ArcGIS Pro is foundational to workflows supporting the buildings, transportation, and distribution systems that let us live and work. Use ArcGIS Pro to directly read CAD and BIM datasets such as those from Autodesk® Revit® (.rvt), Industry Foundation Classes (.ifc), and Autodesk Civil 3D® (.dwg). Whether the CAD and BIM datasets are accessed from a project folder or a BIM Cloud Connection, they readily combine with all other project information in ArcGIS Pro as feature classes. The ArcGIS Pro workflow also supports georeferencing CAD and BIM files. Project information collected into building scene layers can be published from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise and then streamed over the web.
ArcGIS Pro allows you to author, analyze, and visualize immersive scenes for making project insights. Additionally, you can share comprehensive project information to the web for use in interconnected systems and cross-team collaborations. With expanded CAD and BIM integrations in ArcGIS Pro, you can easily import, view, and inspect geometries and attributes from design files. New to the 3.3 release, ArcGIS Pro adds support for models authored in Revit 2024 while broadening existing integrations for concepts from IFC 4×3 and Civil 3D objects.
Release highlights
BIM continues to grow beyond buildings to include transportation components and concepts such as surface modeling. In recognizing these advances, the CAD and BIM integrations in ArcGIS Pro 3.3 likewise include new direct-read support for elements needed in road, rail, and site modeling workflows. Highlighted below are three CAD and BIM integrations new to ArcGIS Pro 3.3. Access the release notes to find detailed documentation on all new features as well as other product resources.
Add Civil 3D corridors to ArcGIS Pro scenes for road and rail workflows
Autodesk Civil 3D is widely used for civil engineering design and documentation efforts in infrastructure projects. Design entities created in Civil 3D, referred to as objects, combine geometry and parameter sets for modeling infrastructure components such as bridges, pipe networks, and parcels. For road and rail project workflows, designers can model corridors in Civil 3D. These configurable objects bring together alignments and profiles (centerline information) with cross-section information for 3D modeling of roadways and railways. Building upon existing integrations for many Civil 3D objects, direct-read support for corridors is new to ArcGIS Pro 3.3.
Consider a scenario in which multiple roadway corridors, created in Civil 3D, need to be visualized as part of an ArcGIS Pro scene. In ArcGIS Pro 3.3, you can visualize the corridor holistically as a 3D multipatch feature class, generate a raster layer, and incorporate the corridor topography into the definition of ground. In addition to what is shown below, you can also access the linear components and stationing of the corridor (through the Alignments feature class) to boost workflows involving symbolization and linear referencing.
Define ground in ArcGIS Pro scenes using Autodesk Revit 2024 Toposolids
Autodesk Revit 2024 introduced a new element type, Toposolids. These are 3D objects used to represent the terrain across project sites and are typically created based on the site contour lines, spot elevations, or point cloud data. ArcGIS Pro 3.3 supports Revit 2024, including direct-read of Toposolids, so that GIS users can better understand site conditions, situate other scene components such as building base slabs for visualization, and help make informed project decisions.
Shown in the video below is an ArcGIS Pro scene for a project site containing several buildings and parking spaces, which were directly read from a Revit 2024 model. In this example, as the GIS user, I cut into the existing surface of the site using the geometry of the Toposolid in order to see the underground parking. I added the Toposolid feature class to the scene as a layer of multipatch entities and use a geoprocessing tool to create a corresponding raster layer. Once I merged the raster layer into the group of elevation layers, I visualized the underground space in harmony with the other scene components.
Attribution: Revit model, Brownsville, Pennsylvania
Define ground in ArcGIS Pro scenes using digital terrain from IFC
buildingSMART International (bSI) maintains the IFC standard, which is an open exchange BIM format used internationally. Having joined bSI as a multi-national member in 2020, Esri continues to strengthen integration support for direct-read of IFC files in ArcGIS Pro. Enhancements to BIM integrations in ArcGIS Pro 3.3 include broadened support for the IFC 4×3 standard.
New to ArcGIS Pro 3.3 is direct-read of digital terrain from IFC 4×3 files. An example use case is shown below using a scene of an airport. In this example, I directly accessed surface model information from an IFC file, which I first added to the scene as a layer of multipatch features. Next, I added to the definition of ground in the scene by generating a raster layer from the multipatch features and then adding the raster layer to the elevation layers group. Having incorporated the surface information from the IFC file into the scene, I then visualized changes to ground surface elevations in context with other scene components such as the airport terminal and runways.
Ask the ArcGIS experts
Reach out to the ArcGIS Pro CAD and BIM team with questions and suggest ways to make CAD and BIM integrations in ArcGIS Pro even better. Visit the Esri Community to post questions and participate in product discussions. Help drive new capabilities and enhancements to future releases by posting your product ideas for consideration.
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