topic Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit in Revit MEP Forum

Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 22:27:59 GMT

I am pretty new to Revit so please bear with me if this is an easy fix. When I import any CAD file into Revit, hatching that was done as a pattern and not manually, shows up solid black. I fixed one by changing the hatching scale since I saw that in another post about the same issue, however the rest are still not right and reducing the scaling any further would not appear hatched at all. Any help would be great. Thank you in advance.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

RobDraw — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 22:39:42 GMT

Importing into Revit has it's issues and probably shouldn't be done unless you plan on converting everything to native Revit objects. Solids, hatches, and text can all be problematic.

Linking .dwgs is better but still has similar issues.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 22:43:02 GMT

Linking has the same result. Do you know of anything that could fix the issue?

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:06:07 GMT

Linking allows you to edit your autocad file and see the changes you made after reloading the autocad file. You can go into your autocad file and reassign layers to the hatches you don't like to another layer, which in Revit you can turn off. Revit understands the layers you got from Autocad.

Importing is great for details which you want to convert and keep in Revit. If you want to get a bunch of lines, text, etc... from autocad, explode it in Revit, and reassign everything to Revit text, lines, etc...

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:10:17 GMT

My issue is not that I want to get rid of hatching, quite the opposite. I want to see the hatching (and other patterns) however they are showing up as solid blocks. Or are you saying manually redo the detail drawings in Revit?

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

RobDraw — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:17:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Importing is great for details which you want to convert and keep in Revit. If you want to get a bunch of lines, text, etc... from autocad, explode it in Revit, and reassign everything to Revit text, lines, etc...

Unfortunately, it's not that simple unless the details are very basic and conform to a solid standard. I converted well over 150 HVAC details that had varying levels of standards conformity and, no matter what, it's either do a lot of prep work in AutoCAD and dumb down those details or you need to fix tons of things afterwards in Revit. Either way it's usually not worth the effort of importing and converting. I tried that route and eventually found faster ways to create the details in Revit utilizing linking and basically tracing over them.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:29:26 GMT

HELLO 🙂

If you still have this problem here are solving ..

when you import hatch from cad make sure that imported unit file in format window like current revit unit . for example if your revit unit is in (meter) when you import cad determine (meter) in window >>import cad format<< ( shown in screenshot )

if it Succeeded please tell me. 😄

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:37:29 GMT

Thanks for the tip. I have it as auto-detect, not sure if that is right or I should manually do it everytime. It's a relatively small project so I'm going to cave for now and just manually put in the hatching. I would still like a better solution. I was thinking it might have something to do with my line weights, however I don't know what I should be changing and to what.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

RobDraw — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:45:34 GMT

IME, matching units does not help.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

ToanDN — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 23:55:32 GMT

Can you share a sample CAD drawings?

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 01:14:40 GMT

Or are you saying manually redo the detail drawings in Revit?

Using Revit's lines, texts, and hatches (you can create additional, fancier hatches in Revit) would look more consistent with the other Revit drawings than if you were to simply import or link your details. If you explode and convert all the items from your autocad in your Revit drafting views (I assume you're doing this for details), you can reuse the same Revit details on future projects. Again, it depends on what you want to accomplish and how you want your drawings to look like. I would typically import/explode/convert my Autocad details into Revit and make them look good. It does take some time and effort but it's worth it in the long run.

If you simply don't like your hatches and like everything else, just put those autocad hatches on another layer (which you can easily turn off in Revit) and add the hatches you want into Revit.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

fabiosato — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 02:06:43 GMT

Hello,

One suggestion is to explode your hatches in AutoCAD to convert them into lines, them try to use this file in Revit.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

ToanDN — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 02:13:43 GMT

@Anonymous

Is your hatch annotative?

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 18:23:16 GMT

Actually every time I determine meter in cad format the hatch appears regardless revit unit I tried it many times after I was facing your problem

try it again 🙂

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 18:25:09 GMT

yes I found matching doesn't help but i tried to make imported unit in meter regardless revit unit and it worked

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

scrosley — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 20:24:00 GMT

Changing it to meters only changes the scale of the hatch larger so the lines of the hatch are spaced wider apart and is viewable however it also makes the line widths all appear thin so you would have to modify the "View template" if you use one. Unfortunately the only solution I know of is to explode the hatch (good for revit import but not good for your autocad detail file) I find this to be the case with some mtext too. So maybe you have to have two detail folders one for Autocad details and another that is used for revit import.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

scrosley — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 18:30:59 GMT

I also wanted to note that when importing Autocad details, you can have more flexibility with overriding the line types in Revit by assigning dashed lines and hatches to their own layer in AutoCAD. IE. A layer for hidden lines, a layer for phantom lines etc. Making a "View Template" in Revit helps control the line thickness and type by layer.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

scrosley — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 00:34:50 GMT

One thing I just noticed, when I assign actual line weight to a layer in AutoCAD like .20mm instead of using "default" line weight, my Revit cad imports look much better, my hatches, text and line types are just like the cad detail. All my details line weights in AutoCAD used to be by "default". I created a new file in AutoCAD with all my layers to an actual line weight (ranging from .13mm to 1mm in my case). I then used the cad standards layer translator found in the tools menu in AutoCAD to change all my existing detail default layers to an actual weight. In Revit any layer weight not set as default will be imported in the assigned AutoCAD layer weight. Revit seems to like this much better than using the mapping method, I get much better results. The downfall is that if you already imported the detail reloading it does not seem to do anything, I had to delete it and import the detail with the new line weights again.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

mmcdaniel — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:56:18 GMT

CONFIRMED: I was having trouble seeing hatched regions when importing using "Auto-Detect" import units. After switching to "meter" all of the hatched regions showed up just as they appear in AutoCAD.

Re: Autocad DWG file import shows solid instead of hatched pattern in Revit

s.borello — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 22:44:21 GMT

I recommend you link CAD into Revit as opposed to importing. It may be quicker for you to use Revit fills and just draw on top of your CAD hatches... you can then toggle your CAD hatches off under VG assuming they are on a layer that can be turned off without messing with the desired appearance of your model. I do a little bit of CAD prep before I link into Revit... such as putting all my hatches on a "Hatch" layer so they can be turned off easily.