Discover how to export from Revit to DWG for use in Navisworks, an essential step for 3D view preparation and project coordination. Learn about the intricacies involved in organizing components, exporting solids, setting up coordinate systems, and handling layers for optimal results.
Key Insights
- The process of exporting from Revit to DWG for Navisworks involves preparing a 3D view that contains the required elements to be exported. The export process is initiated through the application button, selecting export, and choosing the DWG format.
- During the export process, Revit organizes all components shown in the category column into the layer column. This means that instead of showing specific family types and categories, it will display the AIA standard layer format for the project. It's recommended to export solids as ACIS solids to ensure that components are exported as fully solid objects.
- When exporting, it's vital to ensure that your coordinate system basis is exporting to internal instead of shared coordinates. This is because internal uses a common origin between all your projects, while shared uses a user set work shared coordinate system. Once exported, the files can be opened in Navisworks to verify the results.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. This is part two of the importing-exporting files. In this video we'll be covering how to export from Revit to DWG for use in Navisworks, and you'll need to have Revit open for this video.
When you have Revit open, we'll be opening the Lesson 2 folder, BIM361ARC.RVT. This model should look familiar from our previous RVT import. The first thing you want to make sure is that you have a 3D view ready to go that has everything that you want to export visible, and nothing that you don't want to export visible. If you notice here on the project browser, we have a 3D view called Navisworks.
It's bold because it's the current view that we're in. And as a quick note, this is the same view that Navisworks looked for automatically when we imported the RVT directly. So to export, you just go up to the application button and then select export, cat formats, DWG, and the DWG export dialog box will show up.
Now let's take a look at some of our settings. Now what's going to happen is that when we export this, Revit is going to organize all of our components that are shown on the category column into the layer column. So instead of showing the specific family types and categories, it's going to show us the AIA standard layer format for our project.
Let's check out a couple other options. So let's go to the solids tab and make sure that you're exporting your solids as ACIS solids. If you were to use polymesh, then what's going to happen is that Revit exports each of the planes that make up every component in your project.
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If we use solids, then it exports the components as fully solid objects, which is what we want. Next, let's go under units and coordinates. Make sure that your coordinate system basis is exporting to internal instead of shared coordinates.
If you're ever unsure of which type of coordinate system you're using, you're probably going to be using internal. The difference is that this internal uses a common origin between all their projects, and shared uses a user set work shared coordinate system. If you get really into Revit, then you'll know what the difference is, but for now I know that all of our files actually share a origin, so we're going to use internal.
Select okay, and then to begin the export process, select next, and we'll export this file to lesson 2. Call it bim361arc.dwg, and just uncheck this little box here just to be safe, and hit okay. Now Revit will export everything that's in this view, and once that's finished, we can go back to Navisworks and check our work. So I'll open up a file, and in the lesson 2 folder, we have the bim361arc.dwg that we just exported, and when that's completely imported, you can zoom extents, and we'll see that our file is in, and it looks like it has a number of different colors, and what these colors represent are index colors.
So remember when this file was exported to dwg, Revit organized all of our categories, our component categories, into layers, and those layers actually have their own index color assigned to them. So this a-wall layer is going to have a green index color, and say the a-roof layer is going to have this light blue index color. The big difference between the RVT file that we made, imported before, and this one is one of the colors that you see that are different, and to the organization of the layers.
So this file actually has the layers organized under first trade architectural, and then by object type, so door as an example. The RVT had these organized by level, and then by object category, and then by family, and then family type. If you expand any one of these, let's continue with door for this same example, we have all of our objects, all the instances that we have in our Revit file organized directly under the a-door.
The benefit of this is that if you want to select all of your doors at once, then you can simply select the top layer. Another thing that you will not get by exporting to dwg are the grid lines. Remember the RVT file that we imported had the green grid lines that were around the base of our building.
Those would have to be exported separately and two-dimensionally to use this dwg format. Nevertheless, let's go back to Revit and let's export the MEP file. So I'm going to close this architectural one and open up the BIM361 MEP, and it's in your lesson 2 folder in BIM361-MEP.
This file contains all three of the MEP trades together. We could see by this Navisworks view that we're in by default that all of our mechanical, all of our electrical, and all of our plumbing information is contained within one very slowly moving view. One of the benefits of the dwg is that without the automated process of importing an RVT file, we can go to or create a 3D view for each of the trade types.
I have one for each electrical mechanical and plumbing, and then we can go to export in each of these views to export electrical ELEC, and then mechanical MECH, and then plumbing PLUM. And then just so that we've covered all of our bases, let's close this file and we'll open up the structural file and quickly export this one as well. I'm using the Navisworks view STRU for this title.
And then going back to Navisworks, we can append all of those files at once. I'm selecting the electrical file, holding down control, and selecting mechanical, plumbing, and structural. And they all share the same origin with project internal, so they should go all into the same place.
Of course, if they don't go into the same place, you can always use the units and transform tool. So I can see in my selection tree that I have all five of the trades, and we can select each of them and hide them if we'd like to, or turn them back on. And that's about all there is to exporting and importing dwgs.
Let's save this file using the save button. Let's call this one bim361-dwg.nwf just so we can tell the difference between the rvt example that we made and the dwg example that we're making right now. In the next video we'll be covering exporting to nwc from Revit for use in Navisworks.