Tag: corrupt

Revit 2020.2 Family Corruption and Revit 2020.2.1 Hotfix

Luke Johnson

Most experienced Revit professionals are somewhat wary of brand new versions of Revit, and they might wait a year or so before actually deploying a new version of Revit. The Revit 2021 release season is nearing in the next month or two, so it is somewhat surprising that a serious issue with Revit 2020 (specifically with update 2020.2) has surfaced in the last couple of weeks…

cue scary Jaws music da-dum da-dum

Some of you may have been tracking the Family Corruption issue with Revit 2020.2 update, the Autodesk Hotfix for that issue, and then some of the possible problems with the Hotfix. Below you will find some further detail on this, including download links.

Initially Autodesk released a hotfix (around 4mb), but I believe that has now been replaced with a new combined 2020.2.1 installer (around 378mb) that includes 2020.2 and the hotfix in one installation. You can no longer download the previous *bad* version of 2020.2 (such as was linked here). Screenshot below shows the actual mini hotfix file:

 

File Name: Autodesk_Revit_2020_2_1.exe

Direct Download Link: Revit 2020.2.1 Download (full 378 mb package)

Release Notes: link here

 

Some users have experienced an issue where Revit does not launch after the application of 2020.2.1

 

Here are the full details on the Family Corruption issue, including “how can this happen” and “how you might try and fix it”:

To check existing projects for corruption

Go through the steps in the following article to Audit and then review the Revit journal:
File will not synchronize in Revit

To repair the corruption

Use the instructions in the article above to reload the families called out in the Revit journal.

Question/Answer:

Q. What is the issue?
A.  A change in the way that Revit 2020.2 processes families can cause family content to go missing from workshared central models created in previous versions if the families have existed in an active project for a long time without being modified. The defect results in the deletion of the family content from the central model.

Q. Which versions/models are affected?
A. This issue affects only Revit 2020.2. Previous versions are not affected.

Q. What models are affected?
A. The issue can affect workshared models that were created or upgraded in Revit 2020.0 or 2020.1 which are then repeatedly modified in Revit 2020.2. This issue can impact central models stored locally, on Revit Server, or in Revit Cloud Worksharing. The following models are NOT affected:

  1. Non-workshared models
  2. Workshared models created and exclusively modified in Revit 2020.2
Q. What is Autodesk doing to resolve the issue?
A. Hotfix was released 02/07/2020. A full install of Revit will be updated to include the hotfix in the next few days.Q. Revit 2020.2 has been available for months – why didn’t Autodesk communicate anything previously?
A. The Revit team was first made aware of a possible issue by our customers a few weeks ago. Since these kinds of issues can be difficult to reproduce from scratch, from the time a concern was raised we have been working closely with those customers to reproduce the issue. We were finally successfully able to reproduce, and therefore confirm, the issue at the end of last week when we took action to limit the availability of Revit 2020.2. We have been working diligently to clarify the full scope of the impact and the possible workarounds in order to write this communication.Q. Why didn’t the Revit team discover the issue during pre-release testing?
A. Unfortunately because this issue requires a combination of model creation and modification of families in a previous version and then extensive modification to the same model in 2020.2 it does not lend itself well to typical testing practices or automated regression tests. This means that unfortunately, despite rigorous Revit 2020.2 testing, we were not able to identify the issue before it affected customer models. We sincerely thank the customers that escalated the issue to us so that we are now able to take appropriate action.

Q. What actions will the Revit team take to prevent this kind of issue from happening again?
A. After the Revit team resolves the immediate issue, we will be holding a retrospective to clarify how the defect occurred and what specific actions we can take to prevent similar issues in the future. As much as possible we will look to create automated tests to cover this kind of situation as that means that every future Revit code submission will be scanned for similar problems.

Related blog posts:

Upgrading Corrupt or Problem Models in Revit, and How to Fix Spot Elevation Not Detecting Linked Element

Luke Johnson

Ok, two unrelated issues here, but both are along the lines of “weird stuff that happens in Revit that can be fixed but doesn’t always make sense”. If you use Revit long enough, you will certainly come across issues like this…

Firstly, certain Electrical penetration families were not tagging for height when using Spot elevations. These elements were in a model, which was linked into another model. The fix? Super weird one. Try turning on Lighting Fixtures in your View (in the host model). Then, those spot elevations worked… Even though the penetration family was a Generic Model with Nested Mechanical Equipment inside a link file. I’m thinking this one was either an upgrade error, or perhaps the families had some earlier history as a Lighting Fixture?!?

Secondly, I came across a Structural Consultant Design Model in Revit 2015 that doesn’t want to upgrade to Revit 2016. This is due to some corruption inside various families. Here are a few things to try… along with the ultimate solution.

1) Try opening the model in the newer version of Revit with Detach and Audit ticked, and choose Specify from the Worksets dialog dropdown. If the Opening Worksets dialog appears, Close all the Worksets and press OK. Then, Detach and preserve worksets. You should see the Model Upgrade progress dialog.

This fails with the following error:
The file cannot be opened. There are too many elements missing in it. Please contact Autodesk Support.

2) Next steps are more detailed and resulted in a successful upgrade:

1. Open in 2015, with Audit and Detach, no Worksets open
2. Save As
3. Open in 2016, with Audit and Detach, no Worksets open
a. Delete families when prompted (as you can see, it is one problem Rebar family)
b.

c. Ok to mass errors:
d.

e. Click to resolve Join errors
f. 

4. Save As
5. Setup starting view…

And here are some model tidy-up steps that I did, just #GoodRevit with some Dynamo:
6. Make these worksets:
a. Hide-CADs
b. Hide-Topo
c. Link-Control
7. Move DWGs to workset by:
a. Getting Ids in Dynamo
b.

c. Group
d. Change Workset
e. Set workset invisible
8. Move Topo to workset and set invisible

9. Acquire Coordinates from Control Model
a. Copy / paste control model from current ST file to this upgraded one
b. Link neutral coordinate file
i. Acquire
c. Then acquire from BMGR control file
d. Save

Finally, sharing with team:
10. Save to Box
11. Open in Fed
12. Glue