Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Freeze drawing

Today, I looked at the Freeze Drawing extension using Revit Structure 2009. This extension can be downloaded from the Autodesk site when you are a subscription member. Allways, I thought that this add-in just exported the Sheet to a DWG file and that was it. However, a closer looks gives me these results:

How it works in Revit
1. Select a View to Freeze



2. Due to some settings (see images above), the View is exported to a DWG (or not) and directly imported into an empty Drafting View.
3. When the Drafting View already exists, the naming of this Drafting View gets a version number added to it.

Pros
+ you can Freeze Multiple Views in one run
+ you can dimension non-perpendicular objects that have been cut by the view. In 3D Revit, you can not dimension non-perpendicular (to the section) objects. So, the blue walls shown in the image below can not be dimensioned without using Ref Planes (of course, I know the workaround for this)


Image 2: Normal 3D sliced walls (blue) in Revit can not be dimensioned. Workaround: Use Ref Planes

Cons
- the current DWG export settings is not sufficient to create our drawings, eg there is just one hatch layer for the wall cut patterns. A question is, do you want the View to be exported to a DWG. I think, not necessarilly. This extensions gives you the possibility to do that. However, allways a DWG is imported back into the Drafting View. And it does not look the same as in the Revit model.
- you have to re-create the Sheet.

Image 3: Resulting Drafting View

Wishes
So, I have two wishes for this Freeze Drawing extension in Revit.

1. First of all, do not use the DWG export but create the Drafting View with Detail Lines and Filled Regions.
2. Automatically change the Sheets where the View has been placed on. So, this View must be changed into the just created Drafting View.

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