Open Nested Families as document to export them like a document

[Anonymous]

Hello everybody,

we are working on an export tool for exporting data from a Revit project to a database system, by using Revit API.

Most of the export functions work fine.

The only problem we have at the moment is, that opening a Nested Family as Document in order to export the model data from this Family, is not working.

I've already tried many suggestions from Autodesk Forum posts, which included some of our problems we currently have. But unfortunately no solution was successfully so far.

The Families I'm talking about are nested *.rfa files, storted in the Revit Document file (*.rvt).

I also checked if they are really Family Documents to prevent exceptions of this kind, but it din't help.

I used the method "LoadFamily" and "EditFamily". But most of the exceptions said, that either the document file was read-only or threw other exceptions. I also tried to solve these problems by using Transactions, which is very common for these kind of use cases. Opening the source Document by using an own Transaction didn't work, too.

It would be pretty nice if somebody could help me with this issue.

With best regards

R. Schoenig

[jeremytammik]

I'm surprised you have to struggle so.

I am also surprised that read-only documents pose a problem for you.

Why can't you process read-only documents, if all you are doing is exporting data without modifying anything?

EditFamily sounds like a fine approach.

You can also open the family documents using OpenDocumentFile:

https://www.revitapidocs.com/2020/11420983-6d0d-0022-e24c-2361c4e42fba.htm

I don't think you need any transactions for either of those.

Anyway, here is a bunch of articles by The Building Coder on handling nested family definitions:

• Nested Instance Geometry -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2009/05/nested-instance-geometry.html
• Nested Family -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/nested-family.html
• Nested Family Instance -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/nested-family-instance.html
• Nested Family Utility Methods -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2010/03/nested-family-utility-methods.html
• Nested Lighting Fixture Instances -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/nested-lighting-fixture-instances.html
• Simplifying Nested Family Instances -- http://thebuildingcoder.typepad.com/blog/2018/06/simplifying-nested-family-instances.html

I hope they help.

Best regards,

Jeremy