Best method for exporting Inventor model as .rvt with control of revit categories for individual element

[Richard_Morin83KL6]

Hi, I am currently working on an output study to figure out the best method for integrating Inventor models within Revit with control of it's categories and material finishes later in revit. 

I have accomplished exporting ''simplified'' .asm files to .rfa files through author & export building components which I can later change the "material & finishes" within revit after exploding the imported model and changing the family category as well. This is good.

I can also have an Inventor parent assembly with multiple ''simplified'' sub-assemblies in a new model state which I can then export as an .rvt. The issue is that within the revit environment, I now have the separated elements I need but I cannot explode the individual elements in order to add the ''material & finishes'' revit category required for the project. 

Short of making a parent assembly in Inventor, then exporting to an .rvt and then exporting each inventor sub assembly (converted as a .rfa) and re-assemble the model again within the .rvt, is there another way to export an .rvt from inventor while being able to change the material finishes later on within revit?

I've also tried the AnyCAD method of importing the revit model to inventor and sending back the linked model but I cannot seem to figure out how control the "material & finishes" or categorize the elements within Revit. Basically, the goal is to prevent having to assemble the model twice while having control of material & finishes and categories (i.e Structural Framing) 

Would InformedDesign be the only way to allow for control of revit categories after importing? Any help towards the right direction is greatly appreciated. 

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Richard,

I believe you may want to sign up Inventor Feedback Community (https://autode.sk/InventorBeta) to check the latest RVT export workflow.

Many thanks!

[James_Willo]

RFA will give you a small selection of Categories but you have to infer them by picking an Omniclass. 

Informed Design will let you pick a specific Category from a list. 

The main difference of ID over local RFA workflow is that ID can give you different sizes of RFA in Revit, whereas Inventor will just export the current geometry in a local workflow. 

[Richard_Morin83KL6]

Ok I understand. I was wondering though if the workflow wanted was an .RVT model exported from Inventor but with the ability to assign Revit Categories or changing material & finishes to ''each top level component'', is this possible through ID or would each element would have to be exported individually in either .rfa or ID in order to assign these BIM parameters?

In other words, can the OmniClass be inferred to ''Each Top Level Component'' before the model is exported to .RVT?

Thank you for your help

[James_Willo · Accepted solution]

No, ID will only do a single RFA file. You'd need to export each one separately and reassemble in RVT. 

[kostremEEC7J]

I'm having similar issues. I have a workflow where I'm extracting volume based civil3d solid bodies and importing into inventor. Normally any parts I create in inventor I can get to take a material through either material styles or materials themselves. However, these solid bodies from civil 3D will not take any modification when imported to revit. Tried native exports from Inventor. Tried using BimDex add-in to export the data. Tried exporting as .sat and other files types. Tried informed design. They all end with the same default color in revit.  I feel like I've exhausted all workflows to get this 3D civil data in with some kind of contracting color.

With that said, Look into BimDex as an add-in. That did a really good job of importing a highlevel assembly from inventor and reassembling and assigning individual rfas for part files in revit when using native inventor files.

[James_Willo]

Hi Richard, please check out the new release of Inventor 2026. 

You can specify a location for RVT export, include properties and assign categories to individual elements. 

You can include material information but please note that it cannot be mapped to Revit material parameter, it would become a custom parameter. 

There is an overview video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSHFTOhf_U

[autodeskVJ5AC]

Hey James_Willo,

Inventor 2026 complete breaks my RFA explort. Maybe you can help. I build models in Inventor and I need to be able to assign Materials in Revit to apply textures for visualization. Previously this work great: I would great custom named Appearances in Inventor and apply to in Inventor. In Revit all I had to do was create a Material with the exact same name and the family would automatically pick it put and apply the texture. I doesn't work anymore. I can export material information, but it's just text in the RFA in Revit.

How can I actually apply textures/material in Revit for visualiation?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi! I am sorry I am not aware of any change in behavior in RFA export. If possible, please share the Inventor files here or send them in zip to me directly at [email protected]. I would like to understand the behavior better.

Many thanks!

[autodeskVJ5AC]

Hi Johnson, 

Thanks for paying attention to this. I'll send you three files. The Inventor ipt with a small demo object and two BIM exports to RFA, one done with Inventor 2024.2 and one with Inventor 2026.1. I am not sure how 2025 behaves, I haven't tested. The demo object in the IPA has a bunch of placeholder appearances defined. Check Tools > Appearance and you will see several Appearance named "xxxx Inventor xxxx" with basic flat colors just be able to apply them to surface in Inventor and differentiate them.

 The difference will we quite easily reproducible:

 - First import the 2026 RFA into an empty Revit project and you will see no additional material created when you check the Material browser in Manage > Materials. The object is assigned the colors sometimes and I can't control them in Revit.

- Import the 2024 RFA (which was created from the exact same ipa) and you will have all the "xxxx Inventor xxxx" appearances defined in Inventor, created as Materials in Revit (search for Inventor in the Materials browser). I can now use these materials and change the simple flat color to a fancy texture.

 This used to be a great workflow for advanced visualiation with Revit PBR Material, definable and changeable from within Revit.

[rena_andrews]

Hi @autodeskVJ5AC, thanks very much for reporting the issue, I've reproduced it and created a defect to investigate and fix it: (INVGEN-87295)

I think I found a couple workarounds that can be used in the meantime, let me know if it works for you..

1. From Inventor 2026, choose the Options button to use Revit Core Engine 2024 during export (it seems the issue started with Revit Core Engine 2025). From my testing, the resulting RFA can be opened and upgraded in Revit 2026 if needed and works as expected.

2. To use any Revit Version during export, set the environment variable RFA_VIA_DWG=1

The newer versions use SAT as the intermediate file format during translation (not sure if this is the cause of the issue), but it appears using DWG fixes the issue when exporting using version 2026. Using SAT did improve some geometry specific issues we saw previously but these issues only applied to certain models, in your case the DWG translation seems okay if you'd prefer this workaround.

Huge thanks once again for reporting this issue! And apologies for the inconvenience caused here.

Best,

-Rena

[autodeskVJ5AC]

@rena_andrews 

Thank you so much for the insights. I tried both of your workarounds and they both do the job an Materials/Textures can be controller in Revit. Both have the disadvantage the model apears to be exported at a much lower resolution than the standard RFA2026 format. With the 2024 Inventor export and the 2026 via DWG export small circles of 10mm become squares and larger circles become octagon. The standard 2026 produces quite nice circles, even for sub 10mm.

I hope you can fix the texutres for 2026 format. Any chance of this happeneing in Inventor 2026 or do I have to wait for Inventor 2027? Can I see the progress on INVGEN-87295 anywhere or it an internal bug tracker?

[rena_andrews]

Hey @autodeskVJ5AC great, I'm glad it helps even though the workaround is unfortunately not ideal. Thanks for sharing the feedback/caveat on it so it can be helpful for others as well. As far as I'm aware there's no public access to our internal defect status. It's difficult to give any estimates particularly on "interop" defects e.g. in the event the issue is actually in Revit/Core Engine vs. only Inventor (or occasionally both). So far, I have set the defect to a high priority with a target of 2026.3 and 2027 but obviously can't make any guarantees

[autodeskVJ5AC]

@rena_andrews Thank you very much for setting it to high priority. This is good enough for me. I can live with the workarounds until this is resolved and look forward to having the higher 2026 resolution export and textures at the same time in a future version.

[autodeskVJ5AC]

@rena_andrews Circling back to this issue. I tried export to RFA in Inventor 2027 with the Revit Core Engine 2027 and the bug still appears to be in that version too. Was INVGEN-87295 resolved for that version or am I missing something? Thanks!

[James_Willo]

Hi Allgemeiner, I've looked up the ticket you mention. 

The reason Rena's workaround, works, is because in 2026 we changed the translation intermediate file for going to RVT. We did this because the previous method could in some cases lead to entire parts of the geometry being missing when you open the RVT file. It appears that the disadvantage of dropping materials was missed when this work was done. We have opened a research ticket on this to see what can be done to fix these issues, but it's not as simple as just fixing a bug. 2027 will use the same translation process as 2026 does which is why you still see the issue. We're sorry about this inconvenience and as Johnson states above, please join the beta community if you are doing a lot of Revit interoperability. 

feedback.autodesk.com

[autodeskVJ5AC]

@James_Willo Hey James. Thanks for replying so quickly. I just joined the Beta Program, I can't however see INVGEN-87295. I guess that is an Autodesk internal Jira system. Instead there seems to be another way to submit problem inside the beta community. What is the best way forward for me from here? Given that you already know about the issue and have an internal Jira task to track it, is there any point in submitting yet another ticket using the beta community ticket system?

Given that this hasen't been looked looked into the past year, is INVGEN-87295 still actively or more of a zombie task that will eventually die?

I totally understand the switch to a different model, I had the issue with missing face myself. and 2026/27 totally solves this. Maybe there is another way to apply material to face of an Inventor generated RFA. The pre-2026 method always felt a bit like a hack anyway. It involved creating a bogus material name in Inventor and applying it, importing the Inventor-created RFA would create that material in the Revit project material browser and then you would switch out the asset under the material in the Appearance tab. It worked perfectly fine and I got used to it, but it always felt like an undocumented accidental feature. In an ideal scenario Inventor would allow me to create Revit parameters inside the RFA for all materials.

[James_Willo]

No, the Jira is internal and you don't need to worry about that, it's on our radar. 

I mentioned joining the feedback community because when we work on Inv <> Revit workflows, this will be the first place we talk about it and you can help us shape new features. 

Due to internal resourcing it might be that the team responsible was not working on Revit stuff in the last year, but I am unsure as I have only just returned to Autodesk. I wouldn't call it a zombie task though, it's something we would like to fix, but with it being across technically 3 products it might not always be straight forward to do. 

[autodeskVJ5AC]

@James_Willo I understand it might not be as simple, but the current situation is highly unstatisfactory ever 2024, which is 3 releases ago. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, either I can export to RFA with 2024 and have missing faces, or export with 2025/26/27 and have missing materials/textures. We use the things we export from Inventor to RFA, direct in a visualisation 3D model workflow and have an extensive library of custom Inventor-created RFAs with assigned Materials/textures, which not show up colored blank in 3D.

The way I understand it, you fixed the geometry bug in 2025/26/27 - no more missing faces - great. That might be related to multiple products, but the step with the missing Material assigned in RFA shouldn't concer 3 different products. It is a Revit only. The geometry arrives just fine in the RFA, but the step where Revit Material are assigned to the surface from the Inventor Appearance Materials is simply missing. Not buggy - missing. It might just be a question of re-enabling this feature. I have a feeling that INVGEN-87295 - despite being set to high priority by @rena_andrews a year ago - never saw the eye of the right developer. Is there any chance at all that we can do something to give INVGEN-87295 a little push?

[James_Willo]

Hi Allgemeiner, when I mentioned 3 products I am talking about Inventor, Revit and our translation product, this could be fixed in multiple ways which could involve any number of those three products. I'm going to be speaking to the lead developer about this issue so definitely the right people are aware, but I think it is unlikely to be fixed in Inventor 2028 as we are close to the end of the development cycle. I've also made the product manager and chief product owner aware of this issue too.