Converting toposurfaces for export to DWG

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I've modeled a number of TopographySurfaces in my Revit model, and applied a different material to each so I they can be easily distinguished by color. I'd like to export views of my model as a DWG, but have run into the unfortunate problem that, because surface patterns can't be applied to toposurfaces for export, all of my color coding schemes are lost in the resulting DWG. I wrote an add-in to add filled regions over the toposurfaces as a workaround, but this can't be applied to my 3D views. I also wrote an add-in to convert the toposurfaces to meshed masses on export, but now struggle to make the triangulated lines of the masses invisible (so the geometry appears smooth). This leads to two questions:

1.) What's the preferred way to have TopoSurfaces retain their visual material properties when exported to DWG, especially using the API?

2.) Is there a viable workaround to (1) through clever modification of Mass visibility settings?

Any advice or pointers here are appreciated. Thanks!

[jeremytammik]

Dear Klanea,

Wow, those sound like some pretty impressive workarounds that you have already implemented and tried out.

Sorry to hear that they did not work out.

Simpler than converting to meshed masses might have been converting to DirectShape, but again, I do not think you can make the edges invisible.

However, I do have a completely different suggestion for you to address this:

Have you tried using the custom exporter yet?

That might geve you exactly what you need with a minimum of fuss and with no need for any workarounds or conversions:

http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/about-the-author.html#5.1

That would not give you a DWG or DXF, just face and material information that you can post-process as you like.

You could pipe that into some external app of your own to generate DXF or even, e.g. using the RealDWG toolkit, DWG directly.

Or, if you have AutoCAD installed on the same machine as your Revit add-in, you can use the AutoCAD.NET API within your Revit add-in to generate whatever AutoCAD elements you like for each face.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Anonymous]

Hey Jeremy,

Many thanks for your help here. I haven't tried using a Custom Exporter yet; great idea! I'll investigate both approaches you mention and hopefully make headway. 

Thanks again!