By Dennis Collin
Using the right tool for the right job extends across many areas in our lives. The same motto is also very relevant when applying this to software. We often discover users working in a manner which pushes their applications out of their comfort zones and tests the limits. An area which is very common for this pushing of boundaries is Revit. As a Revit user, I understand there is always a desire to put everything into a Revit model, even if you know it doesn’t belong there. In particular the most common application of this issue is in trying to deliver below ground drainage design into the platform. For me, Revit is not the most appropriate platform for this type of modelling. I would suggest Civil 3D within the AEC Collection is more suitable to this kind of activity. Transposing that information into a Revit environment to understand the context of the design with other aspects of a project is often a desired outcome. This could be achieved through the use of linking Navisworks files into Revit, but this is linked as a coordination file with limited element data. For improved information interrogation, the use of a clever set of tools allows users to import and view any associated data to the components. My colleague Dennis Collin recently posted a blog detailing how this can be achieved.
There is a great video on the Autodesk Knowledge Network which highlights the CivilConnection capabilities to extract the information from a Civil 3D pipe network and transferring it into Revit thereby creating a pipe network which carries all the associated Civil 3D property sets into Revit element properties.
The macro brings it in as a linked Revit file making it easy to control and manage with worksets or view templates.