Configuring export and print settings

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After completing this lesson,

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you'll be able to understand export settings, understand print settings, configure export settings, and configure print settings.

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The objective domains covered are 3.5a configure export settings and 3.5b configure custom print set up.

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Revit supports the export of 2D and 3D data to other CAD systems.

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The following outputs are supported: DWG, which is AutoCAD format; DXF, Drawing Exchange format;

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DGN, which is Bentley Micro Station, SAT or ACIS, which is a 3D neutral file format; and finally IFC, which is Industry Foundation Classes.

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When exporting to other CAD systems such as AutoCAD, you can configure how information and graphical data is transferred.

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For example, a common requirement in AutoCAD is the correct layering conventions.

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You can map Revit categories and subcategories to AutoCAD layers.

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Print settings can be saved and recalled for future sessions.

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Prince settings control items such as paper size, for example, whether you want to use C, D, or E sheet sizes;

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the orientation of the print, could be portrait or landscape;

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you might want to fit the page to 100% or half size scale, so you can use the zoom or scale options there;

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hidden line views control whether vector or raster processing is utilized when printing;

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vector processing improves performance, but sometimes we have to use raster processing if we use things like graphics or rendered or shaded views;

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the options control whether things like crop boundaries, scope boxes or reference planes prints.

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Go ahead and open up the model 042-Configuring Export and Print Settings.

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The model opens up in a ground floor plan.

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First, let's take a look at the export DWG dialog box.

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To view this, let's select "File", "Export", "Options", "Export Setups DWG/DXF".

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So, the "Modify DWG/DXF Export Setup" dialog is now open.

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On the left hand side, you can see that we can save or recall export setups that we've may have configured.

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This is very useful if you have different standards and requirements for different clients.

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On the right hand side, we have a number of different tabs to control various different elements of our DWG or DXF output.

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The most important one really is the layers.

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And you can see here that we have our categories and subcategories from Revit down here.

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And here we have our desired AutoCAD layer and our color.

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There are other tabs across the top to control other elements.

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For example, we can take our Line Patterns in Revit and map those to corresponding Linetypes in AutoCAD.

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We can do exactly the same thing with hatch patterns, the same with Text & Fonts.

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We can configure how our colors transfer through.

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A very important one is Solids.

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The default is to export 3D models out as Poly face mesh.

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However, I think most of us would want ACIS or SAT solids.

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Another useful tab is Units & Coordinates.

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Here, you can see the coordinate system base is set to Project internal.

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Ideally, if you've used a shared coordinate system within Revit, you'd want to configure this to Shared.

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OK, so let's go ahead and create a new set up.

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So, here, I'm going to click New Export Setup.

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We'll call this one "Training" and then select "OK".

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Let's begin by selecting the Layers tab.

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Now, to begin the set up, you'll notice here we can load layers from standards, and I have some default standard setup.

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So, I'm going to keep the American Institute of Architects standard current, and we can now make some modifications or changes to this.

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So, we'll begin by taking a look at structural columns.

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So, here, we have our Structural Columns category.

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Notice if I click the "+" button, I can see the subcategories underneath.

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And this is going to be the layer name that's used.

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So, you can see here, it's S-COLS.

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I'm going to change this to S-COLUMNS.

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This is the projection pane we're going to be using.

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So, I'm going to configure this to pane number 2, and you'll notice that everything here is under projection.

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We also need to deal with how elements are cut.

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Generally, we want to thicken the line weight up in AutoCAD.

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So, therefore, we'll need to change the color.

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So, here we'll change the Cut Layer name to S-COLUMNS, and then I'll have SECTION afterwards.

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And we might want to thicken the line weight.

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So, here, I'm going to change this to pane number 5.

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Now, of course, I can go through and start to configure all of our subcategories as well.

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So, we might simply want this to go on a layer called Hidden, and we'll have all the hidden data on the same layer.

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And that might use pane number 1.

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Now, this is great if we want to categorize all of our structural columns on the same layer,

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but sometimes we might want to split out things like steel columns or concrete columns,

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or perhaps have different layers for each level in the project.

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So, this is where we can configure layer modifiers.

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To begin, we're going to minimize our Model Categories, Annotation Categories and Analytical Categories.

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This allows us to have a smaller list in the dialog box.

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So, under Modifiers, you'll notice here, we have Material for Model Behavior.

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Let's expand that.

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And you can see here we have all of our material for model behavior settings.

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So, Concrete, Other, Precast and so on.

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So, I'm going to change this.

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Perhaps we'll just have "CONC" for concrete and we'll do the same for the Cut.

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And for steel, we'll have the full name, but in capitals.

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OK.

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So, now we go back and expand Model Categories, return back to our Structural Column category.

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And of course, here, we can Add/Edit our Layer Modifiers.

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By default, the layer name is just built up top outs of structural columns.

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But this is where we can add our modifier.

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So, here I'm going to add Material for Model Behavior and we'll add that across.

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I'd like to have a hyphen as a separator in here, and now that's complete, so we can click "OK".

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And of course, I can now proceed through the rest of my categories.

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This could take some time to configure.

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But don't forget, you can save these setups and utilize them later.

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OK. Let's now export a DWG file and review our settings.

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Go ahead and select "OK" to the dialog box.

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Click "File", then "Export", "CAD Formats", "DWG".

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Notice in the top left of the DWG Export dialog box, the Export Setup is Training.

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We're going to simply export the current view, as it is at the minute.

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Will click "Next" and we'll go ahead and save this.

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OK, so once the model is open in AutoCAD, let's go ahead and review our layer settings.

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So, if we zoom up on one of the columns that we created here, let's select the column.

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And on the Home ribbon here, you can see that we have S-COLUMNS-CONC.

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Let's have a look at one of our steel columns.

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So, here's a steel column, we can select that.

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And of course, we can now see that this one is being exported to S-COLUMNS STEEL.

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Here we have our plane position of a steel column and also our cut position of a steel column in section.

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Next, we take a look at the Print Setup dialog box.

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Select "File" and then go to "Print" and select a "Print Setup".

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In the Print Setup dialog box, you can configure your paper size,

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your Paper Placement with center in the plots or perhaps offset in it,

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whether we're going to zoom to fit on the page or, in fact, print it at 100%, the orientation.

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Here, we select Hidden Line views.

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So, most of my views are vector, so I'll use Vector Processing as this will increase performance.

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And when we are printing raster files, we can configure our Raster Quality here.

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So, in this case, because I haven't gotten to the rendered models in the file, I'll use Medium.

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Now, of course, if I want to print out monochrome, I can do this.

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I can select Black Lines only in here.

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And in the bottom half of dialogue box, I can configure exactly what plots.

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So, most of the time we're going to want to be hiding things like the Crop Boundary, Reference Planes, Scope Boxes and so on.

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Once we've configured this, we can "Save As" and we can give this a new name.

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So, here, I'm going to call this Training and select "OK".

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When we now configure a print, you'll now notice that we can choose our set up.

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So, currently it's the last one we've just configured, which is Training.

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OK, in this case, let's cancel the dialog box.

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Our print setups are complete.