2011 - Creating New RAC Version Project Templates - What do you do?

[ra]

What is the "best practice" for creating a new RAC 2011 project template?

UPDATE 2010 file to 2011? or

Transfer Project Standards to 2011 Project Template file?

[david.kingham]

Used to upgrade and had corruption issues on many projects so now we re-create it every year from the 'None' template and transfer project standards (along with many other things)

[twiceroadsfool]

1. First ill update a copy of the content libraries, both in .rfa and .rvt formats, with the batch utilities.
2. Then ill Upgrade a copy of the project Template.
3. Then ill reload all of the content in to the template (if you dont, even though the content IN the template is in the right version, it will "point" to the 2010 libraries.
4. Then ill repoint the Places, rendering, etc, to the 2011 locations.
5. Then ill go to our in-house Family Templates files, change them to .rfa and update them, then change them back.
6. Ill make what additions and changes are necessary for new features, etc.

Then i send it out. been doing it this way for years, never had a problem get corrupted with any evidence that it had anything to do with an updated template.

[greg.mcdowell]

Wow... that's quite a bit of work. Hope everyone there appreciates it! Also, thanks for the brief outline. If you have more to say on this I know I'll be interested!

[ra]

Aaron 'Thank you' for sharing.
You mentioned a batch utility to convert files...
Is the batch convert a custom converter or 3rd party??
Thanks again.

[twiceroadsfool]

Autodesk releases a batch utility script to upgrade entire libraries of families. (It doesnt work on a network, but i just got the library to a local drive and use it there. Then i use the other batch utility they ship to clear out the backup files that are created.)

But, we store a ton of content as Model Groups saved to regular .rvt's instead of families. Five minutes of script edting, and the provided family upgrading utility can be turned in to a project upgrader for directories of projects, too.

Greg- Thats the MINIMUM of what has to be done every year. People dont always realize that simply "upgrading" a template upgrades everything IN it, but it still points to last years stuff. Unless you keep a static "current" library, and migrate the old ones back. But then you have to repath all the old versions, which i dont prefer.

Some years (like 2011) we will revisit a lot of content, due to new features, or new component types. Even still, were starting with an upgraded copy of last years template.

[ws]

I had to hunt around for the Content batch utility this year.

I've attached it in a zipped folder.

Instructions are in the readme file.

The thing I used to omit was to delete all the backup files first, and I've also discovered that it converts sub-folder content as well.

I use *.*0*.* as the filter string in Windows Explorer to find all the backup files.

[ra]

Thank all of you again for sharing....I appreciate you guys taking the time to do so.

[patricks]

Sometimes I upgrade our template, sometimes I make a new one.

I started creating a new one for 2010 last year, but was having issues at that time so finally just upgraded the 2009 one and used it.

This year I'm set on creating a new 2011 template from scratch. When I did a Transfer Project Standards from the 2010 template, there were errors about the elevation tags and such (due to now being able to customize the elevation tags I guess), so I had to do some work correcting those. I got our default template views set up (mostly) but haven't loaded all the content we normally have in the template yet.

Some years I do batch upgrades of our family library, some years I never get around to it. Unfortunately we have not really taken steps over the years to separate the OOTB content from stuff we create, or OOTB stuff we modify. So now all the stuff is interspersed throughout the library, and I can't even begin to think of how much time and effort it would take to separate it all out. Typically if the new version ships with new content, I'll copy that content over (like all the detail component libraries, the recent lighting family changes, etc) but other than that, we usually just keep using the same families over and over, year after year.

[Tony C.]

For what it's worth;

Last year we converted our custom in-house template from 2009 to 2010 and used it on lots of projects. It wasn't until much later in the year that we traced a few issues to the converted template. They were minor issues, but nonetheless they were caused by converting our 2009 template to 2010.

At that point we completely re-created our company template starting with an OOB Autodesk 2010 template. This fixed the issues.

This year we are trying to decide whether to convert or re-create.
Converting is riskier, as we don't know what corruption might occur,.. perhaps none at all.
Re-creating the template is safer, but will take lots & lots of time as we have a highly customized template.


Any input on converting a 2010 template to 2011?
Are there any known issues yet?


Thanks!

[twiceroadsfool]

In my experience, what many people think is "definetely tied" to upgrading often isnt. Of course, there is much less chance something is wrong if you create a new one, but in my opinion thats also because a new one hasnt been monkeyed with over and over again.

If it was built right the first time, ive never had a single problem with any project that was every discerned to be from the template having been upgraded.

[stuntmonkee]

In my experience, what many people think is "definetely tied" to upgrading often isnt. Of course, there is much less chance something is wrong if you create a new one, but in my opinion thats also because a new one hasnt been monkeyed with over and over again.

If it was built right the first time, ive never had a single problem with any project that was every discerned to be from the template having been upgraded.

Agreed. . .we havent seen any major issues upgrading through the years. We havent made the jump yet for 2011, but I don't expect to have it melt down.

[cphubb]

Agreed. . .we havent seen any major issues upgrading through the years. We havent made the jump yet for 2011, but I don't expect to have it melt down.

We always start with the empty Revit stock template and transfer project standards, load all our standard content. We do not always upgrade our library to the current version because we often have old projects that need to stay in the previous version due to installations or deadlines. We don't want to maintain 2 firm libraries so we endure the upgrade for our content till all the previous releases are gone.

I still have not done my 2010 upgrade because we just changed in Dec. and I figured I would just wait till 2011. I am beginnig the process soon, because I noticed many families are upgrading with instance parameters set to 0 when we had a default value in there. Some of my elements will not load because their lenght is set to 0' Am going to backup the library and try the batch files to see if they do the same thing.

[Tony C.]

In my experience, what many people think is "definetely tied" to upgrading often isnt. Of course, there is much less chance something is wrong if you create a new one, but in my opinion thats also because a new one hasnt been monkeyed with over and over again.

. . . .


True. You are right that it’s easy to blame the upgraded template when the problem is something else. .. However, I’m honestly 95% certain that it was in the template. We spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting this issue. In the end we ruled out everything to the point where the original template was the only difference between two files.

For what it’s worth, when using the converted 2009 template in Revit 2010, one type of drafting line would always print black and not grayscale. We tried everything and found no difference between the files & settings, until we realized the files were started with two different templates. We did additional tests and confirmed it.

Yes it was a minor issue, but an issue nonetheless.
(There was something else that didn’t work, but I forget what it was.)


So,…. Is everyone here confident that there won’t be any problems that arise if we convert our 2010 Revit template to 2011?

(Our template has a lot of custom settings, and a TON of our custom families in it. It’s a rather large file.)


Thanks for the input!!

[twiceroadsfool]

Ours is pushing 45 MB, loaded with custom content, views, schedules, settings, Filters, View templates, system objects, etc.

Hasnt had a problem.