Setting Drawing Preferences

Control the behavior of your CAD application.

Pay particular attention to the CAD Application preference listed below. This determines the drawing environment you will use and is required to access your CAD drawing tool.

Select the AutoCAD color to be used when fill-highlighting assets that meet the Archibus restriction.

The default is Red (255, 0, 0).

Enter the size (in feet) of the “splotch” circle placed behind small assets to highlight them in cases where a “fill” type highlight would not be visible. The program uses splotches on any asset that is less than the “splotch” size.

The default is 3 feet.

Note: The size is always given in feet. The program converts to meters when displaying the splotch on metric drawings.

Enter the layer of the drawing to use to hold temporary restriction highlights.

The default is HL-TMP.

Select the CAD application (Revit or AutoCAD) to use with Archibus. The Smart Client detects the available CAD and Revit programs and presents them for you to select.

The CAD application you select determines the Archibus drawing environment with which you will work: 

• Archibus Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD
• Archibus Smart Client Extension for Revit

AutoCAD

If you are using AutoCAD, select the appropriate entry from the drop-down menu of the CAD Application option.

Revit

If you using Revit, do not use the drop-down menu of the CAD Application option. Instead, use the ellipses (…) button to access the CAD Selector and check the desired Revit versions and click OK. Note that Archibus supports multiple Revit versions at the same time; choose multiple Revit versions by selecting their checkboxes.

While you have a model opened in Autodesk Revit, do not change the CAD Application preferences to point to a Revit version. This use case it is not supported and it will lead to an error in the Archibus Extension for Revit.

In order to change or enable a new Revit version, close all instances of Autodesk Revit and then set the CAD Application option by using the (…) button and checking the desired version or versions.

The AutoCAD profile name that Archibus uses when starting AutoCAD from the Drawing List and the Find In Drawing command.

If you use the Drawing List dialog from within AutoCAD, the program ignores this preference and drawings will open inside the open version of AutoCAD.

The default value is None.

Select Yes if the program should always publish to enterprise graphics all active drawing publishing rules whenever the drawing is saved.

Note: This setting applies to both the Extension for AutoCAD and the Extension for Revit.

Controls whether changes made in the Smart Client grid are automatically updated in the BIM model or CAD drawing, if currently open.  The Smart Client syncs renamed identity fields (for example, the Room Code or Equipment Code) and model-driven values.  The Smart Client respects the setting on model-driven values -- those that should always originate from the model -- and does not update those values.

If enabled, the following rules dictate if the CAD drawing is updated or not.

• A CAD drawing is already open in either AutoCAD or Revit.
• That open drawing is recognized as an Archibus drawing, that is, it has a record in the afm_dwgs table.
• The grid is displayed in the Smart Client for records that are considered CAD Asset types, such as rooms and equipment
• A change is made to a record(s), and the values being changed meets any of the following criteria:
  • Is part of the primary key
  • Is the standard value
  • Is part of the CAD asset label

  The end result of a CAD update initiated from the Smart Client grid is as follows:

  • For AutoCAD, the XData and Label will both be updated.
  • For Revit, the element properties will be updated