Using sheet indexes with consultant files in Revit...

In a previous discussion on Gensler's Revit Q&A Forums, it was suggested that recreating consultant's drawing lists was a waste of our time and makes us responsible for keeping the data consistent with the consultants drawing list, even after they make changes.

Christian Bushong's (Santa Monica, CA Office) solution below frees us from having to be responsible for others work. While it is possible to create all the dummy sheets and include them in our list, I like the idea of pasting or importing the list somehow.

Some other possibilities…

Revit >> Revit (Best Option)

Create (or have the consultants create) a separate Revit file that will contain the Consultants sheets and then link in the project to include them in a drawing list.

Excel >> AutoCAD >> Revit

Assuming that consultants are using our Drawing list formats…

If you receive as an Excel file… you can easily select the cells and copy and paste into AutoCAD as a table…(somewhat retaining the formatting)

(To keep a link to the Excel file, use Edit --> Paste Special and click on Link).. you might have to do a little tweaking to get the line colors correct.. but using the BLOCKPROPS and EBL commands can help clean that up.

If you’re really brave, you can use the Excel to AutoCAD tool.. this helps recreate much of the Excel formatting.

You can then link the DWG file into Revit (the current view only).

Images (Drawing List as an Image) >> Revit

While this is another possibility..it’s not the best… there are more variables to consider (scale, resolution, format etc).

I’m told that PNG works well..