- [Instructor] In this video, we're going to look at linking in
a DWG file for the site plan information
that was generated in Civil 3D.
Now, Civil 3D actually participates directly in BIM 360
and has the ability to save files directly
into the folder structure of your BIM 360 projects.
Now, it does use desktop connector to synchronize changes
across the folder structure
and the various participants in the project.
What we're going to do here is
we're going to look at it
from the architect's point of view.
So I'm logged into Revit as my lead architect, Deshi,
and I want to bring in the site plan DWG file
from my civil engineer.
So to get started, I will go to the insert tab
and click on the link CAD button.
I will browse to the BIM 360 drive
and then to my account and project folder,
and then the folder within that project
that contains the site plan.
So in this case, that is the Shared and Civil folder.
Now I'm going to select that site plan file,
and there's just a couple settings that I want to adjust.
The first is I tend to turn off correct lines
that are off access for Civil files for site plan files,
because sometimes that can have an undesired effect
on files of those scales.
And then next, a lot of civil files,
at least in imperial units, are going to be created in feet.
So to ensure that it comes in in the correct scale,
I'm going to set the import units to feet,
but of course, make sure you communicate
with your civil engineer to make the right choice there.
Now, naturally, I'm working in my projects
and my BIM 360 account.
What you see on your screen might vary slightly,
so just keep that in mind.
Now I'm going to accept the defaults over here
because I'm going to need to make some changes
in that stuff anyway.
So I'll just simply click "open".
And when the file comes in,
I'll get this warning here
that the objects are a large distance away.
And so Revit chose to use
center-to-center positioning, anyhow.
So this is why I didn't worry too much about
what insertion option I was using.
So I'll just click anywhere to dismiss that warning.
And then I will right click here and choose zoom to fit.
And it looks like everything went away.
I'm going to right click again and zoom out two times,
and then I'm going to make a crossing window like this
and select the entire screen.
And you're going to see two dots appear.
On the left, we have the work sharing symbols,
the symbol that allows me to make an element editable.
That's my architecture model.
And on the right is a push pin.
That is my Civil 3D file that's been linked in.
So what I want to do is move this over to the model.
So I'm going to click anywhere to de-select.
Go to visibility graphics.
I'll just type the keyboard shortcut VG.
Scroll down and locate the site category,
expand it, and then turn on the project base point
and click "okay".
So the project base point will display over here
where the model is,
and then I'll come back in roughly the area
where the Civil file was and make a selection again.
When it's selected, I will unpin it.
This will allow me to move it now.
And I'll go to my move command.
Kind of pick anywhere in that general location.
It should find a snap point,
and then start moving over here, right-click,
snap overrides, and choose points.
Or you can type the keyboard shortcut SX.
Then come over and move nearby the project base point,
and then click when it snaps to it.
And that will move your site plan model
into the vicinity of the building model.
I'll click anywhere to de-select,
right-click and zoom to fit again.
And now we can get a better look at what we have.
Now it looks like the site model is kind of
off to the side of the building,
but in fact, if you were to orbit slightly,
what you'll see is that it's really hovering
above the building.
So what I'm going to do is go to an elevation view next.
I'll do the South elevation,
but you could really do this in any view you like,
and then this is a cropped view.
So I'm going to zoom out just a little bit here and uncrop.
And if I zoom out a little bit further,
eventually you will see that site plan
hovering above the building.
There it is right there.
So now I'm going to go to the modify tab,
go to my align command, locate level one,
which is right about there.
You can wait until the tool tip appears
and lets you know that you're picking level one for sure.
And I'll pick that as the alignment reference,
and then I'll click anywhere on one of these lines here
to move the site file down to level one.
Click the modify tool to cancel,
and then I'll just close the South elevation.
All right, so that gets me close.
I'm going to finish the work in the site plan.
So I'm going to go up to floor plans.
Double click my site plan.
And you can see that the site plan now is
close by the building model,
but still needs some adjustment.
Now, to help us with the positioning here,
I've added some reference planes.
So this reference plane right here
is actually the edge of the road over here.
So the model is actually nearly 180 degrees
in the opposite direction.
Then these reference planes here,
here, here, and here
are describing this blue dashed rectangle
in the middle of the site plan.
And that's the footprint of the building.
So what I'm going to do is select the site plan,
go to rotate, click in the angle field here,
type 180 and press Enter,
and that will spin it around
and get it roughly to the correct orientation.
Next, I'll go to the align command,
and I'm going to use the reference plane just
to the left of grid one as the alignment reference,
and then line that up with this blue line right here.
And then I'll do it again with the reference plane
just below grid A
and line it up with this dashed blue line right there.
Click the modify tool to cancel.
And let's zoom in in that general location.
Now, at this point you might be thinking,
"Is this really correct?
"I mean, is it okay to just take our site model
"and move it and rotate it and reorient it?
"Isn't the site model set
"to the correct geographic location?
"And using geolocated coordinates?
"And aren't we messing that up?"
These are all good questions,
but rest assured that none of those concerns
are anything you should worry about
because what we actually have
when working in Revit projects
is more than one coordinate system.
So, none of what we've just done
has affected the site model at all.
Our civil engineer won't even have any idea
that we've made any of those changes.
So their file is completely intact.
However, from the point of view of the architecture,
we don't want to work
at the civil engineer's coordinate system.
That's not convenient for us as architects.
What we want to do instead is work
in a convenient local coordinate system
that makes sense for our project,
and then just simply reference
the civil engineer's coordinate system when necessary.
So, my civil engineer placed a marker in here for us
just to kind of let us know
what the actual geographic coordinates of this point are.
And we can kind of use that for reference
as we go forward here.
Let me show you the coordinates of that point
here in our architecture file.
So to do that, we're going to go to the annotate tab
and click the spot coordinate tool.
I'll click right there at that location,
and then just pull this symbol off
and away from that location.
And then I'll click the modify tool to cancel.
I'll come back and select that symbol
and choose the other type,
the one that includes the elevations.
So if you compare the northing, easting, and elevation,
clearly they do not match the coordinates
from the Civil file.
All right.
Really easy to make this adjustment now.
All we need to do is acquire the coordinate system
from the linked civil engineering file.
How do we do that?
Well, we go over to the manage tab,
and we're going to use the tools here
on the project location panel.
I'm going to start with the location tool,
and when I click that,
you will see that currently the file
is using the default settings: internet mapping service
and Boston, Massachusetts.
So I'm going to cancel out of there without making any changes.
So what we're going to do now is
use the acquire coordinates tool
to acquire the geolocation from the civil engineering file.
So that's here on this coordinates dropdown.
We choose acquire coordinates.
And you just click anywhere on the DWG link.
So these curb lines over here ought to do the trick.
So I'll click on that,
and you'll see the spot elevation will update immediately.
And if you compare the numbers
in that spot elevation to the Civil file,
you can see that they match exactly.
Now, I'm a little bit off with the elevation,
but I think that just has to do with
where the spot coordinate is set to,
but you could see the northing and the easting are right on.
So, if we return to the location tool,
now you will see that it no longer says
"internet mapping service".
Instead it says that it's using the location
from a survey point,
and we are getting the GIS coordinate system,
so it is now properly geolocated.
Now, while I'm in this dialogue,
I'm going to click over to the site tab
because you may recall
that when we first brought in the site plan,
we had to rotate it,
and I rotated it nearly 180 degrees.
Well, if you look down here at the angle
of project North to true North,
you can see that it's nearly 180 degrees,
so that kind of checks out.
So let's go ahead and okay out of here.
And now what I'm going to do is right-click anywhere,
zoom to fit.
And if you look at the properties of your site plan,
the site plan is currently set to an orientation
of project North.
But if you click there, there are two choices,
project North and true North,
and most site plans are usually set to true North.
So if I change this, you're going to see everything will flip,
And it now matches the orientation we saw
in the original Civil 3D file.
So everything checks out nicely.
So all we need to do now is
synchronize our changes to make it permanent.
So I'll go to synchronize with central,
optionally put in a comment and then click okay.
Now, when I try to synchronize,
I'm going to get a message
about the locations not being saved.
Now, normally you wouldn't get this
with acquire coordinates,
so I'm actually a little bit puzzled by this.
The trouble is Deshi doesn't have write access
to the Civil folder,
so she couldn't click "save" even if she wanted to.
So what I'm going to do is actually click "do not save" here.
Now, the good news is that by clicking "do not save",
we didn't disable the shared coordinates.
So if you select the file
and look at it in the properties palette,
you can see that the coordinate system is still saved,
but ultimately, we'll need to have somebody
with admin level rights go in and open the file
and click those save buttons
so that we can get past those messages in the future.