Reloading purge types

[Duncan Lithgow]

When I have purged types fro ma Family and reload it from the external rfa file, types purged from my project file don't get loaded. Okay I've read about that problem, but I've also read a post from 2010 (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?118304-Reload-Family-Issue) that working from a type catalogue doesn't fix the problem. Also RevitClinic in 2010 goes through a solution without mentioning type catalogues (http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/04/repopulating-types-when-reloading-a-family.html)

When I try it in RAC 2012 with type catalogues this fixes this problem. Is this new behaviour or am I seeing something odd?

[jsteinhauer]

Duncan,

Does this happen on every 2010 project? Or, is a specific project that is giving you problems? You might try creating a new local from the central, or making a copy of the central first. Either way, it sounds like upgrading the project fixes the issue. I'd stick with that if at all possible. I heard about this happening once in our office, I'll check our internal forums, when i get to work, to see if anyone posted on this.

Cheers,
Jeff S.

[Duncan Lithgow]

Hi again Jeff

You misunderstand me. My projects are in 2012, but the comments I have found are from the date 2010. So I'm wondering if something has changed and type catalogues now force previously purged types into the project (which is what I'm seeing), or if I'm just seeing some unusual behaviour and can't rely on type catalogues to fix this issue.

[jsteinhauer]

Sorry Duncan,

That's what happens when I AUGI first thing in the morning... I haven't run into this situation, and if it happened here, no one took it upon themselves to post to our internal forum for help.

So let me recap what I think I've heard.
You have a project/s were unused content was purged out. The families/types that were purged were needed in the project. When reloading the content, the family doesn't load the proper types, except with Type Catalogs.

When I have purged types from a Family and reload it from the external rfa file, types purged from my project file don't get loaded.

When I try it in RAC 2012 with type catalogues this fixes this problem. Is this new behaviour or am I seeing something odd?
The previous threads talked about modifying a small amount of data, before being able to bring them back in. This might be true for content without Type Catalogs.

I want to focus on one sentence to make sure I'm not missing something.

When I have purged types from a Family and reload it from the external rfa file, types purged from my project file don't get loaded.
This maybe where the issue is coming from. If you delete types of content in a project, then open that family from the project you're not going to have those previous 'Types' available to you. This is where Type Catalogs can save you. I make most of my content with no types within the family, instead I control all types with a catalog. This keeps my family file size small. As firm Revit/Content administrators, we need to be very careful when editing content. Most firms have chosen to lock down content libraries to a limited few. But that doesn't stop those limited few from having moments they will regret, and make changes to content they shouldn't have.

Sorry if this doesn't help, but this is what I'm understanding from what has been described here.

Jeff S.

[Duncan Lithgow]

Thanks Jeff, poor choice of words. Let me try again:
When I have purged types from a family in the project environment, and reload that family from the external rfa file that's when I don't get new copies of the types which are still in the external rfa file. I have to force the issue by creating a type catalogue. So you've understood my problem correctly. I'm just surprised that the two links I started with don't mention that a type catalogue can solve this issue.

cheers, Duncan

[Duncan Lithgow]

It looks like reloading a family doesn't even overwrite changes to Materials. This requires me to think again about how Materials should / shouldn't be organized. The closest I've found to a solution is here: http://www.revitcity.com/forums.php?action=viewthread&thread_id=21162 which requires renaming the family (eg..._old), loading the newer version, and then switching the types out manually. Not an ideal solution.

As ever this just reinforces that a good project template is the solution to so many of these got-ya moments.