
currently I only have two entries here, but
| | 01:12 | I'll get additional entries
as I continue to work in Revit.
| | 01:15 | Now if I'm going to work on the same
project for a while, and I want to make sure that
| | 01:18 | it doesn't disappear off this list, I've
got this little push pin icon right over here,
| | 01:21 | and I can click that, and it
will pin this item to the list.
| | 01:24 | So regardless of what are the files up here
on this list, the Condo Unit will stay here,
| | 01:29 | I'm going to go ahead and unpin that.
| | 01:31 | Now I'm going to just click
anywhere to close that menu.
| | 01:34 | Now we also have also the Quick Access toolbar which
works exactly the same way that it does in AutoCAD.
| | 01:38 | This is basically just a bunch of shortcut
icons for commands that you use frequently.
| | 01:43 | Over here on the opposite side we have the
Help system where you can click here and type
| | 01:47 | in a command that you want to search for,
you can sign in to Autodesk 360, and you've
| | 01:51 | got another drop down over here where you
can choose from the various Help Commands
| | 01:55 | and go out to the community sites on the web.
| | 01:59 | So beneath all of that we have the Ribbon,
which is the primary interface for executing
| | 02:03 | command, so if want to run a particular command Wall,
Door, Window you would locate that command on the ribbon.
| | 02:08 | It's organized into tabs,
Architecture Structure, Insert, and so on.
| | 02:12 | And each of those tabs is organized into
panels, like Build or Circulation and then each of
| | 02:16 | those panels has a series of buttons.
| | 02:18 | And again, this is very similar to the
interface that you're probably familiar with in AutoCAD.
| | 02:23 | Now in the previous movie we already talked
about the Options bar which comes below that,
| | 02:27 | the next piece that's similar between
the two products is the Properties palette.
| | 02:32 | Properties palette can be used in two ways.
| | 02:34 | If you select an existing object, it will
show you the properties of that object that
| | 02:39 | you have selected, so you can see over
here that I have a basic Wall selected and its
| | 02:42 | exterior Brick on Metal stud and then it's
got these settings down below, it's centered,
| | 02:47 | it starts at Level 1, and so on.
| | 02:50 | If I select this piece of furniture, I'll
see different setting, if I select a plumbing
| | 02:54 | fixture, yet again, different settings.
| | 02:57 | If I click a command like the Wall Command,
you're going to see the similar settings on
| | 03:03 | the Properties palette, but now these settings
apply to the object that I am about to create.
| | 03:08 | So the Properties palette is used in both
context, it's used for existing object and
| | 03:12 | changing the properties
of those existing object.
| | 03:15 | And it's used for new objects
that you're about to create.
| | 03:17 | So if I start it to click right now, I'd be
creating a wall that's 4 & 7/8-inch in thickness,
| | 03:24 | because that was the type that was chosen.
| | 03:27 | If I go back to Wall Command, open up the
list and choose a different size, like maybe
| | 03:32 | a 12-inch size, you can see that this new wall that I'm
drawing is a little bit thicker than the other one.
| | 03:38 | Now to get out of the command, I
can get out in one of two ways.
| | 03:40 | I can either use my Escape key to cancel out,
and I have to press Escape two times, or you
| | 03:47 | can always use this Modify
tool over here on the Ribbon.
| | 03:50 | Modify tool appears on every Ribbon tab, so
it's easy to get to, and a single click of
| | 03:54 | that Modify tool will do
the same thing as two Escapes.
| | 03:57 | Now View navigation, a lot of
similarities between AutoCAD and Revit here.
| | 04:01 | The most obvious one
being the wheel on you mouse.
| | 04:04 | If roll the wheel up, it zooms in, if
you roll the wheel down it zooms out.
| | 04:09 | If you hold the wheel and drag, it will pan,
and if you double-click the wheel it will
| | 04:13 | Zoom Extents, now frankly that's what you're going
probably 90% of the time when you are zooming and panning.
| | 04:19 | However, if you come over here to the edge
of the screen, you can see that this little
| | 04:23 | toolbar will light up as I get close to it,
this called the Navigating bar, and again,
| | 04:27 | it's similar to the one that you have in
AutoCAD, may be a little bit simpler, though,
| | 04:31 | because it has only a few icons here.
| | 04:33 | We have our steering while, which you'll find
in all the Autodesk products, it works exactly
| | 04:37 | the same here, you highlight an item and drag, so we
could Zoom, or we could Pan, I'm going to close that.
| | 04:43 | And you also have this drop down right
here which has a variety of Zoom Commands.
| | 04:48 | Now the Zoom in Region is
the same as Zoom Window.
| | 04:52 | So you would just draw box to zoom in.
| | 04:56 | Zoom out two times is really pretty
self-explanatory, it does exactly that.
| | 05:01 | Zoom to Fit is the same as AutoCAD's Zoom
Extents, now to show you Zoom All to fit,
| | 05:07 | we would have to actually have to have more
then one window open, so what I'm going to
| | 05:10 | do is just open up the few other Views here.
| | 05:12 | I'm going to go to the View menu, the View
Ribbon, and click the Tile button, and if I
| | 05:21 | click on the various windows here, you'll see that
Navigation bar always stays with the active window.
| | 05:26 | So whatever window I happen to be on, when
I click it, it jumps over to that location,
| | 05:31 | Zoom All to fit, takes all the
open windows and zooms in to fit.
| | 05:36 | And then finally we have the Zoom to Sheet Size,
which is actually somewhat unique to Revit.
| | 05:40 | And if I show you that over here, you can
see that it takes the scale into account.
| | 05:45 | So notice the size of the text and the size on
the screen, and if I change this to a different
| | 05:50 | scale and click it again, you could
see it zooms a little differently.
| | 05:54 | So there are some different
ways that you can zoom and pan.
| | 05:57 | The last thing I'd like to
cover in this movie is Selection.
| | 06:00 | There are a lot of similarities between the
way that you select objects in Revit and the
| | 06:03 | way that you select them in AutoCAD.
| | 06:05 | Now the most obvious way to select is to
just simply highlight an object and click on it.
| | 06:08 | You can see there that I have that wall
selected, and I get all the feedback in the various
| | 06:12 | areas on screen Properties palette, Modify
tab, and so on, I select this item, now this
| | 06:17 | is furniture, furniture over here,
this is plumbing fixture, and so on.
| | 06:23 | If you want to select more then one object,
the easies way that you can do that is to
| | 06:28 | use either a window or a crossing selection,
now both of these are very similar to the
| | 06:33 | counterparts in AutoCAD, the difference is the
way that you execute the windows in crossings.
| | 06:38 | So in AutoCAD you would go click and then
click to create a window, but you'll notice
| | 06:41 | here in Revit, it doesn't
do anything when I do that.
| | 06:44 | In Revit, you click and drag
to get a windows selection.
| | 06:48 | In all other ways it behaves
exactly the same way, though.
| | 06:51 | When I drag you can see that as that window
completely surrounds objects, they begin to
| | 06:58 | highlight, but before that they don't.
| | 07:00 | So notice there two walls up in the top and right-hand
side are not highlighting, until I completely surround.
| | 07:05 | Now notice the wall on the right is
completely surrounded, so it's highlighting, and when
| | 07:09 | I let go, it'll select all of those elements.
| | 07:12 | Crossing works the same way, where window
was left to right, crossing is right to left,
| | 07:21 | notice the dashed edge, versus the solid edge, but in
another ways it works exactly like the AutoCAD counterpart.
| | 07:27 | Now all we have to do is touch
the object, and it will be selected.
| | 07:32 | So using windows in Crossings is usually the
fastest and easiest way to make selections,
| | 07:37 | and again, it's very similar to the
AutoCAD counterparts except that you have to drag
| | 07:40 | you selections instead of clicking them.
| | 07:43 | While many parts of the user interface in
Revit are different than AutoCAD,
| | 07:47 | as you can see, there are many parts
that are also quite similar.
| | 07:49 | So with a little practice it shouldn't take
you long to get acquainted with the similarities
| | 07:53 | and differences, and begin
feeling comfortable with the software.
| | 07:58 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using keyboard shortcuts| 00:00 | So now that we've seen that Revit doesn't
have a command line, the next thing you might
| | 00:03 | be wondering is, well, what
about keyboard shortcuts?
| | 00:07 | Most AutoCAD users rely heavily on not only
the command line, but using shortened versions
| | 00:12 | of the commands at the keyboard.
| | 00:13 | Well, I am happy to say that Revit has keyboard
shortcut functionality, and in this movie,
| | 00:18 | I'd like to show how to access that.
| | 00:20 | So let's start with the basics, keyboard
shortcuts in Revit are typically two letters, you simply
| | 00:25 | press the two letters on the keyboard, and
you do not need to press the Enter key,
| | 00:29 | sp for example, to execute the
Wall command the shortcut is WA.
| | 00:34 | So all I have to do is type letters W and A,
and as you can see, that puts me right
| | 00:39 | in the Wall Command--I'm
going to escape out of there.
| | 00:43 | The shortcut for door, DR, just type those
letters, no Enter key required, and you could
| | 00:48 | see I'm in the Door Command.
Now how would you know what those shortcuts are?
| | 00:52 | I mean clearly, if you don't have to memorized, there's got
to be somewhere you can figure out where they are.
| | 00:57 | Well, if you move your mouse over to the
tools on the ribbon and hover there for a moment,
| | 01:02 | you'll see a tooltip, this is
common in most windows software.
| | 01:06 | Right next to the command name in parentheses you're
going to see two letters, that's your keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:11 | So you can see the WA that I just used for
the Wall Command and right here you can see
| | 01:15 | DR for the Door Command, and here's
WN for Window and CM for Component.
| | 01:20 | Now if I move over here to Structural Column,
you notice it does not have a shortcut, not
| | 01:24 | every command has a shortcut by default.
| | 01:27 | But what you can do is you can over the View
tab and on the very far right here under User
| | 01:34 | Interface, if you click there, you've got a
command down here called Keyboard Shortcuts.
| | 01:39 | Interestingly enough, their keyboard shortcut
command has a Keyboard Shortcut, so KS would
| | 01:44 | get you into the command as well.
| | 01:46 | When I choose that you'll see a list of all the commands,
and if the command has a shortcut, you'll see it listed there.
| | 01:53 | So you can use this dialog as a way to
help you learn the keyboard shortcuts, and you
| | 01:57 | can also obviously use this dialog as a
way to modify those keyboard shortcuts.
| | 02:02 | So if you wanted to add a keyboard shortcut
to the Structural Column Command, for example,
| | 02:07 | you could find that command here on the list,
you could search for it right here, and then
| | 02:12 | once you've found it, Structural Column,
you could click in here and type the new keys
| | 02:18 | that you wanted to add to that shortcut.
| | 02:20 | You could also Import and Export the lists,
so if somebody else has built the keyboard
| | 02:24 | shortcut list that you like, you can Import
from them, or you can Export yours and share
| | 02:27 | with somebody else.
I'm going to cancel out of here.
| | 02:31 | So keyboard shortcuts will definitely enhance
your productivity just like they do in AutoCAD.
| | 02:35 | It might take you a little while to
get used to them and to learn them all.
| | 02:38 | I highly recommend using the
tooltip method as a way to learn them.
| | 02:41 | It's very quick and easy to see whether a
keyboard shortcut exists, and over time you'll
| | 02:45 | start to remember what all of them are.
| | 02:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding units and numerical input| 00:00 | Once you have looked around the User Interface,
the first thing you'll likely to want to do
| | 00:03 | is to draw something, and since you are used to working in
AutoCAD, you probably want to draw that item to scale.
| | 00:09 | It won't be long before you notice that the dimension input
in Revit is really quite different than it is in AutoCAD.
| | 00:14 | So in this movie we will discuss how to
input dimensions and how to use units.
| | 00:19 | So I am in a file here called Condo Unit,
and it is the same file we have been using
| | 00:22 | in the previous movie, so if you've had this
file open, you might want to close it without
| | 00:25 | saving and just reopen a fresh copy.
| | 00:28 | You can open any file for this if you
don't have access to the exercise files.
| | 00:31 | I am going to start by drawing a wall, and
I'm just in a move my mouse around on screen
| | 00:37 | and the first thing you are going to notice
here is that there is these dimensions that
| | 00:40 | start to appear as I move my mouse around.
| | 00:43 | You are also going to see these
dashed lines at logical locations.
| | 00:48 | So if I'm here, and things I want to continue
from that existing wall or if I am here this
| | 00:53 | other wall, or possibly even the
intersection between the two walls.
| | 00:58 | If I were to click and start my wall at
exactly that location, as I start to move away from
| | 01:04 | that point, you are going to see a second
indication appear on screen, a small dimension
| | 01:09 | that's labeling the length of
the wall that we are about to draw.
| | 01:13 | Now I am going to move this slowly, and, as
you can see, that amount is actually snapping
| | 01:18 | to regular increments, 6-inch increments in this case.
| | 01:22 | Now that's true if there is no other geometry
nearby, but if I were to move in this direction
| | 01:28 | instead, then what would happen is at some
point it might decide to snap to some existing
| | 01:36 | geometry instead, and you can see there that
I get a very different number that's not at
| | 01:42 | all in the 6-inch increment.
| | 01:44 | So existing geometry usually takes precedence
over these snapping behaviors, but both are
| | 01:49 | going to be useful to help you
rough out the location of this wall.
| | 01:54 | Now I could certainly just click and
indicate the length of the wall that way, or perhaps
| | 02:00 | I want to create this next wall,
and I want it to be a certain size.
| | 02:05 | Maybe I want it to be exactly 8-feet long.
| | 02:08 | Well, I could come over here until it snaps
to 8 feet and I could click or as long as
| | 02:13 | it's going in the direction that I want--let
me just pan slightly here--you can see there
| | 02:18 | that angle is confirming for me that it's 90 degrees, and so
I'm happy with that angle. I can just start to type.
| | 02:24 | So if I type in 8 here and press Enter,
notice that the wall is exactly 8-feet long.
| | 02:30 | Now I am going to escape out of here, and
I am going to select this wall, because I
| | 02:33 | want to show you that the dimension
will reappear when the wall is selected.
| | 02:37 | If I select this other wall here, you could
see that one is 5'6", this one is 8 feet,
| | 02:42 | so that kind of confirms for me that the
length of that wall is in fact what we indicated.
| | 02:47 | Now, as an AutoCAD user, the other thing you
may have noticed is that all I typed in was 8.
| | 02:53 | I didn't use any units.
| | 02:55 | If you're using AutoCAD in imperial units,
then you're used to the default unit being inches.
| | 03:01 | Well, I am sorry to say that in Revit, the
default unit in Imperial is actually feet.
| | 03:08 | Now the reason I say I'm sorry to say that
is because it's going to take a little getting
| | 03:11 | used to, to make that reversal in your mind,
and you'll find yourself putting in 8 and
| | 03:16 | thinking, it was inches, and getting 8 feet and vice-versa,
when you wanted feet, you end up getting inches.
| | 03:21 | Well, like anything, it will take a little time to
develop a new habit, but it won't really take that long.
| | 03:26 | So, stick with it, and you'll find
yourself getting comfortable with that new method.
| | 03:31 | Now the reason I say that is because even
though I'm going to show you a dialog where
| | 03:35 | we can go in and we can change the unit
settings, unfortunately, there really isn't any way
| | 03:40 | that we can turn on a quote unquote emulate AutoCAD mode here.
So let's take a look at the command in question.
| | 03:46 | I am going to go over here to the Manage tab,
and we actually just witnessed two behaviors,
| | 03:51 | and so, we go to two different
locations to see those behaviors.
| | 03:54 | We've got our Snaps command here, and we
have got our Project Units command here.
| | 03:58 | Let's go to Project Units because this is
what we are talking about right now, and this
| | 04:02 | behavior of what's the default unit.
| | 04:04 | Now, you have got lots of different
categories here, and I am going to focus on Length and
| | 04:08 | click this button right here, and for Units you could
see that the default setting is Feet with Fractional Inches.
| | 04:16 | If you open up the list, all of the other
choices are single unit choices, so even though
| | 04:21 | it's possible to go to decimal inches or
fractional inches, what that would do is it would make
| | 04:27 | all the units inches all the time.
| | 04:29 | So to get 10 feet, for example,
you'd actually have to type 120.
| | 04:33 | Now if you want to work that way, you can,
but there is no emulate AutoCAD mode.
| | 04:38 | So if you want both feet and inches, unfortunately,
you are going to have to stick with this option
| | 04:43 | and just get used to feet being the default
and using a unit symbol when you want inches.
| | 04:48 | So let me cancel out of here, and let's
dig a little deeper into how that would work.
| | 04:52 | I am going to zoom over here, and I am
going to draw another wall and show you
| | 04:57 | what you would want to do here.
| | 04:58 | Now of course you can focus on the snapping
behavior that we talked about a few moments
| | 05:02 | ago, but as we said, we can type in.
So what if I wanted both feet and inches?
| | 05:08 | Maybe I want this wall to be 5'2" long.
Well, you can type this exactly like AutoCAD.
| | 05:15 | When you want both feet and inches, you can
simply type 5, the foot symbol, and then the
| | 05:20 | number 2, or you can do 2 inches, you don't ask we
need the inch symbol here, because it will be implied.
| | 05:26 | When I press Enter you will see that
wall goes to exactly 5'2" long.
| | 05:29 | I am going to press Escape one
time, start drawing another wall.
| | 05:34 | What if I wanted this wall to be 4'5"?
| | 05:38 | The alternative is to do 4 Space 5, when you
do it this way, Revit will see the first number
| | 05:45 | as feet and the second number as inches, and you press Enter, and
you can see that it's exactly 4'5". Let's press Escape again.
| | 05:54 | Now when you want to do just inches, you
can either do the inch symbol to make it clear
| | 06:00 | to Revit that this time you mean 10 inches,
not 10 feet, or using that same method I just
| | 06:07 | showed you a moment ago, you could do 0 space 6, for example,
and now I've got a wall that's exactly 6 inches long.
| | 06:16 | So you can do all the same things we can
do in AutoCAD, it's just slightly different,
| | 06:20 | so you are just going to have to get
used to what some of those differences are.
| | 06:23 | Now this will be the hardest the first few
days, until you get comfortable with it, and
| | 06:27 | then after you get comfortable with it,
after awhile, it becomes second nature.
| | 06:31 | What about that snapping increment?
| | 06:32 | Well, as we saw, it was snapping to every 6 inches,
for example, now it turns out that
| | 06:38 | if you were zoomed out further, you could
see that at some point it would be snapping
| | 06:45 | to every 4 feet right there, and if were
zoomed in really close, you could see that at some
| | 06:51 | point it would actually be every inch.
| | 06:54 | If I go back to Manage, click on Snaps,
this is where we can configure that behavior.
| | 06:59 | Now these are just the defaults, you
can put in any numbers you like here.
| | 07:02 | So if you don't want 4 feet,
you can change that number.
| | 07:05 | If you don't want 6 inches,
you can change the number.
| | 07:08 | If you don't want this 1-inch increment,
you can delete it.
| | 07:11 | So you can have as many of these
increments or as few as you want and they can be set
| | 07:14 | to anything you want, and it's just to
help you get the rough dimension in first, and
| | 07:22 | then you can come back and modify it later.
| | 07:25 | Now that's a really important
consideration when we are talking about Revit.
| | 07:30 | This wall is 4'5" long, what if I realize
it needs to be a different length, maybe it
| | 07:36 | needs to be five feet,
maybe it needs to be 4 feet.
| | 07:38 | These dimensions appear on screen are not
just information, this is actually how we
| | 07:43 | interact with the object after we've created it.
| | 07:46 | Notice there is no command line, there is no place
to input these dimensions, so where would you do this?
| | 07:50 | You do it directly onscreen right here.
| | 07:53 | So if I select that number, it becomes active, and I can
type in a new value, and you'll see the object change.
| | 08:00 | That works to change the length of the wall
like I have done here, it also works to change
| | 08:05 | the distance of this wall
away from its neighbor, like so.
| | 08:10 | Now which one moves, in this case,
this wall moved closer to this wall.
| | 08:14 | Why didn't this one move closer to that one?
| | 08:16 | Well, it all depends on
which one you select first.
| | 08:19 | So always start by selecting the object you want
to modify and then you manipulate your dimension.
| | 08:24 | The word Revit is actually an
acronym, which is short for Revise it.
| | 08:29 | So even though at first this method of
building objects and modifying objects feels a little
| | 08:35 | strange coming from an AutoCAD perspective,
it's built into the core of the program.
| | 08:41 | This is the way that Revit behaves, so the
sooner you get comfortable with this method
| | 08:45 | of working, the more
successful you'll be using Revit.
| | 08:50 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling basics| 00:00 | Once you get beyond the obvious differences
in the User Interface one of the first things
| | 00:04 | are likely to discover about Revit is that all of
the tools on the ribbon are named for actual things.
| | 00:09 | Instead of drawing lines in the
shape of walls, you draw actual walls.
| | 00:13 | Instead of placing blocks that are configured to
look like doors, we place actual doors, and so on.
| | 00:18 | In this movie we will introduce you to
one of Revit's most fundamental concepts.
| | 00:22 | Instead of drafting, we will be modeling.
| | 00:24 | So, I am in a blank empty file here, this
is just based off the default Architectural
| | 00:28 | template, and we are going to
work completely from scratch.
| | 00:31 | Now since most buildings have walls, that
seems like a pretty good place to start to me.
| | 00:36 | So I am going to come over here to the
Architecture tab and click on the Wall button.
| | 00:41 | Now I am going to accept
most of the defaults here.
| | 00:43 | It's a generic 8-inch wall, that's fine, and
I am going to focus on the shapes over here.
| | 00:49 | Now you could draw your walls line by line
if you want, and I am going to undo that,
| | 00:53 | I am doing Ctrl+Z here to undo that.
| | 00:56 | What I am going to do instead here is just
choose one of these built-in shapes, like
| | 00:59 | a rectangle, and this allows me to just draw two points
instead and get a really simple rectangular shaped building.
| | 01:07 | Now like we discussed in the previous movie
to make the size of this building precise,
| | 01:14 | the next step I would do would be
to modify those temporary dimensions.
| | 01:18 | So perhaps I want this building to be
50 feet long and maybe 32 feet wide.
| | 01:26 | So by I am going to roll my simply editing those two
dimensions, I can fine tune the size of that building.
| | 01:31 | I am going to roll my wheel to zoom in and
switch back to a line object here and maybe
| | 01:38 | I want to draw a few walls on the inside.
| | 01:41 | Notice that all you have to do is snap to the
existing objects and they will automatically
| | 01:48 | join and clean up with the
neighboring walls, so that's pretty handy.
| | 01:53 | So the next most obvious thing you might want
to do is to put some doors and windows in here.
| | 01:57 | So I'm going to go to the Architecture tab, and
we've got a tool for each of those, here is my Door tool.
| | 02:02 | And one of the things we see about the Door tool
is that initially it won't let me place it anywhere.
| | 02:08 | I get that sort of circle with a line
through symbol saying, sorry, you can't place this.
| | 02:12 | The reason for that is if you look down at
the status line at the very bottom of the
| | 02:17 | screen, it says click on
a wall to place the door.
| | 02:21 | So before a door will appear, you have
to actually highlight an existing wall.
| | 02:26 | Now if you think about it,
it makes perfect sense.
| | 02:28 | By definition a door is a hole in a wall,
so not only do we have these objects that
| | 02:33 | look and behave like the objects they meant to represent,
but they also have some built-in intelligence to them.
| | 02:39 | So before I can place a door,
I've got to actually click a wall.
| | 02:44 | And so if I want, I can place a few doors
here, now notice that the message also says
| | 02:48 | we can tap the spacebar to
change the direction of that door.
| | 02:52 | So that's pretty handy as you're drawing,
if you don't like which way it's swinging.
| | 02:57 | Now I am going to use my Modify tool here
to cancel out of there, and you would place
| | 03:00 | windows in much the same way.
| | 03:03 | Notice that they also have to be placed on walls,
can't place a window free standing out here in space.
| | 03:09 | Now I am not going to view an entire floor
plan here, I just want to give you some basic
| | 03:13 | idea of how these various objects work.
| | 03:16 | At some point you're probably going to want to
start looking at this model from another view.
| | 03:22 | Now our default templates started with just
some basic floor plans and some basic elevations.
| | 03:28 | So if I open up an elevation, you can see
here in this South view that that's showing
| | 03:32 | me the three windows that I just placed.
| | 03:35 | If I look at the North view, it's
showing me that door that I placed.
| | 03:39 | Now maybe I want to put a roof on this building.
| | 03:42 | If I open up what Revit calls a default 3D view,
we already know that our building needs a roof.
| | 03:47 | If I click this icon right here with kind
of like a little birdhouse, it is going to
| | 03:52 | be really obvious that our
building doesn't have a roof.
| | 03:56 | Now when you're working in 3D in Revit, like
this view right here, you can hold down the
| | 04:00 | shift key and drag the wheel on your mouse,
and you can spin it around to get a better look.
| | 04:05 | So it's pretty obvious that we need a roof here.
| | 04:08 | So I am going to go to the top
level floor plan here, level 2.
| | 04:13 | And I'm going to build my roof in this level.
| | 04:16 | Now the roof we build a little differently
than the other objects, the other objects
| | 04:20 | were simpler objects, but when I click the
Roof command here, you are going to see something
| | 04:24 | immediately changes on screen,
everything kind of grays out.
| | 04:27 | We are in a special mode
here called Sketch mode.
| | 04:31 | This has a lot of really interesting tools
like this one right here which says Pick Walls.
| | 04:35 | What this allows me to do is to actually
highlight my existing walls and create the edges of
| | 04:41 | my roof based on those walls, so it
will match the same shape of the building.
| | 04:46 | Now before I start clicking those points, I
can actually configure some of the settings
| | 04:50 | here like perhaps I want to have an overhang
on those edges. So if I come over here, and
| | 04:56 | I highlight, notice that I get this purple
line--we call that a sketch line--and it's
| | 05:01 | highlighted 1 foot away because of
this 1 foot overhang that I indicated.
| | 05:06 | Now watch what happens
when I click the next wall.
| | 05:08 | You see how the corners automatically
join up and they automatically join up.
| | 05:12 | Now the trick here is you need to create a
single continuous closed shape, if you were
| | 05:18 | missing one of these lines,
that wouldn't be a valid roof.
| | 05:22 | I am going to Ctrl+Z to undo that, but as
long as I have a closed shape like this, I
| | 05:28 | can now come over here to this big green check
box, and I can say, let's finish that edit mode.
| | 05:34 | And when I do, Revit
will ask me a question here.
| | 05:37 | It is saying, hey, you see
all these walls over here?
| | 05:40 | They all go through the roof.
| | 05:43 | And they're saying, do you want to attach those,
to maybe make this model make a little more sense?
| | 05:48 | And I am going to say Yes here, and if we go back to our
3D view, we end up with something that looks like this.
| | 05:57 | What's important about the way we built the
roof was there are two intelligent relationships
| | 06:01 | that we just establish there.
| | 06:03 | The first was we used the Pick Walls
option to build the roof in the first place.
| | 06:07 | What this means is if you select one of these
walls and modify its location, not only does
| | 06:14 | it move that wall, not only does it keep
the other walls joined to it, but as you can
| | 06:22 | see, it adjusted the size of the roof as well.
| | 06:25 | The other one was the Attach option, which,
if I came over here, and I selected this roof
| | 06:31 | and gave it a height offset right here,
let's say 5 feet, that's going to pull that roof
| | 06:37 | up when I apply it, and notice that the walls
continue to stay attached to the underside of the roof.
| | 06:45 | So when you're building your model in Revit,
it's not just independent drafted exercises,
| | 06:50 | there is a whole lot of relationships that
are being associated to these objects as you
| | 06:56 | build them, and you're building
a more unified intelligent model.
| | 07:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Customizing project browser organization| 00:00 | When you build elements in a Revit project, you see
them right away in the view in which you draw them.
| | 00:04 | However, because these elements are part of
your model, you can immediately change views
| | 00:08 | using the Project Browser and
see the elements in any other view.
| | 00:12 | Remember that, in Revit
you're building a virtual model.
| | 00:15 | This means that just like in real life, if
you have a room with a single door, even though
| | 00:19 | you might need several separate
drawings to convey that condition.
| | 00:22 | For example, a plan, an elevation, or a section,
unlike AutoCAD, in Revit, you would only draw
| | 00:27 | this condition once and then you would simply
view it from several different vantage points.
| | 00:33 | I'm in a file here called Project Browser, and it's really
just a copy of where we left off after the previous movie.
| | 00:39 | If you don't have this file, you can just
simply open up any Revit project for this example.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to open up a few of the
views that are already here in the Project.
| | 00:47 | So, I'm starting here in a 3D view, and if
we look over here in the Project Browser,
| | 00:52 | under 3D Views, you can see the name
3D here surrounded by curly brackets.
| | 00:57 | That's the name that Revit assigns
to what it calls the default 3D Views.
| | 01:01 | That's what we have active here.
| | 01:03 | I know it's active because
it's bold on the Project Browser.
| | 01:07 | Let me double-click Level
1 underneath Floor Plans.
| | 01:11 | Notice that a Floor Plan opens up on screen and Level
1 now is bold, indicating that that's the active view.
| | 01:17 | And let's open up a couple more.
| | 01:19 | Here is a South elevation
and here's a West elevation.
| | 01:23 | Now, one of the things that you can do when
you're working in Revit projects is you can
| | 01:28 | tile multiple views at
the same time on the screen.
| | 01:31 | So, I'm going to go to the View tab, and
I'm going to click this Tile icon right here.
| | 01:37 | And that will tile all four windows and then
I'm going to look for my Navigation Bar, click
| | 01:42 | the dropdown, and I'm going to choose Zoom All to Fit,
and that's going to zoom all four views to match the screen.
| | 01:49 | And then if you want, you can click in
each of these and fine tune and zoom a little.
| | 01:52 | So I'm going to get a little closer on the Floor Plan
and maybe a little closer on some of the elevations.
| | 01:57 | Now, as I click in each of these windows, notice that the
item that's bold will change here in the Project Browser.
| | 02:04 | So, here's West, here's South, here's the 3D,
and if we scroll back up here, here's
| | 02:11 | the Level 1 Floor Plan.
So, the name is listed right here.
| | 02:15 | That's one way you can tell which view you're
in, and then of course, the bold on the Project
| | 02:19 | Browser is the other way that you can tell.
| | 02:20 | Now, you're not limited to
just the views that you see.
| | 02:24 | Another thing that you can do is if you want
to get a better look of your model from some
| | 02:28 | other vantage point that's not currently
included on the browser here, you can see we have
| | 02:32 | a fairly limited collection, couple of Floor
Plans, a few elevations, we can create a new view.
| | 02:39 | So, the new view that I'm going to create
is a Section view, one of my favorite views
| | 02:43 | in Revit, and you'll find
yourself creating sections all the time.
| | 02:46 | So, I'm going to start here in the Level 1
Floor Plan and then on the View tab, I'm going
| | 02:51 | to click the Section icon right here, and
then you just simply draw two points on screen
| | 02:58 | to indicate where you want
the section cut to occur.
| | 03:01 | Now, if I zoom in slightly here,
you can see I just missed this door.
| | 03:05 | So, it turns out, you can
actually move this thing.
| | 03:07 | I'm just going to drag it slightly.
| | 03:10 | After the fact, to fine tune its position, and you
can also use these grips out here to fine tune its size.
| | 03:18 | Now, I'm happy with the size of it
currently, so I'm going to leave it alone.
| | 03:22 | And if you look over here on the Project Browser,
notice that a brand-new category has appeared on the list.
| | 03:27 | We now have a sections category.
| | 03:29 | If I expand that, you'll see
that Section 1 is among the options.
| | 03:34 | So, I'm going to double-click Section 1
and notice that a brand-new view opens up.
| | 03:39 | It turns bold, and we see Section 1
right here, and that's the active window.
| | 03:44 | Now, we can certainly tile it with the others,
but for now I'm just going to focus on the
| | 03:48 | sections, so I'm going
to leave it all by itself.
| | 03:51 | Notice that if you look in the background
here at the Floor Plan, I'm going to move
| | 03:56 | it just slightly out of the way here,
that the section line is still highlighted.
| | 04:01 | Now this is an important thing to
understand about Views in Revit.
| | 04:05 | Views are not separate drawings.
They're not independent things.
| | 04:09 | This symbol here is not just a symbol.
That is the actual view.
| | 04:15 | If you were to come over here to the Floor
Plan, select this symbol and delete it, it
| | 04:21 | would warn you that the Section
1 view is about to be deleted.
| | 04:24 | In other words, you can't disconnect the two.
| | 04:27 | So, if I cancel this, and I take this
Section view, and I move it, watch what happens
| | 04:33 | in the live view that I have in the foreground.
You see how it immediately changes to reflect
| | 04:38 | the new position of this view?
| | 04:40 | If I were to take this little grip here and
drag it, watch what happens to that door in
| | 04:45 | the section, you see how it disappears?
| | 04:48 | Because our section is no longer deep
enough to see that door, so these are live views
| | 04:54 | that are cutting through some portion of the
model that you indicate and so you can't disconnect
| | 05:01 | this section symbol from this view itself.
| | 05:05 | They are one and the same, and
that goes for the width as well.
| | 05:08 | Notice that if I take this one, and I drag it
this way, it crops out a portion of the view here.
| | 05:13 | I can do the opposite right here.
| | 05:15 | If I drag it back this way, when you click
over here, notice that, that grip is restored.
| | 05:20 | They are one and the same.
| | 05:22 | So, as you add views, they'll appear here
on the Project Browser, and you can use the
| | 05:27 | Project Browser to open and close them.
| | 05:28 | If this view is closed, we can
simply reopen it that way, okay.
| | 05:33 | And you can also use the Project
Browser to organize the various views.
| | 05:37 | So, you can see here that currently
I'm organized by the various view types.
| | 05:42 | There are actually options here.
| | 05:43 | If you click the views at the top, there are
different options here where you can organize
| | 05:47 | it by other groupings if you wish.
| | 05:49 | Now, in my case, my view type works just fine,
but if I had multiple disciplines in my project
| | 05:55 | like Structure and MEP, I could organize by
that, or if we had new construction and existing
| | 06:01 | construction, we could organize by that.
| | 06:03 | So there are different ways you can
group and organize the Project Browser.
| | 06:07 | But the project browser is the primary
means for which you will interact with the views
| | 06:12 | in your project, open those views in order
to work in them, and as you add new views,
| | 06:17 | they will immediately appear
over in the Project Browser.
| | 06:22 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Organizing with categories vs. layers| 00:00 | One of the most critical aspects of success in Revit is
achieving a firm grasp of how Revit organizes data.
| | 00:07 | This is not hard to do when you consider that the organization
of elements in Revit is actually quite logical and very consistent.
| | 00:13 | Frankly, for most new users the issue has
more to do with the need to unlearn existing
| | 00:17 | AutoCAD habits, rather than a
difficulty in understanding Revit fundamentals.
| | 00:21 | One such fundamental is the
difference in object organization.
| | 00:25 | AutoCAD uses layers to manage data.
| | 00:28 | Revit has no layers, and
instead uses categories.
| | 00:31 | But the two are far from equal.
| | 00:33 | So, let's take a look at
some of the differences.
| | 00:36 | In AutoCAD, with the exception of
layer 0, layers are user defined.
| | 00:40 | That means that you can create your own layers,
rename them, delete them as project needs dictate.
| | 00:46 | But categories in Revit are
completely built into the software.
| | 00:50 | They can't be added, they can't be
renamed, and they can't be deleted.
| | 00:53 | So here in Revit, I'm in a file called Condo Unit,
and if you already have this file open,
| | 00:58 | you might want just close and
reopen a fresh copy without saving.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to go to the Manage tab, and we
can see a list of all the categories in Revit
| | 01:06 | by using the Object Styles command.
| | 01:09 | Now, when I click on Object Styles, it opens
up this dialog, and you could see it's organized
| | 01:13 | into the tabs and the first tab
is the Model Objects categories.
| | 01:17 | Now here, you're going to find all
of the various architectural objects.
| | 01:20 | We've got things like Casework, Ceiling,
Columns, Doors, Windows, you name it.
| | 01:25 | So, if I select one of these items like the
first one on the list, the Casework category,
| | 01:30 | you'll notice that there's no place here where I can
rename or delete or remove or even reorganize this category.
| | 01:38 | All of that is built in.
| | 01:39 | The only thing I can't change is things like
as Line Weight and its Color and its Pattern,
| | 01:44 | which is a little bit similar to
the things we can do in AutoCAD.
| | 01:47 | So, let me cancel out of here for a second
and unlike AutoCAD where when you draw elements,
| | 01:54 | you have to specifically think about which
layer those elements need to be placed on,
| | 01:59 | that's not really the case here in Revit.
| | 02:01 | If I highlight an existing object, you'll
notice that the first item says the category.
| | 02:06 | This one's the Walls category. If I highlight
this, it says this is the Doors category.
| | 02:10 | If I highlight this, it says
it's the Furniture category.
| | 02:13 | And if you go and add new elements, there is no
way that this new wall could be anything but a wall.
| | 02:21 | There's no way that this new
door could be anything but a door.
| | 02:25 | It's not possible to create a door
element and put it on the Windows category.
| | 02:30 | It just simply can't be done.
| | 02:32 | So in AutoCAD, the layers primarily define the graphical
characteristics, similar to what we just saw in Revit.
| | 02:37 | We could change the Line Weight
or the Color or the Line Pattern.
| | 02:41 | Now in Revit, it goes much deeper than that.
| | 02:45 | As we saw just a moment ago, when you create a
new element in Revit, it knows which category
| | 02:50 | to go to because the category
fundamentally defines the nature of that element.
| | 02:56 | It can't be anything else.
It's not possible to put it somewhere else.
| | 03:00 | So it defines it, not only where it goes but,
its fundamental behaviors and characteristics,
| | 03:04 | and this is why when you draw two walls,
they know how to join with one another, and when
| | 03:09 | you create a door, it knows how to cut a
hole in the wall, because all of those behaviors
| | 03:13 | are built into part of that category.
| | 03:16 | Layers are also used not only to control the graphical
characteristics, but also to control the visibility.
| | 03:22 | But this is done globally
across the entire drawing.
| | 03:25 | If you turn off a layer in AutoCAD,
that layer goes off everywhere.
| | 03:29 | But in Revit, visibility is view by view.
| | 03:32 | So, if we take a quick look over here in
Revit, what you can see is we can use categories
| | 03:38 | to turn objects on and off just like we
can with layers in AutoCAD, but in Revit it's
| | 03:43 | going to be done on a view by view basis.
| | 03:45 | So, for example, let's say that in this view,
I no longer wanted to see any of the furniture.
| | 03:52 | So, what I would have to do is go to the View tab and
choose a slightly different command, Visibility Graphics.
| | 03:59 | Now, when this first opens up, it looks
pretty similar to the dialog we were in a moment
| | 04:04 | ago except that now you'll see there's a
small check box next to each of the categories and
| | 04:09 | with this check box, I can turn off a particular category
in the same way that you can turn off a layer in AutoCAD.
| | 04:17 | So, you'll notice that if I open up another
Floor Plan, the furniture is still turned on here.
| | 04:23 | So yes, we can use the categories to turn
objects on and off, but it's not a global setting.
| | 04:29 | It applies to each individual view, which
gives us a little bit more power and flexibility.
| | 04:35 | The final difference that we want to look at between
layers and categories is that layers are nonhierarchical.
| | 04:41 | There's no such thing as a sublayer.
| | 04:43 | When you create a layer in AutoCAD,
it is just a flat list of layers.
| | 04:46 | So, if you wanted a door panel layer and a
door swing layer, and you wanted those related
| | 04:51 | to the door layer, you really have to just
be clever with naming and clue in the
| | 04:56 | team members to use them that way.
| | 04:58 | But in Revit, we actually can have subcategories and those
categories are nested underneath their parent categories.
| | 05:06 | So, if we take a look at that, I'm going to
go back to Object Styles, and you'll notice
| | 05:13 | a small Plus sign next to each of the categories.
| | 05:18 | So, we've got various subcategories that are
built in part of the software, and if I look
| | 05:24 | at doors here--because that's a pretty
common example--you can see that we've got things
| | 05:29 | like Elevation Swing and Glass and panel.
| | 05:32 | Maybe I want the Plan Swing category to graphically
look a little bit different here in this view.
| | 05:39 | Notice that we've got several
different kinds of doors on the screen.
| | 05:42 | I've got a single swing door.
| | 05:43 | I've got a double swing door.
I've got a bi-fold door.
| | 05:46 | Well, some of these different doors, even though they're
completely different kinds of doors, have door swings.
| | 05:51 | So, if I want to make a change to those door swings across
all of those doors, I can use Object Styles for that.
| | 05:57 | So, I'm going to do really simple example
here and just change the color, and let's
| | 06:01 | click Apply and notice that regardless of the kind of
door, all of the swings have turned red in this case.
| | 06:08 | If you've been using AutoCAD for a while,
it's uncomfortable at first trying to get
| | 06:11 | used to working without layers.
| | 06:14 | However, once you begin using Revit, you
quickly discover that not having to worry about the
| | 06:18 | layer as your work is actually quite refreshing.
| | 06:21 | It won't be long before you find yourself
quite happy to leave your layers behind.
| | 06:26 |
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| Understanding families, groups, and blocks| 00:00 | Nearly all graphic software has some
methods to take a collection of primitive objects
| | 00:04 | and assemble them into a meaningful object
that we wish to reuse across one or more projects.
| | 00:09 | Such items go by various names, we've got
Symbols or References, Collections, Blocks
| | 00:13 | or Groups, and many others.
In AutoCAD, we have Blocks.
| | 00:17 | In Revit, the closest equivalent to a Block would be either
a Family or a Group, but neither is completely synonymous.
| | 00:24 | So, what I'd like to do here is kind of talk
about what the differences are between Families
| | 00:29 | and Groups and kind of equate those as
best as I can to how they may or may not match
| | 00:34 | up to the functionality you're
used to with Blocks in AutoCAD.
| | 00:36 | So, I'm in a file here called Families, and
it is a version of our Condo Plan that we've
| | 00:42 | seen before, but, as you can see, it's
been expanded a little to include four units.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to zoom in over here in this Utility room
area, and let's start with some really basic notions.
| | 00:53 | If you are working in AutoCAD and drawing
a similar plan like this, when it came time
| | 00:57 | to add the door or the hot water heater or
the furnace, you'd add those items typically
| | 01:02 | with the Block, because, you would not want
to draw all the individual lines in the art
| | 01:06 | to make up the door and
then draw it again and again.
| | 01:08 | For other instances, you'd simply draw it once,
and then use that Block over and over again.
| | 01:13 | And some of the advantages you'd gain from
doing it that way would be that later if you
| | 01:17 | decided to make a change to that door block, you could
update that change, and it would update across the project.
| | 01:23 | And we could actually do the
same thing here with the Family.
| | 01:26 | So, if I'd have opened this Family and
make a change to the single flush door family,
| | 01:32 | that change would actually propagate throughout the
project here and all single flush doors would update.
| | 01:37 | So, in that respect, there is a
similarity between Families and Blocks.
| | 01:41 | And we have some other examples here, we've
got a Hot Water Heater, this is also a Family.
| | 01:45 | We've got this Furnace
here, this is also a Family.
| | 01:48 | Another similarity we have here is the
blocks are often stored externally to the project
| | 01:53 | up on a network server somewhere.
| | 01:55 | We will see the same kind of
strategy being employed with Family.
| | 01:58 | So, you would probably go out to a network
server to find this Hot Water Heater and the
| | 02:02 | Furnace and the Wash Room and the Dryer.
So, those are the similarities.
| | 02:06 | However, in Revit, Families are much more
fundamental to the structure of the program.
| | 02:12 | So, in the previous movie we talked about
Categories and those being the fundamental
| | 02:17 | characteristic that defines
the behavior of each object.
| | 02:20 | Well, Category by itself isn't
enough to define that behavior.
| | 02:24 | The behavior is actually a multistep
hierarchical relationship and what we find is that each
| | 02:30 | category in Revit actually is
broken down into one or more Families.
| | 02:35 | So, Families aren't limited to just these things
that are convenient to place as single objects.
| | 02:43 | Every element in Revit is part of a Family.
| | 02:46 | So, if I select this wall right here, what we
see is Basic Wall is the name of the Family.
| | 02:54 | And if I select the door, Single
Flush is the name of the Family.
| | 02:59 | There is no difference as far as Revit's
concerned, between having a family that defines this
| | 03:04 | door and having a family that defines this wall.
| | 03:07 | If I select this stair element over
here, Stair is the name of the Family.
| | 03:12 | If I select this floor slab over here,
Floor is the name of the Family.
| | 03:16 | In other words, every element
in Revit is part of a Family.
| | 03:20 | This is not the case in AutoCAD.
| | 03:22 | When you draw walls or floors or stairs in
AutoCAD, typically those items are drawn from
| | 03:26 | a collection of individual lines.
They are not Blocks.
| | 03:30 | They could be Blocks, but
they typically wouldn't be.
| | 03:33 | So that's where the analogy
starts to break down a little bit.
| | 03:36 | Now, the one thing that is similar typically
is that a Family will be a discrete element.
| | 03:43 | In other words, there is a Family for this
wall and another Family for this door but
| | 03:48 | you wouldn't typically have a
Family for this entire Utility room.
| | 03:53 | If I zoom out a little bit, that
is typically the domain of groups.
| | 03:57 | So, I'm going to highlight one of these
pieces of furniture, and what you'll notice is that
| | 04:02 | the individual chair doesn't highlight, instead,
there is a dashed box around all of the furniture
| | 04:09 | in this floor plan, and when I click, you
can see that all of the furniture in this
| | 04:12 | Condominium unit is highlighted together.
| | 04:16 | If you look at the tooltip that appears on the
status bar, you see that that's all part of a Model Group.
| | 04:21 | So, a group is actually a lot closer to being
directly synonymous to a Block than a Family
| | 04:28 | is because, with a group element,
it's completely user-defined.
| | 04:33 | I can put any elements I like in a group, and then if
I make a change to that group, it will change everywhere.
| | 04:39 | So, for example, if I'd to select this Group
and choose Edit Group and take this nightstand
| | 04:45 | and delete it and perhaps take this chair
over here and move it like so, and maybe rotate it,
| | 04:52 | what we will see is that when I choose
to Finish the group right here, not only did
| | 05:00 | that change apply to this instance of the group, but it
applied to this one as well. Notice the chair is moved.
| | 05:07 | Notice the nightstand is removed, this one as
well, this one as well and the one over here.
| | 05:12 | Because, all of those groups were
instances of that same group definition.
| | 05:17 | And so, the process I just went through would
be very similar to editing a Block in AutoCAD.
| | 05:22 | So, it really is like that old cliche of
apples and oranges, in a lot of ways, Families,
| | 05:29 | Groups, and Blocks are
basically apples, oranges, and bananas.
| | 05:33 | There are some similarities, but
there're a lot of differences as well.
| | 05:38 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at plot styles, scale, and paper space| 00:00 | We've looked at many similarities and differences
between Revit and AutoCAD so far, but one
| | 00:04 | aspect that we haven't considered yet is output.
| | 00:06 | At some point, we're going to want to output our files
to either paper output, or some sort of digital deliverable.
| | 00:13 | Now, like AutoCAD, Revit has the ability
to create sheets complete with Title Blocks.
| | 00:17 | And we can use those sheets to
produce our physical printed drawings.
| | 00:22 | So, I'd like to look at some of the tools
that we have available to us, and I'd like
| | 00:25 | to start with the Line Weight and Scale Display.
| | 00:29 | AutoCAD does a terrific job emulating
the traditional drafting experience.
| | 00:33 | But it's never really done a terrific job at
emulating line weight particularly on screen display.
| | 00:40 | We've always had to wait until we printed
the drawing in order to see the final line
| | 00:45 | weights, and we had to interact with a fairly
complex collection of plot styles and color
| | 00:51 | mapping tables and other mechanisms in order
to get the line weight display that we want.
| | 00:55 | So, I'm happy to say that in Revit, we don't have to jump
through any such hoops in order to get line weight display.
| | 01:00 | Line weight display just happens
naturally directly in the Revit Viewport.
| | 01:04 | I'm in a file here called Sheets,
and I'm zoomed all the way out.
| | 01:08 | But what you'll see is as I start to zoom in, at some
point the line weight display will begin to appear.
| | 01:16 | And, as you can see, the walls are much
bolder than the surrounding geometry like the doors
| | 01:22 | and the elevator and other elements.
This is built right into Revit.
| | 01:27 | As you zoom in and out, the line
weights zoom in a logical and intelligent way.
| | 01:32 | No different than if you took a physical
printed piece of paper and looked at it up close,
| | 01:37 | and then moved it away
from yourself farther away.
| | 01:39 | You'll get the exact same experience here on screen
in Revit, and I personally am quite pleased with that.
| | 01:46 | Now, some folks aren't happy with the
default line weights that come out of the box.
| | 01:51 | Of course, you can change those.
| | 01:53 | Now, I'm not going to get into the
details of how we change those right now.
| | 01:56 | I'll leave that for you and your
CAD and BIM managers to work out.
| | 02:00 | But know that you can change those
settings and make your own office standards.
| | 02:04 | So, if you want the walls a little darker, or you
want the doors a little lighter, you can achieve that.
| | 02:09 | Save it as a part of your project template,
and that becomes your new office standard.
| | 02:14 | The important thing that I want you to see
is that the line weight display is built-in,
| | 02:17 | and it's tied to the scale.
| | 02:20 | So, if I came over here, and I changed the
scale of the drawing--so let's say I'm in
| | 02:25 | quarter-inch right now--let's say I change
it to eighth-inch and then we zoom in again,
| | 02:29 | you're going to see that, that has an
impact on not only the size of the annotation and
| | 02:34 | other elements on the screen, but it does
have an impact on the line weights as well.
| | 02:38 | I personally think it looked a little bit
better at quarter-inch, and I'm going to set
| | 02:42 | it back to that scale right now.
| | 02:45 | So, that's the first aspect of printing is
that basically that takes care of itself.
| | 02:50 | No more plot styles, no more color mapping tables,
what you see on screen is what you get in print.
| | 02:57 | The next thing that we want to
look at is the sheets themselves.
| | 03:00 | I'm currently in a view.
So, this is a Floor Plan view.
| | 03:04 | We've talked about this before,
Level 2 is currently bold.
| | 03:07 | If you scroll down here in Project Browser,
you'll notice that there's a Sheets branch right here.
| | 03:11 | Now, if I expand that, this project
already has some sheets, you can see them here,
| | 03:17 | a couple of Floor Plan sheets,
a few Elevation and Section sheets.
| | 03:20 | Now, to create a new sheet is a simple
matter of right-clicking right here and choosing
| | 03:24 | New Sheet, choosing the title block you want.
| | 03:27 | If you don't see the title block size that you need to
use, you can load one in from your office library.
| | 03:33 | And then when you click OK, you get a
blank sheet complete with title block.
| | 03:36 | Now, I'm just using the default Revit title
block at the moment, but of course, you can
| | 03:40 | customize the title block to
match your office standard.
| | 03:44 | Then it's simply a matter of going into a
view that's not already on a sheet and dragging
| | 03:50 | and dropping it onto this sheet.
Now, I say one that's not already on the sheet.
| | 03:54 | If you try and take a view that's already on the sheet
and drag it onto the sheet, it will generate an error.
| | 04:00 | Each view can only be on one sheet at a time.
So, I'm going to close this here.
| | 04:04 | So, I need to find a view that's not already on
a sheet, so maybe my Ceiling Plans, for example.
| | 04:09 | And since I was working on the second floor,
I'll just take the Second Floor view,
| | 04:13 | drag it over, and place it on the sheet.
| | 04:17 | It comes in, and if you zoom in, it comes in complete
with a title bar that reports the name and the scale.
| | 04:24 | Now, you notice this one is a little bit
small because it's an eighth-inch scale, and we
| | 04:28 | could change that if we wanted to.
| | 04:30 | You can change that directly here on
the sheet, or you can go back to the view.
| | 04:35 | To change it right here on the sheet, you simply select
the Viewport and click here and activate that view.
| | 04:42 | That gives you access to the scale.
Notice that it gets larger.
| | 04:48 | I can right-click here, deactivate the view, and
then just simply readjust this view to fit the sheet.
| | 04:54 | Now, I already have some sheets over here.
| | 04:56 | So, I'm going to open up ones that are
already here like my Second Floor Plan, and you can
| | 05:00 | see it fits nicely on the title block.
| | 05:03 | You can input any of the values that
you want to here in the title block.
| | 05:07 | So, if I zoom in, if I want to change the
name of this from Floor Plans to Floor Plan
| | 05:14 | Level 2, you're going to see that name
change on the project browser as well.
| | 05:18 | You can change the number and the scale and
other things are reported directly from the file.
| | 05:24 | Now, when it comes time to actually
print this, we go to the Application menu.
| | 05:29 | And under Print, we've got our Print
command, and we've got our Print Setup command.
| | 05:33 | I'm going to go to Print Setup first.
| | 05:36 | And I think this is another breath of
fresh air when you're working with Revit.
| | 05:40 | Printing in AutoCAD can
sometimes be needlessly complex.
| | 05:43 | There are a lot of settings, there are a
lot of configuration, there are a lot of plot
| | 05:48 | styles and other files that have to be all
configured just so in order to get proper output.
| | 05:54 | Printing from Revit is a lot like
printing from any Windows program.
| | 05:57 | You go to Page Setup, you choose your
printer from the top of the list here, you pick
| | 06:01 | a Page Size, a couple of other settings,
Portrait or Landscape, whether you want to zoom or
| | 06:06 | fit the page, and you click OK, and it's really
that simple, and Revit will take care of the rest.
| | 06:13 | Now, at the moment, I'm just going to
generate a PDF on letter size paper.
| | 06:17 | I'm using an E size sheet.
So, it's a little bit larger obviously.
| | 06:22 | So, I'm going to let it zoom to fit.
| | 06:24 | If you want to print to
scale, you choose zoom at 100%.
| | 06:27 | But in this case, I'll let it zoom
to fit, go with Landscape, click OK.
| | 06:31 | And then, when I go to Print, it's just a
matter of going to print, all the settings
| | 06:37 | will be preserved from that previous screen,
and I click OK, and it would prompt me to
| | 06:42 | create a PDF in this case.
| | 06:45 | So, I give it a name, save it,
and it will generate the file.
| | 06:53 | If you're printing to a paper output, then
you'd go check your device, and you would
| | 06:57 | have your printed output there,
and it's really that simple.
| | 07:01 | So, generating prints from
Revit is fairly straightforward.
| | 07:05 | We can create sheets complete with title blocks.
They can match office standards.
| | 07:09 | The line weights are what
you see is what you get.
| | 07:12 | So, they're on screen all the time
displaying exactly the way they're going to look when
| | 07:16 | you print, and when it comes time to print,
it's a simple Print Setup command, very similar
| | 07:22 | to most Windows programs, and then you just
simply click Print and generate your output.
| | 07:27 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using links instead of xrefs| 00:00 | A mainstay in many an AutoCAD user's daily
workflow is the External Reference or X-ref.
| | 00:06 | So you may be wondering, does Revit
has this critical functionality?
| | 00:09 | Well, the answer is yes, it does.
| | 00:11 | Revit has links which are functionally
equivalent to X-refs and nearly all ways.
| | 00:15 | So I'm in a file here called Office, and
I've got two tiled windows open, the Site Plan
| | 00:20 | on my left and 3D Perspective view on my right.
| | 00:25 | And there is already one link file in this
file here, so if I move my mouse around here
| | 00:30 | on screen in the Site Plan, you see
that these are individual objects.
| | 00:33 | These are roofs, and there are
some skylights here and so forth.
| | 00:36 | But if I come out to here, and I click, you
can see that the entire Site Plan highlights
| | 00:41 | as a single piece, that's a Revit link which
again is functionally equivalent to an X-ref.
| | 00:47 | So in other words just like in X-ref, what
happens is you take one Revit Project, and
| | 00:53 | you link it into a second Revit Project and the link
will maintain a connection back to the original file.
| | 01:01 | So you can see over here with the selected
that on the Properties palette it says that
| | 01:05 | the object I have selected here is a Linked
Revit Model, and it's called Building Site.rvt,
| | 01:11 | that's the name of the Revit file.
| | 01:12 | And if another user would make changes to
the Building Site file, I could then reload
| | 01:19 | and update those changes
here in my current project.
| | 01:23 | So, for example, if I wanted to open up that
Site Plan and maybe add some more trees over
| | 01:28 | here, then we could reload it back here in
the office, and we would see those trees.
| | 01:33 | Now one thing that's a little different
about Links and X-refs is you can't have both the
| | 01:39 | host and the link open at the same
time in the same session of Revit.
| | 01:44 | So if I want to make that change and add
the trees, what I have to actually do is Close
| | 01:48 | this project and then Open the
Building Site file separately.
| | 01:57 | Now you could see it over here, and I'll just
select one of these trees, go to Copy, choose
| | 02:02 | Multiple, and I'm just going to
create some additional trees over here.
| | 02:10 | I'm going to Close this file, and it prompts
me to save, I'll say Yes, and then here are
| | 02:15 | my recent files, I'll reopen the office, and
pay attention in the corner here, and you'll
| | 02:20 | see that it automatically reloaded
and brought in all of those trees.
| | 02:25 | So that's a really simple example.
| | 02:27 | Now if you're working in the file and
somebody else is working in the Site file,
| | 02:33 | and you want to reload the changes, you don't have
to close and reopen, what you can actually
| | 02:36 | do is go to the Insert tab and use the Manage
Links dialog right here where you can select
| | 02:42 | the file and then down here
you have some Reload options.
| | 02:45 | You can Reload it from its existing location, or you
can use Reload From to point to another version of file.
| | 02:52 | Reload From is handy if you're getting the
file from an outside firm and they send you
| | 02:56 | an update every so often, you could point
to that new update that they sent you via
| | 03:00 | Dropbox or however you share files.
| | 03:03 | So I'm going to Cancel out of here, and
let's look at the process to add another link.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to go to the View tab, tile my
windows again, and right out here in this area
| | 03:16 | of this 3D view there is a tower
element in that same area is right here.
| | 03:21 | And if I zoom in a little, you can see that
there are these four spotlights right here.
| | 03:27 | What I want to do is bring in that tower
element, and that's actually in a separate file.
| | 03:31 | So let's just walk through the steps of
how we create a new link in the first place.
| | 03:35 | So we'll go to Insert, click on the Link
Revit button, select the file that we want to link
| | 03:41 | in, down here we've got the
option to change how it's Positioned.
| | 03:46 | Now if I choose the default of Center to
Center, I'll have to move it, because it will just
| | 03:50 | center the file on screen somewhere.
| | 03:52 | What I'm going to do is choose the Origin
to Origin option to get it to go into exactly
| | 03:57 | the correct location, and when I click Open
here, you're going to see the tower appear
| | 04:01 | here, and over here in both views.
| | 04:04 | And once again it's now a Revit Link, so
is the person working on the tower makes any
| | 04:09 | changes, I can go back to Manage
Link, and update those changes.
| | 04:13 | So, as you can see, with the exception of
not being able to open both the host and the
| | 04:19 | link at the same time in all other ways, Revit Links
are functionally equivalent to AutoCAD X-refs.
| | 04:25 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Using AutoCAD Files in RevitUsing CAD files in Revit| 00:00 | As you are no doubt aware, AutoCAD's DWG format is by far
the most commonly used file format for Computer Aided Design Files.
| | 00:07 | There are countless DWG files in Active
Production and in Archives throughout the world.
| | 00:11 | Even if your goal is to completely transition
away from AutoCAD and begin using Revit exclusively
| | 00:16 | for your firm's design and production needs,
it's likely that you'll continue to use, access,
| | 00:20 | and receive DWG files
into the foreseeable future.
| | 00:24 | In this chapter we will discuss the ways that
you can use those files in your Revit workflow.
| | 00:29 | So why don't we start with a look
at which file formats are supported?
| | 00:33 | So of course we have DWG, and that's AutoCAD's
native format, and that's by far your most popular format.
| | 00:38 | But DGN is also supported, this is Micro-Station's
native format, we can use DXF files from any
| | 00:43 | variety of CAD programs, SAT files, which is a 3D CAD
format, and even sketch-up files, SKP files.
| | 00:51 | So all of these formats are supported and they all get
imported into Revit Projects it much the same way.
| | 00:56 | Now we can bring a CAD file
into Revit in one of two ways.
| | 00:59 | We can Import it, or we can Link it--and
we'll talk about some of the pros and cons in the
| | 01:04 | later movie--but for now I just want you to
understand what the difference is between Import and Link.
| | 01:09 | An Import is essentially
embedded directly into the Revit file.
| | 01:14 | It becomes part of the Revit file, and there
is no link maintained back to the original.
| | 01:18 | A Link of course is referenced, kind of like a
Revit link is that we looked at in a previous movie.
| | 01:24 | It maintains a reference back to the
original CAD file, and if that CAD file is changed
| | 01:28 | by the original author, you can update that
link and see the latest changes directly in Revit.
| | 01:33 | Now whether you're Importing or Linking you'll
have to give Revit a little bit of information
| | 01:38 | on how it should
interpret that CAD data coming in.
| | 01:41 | It's not native data, so it's not going
to be able to interpret it on its own.
| | 01:45 | So, for example, we'll most like we have
layers or levels in the CAD file, and we're going
| | 01:49 | to have to tell Revit which of those
layers we want to use and how we want them used.
| | 01:53 | We might have colors coming in that CAD file,
so we might want to say whether or not we
| | 01:57 | want to preserve those colors or
change it all to black and white.
| | 02:00 | There is of course the issue of units, we
want the size of the file to be interpreted
| | 02:04 | correctly, and we have to tell Revit
whether or not data is either 2D or 3D data.
| | 02:09 | So there's plenty to do when we bring these
CAD files in and so all of these will be options
| | 02:13 | that we will have
available to us in the dialog box.
| | 02:16 | And finally, you can actually export your
Revit files to CAD files if there are members
| | 02:22 | of your team that are still working in CAD and
Revit supports both DWG, and DGN for this purpose.
| | 02:28 | So, just because you're moving to Revit does not necessarily
mean that you have to leave your AutoCAD files behind.
| | 02:33 | Revit is capable of both importing and exporting
DWG files, as well as several of the CAD formats.
| | 02:39 | With a little care and some careful procedures you'll
find that a practical workflow can easily be established.
| | 02:44 | There are actually disadvantages as well,
and in the next several movies we will explore
| | 02:48 | the procedure's best practices and
processes for using CAD files within Revit.
| | 02:53 |
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| Understanding linking vs. importing| 00:00 | There are two ways you can bring CAD files into
Revit, you can import the files, or you can link them.
| | 00:06 | When you import a CAD file, it becomes embedded in the
Revit file, and it maintains no link back to the original.
| | 00:11 | So, if the original file should change, and
you needed those changes in Revit, you'd be
| | 00:15 | forced to delete the CAD file and re-import it.
| | 00:18 | On the other hand, if you choose Link, it
behaves much more like an X-ref in AutoCAD.
| | 00:23 | So, it will maintain a link back to the original,
and when the original changes, you can simply
| | 00:27 | go to Manage Links,
select the link, and reload it.
| | 00:31 | So, let's take a look at both procedures.
| | 00:33 | I'm here in an empty Revit project created
from the default Architectural Template, and
| | 00:38 | I'm going to go to the Insert tab.
| | 00:40 | And on the Link panel here, we have a Link CAD
button, and on the Import panel, we have Import CAD.
| | 00:46 | So, we'll look at both, but
let's start with Link CAD.
| | 00:49 | So, in the Chapter_3 file of the Excise Files,
I'm going to select the AutoCAD Floorplan.
| | 00:55 | Now, be sure you don't double-click it
because if you do, you'll lose the chance to input
| | 00:59 | some of the settings down at the bottom.
| | 01:01 | Now, I want to just point out a
couple of these settings to you right now.
| | 01:05 | Down here at the bottom, we can tell Revit how to interpret
the colors that are coming in from the CAD file.
| | 01:12 | Most of the time AutoCAD files are on a black
background, and Revit's on a white background.
| | 01:16 | So, if you want to keep the file in color,
you could use Preserve, which will preserve
| | 01:21 | the original colors in the CAD file, but
often they're not going to look so good on a white
| | 01:24 | background, so it's usually a
better idea to choose Invert.
| | 01:28 | That will reverse the colors and make
them look a little bit more legible in Revit.
| | 01:31 | Now, you also have the option for black and
white, and that's useful if you want to print
| | 01:34 | the CAD file directly in Revit.
| | 01:36 | Now, you can also tell Revit how to
deal with the Levels or the Layers.
| | 01:40 | Levels are part of a DGN file and
Layers of course part of a DWG file.
| | 01:44 | Now, I usually just choose All here because
I can easily go in later and turn off layers
| | 01:49 | that I don't want to see, but there actually
is a Specify option, or you can choose just
| | 01:53 | the visible layers that are
coming in from the CAD file.
| | 01:56 | So you can certainly
choose one of those other options.
| | 01:59 | For Units, Revit almost always
does a good job of interpreting units.
| | 02:02 | So, I usually don't change this.
| | 02:05 | But if the file comes in, and it's way too
big or way too small, then what you can do
| | 02:09 | is undo it, come back here, and
you can choose an appropriate unit.
| | 02:13 | So usually, you don't have to do that, my
recommendation is start with Auto-Detect and
| | 02:17 | only change the unit if you have to.
| | 02:19 | Finally, the last setting I want to point out
here is correct lines that are slightly off axis.
| | 02:23 | This is a handy little setting that they
introduced in recent releases here in Revit that helps
| | 02:27 | correct an error that would often
appear when you imported a CAD file.
| | 02:31 | You'd get this warning about lines that were
off axis, and you have to OK out of the warning.
| | 02:35 | So, this basically prevents
that warning from occurring.
| | 02:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and click Open here.
| | 02:41 | And when I do, you're going to see the
file come in, and I'm going to zoom in.
| | 02:45 | You can see that if I move my mouse near the file,
the entire thing highlights with a box around it.
| | 02:51 | And if I click on it and select
it, it selects the whole thing.
| | 02:55 | So, that entire file becomes
a single object here in Revit.
| | 02:58 | Now, when I select it, there are a few
buttons that appear on the Modify tab.
| | 03:03 | I mentioned that we can come back after the fact,
and we can manipulate the layers if we wanted to.
| | 03:08 | So, the way that you do that is to use
this Query button right here, and you can move
| | 03:12 | your mouse around in the CAD file, and it will actually
highlight the individual parts and pieces in that file.
| | 03:18 | So, for example, if I click on this blue line
right here, I can see that, that layer is I-WALL.
| | 03:24 | And if I click on this line right here,
I can see that, that layer is A-DOOR.
| | 03:28 | Now, it turns out you can even hide those
layers in the CAD file if you wanted to.
| | 03:34 | So, I can use this Hide in view button
right here, and that hides the door layer.
| | 03:38 | Now, if I later change my mind and realize
I hid the door layer but I'd like to bring
| | 03:43 | it back again, I use
Visibility Graphics to do that.
| | 03:46 | That's the standard Revit
Visibility Graphics command.
| | 03:48 | Now, I can go to the View tab and choose Visibility
Graphics, or I can use the keyboard shortcut V+G to get there.
| | 03:56 | When you get to Visibility Graphics, you're going
to use the Import Categories tab to access CAD files.
| | 04:02 | And you'll see each of the CAD files that
are in the file is listed here, and you could
| | 04:05 | see there is A-CAD
Floorplan, and I can expand it.
| | 04:08 | And you'll notice that A-DOOR is checked off.
| | 04:11 | So, I'll just turn it back on again,
click OK, and my door layer comes back.
| | 04:16 | We brought this in as a link, and I want
to see what happens if the owner of the file
| | 04:21 | in CAD makes a change. Let's switch over to AutoCAD.
And here in AutoCAD, I'm in the original file.
| | 04:29 | And what I'm going to do is
just make a really simple change.
| | 04:32 | And perhaps this closet right here needs to
be a little bit larger, so I'll just use a
| | 04:36 | simple stretch operation, and I'll make that closet larger
like so, zoom back out, and let's save the file.
| | 04:46 | Switch back over to Revit, and let's zoom
in on that same area here, and of course,
| | 04:51 | we're still seeing the original closet.
| | 04:53 | I've been informed that
the CAD file has changed.
| | 04:56 | I'm going to use the same Manage Links dialog that
I used to manage Revit links in an earlier movie.
| | 05:01 | Now, when I click on that,
the Revit tab is empty.
| | 05:03 | We don't have any Revit links in this file.
But you'll notice there is a CAD Formats tab.
| | 05:08 | When I click there, you could see
my A-CAD Floorplan is listed here.
| | 05:12 | Down at the bottom, I have several buttons.
| | 05:14 | We can reload it from a different, reload
it from the same file, unload it, remove it,
| | 05:18 | I'm going to reload it, click OK, and you'll see
the closet gets bigger. Let me zoom back out.
| | 05:26 | That was the basic process to link a CAD file.
Let's talk about importing a CAD file now.
| | 05:31 | I'm going to import a detail file, which
is pretty typical one to use import for.
| | 05:36 | Now, to bring in a detail file, I don't
want to bring it in, in this Floorplan view,
| | 05:39 | so I'm going to go to the View tab here,
create a Drafting view, and I'll call it Details,
| | 05:46 | and I get a blank sheet of paper.
| | 05:47 | And now I'm going to go back to
Insert, and choose Import CAD.
| | 05:52 | I'm just going to select this file here
called AutoCAD Detail, and for the moment, I'm not
| | 05:56 | going to change anything down here, I'll
just accept all the defaults and click Open.
| | 06:00 | Then I'll do a Zoom to Fit which is Z+F.
| | 06:03 | And it finds the file, zooms in on it, and you can see
that it highlights the same way as the Floorplan did.
| | 06:09 | I've got the same Query button, and I could
click on things, and I could see what layers
| | 06:13 | they're on, and I can do Hide in view, all
the same features are basically available.
| | 06:17 | The only thing I can't do with the import
file is if I go to the Insert tab, and I click
| | 06:22 | on Manage Links, if you go to CAD
Formats, you notice it's not listed here.
| | 06:27 | The import file is not linked, therefore if
somebody were to make a change to this detail
| | 06:32 | back in AutoCAD, I would have to erase it here
and re-import it in order to get that change.
| | 06:37 | So you can see that we have both Import and
Link, both are valuable ways to bring in CAD
| | 06:42 | files and incorporate
them into our Revit workflow.
| | 06:47 |
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| Importing CAD files with Current View Only| 00:00 | There are many settings available
when you import CAD files into Revit.
| | 00:04 | Some of them are self-explanatory, things
like layers and colors, and we've talked about
| | 00:07 | some of those in a previous movie. Some are
less so, like the Current View Only setting.
| | 00:11 | Current View Only is used to determine whether or
not the CAD data coming in should be interpreted
| | 00:16 | as two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
| | 00:18 | Now, I know the name doesn't really say
that, but that's essentially what it's doing.
| | 00:23 | Consider that when you create geometry in
Revit that all of the objects already know
| | 00:27 | what kind of object they are.
| | 00:28 | So, an object like a wall, door, or window
knows that it's part of the model and therefore
| | 00:32 | it shows in all views. Things like text, and
dimensions, and notes, and drafted entities
| | 00:37 | know that they're two-dimensional
and they show in the Current View.
| | 00:40 | But when you're bringing CAD data in, it
doesn't know how it should interpret that, and that's
| | 00:44 | why the setting is called Current View Only.
| | 00:46 | So, let's go over here to the Insert tab,
and I'm going to choose Link CAD, and let's
| | 00:51 | take a look at how this setting behaves.
| | 00:52 | So, I'm going to click on the AutoCAD Floorplan file here,
and I'm going to start with Current View Only checked on.
| | 00:59 | Now, when I click Open, we'll see the
file come in, I am in the Level 1 Floorplan.
| | 01:05 | If I go to other views, you're going
to see that, that file does not appear.
| | 01:09 | If I go to second Floorplan, or if I go to a 3D view,
that's because we turned on Current View Only.
| | 01:16 | To translate that into Revit terminology,
what we've essentially said is this linked
| | 01:21 | CAD file is view specific, it
belongs to the Level 1 Floorplan view.
| | 01:27 | So, I'm going to select it and delete it.
Let's go to Link CAD again.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to select the same file, uncheck
Current View Only this time, and then click Open again.
| | 01:39 | It looks exactly the same here in Level 1.
| | 01:41 | But notice now that if I go to Level 2 Floorplan,
it appears, if I go to 3D, it appears again.
| | 01:48 | Even though the CAD file coming in is
actually two-dimensional data, we're still telling
| | 01:54 | Revit to treat it like part of the model.
| | 01:56 | See, Revit doesn't care whether or not it's
2D or 3D, it just wants to know whether or
| | 02:02 | not it should treat it like model or
whether it should treat it like view-specific.
| | 02:06 | That's why the check box
is called Current View Only.
| | 02:09 | So here, this CAD file, even though it's a
flat 2D file, we're telling it to treat it
| | 02:14 | like part of the model.
So, it's going to show everywhere.
| | 02:17 | Now, if there was a view where you didn't
want to see it, you'd have to use Visibility
| | 02:21 | Graphics and hide it.
I'm going to delete this file.
| | 02:24 | I'm going to go back to Level 1,
and let's look at another example.
| | 02:27 | It's important the distinction I just made
that what Current View Only really is doing
| | 02:32 | is telling it whether or not it's part of the
model or part of the view because it doesn't
| | 02:36 | really matter whether the
file contains 2D or 3D geometry.
| | 02:40 | We saw that a moment ago because
we just brought in 2D geometry.
| | 02:43 | Well, what happens if I bring in 3D geometry
like this Sculpture Garden, you can kind of
| | 02:48 | see in this preview over here that is 3D.
| | 02:51 | But I'm going to bring it
in as Current View Only.
| | 02:53 | When I click Open, we're going to see it
come in, we're looking right down on it.
| | 02:58 | But if I go to 3D, nothing appears.
| | 03:01 | So, even though that file contains three-dimensional
geometry, that geometry is being ignored,
| | 03:07 | because we brought it in to
Level 1 as Current View Only.
| | 03:11 | So let's delete it and bring it in again,
turn off Current View Only this time, and
| | 03:19 | then go to 3D, and you can see
that the 3D geometry now displays.
| | 03:25 | It makes a huge difference whether or not
you check the Current View Only check box
| | 03:29 | or not in terms of what you're going to get.
| | 03:32 | It really comes down to
how you plan to use the file.
| | 03:36 | If your intention is to use the 3D geometry
as 3D geometry in your Revit project, then
| | 03:41 | you want to make sure
Current View Only is turned off.
| | 03:44 | If your intention is to use it as just flat
drawings like floor plans, for example, that
| | 03:50 | you may want to use with your project or a
trace over or something like that, then Current
| | 03:54 | View Only turned on is
actually a good setting to have.
| | 03:57 | So, those floor plans that we started with,
we probably want to have Current View Only
| | 04:00 | turned on, but the Sculpture Garden,
we probably want to have it turned off.
| | 04:04 | Let's look at one more example.
| | 04:07 | If you want to take a CAD file that contains
civil data like 3D contour lines that represent
| | 04:12 | the terrain of your project, and use that in Revit,
you have to make sure you bring it in as model geometry.
| | 04:19 | You have to make sure the
Current View Only is turned off.
| | 04:22 | If you don't, you won't be able to use the feature that
allows you to create a toposurface from that 3D geometry.
| | 04:31 | When you go to Link, and you select your site plan,
make sure that Current View Only is turned off.
| | 04:38 | It's grayed out right now for me,
because in the background, I'm in a 3D view.
| | 04:43 | And when you import to a 3D view, you don't
get the choice of Current View Only or not.
| | 04:48 | So, in this case, it's actually going to give me
what I need automatically, zoom out a little bit.
| | 04:55 | And if I wanted to take these 3D contours
and convert that into Revit topography, then
| | 04:59 | I could go to the Massing & Site tab, go to
topography, and use the from Select Import Instance.
| | 05:05 | Now, I'm not going to go through that process right
now, we cover that in the Revit Essential Training.
| | 05:10 | So, feel free to check that
out if you want to learn more.
| | 05:14 | It's very important that you consider the Current
View Only check box before you import your CAD file.
| | 05:21 | Now, the way to make a good decision about
what setting to use for that is to think about
| | 05:26 | how you want to use the file.
| | 05:29 | If you want the file to be part of your model,
and you want to be able to use the 3D geometry,
| | 05:33 | or you want to be able to use it as a basis to create
3D geometry, then Current View Only has to be turned off.
| | 05:39 | If you want it to be limited to a particular
view like a Floor Plan or a Detail, then you
| | 05:44 | probably want to have
Current View Only turned on.
| | 05:49 |
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| Tracing CAD files| 00:00 | Sometimes the Project is begun in AutoCAD and
then the team decides to transition over to Revit.
| | 00:05 | There are many possible scenarios where this can happen,
some of the team members may not have yet learned Revit.
| | 00:10 | The project could have started a long
time ago in CAD, and now it's being revived.
| | 00:14 | It could be some members of the extended
project team working outside of your current firm
| | 00:18 | that don't use Revit, many
others scenarios are possible.
| | 00:21 | In any case there are basically two
strategies that you'd want to employ.
| | 00:25 | There's the so-called Convert Strategy and
then there is the Hybrid Strategy. In this
| | 00:31 | movie I'd like to focus on the Convert Strategy.
| | 00:35 | So to do this, I am in an empty project
created from the Revit Default Architectural Template
| | 00:40 | and on the Insert tab I'm going
to click on the Link CAD button.
| | 00:44 | Now the file I'm going to bringing is called
02 Space Plan, so you'll notice here in the
| | 00:47 | background I opened up the Level 2
Floor Plan on my project browser.
| | 00:52 | So I've got the 02 Space Plan selected, and I
want to make sure that I choose Current View only.
| | 00:58 | Now if you've watched the previous movie,
you know that this will force this file to
| | 01:03 | display only in the Level 2 Floor Plan,
it will make it view specific to that view.
| | 01:08 | The reason, I'm doing that is because I'm
only using this file as a basis to create
| | 01:13 | Revit geometry and then when I'm done with
the file, I'm going to remove it anyway, so
| | 01:16 | there's really no reason
for it to show in other views.
| | 01:19 | The other thing I'm going to do is I want
to Invert the Colors, it was created in CAD
| | 01:23 | with colored lines on a black background, if
I choose Invert it will make it a little bit
| | 01:28 | more legible on my white background.
| | 01:29 | I am going to bring in All the Layers, let
it Auto-Detect, Converting off axis lines
| | 01:34 | and Center to Center
orientation is just fine for me.
| | 01:36 | So I'm going to go head and click Open here.
| | 01:38 | When I open it up and zoom out a little bit,
you can see the file has come in, and we have
| | 01:43 | a bunch of walls that were created here in
AutoCAD and these walls just simple lines.
| | 01:48 | Now when I call this the Convert Strategy,
it's really a misnomer, there really is no
| | 01:52 | way to actually convert AutoCAD files into Revit, there
is no button you can push or any sort of automated routine.
| | 02:00 | Conversion is really just a process
of painstakingly tracing over the file.
| | 02:04 | It turns out that it's maybe not quite as painstaking as it
may sound, tracing is actually fairly straightforward in Revit.
| | 02:10 | So what I'm going to do is just pick some
area of the file to work in, I'll pick these
| | 02:14 | galleries over here, this is a museum
gallery that we're looking at here, and I'm going
| | 02:19 | to go to the Architecture tab, click on my
Wall tool and what I want to do is just choose
| | 02:23 | the Basic Settings, let's do a 5-inch wall and leave the
Height unconnected for now and use a Center location line.
| | 02:34 | Now the reason I'm going to do that is Revit
does this kind of ingenious thing here where
| | 02:37 | it sees the two parallel lines in the CAD
file, and if you zoom in, you can kind tell
| | 02:43 | that it's finding that Centerline and allowing
me to draw this wall directly down the center
| | 02:49 | of these existing parallel CAD lines.
| | 02:53 | So yes, I am tracing over it, but you can
see that it's going to move fairly quickly.
| | 02:59 | The default behavior in walls in Revit is
to Chain, you can see that check box right
| | 03:03 | here I've got that turned on, and that's what
allowed me to do three walls in sequence like
| | 03:07 | that, if I want to break the chain to move
on to the next sequence of walls, I press
| | 03:11 | the Escape key a single time--don't press
it more than once, you'll cancel all the way
| | 03:15 | out of the command--and then I can continue,
find a nice comfortable level of zoom.
| | 03:21 | And you can see that even though I'm tracing--press
Escape one time--it's going to move fairly quickly.
| | 03:29 | While there is no automated pushbutton
convert routine, using the underlying CAD file and
| | 03:35 | a few little techniques, it's fairly quick and easy to
trace over that file to begin creating Revit geometry.
| | 03:42 | Now one last little tip here, the reason
that I brought in the CAD file using the Invert
| | 03:47 | Colors feature was to keep the
CAD file in color when it came in.
| | 03:53 | As you can see, as I begin to trace over
this file with Revit geometry, the colors slowly
| | 03:59 | starts to disappear and the strategy there
is that I'll kind of know when I'm done tracing,
| | 04:06 | because everything will have turned to simple black and
white and all of the underlying CAD will be covered up.
| | 04:12 | When you're done, you just simply take the
CAD file and delete it, and you're left with
| | 04:17 | native Revit geometry in its place.
| | 04:21 | Convert maybe a little too optimistic, but
the essential process to quote unquote convert a CAD file
| | 04:27 | is to simply link it in, trace over it with Revit
geometry, and then remove the link when you're done.
| | 04:32 |
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| Creating hybrid projects with nested CAD files| 00:00 | Importing or linking CAD files into Revit is often
performed as a temporary or transitional measure.
| | 00:05 | Perhaps the CAD file is traced over to creating
new Revit model like we did in the previous movie.
| | 00:10 | Or an existing CAD detail might be used as a
starting point to create a new Revit detail.
| | 00:14 | However, it is also common for CAD files to be
left as a permanent part of the Revit Project.
| | 00:19 | In another words, some parts of the project
are modeled in Revit while others remain simply
| | 00:24 | drafted and embedded CAD files that gets
printed right alongside with the Revit Project.
| | 00:30 | Such an approach is not without its disadvantages,
and there are some who do not favor the approach at all.
| | 00:35 | However, it is a common scenario that you're
likely to encounter as you transition to Revit
| | 00:40 | and so in this movie, we'll take a look at.
| | 00:42 | So in file here called hybrid, and
it's a Revit model of an art gallery.
| | 00:47 | All of this area here has been created
with Revit geometry but in this area here this
| | 00:51 | going to be an outdoor sculpture garden.
| | 00:54 | And let's assume that that was created by
an architect who's using AutoCAD and they
| | 00:58 | are a consulting architect for our firm.
| | 01:01 | We have two choices we can either take the
AutoCAD file that they gave us, and we can
| | 01:04 | try and re-create all using Revit geometry,
or we can just simply bring that CAD file
| | 01:10 | in an embed it right here in the Revit Project, and
that's a scenario we're going to look at right now.
| | 01:14 | So I'm going to zoom in slightly into this
area here, go to my Insert tab, and we're
| | 01:20 | certainly going to want to use the Link CAD
feature for this type of thing because we're
| | 01:24 | going to want to be able to maintain the
ability to reload that CAD file if that consulting
| | 01:29 | architect makes changes to their design.
| | 01:31 | So I'm going to little Link CAD,
select my Sculpture Garden.
| | 01:35 | Now I'm going to make sure I uncheck
Current view only because, as you can see
| | 01:40 | in the preview here, this is a 3D file so I want to
maintain the ability to see the 3D geometry
| | 01:45 | of the Sculpture Garden in any
view that I happen to look in.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to change the colors here to Black
and White because I'm going to keep this is
| | 01:53 | a permanent part of my Revit Projects so that it
prints consistently with the rest to the project.
| | 01:58 | I'll go head and use all the Layers
and let it Auto-Detect everything.
| | 02:02 | And then for the Positioning you really
want to coordinate this with the consultant.
| | 02:07 | If you're both using the same origin point then
you should be able to choose Auto-Origin to Origin.
| | 02:14 | Otherwise you're going to have to choose Center to Center
and just move into Position into the correct location.
| | 02:20 | Let's go head and try the Origin to Origin
option and see if our consulting architect
| | 02:23 | uses the same origin point as our project.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go head and click Open here,
and you can see that the Sculpture Garden
| | 02:31 | came right into the exact location where it
was supposed to, so our consulting architect
| | 02:36 | did in fact use the correct origin.
| | 02:38 | Now if they didn't, it wouldn't be that
big of a deal we could just simply select the
| | 02:42 | linked file after the fact and then up here
on the Modify tab we could use commands like
| | 02:47 | move and rotate to get it
into the correct position.
| | 02:51 | If I go to the 3D view here you can see
that because we unchecked Current view only--and
| | 02:56 | I'm holding down my Shift and Dragging with
the wheel and then I'm rolling the wheel to
| | 03:00 | zoom in--we're getting the full 3D geometry of the Sculpture
Garden, and it fits in nicely directly into our project.
| | 03:08 | In 3D we've still got the color because the
3D geometry is colored, but if I go back to
| | 03:14 | the Floor Plan view, you can
see everything is black and white.
| | 03:17 | When I print the Floor Plan drawing I'll get
a nice consistent look and then in 3D it shows
| | 03:21 | the materials that orange material being a
material that was assigned to the Sculptures.
| | 03:26 | The assumption here is that we're going to
keep this CAD file as a permanent fixture
| | 03:30 | in the project and so we're just simply going to
use managed links to updated as the design changes.
| | 03:36 | And so this is what we refer to as a hybrid
project because some parts of it are Revit
| | 03:41 | and other parts of it are linked CAD files.
| | 03:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling imported line weights| 00:00 | When you import a link a CAD file into Revit,
Revit tries to interpret the lines and other
| | 00:04 | geometry coming in and
display them in a meaningful way.
| | 00:07 | Since they are just lines they do not get
converted to Revit categories, Revit simply
| | 00:12 | looks at the layers in the CAD file and
determines how to display the graphics being imported.
| | 00:17 | In this movie we'll look at the process that Revit uses to do
this and how we can manipulate that to get desirable results.
| | 00:23 | So, I am in a file here called Lineweights,
and I'm in the Level 1 Floor Plan, and I've
| | 00:28 | got a CAD floor plan already linked in here.
| | 00:31 | And what I'm going to do is just start to
zoom in a little bit here, and as you can
| | 00:34 | see, this file has line weights displaying
quite nicely on screen all the walls are in
| | 00:40 | a nice dark line weight and the doors and the
other fixtures are a little bit lighter.
| | 00:46 | How did Revit know how to correctly interpret
that information coming from CAD, particularly
| | 00:52 | when most CAD files actually use a combination of
layers and colors to determine those line weights?
| | 00:59 | So if I take you over to AutoCAD, and we
look at this same file and zoom in on the same
| | 01:05 | area, you'll see that none of those line
weights that we were just looking at are displayed
| | 01:09 | here what we see instead is a bunch of colors.
| | 01:12 | To understand the way that this works,
let's open up the layer dialog box.
| | 01:17 | Now when I open the Layers you can see all
of my layers listed here and then in the Color
| | 01:21 | column you can see that most of these
layers are either magenta or yellow.
| | 01:25 | However, look a few columns over,
and you notice the line weight column.
| | 01:30 | A lot of AutoCAD users don't actually
realize that AutoCAD has a line weight feature,
| | 01:34 | or they just simply just choose not to use it,
but in this particular drawing the line weights
| | 01:39 | are being used and they've been assigned to
all the layers, and so even though I have several
| | 01:43 | layers here that are set to the magenta color,
you can see that several of them are using
| | 01:48 | different line weights. This one here for the glazing
frames is actually .30, where the glazing itself is .18.
| | 01:58 | If we were using just simply the magenta color
the entire window in its frame and glass would
| | 02:03 | all come out to the same line weight, and
in fact, that may be what we would get from
| | 02:08 | AutoCAD if we printed with a plot style table,
but because we've got the line weight feature
| | 02:12 | here we can override that color
and use that line weight instead.
| | 02:17 | If Revit sees the line weight in the file
it looks no further, it simply uses that
| | 02:23 | line weight directly over on the Revit side.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to switch back over to Revit, and
let's open up another file. Over here under
| | 02:32 | Drafting Views, I've got a view called the
Details, I'm going to open that up and zoom
| | 02:37 | in a little bit here on this detail.
| | 02:41 | If we look at this detail over in AutoCAD,
and I've still got the layer dialog box open
| | 02:47 | here, you can see the detail there in the
background and all of its layers listed, but
| | 02:52 | noticed this time all of the
line weights are set to default.
| | 02:58 | This means that Revit can't use the line
weight feature to determine how to import this data
| | 03:02 | it has to instead rely on the colors and so
what's going to happen now is Revit is going
| | 03:09 | to take each of those colors
and assign them to a line weight.
| | 03:14 | Now when we switch back over to Revit, what
we see here when we are zoomed in is there
| | 03:19 | aren't any line weights really being used
at all on this detail, everything is kind
| | 03:23 | of flat and lifeless with
a single thin line weight.
| | 03:26 | The reason for that is we were using the default
mapping table here, let's look at where this mapping table is.
| | 03:33 | I am going to go the Insert tab and on the
Import panel there's a tiny little icon right
| | 03:39 | here, and if you click that that opens up
the Import Line Weights dialog, and what you'll
| | 03:44 | see here is a long list of color numbers on
the left and the corresponding line weights
| | 03:49 | that are to be used for
those colors on the right.
| | 03:53 | If you look at the very bottom of the
dialog there's a note that says these values only
| | 03:56 | apply to lines and layers that are set to
the default line weight in the source DWG file.
| | 04:02 | And that's why the floor plan came in
with line weights automatically, but the detail
| | 04:07 | did not, because the floor plan was using line weights
in its source file, but the detail was set to default.
| | 04:14 | So for the detail we have to go through
this list here and look for the colors that are
| | 04:19 | being used in detail and
assign line weights to them.
| | 04:22 | Now I have already done this work for us, so
I'm going to go to Load, I'm going to click
| | 04:26 | this Detail-Lineweights file that I have
created previously, open it up, you can see it sort
| | 04:30 | of scroll through the list here, and I'm
going to go down to the first line weight that's
| | 04:34 | been assigned there Color Number 31.
| | 04:37 | Back in the CAD file color number 31 should
be a pen weight 3 and then if we scroll down
| | 04:43 | a little further somewhere around pen
number 131, you can see that that should be a pen
| | 04:49 | weights five and so on, you don't have to
assign all 255 colors, but you do have to
| | 04:55 | go through the CAD file and assign all of
the line weights they're actually being used,
| | 04:59 | on the ones you want to change.
| | 05:01 | So when I do that, and I click OK, and I
select this file, and we delete it, zoom out just
| | 05:07 | to touch, and we'll bring it in again, I'm
just going to do Import for this, choose my
| | 05:12 | AutoCAD Detail, I'm going to force it to
black and white, click Open, and now you can see
| | 05:18 | that it comes in with line weights.
| | 05:21 | It does take a little bit effort to set up
that color mapping table the first time, but
| | 05:25 | the good news is that most firms use a
standard list of colors for all their details in their
| | 05:31 | office standard and so once you set up that
file once, you can simply save it as a color
| | 05:35 | mapping table and then use it
for any detail that you import.
| | 05:39 | Just a couple other things I want to point
out here that there's a few other thing that
| | 05:42 | may get lost in translation
when you bring in the CAD file.
| | 05:46 | Notice that these arrowheads are displaying
on the leaders, but down here there was
| | 05:49 | a couple arrowheads and those are not displaying.
| | 05:52 | These arrowheads were actually a custom
arrowhead that was just made from polylines those won't
| | 05:57 | display, Revit doesn't interpret those
polylines with thickness correctly, so you'd have
| | 06:01 | to draw those another way in CAD
or add them back here in Revit.
| | 06:05 | Over here you could see that this note
looks a little different than this note.
| | 06:09 | Back in CAD this note uses the
simplex font which is an essay checks font.
| | 06:15 | Essay checks is an AutoCAD only technology.
| | 06:17 | Revit doesn't understand what an essay
checks font is so it's substituted a TrueType font
| | 06:22 | in its place, and in this case it used
Arial, these up here were using Arial narrow.
| | 06:28 | If you want the fonts to display a certain
font you're better off actually going back
| | 06:32 | to AutoCAD and changing all the fonts in
AutoCAD first before you import them to Revit, because
| | 06:39 | there's really no way to
change them after the fact.
| | 06:42 | So you can get desirable and predictable
results on the files that you import into CAD either
| | 06:49 | by using the Line Weight feature from CAD
first and Revit will read it directly or by
| | 06:53 | building a color mapping table to
establish all the line weights ahead a time so that
| | 06:58 | when it gets imported in they will map
correctly to your desired office standard.
| | 07:03 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Avoiding exploded CAD Files| 00:00 | Coming from AutoCAD, you are no doubt
familiar with the Explode command.
| | 00:04 | Explode is used frequently in
AutoCAD to accomplish various goals.
| | 00:07 | When you import a CAD file into Revit,
there's an option to explode the file.
| | 00:13 | Its results are similar to exploding the block in AutoCAD.
| | 00:15 | In general, this tool is
typically avoided by most Revit users.
| | 00:20 | In this movie we'll discuss the tool and
why it's typically avoided and under what rare
| | 00:24 | circumstances it would be considered acceptable.
| | 00:26 | So I'm in a file here called Explode, I'm
looking at a floor plan that's been linked
| | 00:31 | in and the first thing you want to know about explode
is that when you have a linked file you cannot explode it.
| | 00:39 | So when I select this notice that
the explode option is grayed out.
| | 00:44 | That right there is one of the reasons why
a lot of CAD and BIM managers will actually
| | 00:47 | recommend using link CAD exclusively,
because it eliminates the temptation to explode by
| | 00:53 | simply not having it would be available,
but let's press on and scroll down here on the
| | 00:57 | Project Browser and locate under
Drafting Views this Detail view.
| | 01:02 | Here I have an imported CAD file, and because
it's an import it can be exploded, so you'll
| | 01:08 | notice here that that button is available,
but before I click on it I want to show you
| | 01:12 | a couple things so that we understand a little
bit about why we want to typically avoid this.
| | 01:18 | One of the main reasons we want to avoid
exploding CAD files is it tends to junk up your Revit
| | 01:24 | project with lots of extraneous types and
items that are not needed by the file.
| | 01:30 | This will serve to cause confusion to the users
coming after you in the file, it will tend
| | 01:35 | to balloon the size of the file and in
some cases can even introduce corruption.
| | 01:40 | So for all of those reasons we typically
try and avoid this command wherever possible,
| | 01:44 | but let me show you some of the
items that I'm talking about.
| | 01:46 | If I go to the Manage tab, and we look under
Additional Settings, we've got lots of things
| | 01:52 | that can be configured here, among
those are things like the Line Styles.
| | 01:57 | If I look at Line Styles, and I expand this
I've got the default list of line styles here
| | 02:03 | these are the ones that are created
by Revit when we first create the file.
| | 02:06 | The ones with the little brackets are built
in those are always there and then the ones
| | 02:10 | down here can actually be customized, but
you can see it's a pretty limited list we've
| | 02:13 | got Hidden Lines, Lines, Medium Lines, Wide Lines.
Let's cancel out of their, let's look at another example.
| | 02:21 | If I go to the Annotate tab, here on the
dialog launcher for Text are the Text Types.
| | 02:27 | Now this list is even more compact than the
line styles list there's only two text types
| | 02:32 | currently in the file we've got 1/4-inch Arial
and 3/32-inch Arial, so let me cancel that.
| | 02:38 | Now you may be able to figure where I'm
going with this, when I select this file, and I
| | 02:44 | click the Explode button, what that does is what you
might expect it breaks the CAD file up into pieces.
| | 02:51 | Now the pieces that it breaks it up into
are really just simple lines, you can see here
| | 02:55 | that when I click on these, these are
nothing more than lines here because even when you
| | 03:00 | explode it Revit doesn't have the ability to somehow
magically convert this into proper model object categories.
| | 03:07 | So it just comes up with line objects that
match what the drawing looked like, and, as
| | 03:12 | you can see, over here under Line Style this
is the same list that we looked at a moment
| | 03:18 | ago on the Manage tab there is all the built-in
styles there, but notice all these new line
| | 03:24 | styles that got added to the file
that all start with the prefix A.
| | 03:28 | Those came from the layers in the CAD file.
| | 03:32 | So every layer in the CAD file got converted to a
line style, which again you may or may not want.
| | 03:38 | The same has happened to the text.
| | 03:41 | Notice when I select a piece of text here,
and if I open up the drop down here, here's
| | 03:45 | the two types that we had to start with, but
now we've got all these other ones that have
| | 03:50 | the name AutoCAD in front of them.
| | 03:52 | So you're going to get lots of additional
types and styles and items that load up the
| | 03:58 | file and again can increase file size
and potentially inhibit performance.
| | 04:04 | Notice here that some parts of this
detail are still selected as an import symbol.
| | 04:10 | Well just like in AutoCAD you can nest one
block inside of another when you explode an
| | 04:16 | import in Revit it looks at that structure
the same way, so if there are nested elements
| | 04:21 | inside the block either other blocks or hatch
patterns and so on then those become new import
| | 04:28 | symbols that would have to be exploded.
| | 04:30 | Now if you want to just explode the entire
thing in one shot, you can use the drop down
| | 04:35 | here and do a full explode that will explode all
levels deep it won't just stop at the top level.
| | 04:41 | If I explode this guy here's another
downside to exploding something like a hatch,
| | 04:47 | it's not going to stay a hatch, Revit's going to
turn that into a bunch of independent lines
| | 04:52 | and potentially add even
more line styles to the file.
| | 04:57 | For all those reasons I hope you can see
that exploding is not necessarily ideal, and if
| | 05:01 | I go back to the floor plan here, even if
this were an import, and you exploded it all
| | 05:08 | you going to get is lines here.
| | 05:10 | All of these walls won't get converted to
walls they're going to be two separate parallel
| | 05:16 | lines, so it's really not going to be very
helpful to try and explode this file to shortcut
| | 05:20 | your way into converting it to Revit.
| | 05:22 | The better way to convert it to Revit is to use the
techniques that you talked about in the Convert movie.
| | 05:27 | If you find yourself in a situation, though,
where you really just need to explore a CAD
| | 05:32 | file then here is the recommended workflow.
| | 05:34 | First go into Revit and create a brand-new
empty project, import the CAD file there,
| | 05:42 | explode it there, and clean it up.
What do I mean by clean it up?
| | 05:46 | I can select these lines one or several of
these lines, and I can change the line styles
| | 05:52 | to a corresponding Revit type, you want to
do that to all of the pieces of text, you
| | 05:57 | want to do that to all
the line styles clean it up.
| | 05:59 | Then you select the resulting geometry and copy it to
your clipboard and paste it back into your live project.
| | 06:06 | If you do it that way you're going to leave
behind all of the stuff that we didn't want
| | 06:11 | and only bring over the stuff that you did
want, and so that's considered a much better
| | 06:15 | way to perform that process in
the cases where it's necessary.
| | 06:20 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting from Revit to AutoCAD| 00:00 | Just like that we can import CAD files into Revit, we
can export any view of our Revit project out to CAD.
| | 00:06 | We can use any of the standard industry CAD
formats, obviously DWG being the most popular.
| | 00:11 | And in is this movie we'll explore the settings
and procedures that we use to perform that export.
| | 00:16 | So I'm in a file called Export, and I'm
actually in one of the sheets right now.
| | 00:21 | I am in Sheet: A102 - FloorPlans,
and you can see that over in my project browser.
| | 00:25 | What we're going to look at first is the
settings that we use to control the export.
| | 00:31 | Remember that we're taking a bunch of
objects and a bunch of elements in Revit that know
| | 00:35 | what they are walls and doors and windows,
and we're going to be exporting them out to
| | 00:39 | CAD, and basically turning them
into bunch of lines, arcs, and circles.
| | 00:42 | Because CAD uses layers as the primary
organizational tool, that's going to be one of the things
| | 00:47 | we're going to want to make sure that Revit
establishes correctly we want it to map all
| | 00:51 | of the objects to the correct layer.
| | 00:53 | So I'm going to go here the Application menu--
the big R--go down to Export, we can see there's
| | 00:58 | lot of options, and if you slide all the
way down at the bottom you can see there is an
| | 01:02 | item called Options at the very bottom.
| | 01:05 | Slide over here, and it
says Export Setups DWG/DXF.
| | 01:08 | So you really want to start here.
| | 01:11 | This is a big scary looking dialog box, but
the things that you're configuring in here
| | 01:16 | are all pretty familiar AutoCAD stuff.
So let's start with Layers.
| | 01:21 | The Layers tab is your first, and you can see a
long list of Revit categories here with the scrollbar.
| | 01:27 | Right next to each of the
category names you can see a layer.
| | 01:30 | Now if you look at the names of these layers
they are using the AIA format A-GLAZ, E-POWER,
| | 01:38 | and so on, that's because right here it's
says load Layers from Standards and AIA Americans
| | 01:43 | Institute of Architects is chosen here.
| | 01:46 | Or you can even do Load a Settings file if
you have a standard that's not on the list.
| | 01:51 | Now I'm going to stick with the AIA, and I
am not going to make any changes, but the
| | 01:54 | important thing to realize here is every object
in your Revit model will get mapped to a layer
| | 02:01 | that it's based on AIA, in this case,
and the color assigned to that layer.
| | 02:06 | So that's the first thing you typically want to look at,
and so you get all that configured the way you want.
| | 02:11 | If I click on the Lines tab next what we're
going to see here is all of the lines patterns
| | 02:16 | in Revit things like Dash and Dash-16 are going
to map some corresponding line style in AutoCAD.
| | 02:23 | You see how it says Automatically Generate
the Line Type, if you click and open up this
| | 02:27 | list it's possible for you to scroll through here and choose
a line type that already exists and make a direct mapping.
| | 02:37 | You can either let it create new line types for you,
or you can map to existing ones in your office standard.
| | 02:43 | The same is true for hatch patterns all of
the Revit hatch patterns listed here can be
| | 02:48 | mapped to corresponding hatch patterns in
AutoCAD, or you can let it automatically create them.
| | 02:54 | You can do the same with text and fonts, so
all of the fonts on the Revit side are listed
| | 03:00 | over here, and this is how
they map over here on the right.
| | 03:04 | Now with colors, you have two choices. Do you
want to use just the 255 AutoCAD color index,
| | 03:10 | or do you want to let it map to true colors?
| | 03:13 | Most people are going to use the
color index, so that's the default setting.
| | 03:17 | Solids refers to 3D. If you export a 3D
view from Revit, it will either create Polymeshes
| | 03:24 | or ACIS solids, so you can
choose whichever format you prefer.
| | 03:29 | Units & Coordinates I thinks
it's is pretty self-explanatory.
| | 03:31 | What Unit system do you want to
use, usually guesses correctly.
| | 03:34 | And then under General we have her variety of miscellaneous
settings, many of these can be pretty useful.
| | 03:39 | For example, if you've got room objects
in your Revit project, you can
| | 03:42 | have those create Poly Lines for you on the
AutoCAD side so that people can still calculate
| | 03:47 | the square footage from that
AutoCAD file that's generated.
| | 03:51 | If you've got Non-Plotting layers you could
have it search for those Non-Plotting layers
| | 03:54 | and automatically make them Non-Plotting
in CAD side so that's pretty helpful.
| | 03:59 | And you can even hide the Revit only
objects that AutoCAD doesn't really need to see.
| | 04:05 | When you get all the settings configured the
way that you want, you probably want to come
| | 04:08 | down here and Duplicate this setup and give it name,
and maybe call it office standard or something like that.
| | 04:15 | Now because I haven't really made any
changes I'm just going to cancel this but I highly
| | 04:19 | recommend that you create a custom
setup to match your office standards.
| | 04:23 | Once you have the setup in
place, you're ready to Export.
| | 04:26 | So we're going to go to the big R again
and go to Export come up to the very top this
| | 04:31 | time and under CAD Formats we've got
all these different formats we can use.
| | 04:35 | Now if you want to Export a 3D model you could
use SAT files, if you are going to Micro Station DGN.
| | 04:40 | Some CAD program other than AutoCAD DXF and
of course if you are going AutoCAD choose DWG.
| | 04:47 | And that's what I'm going to choose.
And that brings us here to do the DWG Export.
| | 04:52 | Now at the very top left-hand corner we
have a drop down here that would include all
| | 04:56 | of your setups, now I never created my
setup, so I only have the default list.
| | 05:01 | If you realize that you forgot to change
the settings, and you want to change something
| | 05:04 | on the fly, you can ask a click this little
browse button here it takes right back to setups.
| | 05:08 | So you don't have to cancel
out of everything and start over.
| | 05:11 | So you choose your setup here off
the list or configure it directly.
| | 05:15 | The next thing you want to look at
is what you're actually exporting.
| | 05:18 | Here it remembers that I was in this Floor
Plain view, what I want to do is instead of
| | 05:24 | exporting just that one sheet I want to open
up this list and tell it that I want to choose
| | 05:30 | my views, and sheets, and when I do that I
have different filtering options of what I
| | 05:35 | can include in the list, so could include
just the views or I could choose the sheets
| | 05:39 | or I could choose all of the
sheets that are in the model.
| | 05:42 | Now when I do that I'm going to check all of them
here so that I can export my complete set of sheets.
| | 05:49 | Instead of having to do them one at
a time this can be a big time saver.
| | 05:52 | I'm going to go to Next, it will ask me where I want
to save this file, I'm just saving it here on my desktop.
| | 06:00 | The file name isn't actually the file name
of the individual file what it is the prefix
| | 06:05 | to all of the files, so because I'm exporting
several files, it's going to use that as a prefix
| | 06:09 | so I'm going to stick with export which is
fine, but you can change that if you want.
| | 06:11 | It's going to create 2013 DWG files and then
this setting here is a really neat setting.
| | 06:20 | If I move this dialog kind of out of the
way a little bit, in the background I've got
| | 06:24 | a title block sheet with a view port on it.
| | 06:27 | Down here I have elevations in section sheets that
I'm also exporting in those also have view ports on it.
| | 06:33 | What this feature does is it creates one
DWG for the sheet itself, sets it up in paper
| | 06:39 | space, and then it creates a separate DWG for each
view port and X-refs those in and puts them on the sheet.
| | 06:47 | Really nice because that pretty much matches
exactly way that an AutoCAD user would set up it up.
| | 06:51 | So let's go ahead and click okay here, and
then we'll just wait for these files to process.
| | 06:57 | So when it's done it'll back to Revit and
all that remaining for us to do is just switch
| | 07:01 | over to AutoCAD and take
a look at what we've got.
| | 07:04 | So I'm here in AutoCAD, and I'll just simply
go to Open, go to my desktop,
| | 07:09 | and as you can see here, there
are several files that got created.
| | 07:13 | Now these are the actual sheets.
| | 07:15 | Those are set up and paper space with the title blocks
and then all of these down here are the X-refed files.
| | 07:22 | So I'm going to open up the sheet Export
A102-FloorPlan click Open, let's do a zoom extends.
| | 07:30 | Now at the moment it is very bright with
these bright colors on a white background, that's
| | 07:35 | simply because the Plot Style
hasn't been assigned to it yet.
| | 07:38 | But, as you can see, we're in paper space, we
have got a title block here is being created
| | 07:43 | as a block, we've got a view port here,
and inside that view port we have a file that
| | 07:49 | has been X-refed in to
represent the building model.
| | 07:53 | So, again it's set up everything up kind of
the way that we would expect, and all that
| | 07:56 | remains for me to do is go to big A now
under Print and choose Page Setup, I'm going to
| | 08:03 | modify the current Page Setup, and I can
assign the AIA Standard Plot Style, and I'm going
| | 08:08 | to turn on the Display Plot Styles.
| | 08:10 | When I do that instead of everything being
in color it'll make a black and white and
| | 08:14 | so it looks a little bit nicer.
| | 08:16 | It takes a little bit of setup, but once
it's set up its a fairly straightforward affair,
| | 08:20 | you can take all of your Revit views, export
them out and they become separate DWG files
| | 08:26 | complete with title blocks,
paper space and X-refed views.
| | 08:29 | It's very handy and the recipients on the
AutoCAD side will appreciate the setup because
| | 08:35 | it will match the office standards.
| | 08:40 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
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4. Working with AutoCAD ArchitectureComparing AutoCAD Architecture and Revit| 00:00 | If you're using one of the specialized
versions of AutoCAD, you have features and tools
| | 00:04 | not available to the standard AutoCAD user.
| | 00:06 | AutoCAD Architecture is one such version of AutoCAD
that's focused on architectural and building design work.
| | 00:12 | It has many similarities to Revit, in fact,
and in this movie we will explore how the
| | 00:16 | overall concepts behind both
tools compare to one another.
| | 00:19 | So for starters, AutoCAD Architecture and
Revit are actually similar in scope and focus.
| | 00:24 | They are both designed to be used by architects or
architectural designers to create building design projects.
| | 00:30 | They give us a complement of tools that
are focused on the building industry and they
| | 00:33 | have a project structure and setup
that supports that workflow.
| | 00:37 | For example, on the AutoCAD Architecture
side we have Project Navigator, and of course,
| | 00:42 | as we have seen here in this course so far,
on the Revit side we have Project Browser.
| | 00:47 | How do these two compare to one another?
| | 00:49 | There are definitely some similarities,
and there are also some differences.
| | 00:54 | So here is a look at AutoCAD Architecture, and I have
the sample project that comes with the software loaded up.
| | 00:59 | This project is included with the program,
and this is Project Navigator over here.
| | 01:05 | When you look at it, you can see that there
is a Name and a job number, and it's got some
| | 01:09 | information about the floor levels in the
building, and then it's got three different
| | 01:13 | kinds of views, Constructs, Views, and Sheets.
| | 01:16 | And if we compare that to what we saw in
Revit, where we had Views and Sheets and each of
| | 01:22 | those views correspond to different types of drawings
and so on, there's quite a bit of similarities here.
| | 01:27 | On the AutoCAD architecture side, it's a
little bit more complex, because in order to create
| | 01:33 | a view of a typical floor plan, for example,
you actually need to create in some cases
| | 01:39 | several constructs that represent the
various parts and pieces of that view.
| | 01:43 | For example, here on this screen I've got
the exterior shell of the building actually
| | 01:48 | broken up into several different X-refs.
| | 01:51 | So if I highlight right here you can see
that this is a curtain wall X-ref, and that's
| | 01:55 | one of the various constructs.
| | 01:57 | So to create this view which would
represent the first floor might actually take three
| | 02:02 | or four or five different constructs.
| | 02:05 | So that level of complexity isn't necessarily
there on the Revit side, so on the Revit side
| | 02:09 | the Project Browser can often
be a little bit simpler to use.
| | 02:13 | But at a high level, conceptually, they
are very similar to one another, because they
| | 02:16 | use terminology that's very
familiar to an architectural workflow.
| | 02:20 | We are working in floor plans, or we are
working in sections or elevations, and we are taking
| | 02:24 | those items, and we are placing
them on various sheets, and so on.
| | 02:28 | So a lot of that is very familiar to the
workflow that an architect would expect.
| | 02:33 | Now naturally, each of those files is
created from a variety of architectural objects.
| | 02:39 | So one of the biggest similarities between
the two programs is that they both have a
| | 02:43 | a collection of architectural components, they have
walls and they have doors and they have windows.
| | 02:48 | So, for example, back in my Sample project
here, if I select this item right here--
| | 02:55 | let's zoom in a little--you could see that this is
actually a wall element, it's not two parallel
| | 03:01 | lines like it would be in regular AutoCAD.
| | 03:03 | If I escape out of there, and I select this
one, you can see that that is actually a door
| | 03:07 | element, that's not a
block that looks like a door.
| | 03:12 | Each of these objects behaves in a
very similar way to the Revit counterpart.
| | 03:15 | So, for example, if I were to move this door,
you're going to see that the hole that it
| | 03:20 | makes in the wall moves along with it.
| | 03:22 | If I would have moved this wall, you are
going to see that the connection that it has
| | 03:26 | to the other wall over there
continues to be joined up.
| | 03:29 | There are a lot of similarities in those
behaviors between the various parts and pieces.
| | 03:34 | When we look over here at the tool palette,
you can see that I have objects for almost
| | 03:38 | all of the typical architectural components
that you expect, and almost a direct one-to-one
| | 03:43 | correspondence to the kinds of
objects that we see on the Revit side.
| | 03:48 | Object display is also a similarity. Each
of those objects knows what it is therefore
| | 03:53 | it knows how to display
under various viewing conditions.
| | 03:58 | Back in the file here, I'm currently looking
at the walls and the doors and so forth from
| | 04:04 | a top-down orientation, and so AutoCAD Architecture is
displaying them in graphics that are suitable for a floor plan.
| | 04:12 | But the same object is actually capable of
displaying itself in other ways that are suitable
| | 04:17 | to other kinds of drawings, like 3-D
drawings or elevation drawings, and so on.
| | 04:21 | So if I just simply change the vantage point
in the drawing, you are going to see everything
| | 04:28 | changes, and you could almost see it happening,
it went from being flat because it was still
| | 04:33 | using the 2D plan display, and it popped up
and became an elevation, or if I change to
| | 04:40 | an isometric, it changes, and you see it kind of flash
there as it swaps out the graphics and becomes a 3D model.
| | 04:47 | It's not exactly the same as what we see on
the Revit side where we have a more unified
| | 04:52 | model, because this one is still made up
of parts and pieces, but that display system
| | 04:57 | is built in there, and so there is quite a bit
of familiarity in the way that the tools behave.
| | 05:04 | Now those are some of the similarities.
Naturally, there are some differences as well,
| | 05:08 | and we have to remember that AutoCAD Architecture
is still DWG based. That means that all the
| | 05:14 | parts and pieces of that project
are actually separate drawing files.
| | 05:18 | Now being separate drawing files turn out
to be fairly significant, because that means
| | 05:22 | that you can only edit one drawing file at
a time, and when you make changes in one of
| | 05:27 | those files, those changes may not find their way
over to the other files that are needed in the project.
| | 05:33 | So you can end up with a disconnect, or you
can end up with things getting out of sync.
| | 05:38 | This doesn't happen in Revit, as we've seen.
When you make a change in one view, it automatically
| | 05:42 | changes everywhere, because
you're changing the same object.
| | 05:46 | But in AutoCAD Architecture, it still relies
heavily on references, which means that in
| | 05:50 | some cases the files aren't actually
linked together, rather than being the same live
| | 05:56 | objects, so they're not always live data.
| | 06:00 | The main point of this discussion is there
are quite a few similarities between AutoCAD
| | 06:06 | Architecture and Revit, but fundamentally,
one is a DWG based product and the other is
| | 06:11 | the Revit-based product, and the two
really are very separate from one another.
| | 06:15 | So even though they serve similar goals and purposes,
they are still fairly different from one another.
| | 06:20 |
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| Exporting projects to AutoCAD to use in Revit| 00:00 | While there are many similarities between
Revit and AutoCAD Architecture, unfortunately
| | 00:04 | there is no direct path for
these two products to share data.
| | 00:08 | Earlier in the course we discussed
ways that we could use DWG files in Revit.
| | 00:13 | It's true that the DWG files can be linked
over to Revit, but Revit will not unfortunately
| | 00:17 | understand any of the AEC
objects within those files.
| | 00:21 | In this movie we will look at one of the approaches we
can use to export data from AutoCAD Architecture over to Revit.
| | 00:27 | So if you just simply save the file and link
it over to Revit using the procedures we have
| | 00:32 | already talked about, you'll get some sort
of a warning message on the Revit side that
| | 00:36 | it can't understand some
the objects in the data.
| | 00:39 | This of course is a problem, because things
like your walls and your doors and your windows
| | 00:43 | will just simply disappear.
| | 00:45 | You could turn on something called Proxy Graphics,
and what that does is it create a representative
| | 00:50 | object to sort of stand in for the AEC object.
| | 00:55 | That kind of works, but the trouble with that
is that it will really balloon the file size.
| | 00:59 | It essentially doubles the file, because
it creates a copy of every object in generic
| | 01:05 | AutoCAD objects like surfaces and lines and so
forth and then embeds those proxies in the file.
| | 01:12 | So that's certainly an option you could do.
| | 01:14 | If you wanted to do that approach you have
to type the word proxygraphics, all one word,
| | 01:19 | turn it on by typing 1, and then resave the file.
| | 01:22 | Again, as I say you will
see the file size increase.
| | 01:26 | What I want to talk about is
another approach called Export to AutoCAD.
| | 01:30 | Export to AutoCAD is
basically a Save As command.
| | 01:34 | It runs a little routine behind the scenes,
and it takes all of the AEC objects and converts
| | 01:40 | them all to standard AutoCAD primitives,
lines, arcs, circles, and so on.
| | 01:46 | We can find the command up here
on the Application menu, the big A.
| | 01:51 | When we go down to Export, we have an option
here called AutoCAD, and of course every file
| | 01:57 | format back to version 14 is listed here.
| | 02:00 | So you will want to know which file
format you're sending this out to.
| | 02:05 | This command is useful not only for sharing
with Revit, it's actually useful for sharing
| | 02:09 | with AutoCAD users who are using a
previous version, because the same problem applies
| | 02:14 | there, walls, doors, and windows don't save down.
| | 02:17 | If you wanted to share this with an AutoCAD
user that was on 2007, they wouldn't be able
| | 02:21 | to understand your walls,
doors, and windows either.
| | 02:24 | So when we do Export to AutoCAD, I am
going to choose the latest file format here.
| | 02:28 | It will ask me to save the file name, and
it will put a prefix automatically on the
| | 02:33 | name just called ACAD in this case.
| | 02:35 | Now I am going to put this on
my desktop, and I'll click Save.
| | 02:40 | Let me just open that file right here in
AutoCAD Architecture and show you what it created.
| | 02:47 | When we look at this file here this layer
was previously frozen, and it turned on,
| | 02:52 | but you can see that's just a block there.
| | 02:55 | Let me actually just delete that
for a moment to get it out of the way.
| | 02:59 | Let's zoom in a little, though.
| | 03:01 | When you look at these walls, you
see how they actually became blocks?
| | 03:05 | This is because this was
an X-ref in the other file.
| | 03:08 | AutoCAD Architecture is a series of
X-refs that are all linked together.
| | 03:13 | If I actually took that block, and I jumped into it,
either by exploding it or by ref editing it.
| | 03:20 | I'm just going to explode, in this case,
because I want you to see what's in there.
| | 03:23 | What you are going to see is that
it just turned everything into lines.
| | 03:28 | So the door over here is just a collection of lines
and arcs and the wall is just a collection of lines.
| | 03:36 | It did leave them on the correct layer, but
the point is that now these being just primitive
| | 03:41 | objects are something that Revit or another
version of AutoCAD that doesn't have AutoCAD
| | 03:46 | architecture would understand and not complain
about their being objects that it doesn't recognize.
| | 03:53 | It's not an ideal approach, because
there's no way to sort of unexport this.
| | 03:58 | Once you've exported it to
AutoCAD, it is what it is.
| | 04:01 | So if the workflow is that the data will
leave AutoCAD Architecture and go into Revit
| | 04:07 | and not come back again, then
this is a suitable workflow.
| | 04:11 | If you need a round-trip, then this is
going to be a less than ideal solution.
| | 04:16 | In the next movie we will look at a possibility
for how to deal with a round-trip scenario.
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| Using the IFC format| 00:00 | In many situations, the most practical approach
is to decide early on if a particular project
| | 00:05 | will be authored in standard
AutoCAD, AutoCAD Architecture, or Revit.
| | 00:09 | Translation of any kind always introduces
a layer of complexity and the possibility
| | 00:14 | that data will be lost in translation.
| | 00:16 | Making this decision early
eliminates any such issues with translation.
| | 00:21 | However, it's not always possible to
perform all project work in a single platform.
| | 00:26 | In the previous movie we discussed using export to
AutoCAD as an option to take AutoCAD architecture
| | 00:30 | files and bring them over to Revit.
Another alternative is to use the IFC format.
| | 00:36 | Now IFC stands for Industry Foundation Classes,
and it's an independent open file format designed
| | 00:42 | to translate building components across
various products from different vendors.
| | 00:48 | It's sort of positioning
itself to be an open bin standard.
| | 00:52 | Now IFC is really the only format out
there that's attempting to universally say that
| | 00:59 | this is a wall and this is a door and this is a
window, but it's far from being complete or ideal.
| | 01:05 | So if you really need your walls, doors,
and windows from AutoCAD Architecture to stay
| | 01:10 | walls, doors, and windows when they go
to Revit, IFC is really your only option.
| | 01:15 | But as I said, don't expect it to
be a perfectly seamless translation.
| | 01:20 | But considering the alternative of having to trace and
redraw everything, it's certainly worth giving it a try.
| | 01:25 | So let's take a look at the steps here.
| | 01:27 | So I'm in the Sample Project that comes with
AutoCAD Architecture, this project is included,
| | 01:32 | and I've opened it up in Project Navigator,
and I just loaded up the first Floor View file
| | 01:37 | which gives me basically a first floor plan here.
So let's export this file to IFC.
| | 01:42 | So I am going to go up to the Application
menu, the big A here, under Export, and there
| | 01:48 | are lots of different choices, and I am going
to scroll down a little here, and we're looking
| | 01:52 | for IFC (Industry Foundation Classes)
so I am going to choose that.
| | 01:57 | So when the Export to IFC dialog comes up,
there is some information you can put at the top,
| | 02:01 | you can give it a Project Number if you want to,
and you can give it a Name here.
| | 02:07 | I am just going to leave
the Sample Project name.
| | 02:11 | And then where do you want to save
this, I'll just put this on my Desktop.
| | 02:15 | So right here we can see that we're in the
file called 01 Floor Plan, and beneath that
| | 02:21 | it's got all of the X-refs that are part of
that file are listed here in indented beneath,
| | 02:26 | and you can see there are quite a few X-refs
already in this file, so it's going to take
| | 02:32 | all of that into account when it exports.
| | 02:35 | Let's just come over here
and click the Export button.
| | 02:42 | So the process is complete, and we now have the IFC file,
and what we want to do next is switch over to Revit.
| | 02:47 | And here in Revit I am just in an empty default
project based on the standard architectural template.
| | 02:51 | So I am going to go to the big R, go to
Open, and come down here and choose Open IFC.
| | 03:00 | There on my Desktop you'll see the
01 Floor Plan IFC file, go ahead and open that up.
| | 03:08 | Now this process is going to take a long time,
so be patient, maybe even step away from your
| | 03:14 | computer for a few minutes, give it time to
process, and then come on back and see the result.
| | 03:19 | So, depending on the size of your file,
that process can take quite a long time.
| | 03:23 | And then after the process completes, you're
not completely done yet because you will often
| | 03:29 | be confronted with error
messages that cannot be ignored.
| | 03:34 | Now this is a frequent occurrence in Revit
that you sometimes have errors that come up
| | 03:37 | that you have to deal with
right away before you can continue.
| | 03:40 | In this case you can see that I'm looking at
error number 1 of 322 which is quite a few errors.
| | 03:48 | You can go through them one at a time here
with this arrow, and you can click Expand
| | 03:53 | here to get more information, and you
can see the complete list of errors here.
| | 04:00 | Now the trouble is that some of these errors
will not really give you any more information
| | 04:05 | when you click Expand than
it did in the first place.
| | 04:07 | Like here all it does is
just say the same thing twice.
| | 04:10 | So essentially what this error is saying is
that there is some door somewhere that it's
| | 04:15 | having a hard time cutting out
of the wall. The remedies vary.
| | 04:20 | Sometimes you'll get a remedy that actually
makes sense and seems useful, and other times
| | 04:25 | you'll get a remedy that seems not so great.
| | 04:27 | Like in this case, the remedy for this
particular error is to delete that door instance.
| | 04:33 | Now the reason for that is because doors have to be hosted
in a wall. You can't have a door free standing in space.
| | 04:41 | So, somewhere in this model there is a door
that didn't intersect a wall and Revit's only
| | 04:47 | solution is for us to delete it.
| | 04:50 | Now the only other option is to Cancel and
the trouble with that is you've just waited
| | 04:53 | quite a long time to open this IFC file, and
if you Cancel, it's going to dismiss the whole
| | 04:58 | thing, and you'll get nothing.
| | 05:00 | So despite the fact that Delete Instance is
not an ideal solution, it's better than scrapping
| | 05:06 | the whole thing and starting over.
So I am going to go ahead and click that.
| | 05:12 | And you can see that even though it had to
delete some of the objects, what I have here
| | 05:16 | in the background, there
is at least something here.
| | 05:19 | Now the next thing you're going to want to
do is investigate what it actually created
| | 05:23 | and see just how useful it is, and it's not always
going to translate things exactly the way you want.
| | 05:28 | Remember, there is a translation going on here.
| | 05:31 | So, be ready to have to do
some work to clean this model up.
| | 05:36 | So let's zoom in maybe over here in this area.
| | 05:39 | And what you can see is this came in and
became a wall, and this came in and became a wall,
| | 05:43 | and this one right here, and this is a door.
| | 05:46 | So a lot of the basic objects did get
transferred over and become Revit objects.
| | 05:51 | The trouble is you can see that a lot of the
graphics are a little iffy here, like these
| | 05:55 | windows look like they need some adjustment,
there seems to be some doors here that either
| | 06:01 | didn't translate properly
or are missing altogether.
| | 06:04 | So we certainly have some cleanup to do.
| | 06:06 | The other thing that happens here is when
you look at these walls that get created,
| | 06:12 | Revit frequently will create custom types to
accommodate each of the walls coming in from the IFC file.
| | 06:17 | Now in this particular case,
it didn't do so badly.
| | 06:20 | We've got a few new ones up here.
| | 06:22 | These are all of the ones that were standard
out-of-the-box Revit right in here, so those
| | 06:26 | were there already, and then
we've got a couple over here.
| | 06:29 | So not too bad. It didn't create dozens
or hundreds, but in some cases it may.
| | 06:35 | So I might just take this wall then, and I
can choose one of the ones that was already
| | 06:41 | here in my file, like perhaps
the Interior - 4 7/8 partition.
| | 06:45 | Now the trouble is you might have
to do that throughout the model.
| | 06:49 | So at this point you have to weigh the
amount of cleanup that's required to transfer
| | 06:55 | the auto-created wall types over to more suitable
wall types and to fix the strangeness that's
| | 07:01 | in the file and weigh that against what time
and effort it would take to basically start
| | 07:06 | over again from a flattened
AutoCAD file where you trace over it.
| | 07:10 | There really is no easy way to make that determination.
You're going to have to look at both options and kind of decide.
| | 07:17 | But I highly recommend that you take some
time and do the cleanup that's required in
| | 07:20 | this file before you take it and incorporate it
into a live project, because there is
| | 07:26 | a lot of things in here that are probably
substandard that you're going to want to clean up.
| | 07:30 | So IFC is really the only option that we
have that will attempt to translate AEC objects
| | 07:38 | from AutoCAD Architecture and turn
them into bonafide objects in Revit.
| | 07:41 | But as you can see, it's not a real seamless
and easy process. It does take a lot of manual
| | 07:48 | cleanup and processing to complete the entire task
and get something usable on the other end.
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