How to Georeference Revit Models in ArcGIS Pro

We've had a fair amount of rain this last few weeks  in Southern California, but not nearly enough to expect that the new design for the Esri building E' should be under water.  Although that seems to be the default when adding the Revit design of our new building to ArcGIS.  Here is the promised second part of the pair of blog posts regarding georeferencing Revit data in ArcGIS Pro. Follow this link to my latest Esri blog and video on How to Georeference Revit data in ArcGIS Pro  

Revit Coordinates for ArcGIS Pro

I was having  a conversation with some BIM folks in Amsterdam this last week and promised I would push out this blog and accompanying video on how I establish coordinates in a Revit  model so that  ArcGIS Pro will position my Revit  model without having to do any additional work.  Arguably it can be a  little  confusing to work through all the options  for  clipping and  un-clipping the Survey  Point and  Project Base Point or talking about the  internal project coordinates, or the fact that those coordinates would seem to always be stored as feet regardless of your display units...   And as a GIS guy you can take my observations with a grain of salt, but here is a link to  what I find works for me when I want to establish the real world coordinates of an existing Revit model.  This is a link to the Esri article on the topic Coordinates In Revit for Use in ArcGIS Pro. 

ArcGIS for AutoCAD and AutoCAD 2019

It was great to meet up with so many in San Diego at the Esri 2018 Users Conference in San Diego.  It was also good to hear from so many of you that are making good use of the free ArcGIS for AutoCAD application and the  bonus  tools.   We are busily at work creating our next release to improve  integration with ArcGIS web GIS we hope to release before the end of the actual calendar year "2018".

ArcGIS for AutoCAD is a free download from Esri, and provides AutoCAD users with a way to generate ArcGIS data inside AutoCAD drawings, and access and edit ArcGIS Web Services.  The latest release has been updated to install into 64bit AutoCAD 2015-2019 versions.  Although ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 already supported AutoCAD 2019, the installer and desktop launcher did not recognize the AutoCAD 2019 versions, and you had to install ArcGIS for AutoCAD on a previous version of AutoCAD.   The installer and desktop executable launcher that invokes AutoCAD and loads ArcGIS for AutoCAD has also been updated for AutoCAD 2019.   

ArcGIS Pro 2.2 Supports the Direct Reading of Revit Files

The recent release of ArcGIS Pro 2.2 introduces two new capabilities for CAD and BIM.   Direct reading of Revit (RVT) files as attributed 3D GIS Objects and georeferencing in 3D Scenes for BIM and CAD data.

Also included in this release is updated support for reading and exporting AutoCAD version 2018 format files which includes AutoCAD 2019 which has the same DWG format file.

When Revit models in the past were supported through conversion to IFC file and then a secondary conversion to a geodatabase using the ArcGIS data interoperability extension and this capability is still available.  New in ArcGIS Pro 2.2 however is the ability to open a Revit BIM models directly off disk (Revit 2011-2018 files).  Review my included YouTube video to  see some highlights of Revit files in ArcGIS Pro 2.2 .  

Within Autodesk's Revit, data is organized into categories, these Revit categories like Walls, Windows or Doors will be directly understood as ArcGIS 3D Multipatch feature classes within ArcGIS,  These Revit-sourced ArcGIS feature classes include many Revit properties and user defined parameters as ArcGIS feature attributes.  Revit data added to ArcGIS Pro behaves like any other 3D  GIS data within ArcGIS Pro and can be queried, measured analyzed used in geoprocessing models and tools, or simply copied to a geodatabase.   

Once saved as a geodatabase the Revit-sourced information can also be shared as scene layers to be included in web scenes or consumed back in other desktop applications like ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Earth.

New ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 Available for Download

Happy New Year.   I am happy to share this with you after my recent vacation.  I would also like to thank the YouTube community for helping me fix my furnace myself over Christmas.  In some small way I hope to help some of you with a YouTube offering of my own that I hope you find useful.

A new version of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370 is now available for free download.  This popular Esri application is linking AutoCAD users with the ArcGIS platform to provide self-service mapping to AutoCAD users through ArcGIS web services and allows AutoCAD users to create and edit ArcGIS GIS data sets within AutoCAD drawing files.  This incremental release includes support for 64bit AutoCAD versions 2015-2018 and some important bug fixes.

For more information see this Esri Blog post.

Take a look at my YouTube video on what’s New in ArcGIS for AutoCAD 370

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ArcGIS for AutoCAD 365 Now Available

A new version of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 365 is now available for free download. I think this release is a very important one, the new block attribute behavior and text linking especially paired with the updated bonus tools for labeling will be an important and useful improvement. These new behaviors will not only help when annotating your drawings but also provides some powerful new options for editing. And lets face it, it takes some of the clunkyness out of working with AutoCAD blocks with attributes in ArcGIS for AutoCAD.

For more information see the Esri blog post.
And, or my YouTube Playlist on what’s New in ArcGIS for AutoCAD 365.

ArcGIS for AutoCAD 355 Now Available

A welcome interruption to the current blog series on the five uses of ArcGIS for AutoCAD, is this reminder that the new shiny version ArcGIS for AutoCAD 355 is now available for download on Esri.com.

Esri is increasing the pace of releases of ArcGIS for AutoCAD. This is one of those incremental releases. Be sure to download the newest version of ArcGIS for AutoCAD 355 now, which is available here.

This new release includes updated support for AutoCAD versions 2013-2017 in nine different languages. New in this release is a command to generate local feature classes from all the populated layers in your drawing. This new command is good for creating new local feature classes from well-structured drawings that you intend to share with ArcGIS desktop users, or that you want to add tabular attributes to within AutoCAD.

This important release fixes a bug when connecting to secure services on ArcGIS 10.3.x and higher servers. This release will also warn you when you connect to feature services on 10.3.1 servers containing unsupported date fields. (This issue with feature service date fields in ArcGIS Server was fixed in ArcGIS Server 10.4), but in case you are using 10.3.1 servers with ArcGIS for AutoCAD you will be warned that you cannot synchronize services when a date field is present in feature services on those servers. Check out this brief video for an overview of what’s new in ArcGIS for AutoCAD 355.