Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
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Autodesk Support
Oct 8, 2023
Products and versions covered
Note: When using Revit tools for troubleshooting purposes, you could make changes that you will not want to keep. To avoid accidentally making unwanted changes to your project file, make a copy of the project (and if necessary linked project files) and only work with the copied file.
When troubleshooting a project-specific issue, get the following information. (This information is good for troubleshooting most software issues):
It is a good idea to apply product updates when troubleshooting unexpected behavior (as updates often resolve such issues). In addition, if you are working with someone else to troubleshoot the issue, make sure that everyone is using the same product version.
Linked files can cause unexpected behavior in Revit, such as unexpected display of linked elements or crashing, or they can prevent a project file from opening in the first place.
If you can't open the host project file, try copying it to a location without the linked files, and verify whether you can open it. If you can open it, then you can begin determining which linked file is preventing the project from opening. (If you find that you can only have a certain number of any given linked files loaded, you may be seeing a resource-related issue).
If you can open the project, but are seeing unexpected behavior, a good first step is to go into the Manage Links dialog (on the Insert ribbon tab), and remove all linked files from the project to see if the issue is related to one (or more) of the linked files.
Sometimes, one project is not working like another, and you don't know what setting in Revit is causing the different behavior. To clear the issue, you can try transferring all the project standards from the working project to the problematic one. To narrow down what setting was causing the issue (if transferring all of the project standards fixes the issue), you can transfer them in groups, or individually until you find the specific category that clears the issue. Then compare the category settings between the two projects
Occasionally you may find that one view, is not behaving like other views in your project. In this situation you can create a view template from the view that is working as you expect, and apply that template to the problematic view. If the issue is cleared, you can modify the view template to apply fewer settings and determine what specific category was different between the views.
The Project Browser is the tool that allows you to access the different views in your project. It also allows you to access and manipulate Families, Groups, and Revit Links.
If you suspect a particular group is causing issues in your project, you can find the group in the Project Browser, right-click it, and click Select All Instances -> In entire Project. Once all instances are selected, you can ungroup them or remove them from the project.
If a particular family is not working expected, and you want to remove and reload the family, you can use the steps above to select all instances in the project, and then use the Type Selector to change the instances to a temporary family type. (To do this, create a new family type on a different family in the same category and then change the instances to the new family type.) Remove the existing family (which no longer has any instances), reload the family into the project, and then change the previous family instances back to their original family type.
If you suspect that one or more families are causing an error in your project, you can use the project browser to remove all of the families (except for a single instance of each system family type) and verify whether the error is cleared. If the error is cleared, you can then narrow down what family or families were involved with the error.
Note: Removing the family removes the family instances. It is possible an error could be related to a particular instance of the family, and not the family itself. This leads to the next tool.
If you find a particular element in the project is not behaving as expected, you can try recreating it by Cutting it to the clipboard, and then pasting it aligned to the same place.
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