So now that Revit 2012 has been out for a while, and I’ve explored it, though not used it heavily, I thought I’d share with you my favorite feature. This feature is often overlooked, but it is a really awesome and convenient way to export your families to text files. Even better, you can open a pre-2012 family in 2012, export it to text file, and then use excel, or word to edit your family types. Then when you load the older version of the family into a project, it gives you the option to select which types you want to load, thus reducing the amount of memory used for types. This also reduces the need to purge unwanted family types.
Here is the process:
Open your family in Revit 2012.
Choose the Application Button (The Big “R”) ->Export -> Family Types.
Navigate to where you have your family located, leave the file named as your family name followed by the .txt extension.
Click the Save Button.
Open a project.
On the Ribbon select the Insert Tab -> Load Family.
Navigate to the Location of your Family and Select it.
Choose the types that you want to load (hold ctrl + click to add a type from the list, while holding ctrl, click on any selected type to remove it from the selection). Voila!
