Harlan Brumm
Update: December 4, 2020
A new update is rolling out to Load Autodesk Family in Technology Preview of Revit 2021.1! With this update you can expect better performance when launching the application, curated content in Revit LT, localization of a handful of items in the Load Autodesk Family UI and a few routine security updates.
The update is scheduled for December 7, 2020 at 9pm EST/6pm PST.
While the update will take less than a few minutes, customers may experience a brief interruption in accessing the application during this time. If you experience any difficulties with Load Autodesk Family due to this update, please post any questions or details to the Revit Architecture Forum
Original Post: August 04, 2020
We have a new Technology Preview for you to start using. Technology Previews provide early access to features that are considered complete and ready for use in production for Autodesk Revit and Revit LT. We make them available so you can kick the tires on new BIM functionality and provide feedback for what works for you and the way you design and engineer. While not all features we preview will be available for every geography and in all languages, all subscribers can access the feature we introduce today: Load Autodesk Family for Revit 2021.1.
Load Autodesk Family
Load Autodesk Family is a cloud-based tool that allows you to access all Autodesk-provided Revit RFA families that you would normally download and extract separately. It is available to all Revit and Revit LT subscribers running 2021.1, and to start it up, you will need to close and restart Revit.
With this technology preview you can search or browse the entire library of Autodesk provided content. No more having to download and extract lots of packages of content. Just search and find only what you need and access Autodesk families when you need them, without having to dedicate significant hard drive space to it.
You might be asking – why this for a technology preview? Well, it’s a cloud service and we want to make sure it is resilient, stable, and scalable — no matter where you might be creating with Revit. We also want to get some feedback, of course, so please try it out and let us know how it is working for you in the Revit Forum. This preview is available for anyone, anywhere, in any language, as long as you have a Subscription – it will also work for Revit trial users.
This feature requires Revit 2021.1, an active Autodesk subscription, and internet access – it’s a cloud service! You will not be able to load content through the Load Autodesk Family button without them.
For BIM managers, we understand that you might not want this technology to display in Revit. There is an option to turn it off that is easy to deploy and manage. Simply add the following to the Revit.ini so the button and the technology preview will not display:
[Misc]
ShowLoadAutodeskFamily=0
For more information about the Revit.ini, please refer to our help documentation here. You can read more about Load Autodesk Family here. Check out Load Autodesk Family in Revit 2021.1 today and remember to let us know what you think or flag any issues you find within our Revit Forums.