2d From 3d Autocad

[Heike Fallago]

Forsome projects I want to copy a sketch from Autocad, paste them in an Inventor sketch then extrude them to create my 3D model. Yet I encounter the scaling problem. (I do not want to use the scale tool because I require dimensions to be exact, NOT 'close to'). Additionally some sketches which are joined in autodesk become unjoined when copying, which creates issues for me when I want to extrude.

What I've tried

By the way, how about just create it in Inventor from scratch.. Its good practice. Additionally, there are many ways to handle the transition such as create a sketch and insert the DWG file to 2D sketch or Copy AutoCAD data into 2D sketches or leverage DWG Underlay technology to do so.

If you make sure your Units in AutoCAD are the same as your Units in your part template in Inventor and then you only draw to a 1:1 scale in AutoCAD, you will never have an issue. Take a look at the screencast where I set the units to millimeters in AutoCAD, draw a 1:1 drawing and then copy and paste it into Inventor.

There is an option to combine points when import sketch. SolidWorks exported DWG/DXF will have point not connected, event they have exact same coordinate. Its a default setting in SWX that need to be changed.

This idea came from working with the Adobe software collection, where you can copy from Illustrator some lines, text, fills etc. and paste them straight in In-Design or Photoshop without any problem or saving a file.

The Idea is very simple, since they are both Autodesk software, it should be a more harmonic way how you transfer elements between them without saving 1000 files and creating a lot of junk in your computer.

And as you said, detailing (small scale drawings) and urban planing (large scale drawings) is still and will still be 2D for a while. Why not have a smoother way how to get elements inside Revit. Automatic conversion between ACAD blocks and Revit Detail Items or Detail Groups etc. etc.

Copy/paste goes through the Windows clipboard, unlike a dedicated import function. Trying to implement PASTE-handlers for every possibility would get quite taxing as opposed to the more regimented dedicated process. The latter can also be treated as a completely separate module for development and testing.

Having the ability to copy vector lines from autocad to facilitate the drawing of details and save time. Well, autocad has many vector drawing facilities, while Revit improves its drawing capabilities, I consider a good alternative to just do Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V from autocad and insert into the work plane.

Yeah, we are familiar with importing and inserting - a process that's clunky, messy, imperfect, and also has seen little improvement. Importing is why our Revit models have a hundred layers, two dozen text types, etc. You can copy paste into/out of cad to/from word, excel notepad (with just text, and imperfectly but at least it tries). I did this almost 20 yrs ago with cad.

The excuse of 'every one will soon work only in revit' is as inaccurate as it is lazy. While this stood a chance once, a decade or two of stagnation coupled with massive cost increases and decreases usability has fed real fuel to the Anti-Revit crowd.

Even if more people were happy with revit, the transition will be extremely lengthy. And made longer by needless complications like this. Why? Because transferring those thousands of master details from CAD to Revit was such an expensive process and didn't' have great results. It's still underway. Most small to medium sized firms (up to 100 or even 200 employees) still used CAD on old projects up until recently or still do today. Almost all have details or other relevant graphical info in CAD form.

ArcGIS Desktop only reads the CAD entities from the Model Space of CAD drawings. The entities in the Paper Space layouts in the CAD file are ignored. The thought being they are not necessarily geospatial content, but there are situations where the entire document as created has useful content that could be displayed on the map. If possible you might want to move some of that content into Model Space if you want ArcGIS desktop to see it.

I have been using Sketchup since Version 4 and I have never had this problem. I understand that certain blocks and text cannot be imported into Sketchup from AutoCAD, but here lately even basic lines are not coming in. I am using Sketchup Pro 2018 and AutoCAD 2018. Any thoughts??

Alright, I turn that one layer back on and it came in. I then went back into AC and froze that layer and it looked the same when I brought it back in to SU. I still stand by my 1st statement, this is something in the way SU imports the DWG file.

The walls were drawn on a C-Wall-1 layer that does print. The Area layer polyline was drawn over some of the interior walls to determine S.F. of each room. Since AREA line it was on a NO-Plot layer I guess Sketchup saw it as not suppose to plot. I removed the Area layer and it works now.

Thanks,

Allen

Converting your solid or surface geometry into faces in AutoCad prior to importing the file into SketchUp might help keeping your beams all the same size. It seems that the importer uses some very rough conversion algorithm when processing these NURBS-based objects. What you can also try is to export your AutoCad model into the STL format and use the STL import/export plogin from the SketchUp team to import that.

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