Shadow and sun settings disabled by 3rd party software

[robinhillrhca700396]

I have just been hit by a nasty bug.
In an elevation view I enabled shadows for better presentation. For some reason it set light source from top right. I wanted the conventional top left light source.
I went into sun settings for that elevation and set it to light source from top left.
I immediately received a pop up saying
'Third party updater 'Sun and Shadow Settings Updater' has experienced a problem
and its action had to be canceled.'
It gave me the option to disable updater.
First time around I cliked cancel but this did not allow me to set shadows.
Next time I tried 'Disable Updater'. But this greyed out with broken line shadow icon at the bottom of the window, and disabled all sun and shadow options.
This then propogates to other elevation views which then fail to allow shadow settings.
Switching off and restarting does no good, and this now acts the same with new and old projects.

Googling around throws up some information that many people are hit with this, some since Revit 2015 and some with 2016. It seems that Dynamo may be to blame.
Autodesk appear to sugest it may be Dynamo and that it can be deregistered as it is not used (so why did they supply it ?) but there is no confirmed resolution and Autodesk seem to lose interest.

Has anyone else had this, and how did you overcome it?

Is it Dynamo to blame?

How do you 'Deregister it'?

Does that give back the ability to use shadows and sun settings?

Hope someone can help!

Thanks

Robin

[robinhillrhca700396]

Just to say, the only add-ins were those supplied with Revit as part of the 2016 package namely
Visual Programming: Dynamo 0.8,
BIM 360: Equipment Properties, Clash Pinpoint, and Glue
External Tools: Navis Works 2016,Navisworks Switchback 2016.

Has nobody else experienced this?

[david_peterson]

I've been getting a similar warning on a lot of users workstation about that. I think it's actually related more to an A360 setting but I don't know.
"Third Party Updater "Sun and Shadow Settings Updater" has experienced a problem and it's action had to be canceled"
Sounds like it's related to Dynamo.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-architecture/third-party-updater-error-message-sun-and-shadow/td-p/5630616/page/2
Several suggestions here.

[dhurtubise]

I cant remember when it happened for me but i also get the message. No big deals, just continue and move on.

[robinhillrhca700396]

The no big deal is of course that shadows will not cast in elevation views, so yet another Revit functionality ceases to work.
Not happy with that I followed the advice given elsewher to remove dynamo from the add-ins.
BIM Jedi 6 January 2012 blog tells me it is as simple as moving the add in out of C\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2016 folder.
Did that and yes dynamo disappears from add-ins.
This doesnt help with projects that already have been hit - they seem locked to have no shadow capability.
Tried with new project, and first elevation tried allows shadows to be set up, but all other views are also locked with the shadow icon greyed out with dashed lines, and the sun setting icon leading to a pop up with all options greyed out.
So no solution there.
I don't want to just give up on producing presentation drawing with no shadows, its supposed to be part of Revit's ability.
Any other ideas?

Robin

[dhurtubise]

In my case i still can use Shadow properly.
Not only remove dynamo but try removing ALL addins and see if you still get the error.

[patricks]

I just experienced this for the first time today, in a project that I started new in 2016. I started the project from our template as normal, put in a few existing building elements (walls and columns, couple ref planes), then activated Worksharing. I changed the default Workset1 name to "Building". Then when I tried to save the file, that error came up about the Sun and Shadow Settings Updater. Instead of hitting Disable, I hit Cancel. Then the worksets dialog came up with NO WORKSETS listed! Apparently everything in the file was on "Workset1", which wasn't listed in the Worksets dialog, and if I added my own Worksets, everything that was already in the file was stuck on that Workset1 and could not be changed to anything else! And anything new that I made in the file would go on one of my worksets, but I could not choose that Workset1.

The whole thing was really weird. I started yet another file, copy/pasted what I had into the new file, activated Worksharing again, and all was fine. No errors at all.

[patricks]

Now it seems to be happening to me no matter what, any new file that I activate Worksharing gives me the error about the Sun and Shadow Updater. Not cool!