DWF Improvements

In this entry I would like to focus attention to what was done to another mechanism for visualization of Revit Models - Export to DWF.

Prior to the 2010 release, our DWF implementation was divided into two parts: 2D export was done through our graphics engine and 3D export was done independently by traversing the model and trying to "guess" what are the correct attributes for every node in the scene graph. This was leading to a lot of errors and justified user complaints about the output quality. Because of this and other problems, we didn't have the ability to combine 2D and 3D data into one file.

After a lot of requests from our users we were given the task to redesign and improve the DWF export to comply with the following five goals:

• WYSIWYG for 2D and 3D views
• Support for 2D and 3D data exportable to a single file
• Export Room and Area geometry for 3D Views
  
• An improved user interface (UI) for selecting, managing, and previewing what is being exported (see image above.)
  
• Apply this new UI consistently among the different export to CAD functions within Revit. (DWG, DXF,  DGN, SAT)
  

 

We were able to achieve those goals, although though there are couple of items left for improvement. I hope those changes will be helpful to our users and their everyday work.

_tsvetan

Comments

[Kjanik]

Looks like you did a bunch of work on this but the Revit Architecture 2010 Feature Summary only notes some of this under API improvements and Export Building Site areas. (See below.)

Seems like more should have been said since it is much of an improvement and shows another thing fixed and improved in Revit.

New Options for Export to DWF
The option DWF2DExportOptions.ExportFormat allows specification of the paper format for the DWF.
The option DWF2DExportOptions.PortraitLayout allows specification of the layout for the DWF.
The new option DWF2DExportOptions.ImageFormat allows specification of the format for the exported image in the DWF.
The option DWF2DExportOptions.ImageQuality allows specification of the format for the exported image in the DWF.
The option DWF2DExportOptions.StopOnError and DWF3DExportOptions.StopOnError controls whether Revit stops the export process when an error is generated during export of one view, or attempts to continue the export for other pending views.

[Chad]

What a shame that DWFs out of Revit are still somewhat useless.
Some Views such as those which are shaded still output as raster, rather than vector. DWFs with raster images make the DWF file perform terrible and thus are unusable. The file sizes typically end up larger than those of PDFs.

I think I have been requesting to get vectorised files out of Revit every year for about 5 years now.

Very disappointing!

[Tsvetan Tsvetanov]

Agree and as I said there are couple of items that needs more work.

As to the size of DWF in the new UI we exposed a control over the format in which we export the images. In our old DWF Export we always used lossless compression. In 2010 we added additional lossy compression with 3 levels of quality.

[David Baldacchino]

*cough cough* look at that beautiful, unresizeable window where you can barely read the sheet name! Seriously guys, this shouldn't be happening, especially when one of the things of major focus for this release was UI design.

[eddy]

Do I click OK or Export????

it's all so confusing.
what was wrong with the old dialog box?

[Tsvetan Tsvetanov]

Could you please elaborate what is confusing about those two buttons and what you would expect their behavior to be?

[Chad]

It's also a little confusing to have on the Application menu say Export > "DWF", but then have the dialogue box labeled as "DWF Export Settings". So is it exporting a DWF or setting the DWF settings?

With regards to Eddy's comment it's confusing because you are selecting on the Application menu to Export a DWF, and then after a dialogue is presented the next expected button to press is OK. But the OK only saves the Settings not export as the user is expecting.

What you have built is a command in a command. You have the Export command buried inside a DWF Settings command which is run by an Export menu item.
The OK and Cancels buttons on the Export Settings don't have anything to do with Exporting which is what the user has selected to do in the first place.
It's like some kind of paradox that you would see in an episode of Futurama.

Not very user friendly indeed.

I'd also like to ditto David's comment too.

[Tim Waldock]

Great to see improvements in DWF. Only problem is that none of our clients are interested - they all want PDF, so we don't use it (regardless of which is better). I had pretty much given up on Autodesk reinstating direct PDFing from Revit (removed a few versions ago). Then I happened to see a demo of what s new in Autocad 2010 and was amazed to see what looked like a really good implementation of PDF export AND the ability to link in/underlay PDF files. If only we could do that in Revit too.

[eddy]

Tsvetan-

sorry for the long wait, but it is majorly confusing. My default computer user's mind wants to always press OK to make a positive response within a dialog box. If I want to print, as an example, I check my settings then press OK and I get a piece of paper or a PDF with the desired image. It's like that in many applications. In THIS dialog box, exporting a DWF I have a button that says 'OK' and when I press it the dialog box goes away and nothing happens. I have another button called 'cancel' that does the same thing. The Export... button when pressed will export my file do DWF, but the '...' is typically used (again in a lot of other apps' to mean there is another dialog box coming, but instead it just spits out a DWF.

Basically, this dialog, aside from being huge and non-resizable doesn't follow many of the 'rules' or expected behaviors found in other apps. There's no consistency and therefore no predictability forcing either rote memorization of the goofy interface or me to use 2009.

either way, it's confusing. I want to hit OK to export my DWF.

[Charles Francis]

Tsvetan:
We are finding a problem with image scaling when printing DWF's. Even though we export the dwf from RA2010 using a sheet size of 24 x 36 [Arch D] and we set the paper for printing in the DWF advanced features to 24 x36 we have to scale the image to, in some cases, 217% in order to get it to fill the preview and with that, we are not sure of the accuracy of that scaling due to the small preview size. We stumbled onto this due to the problems we are experiencing with printing jpgs in RA2010 and we are searching for a usable workaround. [We are finding that jpg's in RA2010 are printing only a small portion of the image or not printing the image ar all depending on the location on the sheet.]

[Tsvetan Tsvetanov]

eddy, we logged this into our issue database and we'll look into it.

[Daniel Friesen]

Non-resizable dialog boxes was one of the major complaints in the old UI - I find it extremely disappointing that a whole new dialog box in the 'new improved' UI is not resizable, and hides much of the pertinent information. What a lost opportunity.

[Rich Sales (Director Salesoft CAD Solutions - Revit developer)]

Refer also Raster quality Medium that totally smashes an A1 Sheet. SR# 1-6187435761 - Bug Found in DWF EXPORT new feature

Plus if this UI is for Revit why does it say List all Sheets in the MODEL. I thought and teach Revit is a Project based file editor container. Change the working to "List all Project Sheets"
I too am disapointed that Autodesk does not address the fixed dialog issue. It happens in other features like Save & Import a View - that must be extremely short view names to see and select.

[RobiNZ]

It's a pity Revits weird habit of altering the resulting DWFx file name was not addressed as part of this.

When I export with combined sheets into one DWFx I just want the project name to which I append the date. Revit insists on appending the first sheet name (irrelevant on a combined DWF) when automatic long, or removing the project name and using sheet number with auto short.

Have I missed the "Create the filename the user specifies without meddling" option somewhere?

[RobiNZ]

Re Export & OK

When I first saw this dialog I expected OK to complete the export process and create the DWF.

Export... to me implies "export something related to this dialog" like the current sheet/view configuation to a file rather than the actual DWF

[Patrick Davis]

We use DWF for markups, but there are some improvements that would be very beneficial.

1. I would like to be able to apply a Filter or have some kind of default display change for the individual markups based upon their markup status. Ideally the visual representation would be the same as what you see in Design Review.

2. Schedule markups by sheets with their status. If a markup set gets sent to QA/QC, gets marked-up and linked back into Revit, the team either needs to print the markups or go sheet by sheet. Not very efficient.