Families seem to be missing or not loading Revit 2013

[bwilliams133]

I'm working on a model in Revit 2013 which was created by someone outside our office. Today I downloaded a sips panel model (2 actually) from autodesk seek and loaded them into my project but can't find them anywhere. Now I'm trying to place a rectangular structural column and clicked Insert-Load Family-Selected Columns/Rectangular Columns from the standard pre-loaded library and still the only thing that I get is the Pipe-Column that was already in the project.

I can't find any of these in the project browser under families, it's as if they weren't loaded into my project at all. I did not get any errors when loading into the project.

I'm unable to find any answers on the 'net this morning and I'm the best Revit resource in our office (which isn't saying much!). Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Brian Myers]

The key here is to not load them immediately into your project. Download them and then open it from the RFA file.

Next, inside the family, go to (under the Create Tab on the Ribbon) Family Categories and Parameters. Whatever is highlighted in there, that's the category it is getting loaded in as. If you change that category to Structural Column then it should display where you want it when you next Load it into your project.

Which leads us to the next step... load it into your project after changing the category.

As long as you downloaded RFA files, that should take care of it.

[bwilliams133]

Ah - ha! That's where that information is hidden. I knew it was somewhere, but my limted knowledge didn't lead me to it. So that helped me find the sips panels I loaded in.

As for the reason the rectangular column wouldn't load in, I was trying to load a "structural column" but selecting the "Column" family - which is apparently just for architectural columns. An interesting note here...if we picked another column from that category such as the Doric Column, we got an error stating that the column couldn't be loaded into the "structural columns" category. This is how we learned we needed to go to the a different folder to pull our rectangular column. All the columns listed under Revit's default library under the "columns" folder gave us this error EXCEPT the "rectangular column".

I've got everything found and working now. Thanks.

[lauriefuentes9543806]

I am having the same problem, I followed your steps and it is still not working, it keeps loading a light from the list of families that I already have loaded

[MikeJarosz]

One of my favorite tips when objects disappear is to change the view to wireframe. You may have to change the view to infinite or switch to an elevation, but most of the time wireframe finds the missing object.

[DaveP]

I kind of wish they didn't have the Option to Load Family from the special Ribbon tabs.
People get confused by that all the time.
When you are in a "command" - say Placing a Door - there is a Load Family icon at the end of the Ribbon. (context menu)
However, the ONLY thing you can load is a Door Family. You can't load a Window family from that icon.
Ditto with your Column. You were in the Structural Columns command and you tried to load an Architectural Column.

I recommend that people ALWAYS load families from the Insert Tab's Load Families icon. That one lets you load ANY type of family.
Plus it you use the Insert Tab version, you are unlikely to be inside another command