Yes, still frustrating, but in case it helps anyone, our small firm has successfully been using the Environment Tools "External Civil Data" feature. In Civil, Output to LandXML. In Revit, load or reload the surface into Revit. For us, it is light-years better than the standard Autocad "Link Topography" feature, although it's not perfect.
Limitations:
- Load/reload into Revit is speedy, but output from Civil is surprisingly slow. More triangles = more slow. Workaround: split your project into multiple surfaces and only export/import as necessary
- Upon reload into Revit, surface labels will be lost (slope labels, spot elevations, etc.).
- Objects hosted onto the surface may be deleted? I've had mixed results with this and I'm still not quite sure how it works. In my experience, most objects seem to be fine, but railings (aka fences) may be deleted without warning.
- The plug-in starts at $500/yr, but on the plus side, it has a lot of other useful features, and hopefully their topo modeling tools will surpass Civil at some point (for Arch/Landscape needs)