Somehow screwed up my machine when opening Revit files/families

[patricks]

Yesterday I decided to uninstall Revit 2011 since we're only using 2012 and (mostly) 2013 now. After doing so, my machine lost the program association for what program to use to open RFA and RVT files. I double-clicked on a Revit file in Explorer and it brought up the window asking me to specify what program to open it with (all the while I had 2013 open and running).

So I navigated to the Revit 2013 EXE. Now, however, if I double click on any Revit file in Explorer, or if I download a Revit file and try to open it from Firefox, my machine will open a 2nd session of Revit 2013 instead of just opening the file in the 2013 instance I already have running.

Before I removed 2011 all Revit files would open up in 2013 just fine, if that's the Revit version I had open when double-clicking a Revit file or opening a Revit file from Firefox. Any ideas what has caused this and how to fix it? I'm sure it's some system registry entry somewhere that the 2011 uninstall process probably wiped out. I just don't understand why it keeps wanting to open a second instance of 2013.

[patricks]

Anybody has this happen before? It's pretty annoying to try to open some family while I have Revit 2013 open, only to have another instance of Revit 2013 open up just to open said family. It can also be problematic not having the family and project open in the same instance of Revit (can't Load Into Project for one thing).

[frolio2986347657]

I've just run into the same issue when uninstalling Revit 2012. When I open a family, a second instance of Revit opens. Has anyone else run into this and/or found a solution?

[patricks]

My guess is that some DLL file or some registry entry gets changed during the uninstall of one version, that affects all other versions' associations with the native files.

It might be possible to "repair" the installation of the current Revit version you're running.

[frolio2986347657]

I've found a solution to my problem. It was a registry error. I'm running Revit 2014 so I changed the following registry values..

For Families:
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Revit.Family\shell\open\command
Change (Default) to
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014\Revit.exe"

For Projects:
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Revit.Project\shell\open\command
Change (Default) to
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014\Revit.exe"

[cr_gixxer]

I've found a solution to my problem. It was a registry error. I'm running Revit 2014 so I changed the following registry values..

For Families:
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Revit.Family\shell\open\command
Change (Default) to
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014\Revit.exe"

For Projects:
\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Revit.Project\shell\open\command
Change (Default) to
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit 2014\Revit.exe"

how exactly do I do this?
I can't seem to find revit. family or revit.project when I go into regedit.
should I try a repair first?

[patricks]

Blah. I'm hoping when I remove Revit 2012 and then install 2014 that this will be fixed.

[patricks]

how exactly do I do this?
I can't seem to find revit. family or revit.project when I go into regedit.
should I try a repair first?

I wouldn't go messing with that. Those registry keys might be installed with 2014, but they do not exist on my machine with 2012 and 2013. There are some Revit.Family and Revit.Project key names under "OpenWithProgids" in several places, but they are buried deeeeep within the registry and it's probably a bad idea to mess with them.