Revit Tips to Tracing DWG Floor Plans

A few tips when tracing over linked DWG floor plan files;

During the import / linking of a DWG floor plan into your Revit project, you can choose an import option that allows you to specify which layers Revit should bring into the project: ALL, VISIBLE or SELECT.

When tracing over interior walls, select a Revit wall family and set the justification to "Wall Centerline". When your cursor hovers over the two AutoCAD line segments that represent a wall, Revit will find the centerline between the two lines....The "Wall Centerline" justification is the only wall justification that provides this pretty scary cool feature!

When DWG files are linked into Revit, you can use the PICK tool (arrow) to select the linework in the DWG file. Revit will use the selected linework/arc to create the respective Revit object. So if you select a curved wall line in the DWG file, Revit will create a curved wall using the exact geometry description from the DWG entity.



Remember that PLAN views usually have Model Graphics set to hidden line. When you place doors/windows into walls, consider setting the Model Graphics to Wireframe mode. You can now look down through the Revit wall and see the jambs that are displayed in the DWG file....which should more accurately assist you to view/place doors & windows.

The VIEW PROPERTIES of the view displaying the DWG file contains the VISIBILITY button with a separate tab called "Imported Categories; i.e. your DWG file. You can control the linked DWG file’s layer visibility (ON/OFF), color, linetype etc in here.

Avoid exploding imported DWG files. In our Revit 7 training class, the Autodesk trainers indicated that exploding files should be done as a last resort and only with small files. They indicated that exploding DWG files with more than 10,000 entities may result in missing information. It sounded like 10k of entities was a "cap" at that time with Revit 7. Other Revit users have also indicated performance issues when they exploded large DWG files in Revit.

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