In an ideal world, no one would use CAD, ever. Sadly, we don’t live in that world yet so we have to deal with consultants and friends that send us CAD files we have to integrate in Revit. A lot of people don’t really know what they are doing when they import CAD into Revit, resulting in chaos and poor management. Following these tips should help you avoid a lot of problems.

1- PREPARE CAD FILES

Any CAD files linked into Revit must follow a careful process:

1- Bind XRefs: Xrefs can cause problems. Open the Xref dialog box and bind them all, preventing duplicate layers.

2- Run "Purge": This removes unused layers, linetypes, blocks, etc.

3- Run "Setbylayer": All lines settings should be set to layers, ignoring any color, linetype or lineweight overrides. Use the Setbylayer command to quickly resolve this problem.

4- Freeze Useless Layers: Freeze all layers not required in Revit.

5- Save A Copy: Keep the original DWG file just in case. Save the modified file in a Revit "CAD Links" subfolder.

2- USE LINK CAD, NOT IMPORT CAD

Now that your DWG file is ready, you can bring it to Revit. You will notice that there is two options to bring the DWG file: Import and Link. Avoid using Import CAD. It makes your model heavier, causing performance issues. Link CAD is better: it loads the latest version of the DWG each time you open Revit and is more efficient to manage the files.

3- USE THESE LINKED CAD FILES SETTINGS

You have many settings to adjust when linking a DWG file. Use the settings below for the best results: