Revit To Max, Why Such A Nightmare??

[Jefferson Grigsby]

Anyone else have experience importing large Revit files into Max 8???

I am working on a large revit model that imports into max very poorly due to Autodesks insistance of using DWG linking in their MAX import filters. In days of old Max used to bring everything in by material, thus creating one object all attached by material, and thus creating a very efficient max file to work in. Now it likes to import all the geometry as seperate pieces, with a bunch of invisible block references that do little more than bog down the scene and slow the display. Is there any way around this DWG linking disaster they have created?

 

 

In theory DWG linking would be very nice, if not only did it actually work, but if it did not create the world's slowest model file. Typically I like to attach all of my geometry by material to speed up the display, as well as organize and speed up the render file. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any way around this DWG linking filter which also brings a lot of garbage, block instances, cropping boundries, etc.., and there is no way to differentiate between the actual geometry and the chaff.

I am spending too much time cleaning up these files. This can not be right. Somebody tell me Autodesk really does not expect us to wade through this DWG linking mess soley for the purpose of organizing a model and rendering it in Max, seems rather pointless to have this functionality if it also happens to make the files so slow they are unusable.

Now that they own revit and MAX, one would think they would tighten this up a bit?? Does anyone else have a solution to this issue, or know if Autodesk plans to address this in future Releases?

 

 

thanks in Advance

Jefferson Grigsby

[jamesB]

Check out http://www.augi.com

 

You can do a search in the rendering section of the forum or post your question. During weekdays you'll get an answer within minutes. In the weekend it might take a little bit longer

[Island J]

Here are a few things to try

1. If you apply your materials in Revit you can change them out in max easily

2. Apply as much materials in Revit as possible eventhough you may not use them for any other purpose than exporting.

3. Always change the material name in max after you change the parameters of the material or remember to specify that max retain scene materials on reload or materials will default back to revit materials:eek: .

4. Keep object styles organised in revit....very organized this helps if you have a multi material that you want to apply to different components. Try to keep the object styles and materials related in some way in the component.

5. Create a custom export file for Revit for each project letting it know what layers to put stuff on.

6. I use VIZ, there is a layer dialog box and I can select layers there--- dont know if that is in max.

7. I changed the material on a face once so i cant remember the specifics but I think i changed the material id for that face and gave it a multi... material, but again i'm not 100% on that.

8. You can mess around with the export options in revit and the link options in max until you get the objects to group the way you want them, if that is possible. Selecting ojects by name also helps.

Hope that helps and I agree with you that the process could be ALOT better but the buzz word seems to be "work-around", Revit is concentrating on Revit being a platform and it doesnt seem like rendering is high on the list IMHO given that the latest release has an old version of accurender builtin. I for one think that Vray should plug right into revit instead of accurender. Or even mental ray. But then you wouldnt buy seats of max/viz And you wouldnt need dwgs so i guess we can forget about that.

 

Jose'