silent install using web installer and preconfigured revit.ini

[robin.grafCHSKM]

I'm doing a skript for silent company wide deployment of Revit 2023.1.2.... There are many issues in the forums having several issues when doing such a thing, I know.

(I'm using the customized setup in the Autodesk Mangage environment, use the (web-)downloader to deploy to the machines. In this case I'm trying for the first time to really use this web installer, and I'm no longer extracting the image from the installer and deploying the whole 15GB to each machine...) 

My issue is more or less an information directly for autodesk:

When customizing the (web) setup I have to use the option to deliver a customized revit.ini file, as we want to give alternative template paths (and do NOT want to have the installer putting things into these folders). The issue is that if I upload a customized .ini this ini is usually coded as a windows file. But Autodesk makes it a UNIX file when it fetches it back to the client (creating the image).  (see attachment)

As a result Revit takes this unix ini from the Programdata... UserDataCache folder and copies it to the %appdata%\autodesk... Folder of the user, 'converting' it back to windows, but generating issues for all 'special characters' (mutated vowels, umlaut).... which is visible for instance in the template selector within Revit.

[Simon_Weel]

As for the first part - do you mean you install Revit directly from the Autodesk site?  I'm not sure (never done that) but I guess it will create some kind of cache to hold all downloaded files - on each pc. Nothing wrong with that, but if you're low on disk space, it could become an issue. Anyway, like I said, I'm not sure if it works this way, but if it does, then NEVER remove that cache or you most likely get into trouble installing additional updates.

For the revit.ini - that's an interesting twist? You could solve it by simply have the correct revit.ini copied after the installation has finished (%ProgramData%\Autodesk\RVT <version>\UserDataCache\).

Since the paths in revit.ini could change over time, I use Nirsofts nircmd to alter those paths if necessary.  This is done with the login script, here's a snipped:

set userpad=%appdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2023\
nircmd inisetval "%userpad%revit.ini" "Directories" "ProjectPath" "c:\Temp\Revit_Local"
nircmd inisetval "%userpad%revit.ini" "Directories" "ExternalParameters" "L:\Revit_Support\KB Gegevensbestanden\KB_Shared_Parameters.txt"
nircmd inisetval "%userpad%revit.ini" "Directories" "ExportToClassIFC" "L:\Revit_Support\KB Gegevensbestanden\exportlayers-ifc-IAI.txt"

[robin.grafCHSKM]

Hello Simon,

never used nircmd, but thanks, will have a look. Currently I have less issues managing the ini content.

The post was mainly aimed at Autodesk itself to make them aware of the 'conversion' issue.

Regarding the package and deployment method:

my previous package was made differently. I used the webinstaller to create the complete image, and we used that image (shared across company via several subsidiary network shares) as a base for the actual deployment. IT wanted me to make the package independent from those shares in order to handle deployment better for home office users. So I created a deployment which just needed the (preconfigured by us) webinstaller, which fetches everything for the user, and then we start the setup from that local image. Yes, we are aware of the data amount.

As for the conversion issue: yes, i rewrote my script and now copy our original ini between image creation and actual deployment to the path where the setup expects it. But this is of course redundant and should be handled soundly by the webinstaller from Autodesk itself, this is why I used the option to upload the ini in the first place...

[Simon_Weel]

Out of curiosity, created a new deployment, included a revit.ini, downloaded the image and indeed - the coding of the text file is changed as you describe. Not what you want, so I would make a service request to have this fixed....

[Thanos603]

I can confirm that we are aware of this issue , which has been logged and escalated to the appropriate Autodesk team.  Currently the work-around is to replace the INI file located in the CustomUserFiles\SETTINGS_INI_FILE_PATH folder with one that uses UTF-16LE encoding.

Tony Michniewicz
Autodesk Delivery Team

[robin.grafCHSKM]

Just FYI: issue still persists. I just tested it in an updated customized rvt23.1.3 package.

[robin.grafCHSKM]

FYI: Just did a Revit 2024.2 custom package. Web installer still downloads preconfigured revit.ini as unix encoded file...

[Thanos603]

Unfortunately this issue is not something that can be addressed in a Revit update and the fix requires changes in the deployment workflow.  We have escalated this issue to the appropriate team and asked for a resolution.

Tony Michniewicz
Autodesk Delivery Team

[robin.grafCHSKM]

One year later, doing silent deployment for Revit 2025.2...  still Autodesk downloads revit.ini as UNIX...