Upgrading from RAC 2012 to 2014 - Advice?

[spanaro]

Title pretty much says it all, our firm is looking to upgrade to Revit Architecture 2014 from 2012 in the next month or so. Are there any snafu's or other things that we should look out for (besides the usual opening of all our families/templates/etc and resaving in 2014)? Our firm adopted Revit last year and we never upgraded to the 2013 version, so this will be the first product upgrade that we are experiencing and I don't want us to run into any surprises (wishful thinking maybe...).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Revitaoist]

Archive everything before upgrading.

[david_peterson]

Adesk will tell you it's never a good idea to skip a version when upgrading files. If you skip a release, they may have changed something in "Hals" programming that may cause some unforeseen errors. The problem is that in 2013, they may have put in a patch to fix something. They would then "fix" the patch and re-write some code that 2012 wouldn't have, and 2014 may not know what to do with it.
I haven't tried, haven't done it, but it's not a suggested practice. Even if you're firm never upgraded, I'd try to see if there's a copy of 2013 that you can install to upgrade from 2012 to 2013 before going to 2014. I think they even had an upgrade porter at one point so you could batch all content.
We upgrade with every version and upgrade all content per version to avoid issues. But then again, we also never upgrade to the next release until after the first service pack either.

[DaveP]

My advice would be to convert as quickly as possible.
We've tried both ways - running multiple versions, and switching over ASAP.

We've found that when we had different project in different versions, people got really confused and either tried to open an upgraded project with the new version (can't do it) or accidentally opened an old project with the new version - and then wasting 20 minutes trying to cancel out of the upgrade. Even had one project where someone let the upgrade finish and then saved it. Problem was our MEP consultant wasn't ready to upgrade.
Now when conversion time comes around, first thing I do is make sure consultants are ready. Then we look at project schedules to avoid upgrading just before a project issues. (I keep a spreadsheet)
Then I put a dummy file in the Central folder "Use Revit 2013.rvt" or Use Revit 2014.rvt". It's just a dummy, zero-byte Text file, but that clues people in to which version they need.

When upgrading, do the Links first - that will save you time "temporarily upgrading" the Link from the parent only to upgrade it again with the actual file.
If everything is cross-linked, rename all the .rvts first. Then the parent won't find the Link and would try to upgrade it, but it will still keep all it's settings.

Good luck

[MikeJarosz]

There is more to consider.

Large firms that invest in Revit customization are forced to upgrade their software when new versions of Revit are adopted. This is expensive and time consuming, so they tend to skip alternate years in the upgrade cycle. I wrote a number of major applications for Acad and every couple of years I had to drag out the code and verify that it would not only work with the new version, but take advantage of any new features.

At the NYC Revit User Group, we regularly see presentations of algorithmic design. Underlying these wild, biomorphic shapes are programs written by someone who has mastered one of the programming languages. I'm sure that changes to the API are a nightmare (or opportunity!) to the programmers who create these designs.