Wood Framing - Revit Links

Lets now examine the options for working with Revit links in a wood framed building project.

We will begin with using the architectural link directly for our purposes.  The main issue with the architectural link is the visibility of the walls in the structural views.  Specifically, it is typical practice for our local architects to model walls an non-load bearing and hence they are not visible in "structural" views. 

You could set your views to coordination and then these walls would be visible, but then the visibility of the structural items is disrupted.

Wood Framing - CAD Base Plans

One of the first things that I noticed when trying to work with CAD plans in a Revit many moons ago was that the CAD plans would block out structural elements like footings and foundations.  After that I was finding Revit elements blocking out CAD objects.  It's been over 9 years since my first Revit project and I've created several iterations of workflow for CAD in Revit and Autodesk has kindly made many terrific updates in that time as well.  So lets have a review of the more recent and simplest workflow yet.

Step 1 -  Clean the CAD file.

You need a cleanup routine to make the job faster and easier.  Either you already have one for cleaning up architectural files for underlay in your CAD projects and can take that a bit further for Revit implementation.  Or you start from scratch.  I suggest getting your friendly IT person on task.  Our custom command arch_underlay will explode every block and purge everything in the file and place all remaining items on one layer of grey color.  We don't typically show all the toilets and sinks etc, so it's standard workflow to delete all undesired blocks prior to invoking the arch_underlay command.  Failing to do so will result in time spent deleting the linework of these undesired elements in the CAD file.