From the course: Revit: Migrating AutoCAD Standards

Importing a CAD file - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: Revit: Migrating AutoCAD Standards

Start my 1-month free trial

Importing a CAD file

- [Instructor] In this new chapter, we're going to look at bringing our AutoCAD layers, our standardized layers, into a Revit project. Now I've got a Revit project running. It's a basic project, nothing in it at all. And as you can see, I haven't even renamed it yet. It's just called Project1 up at the top of the screen there. And you can see that we are in level zero, so if we look at the Floor Plans in the Project Browser in Revit, we're at Level 0. So I've even just got default floor plans that haven't been named in any which way, shape, or form. So I'm literally starting from scratch. Now there are two ways that you can bring in information from a CAD drawing into Revit. The first one of these is importing a CAD file into Revit itself. Now, that's great, but when you import a CAD file, it's a snapshot in time of that CAD file. Any subsequent changes to that CAD file will not show on the imported CAD drawing. So I'm gonna show you how that works and then I'm going to delete that imported CAD file. So, you're in Revit. You've started up a new project, as you can see, and I'm in Floor Plan Level 0. I go to the Insert tab on the ribbon in Revit and it's Import CAD here. So as you can see, imports data or 3D geometry from other CAD programs to a Revit project or family. So I'm gonna select Import CAD. That brings in the Import CAD Formats dialogue box, and you can see there that I've already got a .dwg that you can use that you can download from the library to use to follow along with this particular video. So it's this one here, 00_Office_GROUND_PLAN, that one there. So I select it. You may recognize it from previous chapters by the little preview there, the little thumbnail. Now, there are various settings that you can utilize when you import a CAD file. They're all down here at the bottom of the dialogue box. So as you can see, the file type that we're using obviously is .dwg. It's an AutoCAD file. And we've got a choice of colors, I can maintain by preserving the colors there, or I can invert the colors, possibly not a good idea. Or I can just go black and white. Black and white tends to be the best option because in Revit, most of the time, you're working with a white background. So, black and white is a good option. Now, you can bring in all of the layers and the levels or you can just do the visible ones in the .dwg or better still, I can specify which ones I want to come in. You'll see what happens in a minute when I actually bring this imported CAD drawing in. Import units will auto-detect, that's always a good thing, but you can go in and specify a custom factor or something like feet, inches, millimeters, and so on. Auto-detect tends to be the best option. Any lines that are slightly off axis, Revit will correct them if you tick that box. Very, very useful, and we're gonna position auto origin to origin so the origin in the .dwg file will be the origin in the Revit project as well. We're gonna place it at Level 0 because that's our current floor plan, and we're gonna orient to the view. We're gonna make sure that it's all nice and horizontal. So when I click on Open now, because I've done this with the layers and the levels, specify, I'll get another dialogue box. Now the benefit I've got here is now I can see all of those standardized, AutoCAD .dwg layers, and I can decide on what I want to come into my Revit project. Now I might not want the walls, I might not want the doors, I might not want the gridlines, but I can specify what I want to come in. So I've got some very simple boxes here, I've got Check All, Check None, or Invert. So I can invert the settings or I can just say, I don't want any I like, and then just pick which ones I want or I can say I want all of them, like so. I'm just gonna go for all of them, and click on OK. And that now imports the .dwg into my Revit project. So if I select it now, can you see, it basically behaves in a very similar way to an external reference file in AutoCAD, an xref, it's very, very similar. So I've selected that there and you can see it's all one object in my Floor Plan at Level 0 in my Revit project. Now you'll notice there's a little pin there. Now, in Revit, that prevents or allows change of the element position. So if I hit that pin, can you see, it now basically is unpinned. And what I can do, is I can delete it. I'll just hit the Delete here on the keyboard, and that's now gone, so my imported CAD file is now gone. That's how quick and easy it is to remove. If I wanna bring it in again, obviously I would go back up to Import CAD and go through the same workflow and process. But as I specified, when you import a CAD file, it's a one off snapshot. Any changes to that CAD, in this case, .dwg file, will not reflect when you open up the Revit project again and changes have been made to the .dwg in the background. So just be aware of that. So it might be a fixed set of gridlines, for example, that you want to bring through from the .dwg. That's fine, as long as those gridlines don't change, because if they do, you won't see the changes in your imported CAD file in your Revit project.

Contents