Spiteful CAD Imports-Repost

This article comes from the blog do-u-revit by Dave Baldacchino and Steven Campbell. I'm re-blogging this because I feel it's an important workaround. I also feel that Autodesk should be addressing this in the program and not relying so much on outside apps.

I also wrote an article on the dangers of importing CAD here.

Spiteful CAD Imports

So this week the buildingSMART managers at HOK were discussing ways to get rid of imported (BAD!!) CAD files in Revit projects. Should be something that is easy to do, right? Well, not so easy it turns out.

If you need to do this, you might simply fork out a little cash for a custom plugin. Autodesk Exchange has a good number of such things available and my cohort Brok Howard pointed me to Purge Cads. I have not tried it, but I did confirm with the developer that it does not touch linked CAD files, so for a couple of bucks, this will get the job done fast.

One way or another, you need a plugin. In my case I had Ideate Explorer at my disposal. Unfortunately it lumps CAD Imports & Links together. If you have this plug-in, here’s what you might call “an obscene work-around” to hack your way to the finish line:

• Assuming you have worksharing enabled, have another user go to the Manage Links dialog and re-load all loaded CAD Links and load & unload all unloaded CAD Links. All we need is to have another user borrow these linked instances so we can get their name in the following step;
• Go to the Manage Links dialog and try to load/unload the links. You will then get a list of CAD links that you don’t have permission to edit (the ones touched by the other user in the above step). Take note of the names;

• In Ideate Explorer, select all CAD Imports/Links, then go to the Revit filter and de-select the instances listed above.

• Now delete the selection and the links will be retained.

Autodesk (or Ideate), if you’re reading this, don’t you think our lives can be simplified by a smidgen? This type of functionality should just be built into the product. The amount of solutions we have to default to via plug-ins is getting way out of hand!