Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Saving or Sharing Export DWG Layer Standards

The process has changed a bit for exporting to dwg (or DGN for that matter). We used to be able to export our own settings to a .txt file format for use with other projects. In Revit 2011 we had this dialog and Save As button.


With 2012 they've decided to capture our settings in a project file itself. They let us choose one of these four standards to use, or to use as the spring point for our own version.


The fifth option is to "Load settings from file...". Interesting that there aren't any files to use though. We are to capture our changes in the project and then, when desired, pass it along to other projects via the Transfer Project Standards tool.

I've posted the source files that the four export settings templates use because they don't appear in my 2012 installation anywhere. I recovered them from my 2011 installation. Interestingly the other three besides the AIA version didn't show up until I loaded each one in to replace the previous. As soon as I did that, the other files appeared alongside the AIA version. If you really want to edit the .txt version, to grow your own version, you can download them here:

exportlayers-dwg-AIA.txt
exportlayers-dwg-BS1192.txt
exportlayers-dwg-CP83.txt
exportlayers-dwg-ISO13567.txt

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This feature was removed in 2012. You can not export / save your custom txt file! The only work around is to create a emptly template and create your layer map and porject transferer the setting between projects.

Tom said...

They should be installed in ..\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit xxx 2012\Data

Where xxx is the flavor of Revit

Steve said...

Is there an echo in here? :)

Tom, thanks...that's where I expected to find them but they aren't, odd eh?

DaveP said...

One (big) thing I found missing in the .TXT files is the Layer Modifiers.
Our autocad layers are categorized by Phase and I was glad to see this addition in 2012 with the Layer Modifiers. I just added {Phase} to the right categories.

I couldn't figure out how to get that into the .TXT file, though.
That may not be possible.

Steve said...

Probably a contributing factor to managing the data inside the project environment only...

Unknown said...

hi can you upload the files again, link is not working ? Or maybe someone knows the path where can I find those files on my computer ?

BIMbeau said...

As this is an old post, perhaps someone can still advise me on this ...

The company I now work for has a well-established CAD layer standard. I am tasked with creating a set of settings for Revit 2015 to export our Revit work to the company layer standards.

Is there a way to export the layer standards from a DWT/DWG file and import this into Revit through the Modify DWG/DXF Export Setup? It needs to be a TXT file for Revit to import.

thanks in advance
Ian

Steve said...

Not that I'm familiar with. They decided to embed the standards in the project templates and allow us to use Transfer Project Standards to pass them from project to project.

If you examine the formatting of the TXT files I shared in my post you might be able to work some magic if you're patient and then use the last option for Load layers from standards: choosing Load settings from file...

BIMbeau said...

Thanks Steve. I appreciate your insight.

So I've managed to create a new Setup. Is there a way to export this to create a TXT file? I'd like to be able to apply my new settings to other existing models.

Ian

Des Hourihane said...

Hi Steve (et al.)

I've downloaded your files to have a look (thanks for providing them). A number of Categories and Subcategories have been added to Revit since this translation was drafted. At the same time, looking at the BS 1192 file, there are a number of pieces of syntax missing in the Layer Names from that time also. For example, there are no hyphens between the various fields (Role, Classification, Presentation, etc.) and very few Descriptions.

Are you aware of a more up-to-date version available as a .txt file with the correct syntax for the Standard and with a full Category list for Revit 2015 (or indeed a 2016)?