One of the advantages of supporting any type of software is that you are often confronted with the customer’s workflows and needs. Many times, the support case leads to further investigation to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish and whether the software can accomplish the tasks natively, or if it requires a workaround. Lately, we have had a few cases that dealt with the Transfer Project Standards feature in Revit. Some customers simply want to transfer one or two items from another project, instead of transferring the entire category of settings or Family Types. In some cases, however, we were asked why some elements do not transfer over with the Transfer Project Standards feature.
When it comes down to Revit Families, Transfer Project Standards will NOT transfer loaded (component) families (well, sort of. I’ll explain later). If you want to transfer Revit Families, you can either find the external Families and load them into your project, or if you cannot find the external families but can find them in another project, you can simply open that project, find the family, click the “Edit Family” button and then select the “Load into Project” feature to load them into your current project.
So if Transfer Project Standards does not transfer over component Families, what does it load or transfer over? According to the Autodesk Help file, Transfer Project Standards copies over the following project standards:
• Family Types, including System Families (Floors, Walls, Roofs, Ceilings, etc.)
• Line weights, materials, view templates, & object styles.
• Mechanical settings, piping, and electrical settings.
• Annotation styles, color fill schemes, and fill patterns.
• Print settings.
If you want to transfer or copy over Families that are not part of the Transfer Project Standards feature, then you could try a few of the options in this blog post.
For this example, we are going to look at the Profiles category in this Revit file. There are (5) profiles being used (as underlined in red) by the two walls that are shown. Take note that each of the (5) profile Families have more than one Family Type. For example, the Family named ‘Reveal-Brick Course’ has three Family Types (1 Brick, 2 Bricks, 3 Bricks).
To test out the Transfer Project Standards, we cleared out all of the Profiles in our new Revit project and then selected only the Wall Types from the Transfer Project Standards. Remember, Walls are System Families, therefore, they will transfer over with the Transfer Project Standards Feature.
After the Transfer Project Standards completed, the (5) Profile Families that were part of the system Families (the walls in this case) transferred over, however, the additional Family Types that were not used by the Wall Types did not transfer over. This clearly indicates that Transfer Project Standards will not copy over ALL component Families, rather, Transfer Project Standards will copy over only the component Family Types that are part of a System Family.
If you want to transfer over all the Family Types from one project to another, you have a few options. The first one, of course, is to find the component family on your computer or network server and then simply load it into your new project. This feature is by far the most widely used method. But if you cannot find the component family outside of your Revit model, then find the Family in the Project Browser, right-click on it and select the Edit option.
Once the Edit option is selected, you will be in the Family Editor. Rather than editing the family, simply select the Load into Project or Load into Project and Close option. By selecting either of these two buttons, you will be able to load the entire Family and all of its Types into your new Project.
If you only need to transfer a few Families to another project, then the aforementioned method may be the easiest, however, if you want to transfer many families over, you can save all your project families to a folder and then load the ones you need into your new project. Depending on how many Families exist in a Revit project, the export process can take some time to process.
For more information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com
Sash Kazeminejad
AEC Senior Application Specialist
Sash brings proficiency in Autodesk solutions including AutoCAD and Revit Architecture to Ideate customers. His industry experience includes project management, BIM Management, and design for Architectural firms in California, Montana and Oregon. He is LEED accredited professional and is on track to achieve California licensure with Oregon to follow. In his academic life, Sash was awarded a variety of college scholarships, earned a BA in Environmental Design, a MA in Architecture from Montana State University (MSU) and taught Building Information Modeling courses at MSU Gallatin College. As a Revit Architecture Autodesk Certified Instructor, Sash provides Revit Architecture training and support for AEC firms.@sashpdx
