Installation & Licensing
Welcome to Autodesk’s Installation and Licensing Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Download, Installation, and Licensing topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Revit 2011: How to Install from Local content files?

11 REPLIES 11
SOLVED
Reply
Message 1 of 12
wbd
Observer
9840 Views, 11 Replies

Revit 2011: How to Install from Local content files?

Well, we just burned through our entire months worth of download in less than 48 hours by downloading our new 2011 software.

To make matters worse, on installing Revit 2011 we discover that the massive 2GB rar file doesn't contain the library contents, which is another massive download.

*sigh*

Having just installed Revit 2011 on one PC, how do we go about installing it on the rest without downloading the content each time? I can't seem to get a Revit install to recognize locally-installed library content.

So, my questions:

WHERE does a standard Revit install put all the the library CAB files it downloads?

WHERE should I put these downloaded CAB files so that the next installation recognizes them?

HOW do I tell Revit to use these local files instead of stubbornly downloading them all over again?

WHY is there not information clearly explaining how to do the above in the README file?

The last question is rhetoric; I think this information is vital, and is a glaring omission from the documentation, especially if Autodesk is now pushing download-for-all.
11 REPLIES 11
Message 2 of 12
harlan_brumm
in reply to: wbd

Hello,

Your best solution is going to be request a DVD be shipped to you if you are on subscription (or if you just purchased Revit, get the DVD in the mail). You can do this from the Subscription center at www.autodesk.com/subscriptionlogin.

The DVD contains all the CAB files on the disk instead of you having to download them with the content loader during the installation process each time from the web download.

I am working with our development organization on attempting to put together a workaround for this issue. I will post a link to the Technical solution on autodesk.com on this thread if we figure out a workaround that works correctly and make sure this stays updated no matter what.

Thanks for understanding,

Harlan Brumm
Autodesk Product Support
Click Here to Take Our Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/86MH8JX
Check out Autodesk Blogs: http://blogs.autodesk.com


Harlan Brumm
Sr Product Line Manager, Core Capabilities and Collaboration Services
Message 3 of 12
wbd
Observer
in reply to: wbd

We got the DVDs today, fortunately.

In future downloading is OK, but maybe the option to download the entire product DVD as an ISO file might be more useful, as we can then create our own installation DVDs easily.

That would also give us an absolute download size to work with rather than the 2GB + unknown extra we had to deal with.

Also an option during install to cache the content files, or point to a directory that contains them would also be useful.

Thanks.
Message 4 of 12
DouglasLauritsen
in reply to: wbd


You might want to read my post from April 9th here:



http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6370419&#





Douglas Lauritsen, Autodesk Product Support

We appreciate your quick feedback on this forum!



Douglas Lauritsen
Support Specialist
Product Support
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 5 of 12
DouglasLauritsen
in reply to: wbd


You might want to read my post from April 9th here:



http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=6370419&#





Douglas Lauritsen, Autodesk Product Support

We appreciate your quick feedback on this forum!



Douglas Lauritsen
Support Specialist
Product Support
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 6 of 12
harlan_brumm
in reply to: wbd

Hello,

I was going to propose a pretty complex workaround for this today. However, thinking about this more, there is a much better way to download and create a installation that can be installed everywhere and includes all the cab content files that are typically downloaded during the installation process, after the EXE has been extracted to the C:\Autodesk\ folder.

Drum roll if you will :)...

You can create a deployment instead of a standard installation. A deployment will download all the content cab files once into the admin image and then you can simply run the deployment on every machine to install Revit and it will pull the content from the admin image folder, not from the web.

This is a much better solution that trying to download the cab files separately and trying to mash up the installer to pull the content from the local drive and not the web. In case you a curious though I will provide the workaround for how to get the Revit installer to install content from the local download (once you actually manage to download all the content, which is pretty tricky in itself).

The Web download of Revit downloads content from the web during the course of the installation process. By following the process below, you can download the CAB files needed to the extracted location of Revit and have Revit install using those CAB files instead of the files located on the web.

Follow these steps:
  1. When the installation wizard starts, cancel the wizard using the Cancel button.
  2. Navigate to following location using Windows Explorer, where the install files have been extracted.
    C:\Autodesk\Autodesk_Revit_Architecture_2011_English_Win_32-64bit
  3. Open the RevitInstall.ini located in the above directory with a text editor like Notepad
  4. Find the [ContentRoot] section and the URL field in the RevitInstall.ini file. For Revit Architecture this will read: URL=http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/2011RAC
  5. Next, locate the CAB files within the RevitInstall.ini file that you want to include with your installation.
  6. To locate these files, search the RevitInstall.ini for the word “filename” to locate the file names of the CAB files. Each filename is within a field of text that contains additional information about the CAB that is needed. Here is a sample CAB file listing in the RevitInstall.ini
    [ContentBundle_Data\Imperial\Library]
    usage=Building
    language=ENU
    name=North American Imperial
    locale=USA,CAN
    description=North American Imperial Content Library
    alwaysOnForCountry=1
    filename=NAImperial.cab
    type=Families
    units=Imperial
    size=235.4MB
    MaxPathLength=160
    bytes=246757110
    cabbytes=213730192
    Look for the language, filename, and type fields. The language field tells you the folder the file will be placed in and its download location. The Type field tells you the type of content, and the filename field the name of the cab file to download. Note: Some CAB files are required for installation, if the type field is listed as Help or Utilities, these CAB files must be downloaded for the Revit installation to work correctly.

    For the language field, each value represents a different folder location on the web for downloading the cab files. ENU translates to a ContentENU folder or for [any] this translates to ContentAll folder for English installs.
  7. To download the CAB file for the section, use Internet Explorer to enter the URL found in step 4 but append the information found in step 6 to the URL. Append the folder location based on the language field and the filename field as shown in this example: http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/2011RAC/ContentENU/NAImperial.cab. This is case sensitive
  8. Next, put all the downloaded CAB files in their own directory from the Language listed in the ini file in section in step 6. For ENU, this translates to a ContentENU folder or for [any] to ContentAll for English installs. Place the CAB file in to the directory and the directory in the C:\Autodesk\Autodesk_Revit_Architecture_2011_English_Win_32-64bit folder. For the above INI example in Step 6 the CAB file would be located in C:\Autodesk\Autodesk_Revit_Architecture_2011_English_Win_32-64bit\ContentENU\NAImperial.cab
  9. Edit RevitInstall.ini to replace line

    URL=http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/2011RAC

    With

    URL=.

    This instructs the installer to look for content in the directory where the setup.exe is located as long as it is the correct folder.
  10. Start setup.exe in the install folder to install Revit.

I know this is complex and in my mind a little crazy. I do not think that I would want to try and do the above. Instead I would create a deployment :), much easier. I hope that this helps. Also, I do apperciate the feedback about the download process and ways to make it better. I will make sure that it gets passed along.

Thanks,

Harlan Brumm
Autodesk Product Support
Click Here to Take Our Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/86MH8JX
Check out Autodesk Blogs: http://blogs.autodesk.com



Harlan Brumm
Sr Product Line Manager, Core Capabilities and Collaboration Services
Message 7 of 12
wbd
Observer
in reply to: wbd

THANK YOU!

I have tried in the past to do a deployment install, but without documentation for the download issue, it would always try to download the CAB files.

This is what I have wanted for the past 2 or 3 releases of Revit!

In the past the instructions have been to simply download the CAB files and place them in the install directory, but no-one ever mentioned the step to edit the INI file!

Thank you for providing the steps involved!

This might be a really good addition to the Revit installation readme file, or be made a sticky on the installation forums

Thanks again for the info!
Message 8 of 12
mike.burke
in reply to: harlan_brumm

 


@harlan_brumm wrote:
Hello,

I was going to propose a pretty complex workaround for this today. However, thinking about this more, there is a much better way to download and create a installation that can be installed everywhere and includes all the cab content files that are typically downloaded during the installation process, after the EXE has been extracted to the C:\Autodesk\ folder.

Drum roll if you will :)...


 

I used this excellent method to get the CAB files locally when we were testing Revit Structure 2011. At that time I was doing straight installs for the users.

Later on I created a network deployment from the now-modified RevitInstall.ini setup, which was good at the time because it copied all the CAB files from my hard drive and not the Internet. The content location I specified in the deployment was the standard" C:\Documents & Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\RST2011" location.

The deployment installs the program and service pack 1 correctly.

BUT it does not copy any content from the deployment folders .\ContentENU and .\ContentAll onto the end user computer. The template file the deployment sets up is called ".rte"  Because there's no content in the RST2011 folder and definitely no template file called ".rte" I get template and path errors when starting up Revit Structure 2011.

I've checked the install log and found nothing that stands out. I tried modifying the RevitInstall.ini on the deployment folder by changing URL=. back to the standard URL=http://revit.downloads.autodesk.com/download/2011RST. That did nothing at all.


Does anyone know why the deployment fails to copy the content to the end user computer from the deployment folders?


Thanks

Message 9 of 12
mike.burke
in reply to: mike.burke

I think I found the problem - always happens after posting questions!

 

I checked the Content.rcl files and they are both missing all the CAB info that appears below the [silentTargets] section.

 

I think this is the reason why no content is being copied. Won't be able to test until I'm at work tomorrow.

 

I have attached the RST 2010 and RST2011 versions so you can see what I mean.

Message 10 of 12
mjroha
in reply to: mike.burke

Hi Mike,

I have encountered this issue with my Revit Architecture deployments.  Did you find a solution other than manually decompressing the files into the default directories listed in the content.rcl folder?  I would much rather go with something built into an installer or Revit itself. 

 

I seem to remember that I had some funky installations in Revit 2010 where I did something in Revit that ran that template/library install window that you normally see at the end of the installation.  Unfortunately I can't find my notes and don't remember what I did to get that dialog.

 

Thanks,

Mike R.

Message 11 of 12
mike.burke
in reply to: wbd

Hi, sorry for the really late reply!

 

In the end I recreated my deployment from scratch again, using the original ini file. And the problem went away.

 

Trap for young players, having a modified ini file for local installs and then using it to create a deployment from, doesn't work.

 

Cheers

Mike

Message 12 of 12
dgarvin
in reply to: wbd

Another problem with content download.  I've installed 5 copies of Revit 2011, and each time I get a message for something like "Imperial Templates" that the data is invalid, and it doesn't install. Then it tries to install the same content when you install the service pack, and it fails again.  Then you open the program for the first time, and it fails to install again, each time something wrong with the data being downloaded, and only the same "cabs".  Why does this download content uniformly get corrupted with 3 different attempts on 5 different installs...on 64-bit machines of Windows 7 with 8GB RAM?  (I even downloaded the program TWICE from the subscription page, thinking that my install download was corrupted.) 

 

And similarly to a previous question, why don't you offer a way to download this content ONCE, instead of me having to do it 16 times for 16 machines?  (Just cutting corners, and screwing your customers.)

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Administrator Productivity


Autodesk Design & Make Report