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Tyler Grant/6 min read

Revitizing CAD Details for Plumbing: Bringing CAD details into Revit for detailing in BIM 322 Course

CAD-to-Revit Detail Workflow

1

Insert CAD File

Insert > Link CAD or Import CAD into a drafting view.

2

Pick Origin and Scale

Position the CAD file at an appropriate origin.

3

Trace Over with Detail Lines

Recreate critical geometry with native Revit detail lines.

4

Add Annotations

Tags, dimensions, and material notes within Revit.

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This lesson is a preview from our Revit Certification Course Online (includes software & exam). Enroll in this course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.

This Revit tutorial walks through revitizing cad details for plumbing: bringing cad details into revit for detailing in bim 322 course, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 322 course. In the previous videos, we went ahead and got all of our sheets done that we needed to create. And in the next series of videos, I want to go ahead and start talking about detailing and how we can bring over either CAD details or existing details from a Revit project and bring those in.

The first thing I want to go ahead and do is, we want to go ahead and Revitize—if you want to coin a term for it—Revitize a detail from CAD. So, what we're going to do is, we're going to create a new callout referencing a new detail view, then we're going to go ahead and import that into the drawing. So, let's go ahead and jump down to our Plumbing, our Sheet View 1 for Plumbing.

And what's going to happen is, we're going to create a callout. Go ahead and zoom into this Janitor Storage area—we're going to create a callout for the actual water heater here. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to go to the View tab, I'm going to go to Callout, and instead of just drawing the callout like we normally would, I'm going to go ahead and make sure that this box up here is checked to reference another view. I'm going to select here, and we're going to create a new drafting view.

I can select any of the views I have here, but I'm going to go ahead and create a new drafting view. I'm going to go ahead and click and drag it over the water heater and place it. It's about how I like it.

I can always go back and grab these different shape handles and adjust the callout sizing if I need to. I am going to adjust the location of the callout head to about right here. And there we are.

I'm actually going to adjust it just a slight bit more. I'm going to go ahead and bring it over here so it's outside the building and then put it right in there. And there we are—good to go.

What we want to go ahead and do is, we want to go ahead and find that view in our Project Browser. Now, what happens is, Revit does not know exactly what to do with it. It knows that we're on a Plumbing plan, but it doesn't know exactly what subdiscipline it wants to assign to that specific callout.

If I go ahead and look through my Project Browser, it's going to be under the Mechanical area, and you see these three little question marks. What that's saying is that there's not a subdiscipline assigned to it that it can be grouped under. So I'm going to go ahead and expand this out.

It's going to call me Drafting Views → Detail. Expand that out. And as you can see, I have the callout of Sheet View 1 – Plumbing. Let's go ahead and double-click into that view.

And as you can see, we have just a blank drawing space because this is a strictly 2D drafting view. But I want to go ahead and organize it under the correct subdiscipline. If I go up to my Project Browser, under Discipline, Mechanical is fine.

I want to change the subdiscipline to Plumbing. And there we are. If you look back at your Project Browser, you'll notice if you go down to the very bottom, under Plumbing, you have Drafting Views → Detail → Callout of Sheet View 1 – Plumbing.

So what I want to go ahead and do now is, let's go ahead and bring in the actual CAD information. I'm going to go ahead and let's go to the Insert tab here. And we can either Link CAD or Import CAD.

What we want to go ahead and do here is, we want to import this CAD data because we want to be able to explode it so we can edit it and change it. We do not want to use the Link CAD. I want to go ahead and do Import CAD.

So I'm going to go ahead and click on Import CAD. I'm currently in my BIM 322 folder on the C drive under BIM 322 – Details. And the detail that I want to go ahead and select is the Domestic Water Heater detail.

So I'm going to select that one. I want to make sure that my colors are Black and White, Layers: All, Import Units: Auto-Detect is fine, Positioning: Auto – Center to Center is perfect, and I'm going to hit Open. I'm going to go ahead and Zoom Extents.

Control-S and save the file. Now, right now I do have my thick lines turned on. And as you can see, things are kind of crazy.

Let's go ahead, Zoom Extents, and change that to thin lines. So I'm going to go up here and activate my Thin Lines so I can start to see everything. And there we are.

We can start to see everything, and it's all good to go. We have this information in here now. And in the next couple of videos, we're going to go ahead and start to detail this guy out.

But before we move on to the next video, what I want to go ahead and do is, I want to explode this guy so I have all the information natively. I'm going to go ahead and select it. And I'm going to go ahead and get this contextual tab.

And as you can see, under Explode, I'm going to select it and go Partial Explode. And what this is going to do is, it's going to take all the information back so that I can natively edit it in Revit without having to go back to the AutoCAD DWG. I'm going to go Partial Explode.

It's going to take a second. And there it is. So as you can see, now I have individual lines and all the other good information already there.

I'm going to go Control-S, save the file now. I'm going to go and pause the video here, and we'll go ahead and get started with the next portion in the next video. I'll see you then.