PCP, Revit and Autocad

[jewongVB7C5]

I understand when Revit exports to DWG, it also exports a PCP file along. Within autoCAD I could convert this PCP file into a Plot style pen table. But when I print using this pen table, I DONT get my pen thickness, etc. similar to Revit. Is there any reason for this not to work.

These are the things I tried:
1. I had tweaked the import/export settings in Revit. So, I went ahead and imported the AIA std pen settings and tried creating a CTB file. Still does not work.
2. Within autocad I AM selecting the "Plot with plotstyle" option. Still the printed sheet from autocad is very different from Revit.
Any thoughts.
Thank you in advance.
John.

[moturi.magati.george]

Hi @jewongVB7C5,

This forum is dedicated to Revit API support, and you might not get the best solution when it comes to product usage.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-api-forum/this-forum-is-for-revit-api-programming-questions-not... 

In the blog above you can find the link to the Revit Product support where there are experienced experts to help you. 

[RPTHOMAS108]

I don't think DWG's exported from Revit are that print ready regardless. They are mainly for coordination exercises with those not using Revit or those using Revit that want to overlay DWG's equivalent to a specific drawing and isolate aspects of such.

If you want a print ready format then use either pdf, dwf etc. why make life harder than it needs to be?

As far as I know the pen styles in AutoCAD are either .stb or .ctb (style dependant and colour dependant respectively). Did you use add a plotter wizard with the PCP? If you end up with a ctb then you probably have to ensure your Color ID values in the export layers  are in line and on the 'Colors Tab' you have indexed colours set. Since ctb is the older way of doing things and relates the plotted pen thickness and colour to a colour index you see on the screen. The layers export dialogue is not equivalent to that since you can have layers set for categories and then those layers can have a cut or projection colour id. In Revit however two categories may share the same line weight for those things. So I don't know what allowances it makes for those kinds of discrepancies.

You'll have other issues regardless such as fonts and widths of such.

[jewongVB7C5]

Thanks for your reply. You are talking about CTB and STB drawing files. This drawing uses CTB and I have chosen the CTB file (that I created using the PCP from Revit) in the print dialog box in AutoCAD.
There is something in my setup or Revit export that gives me a screwed up PCP. To explain this further: We use Revit to create the contract documents. Our clients want DWG files from us. They would like a CTB file along, so that they can print the sheet from AutoCAD and it looks similar to the revit sheets. We could not achieve this.
If any of you have achieved this, please let me know. If any of you do this routinely, please share any best practice tips.
thank you

[RPTHOMAS108]

I don't know what work you've done on this so far but in line with my comments above you probably need to ensure your export layers are reduced (in terms of unique colour ids) to that required to plot the thicknesses you have defined elsewhere in Revit for the category object styles.

Remembering in Revit that the thickness numbers used (and assigned to categories) have a possible view scale variation so you need those permutations incorporated somehow (it may not be possible). The layer export dialogue only maps categories to colour ids via layers (no modification for the scale of the view it came from).

You could probably only achieve the same in the printed dwg if you make the weighs uniform for all scales in the below dialogue but that would probably leave your Revit file awkward to view. The dwg export settings don't seem to be capable of incorporating these variations i.e. it matters what viewport the line is in when it is printed (not just the colour).

 

If the file you ended up with was a .stb then they could have probably easily incorporated the above i.e. styles defined in Revit and same style defined in .stb but with viewport scale permutations. Or they could add a layer modifier and allow extra layers to include the viewport scale.

You should submit an idea for this but given the direction things are going (online documentation) it probably isn't going to be a priority.