Learn / Electrical Workflow Videos
Linking CAD Drawings into Revit
Electrical · Single Line Diagram · 3m
This lesson teaches you how to link CAD drawings into Revit for creating single line diagrams. You'll learn to set up a drafting view, import your CAD file, and manage its visibility settings to ensure a seamless integration into your Revit project.
Key skills covered include adjusting scale settings, using the insert tab for linking, and reloading CAD files for updates. This method is particularly useful for firms transitioning from CAD to Revit while maintaining existing diagram standards.
Transcript
Okay. So now the next way to do a single line diagram is actually just to import one from CAD. So let's say you already you know, your company already does single line diagrams in CAD for years and you have all your symbology and, you you know, you do, like, a riser diagram. It's it's very nice, and it's already set up. And you just wanna bring it in.
So you can easily do that. So same thing. You create a drafting view, and then just make sure that the the scale down here is set to match whatever your CAD file is in. So if you drew it in eight scale, make sure you set it to eight scale or maybe some people draw in quarter scale or who knows, some people draw it in 12 to one. So once you have the scale figured out and you have your drafting view created, we're gonna go up here to the insert tab, and we're going to link the CAD file in.
Now linking it in allows you to make edits in the CAD file and then edit it and, you know, refresh it in in Revit, and then it'll update. So we're gonna go here to we're gonna change it to black and white and layers and levels. I just want the visible ones. If you turn off stuff in CAD, I don't want it to all turn back on here, so I just wanna make sure it's just visible. And then hit open.
And you can see right here that now this is an imported entity that's now linked in, and you can check that by here. You see how it says imported SLD. You should go up here to manage manage links, go to CAD. You can see that it's now linked to a document that is a CAD file. So this, you can't really do anything with now that it's brought in.
You basically just take this and you drag it onto a single line diagram sheet. And essentially, it'll look like you know, you just drag it in and it'll kinda just look like this, and then you print it from Revit. But if you need to make any edits to it oops. Hold on. Let go back to the example.
So if you ever if you need to make any edits to this, you would open up the the CAD file, make the edits, save it, and then over here in Revit, go up here to manage links, CAD file, click on the CAD file itself, and hit the reload button. So once you reload that, your your changes will be updated, and then you can print from Revit again. So this is the linked CAD method, and I think a lot of people will end up using this to start with, especially if your firm has already been doing single line diagrams in CAT for a while. So this is kinda like the the easiest way to do single line in Revit.