Friday, September 16, 2011

Coordinates again...

So once in a while you think you have something figured out until... to later find out that circumstances are ready to jump at you and make you rethink the problems challenges.


If you set the shared coordinates manually between civil3D en Revit like I do, you get trouble if you also want to use the civil integration extension. Basically it shifts your project base point. We found out that the geomarker in civil isn't much of a help either because once you changed it's position it happily wanders back as soon as you hit the save button. (I had to do this several times to actually believe what I was seeing) The way to keep this thing fixed is to throw away your coordinates settings in civil altogether. Somehow I wasn't really happy about that.


The geomarker location is used by Revit's 'civil 3D integration extension'. Since I can't beat the geomarker I thought let's try and fool it. And that has worked for me this afternoon.


First let's get my bearings in Revit. I linked a dwg file with two squares and I placed the dwg on the project base point. I used the point where both of the squares meet.
In civil I have set a point to be used as the project base point in Revit. I used some nice round numbers. Bear in mind that civil is in meters and Revit in millimeters
In another civil 3d file I have setup some surfaces that I want to get into Revit with the civil integration extension and they have to line up.
dtm_2 dtm_3 & dtm_4 the controle surface has to take care that the geomarker goes a stray. ( I want to geomarker clearly out of the way to make sure this bugger doesn't accidentally get it right for me)


First step of getting surfaces in with the civil integration extension
second: Only import the civil2revit surface!!!!!
third: the civil2revit surface has been placed in such a way that it's center point lies ontop of the project base point. As you can see on the picture the extension uses the project center of this surface.
there it is:
Start the civil integration extension again and select another surface (dtm_4 here) Take a good look at the screen there is a small difference for importing this surface with the previous. You can now choose to use the project center at the topography of the civil2revit. 
So bear in mind get a controle surface in first and then you can use the center of the topography created from this surface.


Next steps are for checking
Create a nwc file from Revit and append that file and the civil3d file into navisworks.


They should line up perfectly. Here the civil 3D file selected
Here the revit nwc file selected
Notice that Navisworks says this file is exported in feet. That's right the Revit engine runs on feet. for metric it recalculates everything. That's quiet an atrocity when you think about it.


But at least I get the surfaces in now.



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http://danielgijsbers.blogspot.com/2012/08/disclaimer.html