Any 2013 Deployment creation how-to's?

[patricks]

Are there any meaningful how-to's out on creating a deployment with custom settings for Revit 2013? I see there are some options as far as including custom Revit.ini files and something about a inifile.xml I think. I have no idea how to use or modify that stuff. I *REALLY* want to have all the file locations and everything as part of the deployment so I don't have to go around doing it every time.

Would it be as simple as installing it on my own machine, getting everything set, and then using the INI file on my machine in the deployment?

*edit* I went back and looked at the 2012 Deployment threads, and there was a link posted to this Deployment Creation Utility from Autodesk: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...linkID=9273944

Will there be something similar for 2013 or is this utility already built in with the 2013 deployment creation process?

[patricks]

I don't know, it may actually be less time for me to just set it up on each machine rather than spending the time and trial-and-error trying to get a deployment right.

[rosskirby]

Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgVxfpsPoA

[patricks]

Yeah I watched that last night, not sure how that DFS stuff relates to our setup. We just have a server in the back room running a domain for the office, and all users have a domain login that runs a login script to map several shared folders on the server as drive letters on the workstations. However I did notice when setting up the deployment that it wants the deployment location specified as the UNC path, i.e. \\server\revit2013\deployment instead of the mapped driver letter path.

I guess my question is should I go ahead and install on my machine, get it set up, and use my Revit.ini file as the basis for the INI used in the deployment? And if so then do I even need to mess with anything in the inifile.xml file?

[rosskirby]

That's pretty much what I'm doing (setting up mine first, then pushing that out as part of the deployment). It doesn't seem like we even need to mess with the inifile.xml anymore.

[patricks]

okay cool. So have you been able to get the deployment to work correctly with all the options set up after installation, or are you still working on it?

I'm trying to get a big project out this week so will probably try it myself next week.

[patricks]

Oh, haha I guess DFS is what we have - just the definition of having files stored on a server that multiple users in the office can access. I had not heard the term "Distributed File System" used before to describe this setup.

[patricks]

I went back and watched the video again. I believe this is essentially what I need to do. Only thing I wonder about is that error about the Project Path being relative, which he then changes to the UNC network path of his content. Does that not change the Location setting for user files, or not? Reason I ask is that needs to be set to the user's local Documents folder on our machines. So could I make that line say ProjectPath=C:\Users\%USERPROF­ILE%\Documents instead? This would be for a Win7 installation.

[heath.simone]

Just a question why you want the content local to each machine and not centrally stored on the network?

Is that only the Autodesk content or all your content that is stored local?

[patricks]

That's what I'm asking - is ProjectPath referring to the option in File Locations where user documents are stored? Normally that's assigned to username\Documents which is why I was asking.

We typically install the content that comes with each Revit release on the local machine, but still path to our server as the default Library path.