by John Flanagan
Exporting Tips
Exporting Autodesk Revit Projects to various CAD file formats is a common need in collaboration with consultants and engineers. Using this process, you can export individual views or sheets, or sets of views or sheets to DWG, DXF, DGN and SAT files. You can also create and save sets of views /sheets.
You might want to adjust export settings. Click in the export setup.
In these settings, you can map Revit objects to specific layers, and also select Units and Coordinates and the specific CAD version you want to export to.
If you use one of the export tools for a 3D view, Revit exports the actual 3D model, not a 2D representation of the model. To export a 2D representation of the 3D model, add the 3D view to a sheet and export the sheet view. You can then open a 2D version of the view in AutoCAD.
Note: You cannot export to CAD formats while using the Revit Viewer.
Before exporting a Revit model, consider these best practices:
- Reduce the amount of model geometry to be exported.
- Create or modify layer mapping to ensure that all the information stored in Revit categories and subcategories will be exported to the proper CAD layers (or levels, if exporting to DGN).
- Adjust the view scale to control the precision/performance ratio.
When you export to 2D DWG or DXF, you export a scaled 2D view of the model. The view scale you apply determines whether the resulting view is exported for precision or for performance. For example, if your model contains 2 lines that are 8mm apart and the view scale is 100, the lines will be considered to be within tolerance, and the exported DWG will contain a single line (exported for performance). If the view scale is 20, the exported DWG will contain separate lines (exported for precision).