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In April of 2015, I wrote The Importance of Auditing Revit Models and, more recently, another blog post, Too Many Missing Elements. (Be sure to read these articles if you have not yet done so.) The reason I wrote these posts was we have seen many cases in which our customers were experiencing a rash of file errors, such as corrupt families within a Revit project. At that time, I emphasized the importance of clicking the ‘Audit’ button at the bottom left corner of the Open dialogue box whenever files were being upgraded from one Revit version to the next (either Revit 2015 to Revit 2016 or Revit 2016 First Customer Ship to Revit 2016 R2) and whenever you were experiencing file errors or performance issues.
Besides clicking the ‘Audit’ button from time to time, I now want to call attention to the fact it is also really important to “Audit” your Revit models, on at least a weekly basis. You want to regularly be looking for warning signs your model is heading for trouble and whether or not you are deviating from office standards. For example, look at the Revit Warnings to see how many you have and which one’s deal with calculation and redundancy issues. These types of warnings usually contribute to file performance issues and potential file opening and upgrading problems as well. In addition, use the powerful tools within Ideate Explorer to have a quick overall look at your model so that you can make informed decisions on how to correct or improve your model’s health and performance.
For more detailed information on Auditing your Revit models watch this video I put together for you, Part 2: The importance of Auditing Revit Models.
For more information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website.
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. Find him on twitter.
We have seen several cases in which customers have had issues opening their Revit files due to missing elements. While attempting to open their file, they receive the following message:
“The file .rvt cannot be opened. There are too many elements missing in it. Please contact Autodesk Support.”
Possible Causes:
- There may be an issue with a file that is linked into the project you are attempting to open. For example, if the linked file has many missing elements and the link cannot be loaded, Revit may throw the missing elements warning.
- It’s possible the file had a problem reading the code to each element in the project. This tends to happen when one or more of the computers in the team is missing an update for Revit, whether they are working on the First Customer Ship (FCS) version, or any of the Updated Versions for Revit. What could happen is if someone saved the Revit file using a newer build of the software, the older version could have issues reading some of the elements within the file, since there is a possibility the newer build changes the way Revit reads a project file. When we are on tech support, we frequently look at the customer’s system to see which build of Revit they are currently using and then ask them to compare that build with others in the office. More times than not, we discover users are all over the place with their builds.
Possible Solutions:
- With an error like this, it is a good idea to try and audit the file to see if Revit can repair the file first. Chances are slim it will resolve the issue, but auditing is always a good starting point.
- Check to see if there is a missing linked file. If many elements are attached to a link and the link cannot be resolved, there could be a large number of "missing" elements (Autodesk website).
- If all the links are loaded without errors, check whether you can recover a backup of the project from before this error occurred. If successful, make sure to audit the recovered project (Autodesk website). It is important to ensure that you have a robust backup system for your Revit files. For example, ensure your office has a general file backup system. Also, make sure you have at least a few backups of your Central files, as well. Lastly, Local files can be used to create new Central files, especially in times of Central file corruption. Ensure users keep a few backups of their local files and remember, ALWAYS create new locals on a daily basis!
- Verify everyone on the team, or better yet, the entire office, is using the same build of Revit. For example, if one person is using Revit 2015 UR11 (First Customer Shipping version with Update Release 11) and the other is using Revit 2015 R2 UR12 (Second customer shipping version with Update Release 12), you are not on the same build. It is highly recommended everyone update to the latest build to help rule out file instability. Keep in mind, if you already have the file error and then you update everyone on the latest build, Revit will probably not resolve the missing elements issue, but it may reduce the chance of happening again since everyone is now on the same build.
- If at all possible, you can attempt to upgrade the project to the next release of Revit. For example, if the project was created in Revit 2015, try to see if you can Audit and Upgrade the file to Revit 2016 (remember, make sure everyone is on the same build of Revit). Keep in mind if this is successful and you wish to proceed using the new version of the software, the entire project team must also upgrade their Revit files, as well, since Revit files are NOT backwards compatible.
Additional Resources to Review:
General Data Corruption
Revit Build Numbers
Recover a Workshared Central File
For more information on training and consulting for the various products Ideate services, visit our website.
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. Find him on twitter.
In-place families are powerful elements that can be created in the context of the Revit model. However, they come with some performance trade-offs.
The following quote is straight from the Revit Help topic:
“You can create multiple in-place elements in your projects, and you can place copies of the same in-place element in your projects. Unlike system families and loadable families, however, you cannot duplicate in-place family types to create multiple types.
Although you can transfer or copy in-place elements between projects, you should do so only when necessary, because in-place elements can increase file size and degrade software performance.”
So, how can we use Ideate Explorer to seek out and audit these in-place elements to make sure they are being used properly in our project?
Continue reading this Ideate Software solutions post by Richard Taylor, on the Ideate Software blog.
Sash Kazeminejad
