Streamlining Revit Families Cross-Project Usage

Revit families play a crucial role in project success, making it essential for firms to maintain their relevance and accessibility. This blog highlights the different ways to save families out of a project and keep them up to date so they are readily available for other projects.  

NOTE: Never save a family that you have modified or customized back in the family’s folder that gets installed with the Revit software or Revit content installation.  
Here are the methods you can use to save and update your families from one project to be used in another: 

All or nothing 

• You can save all families out of a project by right-clicking on the Families node in the Project Browser and clicking Save…. 
   
• In the Save Family dialog box, navigate to a folder that you want to save the families to and click Save.
• You can then review and curate the families that were saved. Note: This method does not export system families. You can only use Transfer Standards from one project to another to extract wall types, materials, duct system types, and fill patterns to name a few. 

One at a time – take only what you need 

• In the Project Browser, expand the Families node. Select a family, right-click on the family name, and click Save…. This will save that family and family type. For example, in the image shown below, within the Doors family category, the Door-Exterior-Single-Two_Lite family will be saved as well as the types listed below it. 
     
• In the Save Family dialog box, navigate to a folder that you want to save the families to and click Save.  
  
  Open, inspect, save, repeat
• In the Project Browser>Families node, right-click on the family name and click Edit. This opens the family up in the Family Editor.
  
     
• In the Family Editor, you can flex your family and verify that all the parameters work correctly, then save the family to your company’s family folder location and load it into your company’s template file. 
  
  I hope you find this blog useful in determining the best way to extract families from your Revit projects. To learn more about Revit template and family creation, check out ASCENT’s Autodesk Revit 2024 BIM Management: Template and Family Creation learning guide.  

About the Author

Learning Content Developer<br><br>Cherisse is an Autodesk Certified Professional for Revit with extensive experience in teaching and technical support. She holds an Associates of Applied Science degree in Architectural Drafting and Design with a focus on Interior Design. In her career spanning over 20 years in the industry, she has helped many firms with their CAD management and software implementation needs as they modernized to a BIM design environment. Today, she brings her passion for design and architecture to all the learning content she creates.

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