2016 - Crash while upgrading 2015

[Anonymous]

Revit 2016 crashes everything I try to open / upgrade an architectural model from a specific client. I can open the other disciplines fine, so it's something in their template. I tried everything I could think of. Submitted a bug report each time. Has anyone else had problems like this? Thanks. 

[sureshchotrani]

Open in Revit 2015 via Audit, then purge & Save. 

Look for any groups & ungroup them.

Now you should be able to open in Revit 2016

[jasonmccool8686]

What about when that doesn't work? We had a 2014 model that kept crashing at 69% when upgrading to 2016. We've been able to open it in 2015 OK, but can't get it from 2015 to 2016. We've audited countless times, purged all unused elements, ungrouped all the groups, taken it off being a central model, discarded all worksets, unloaded and removed all linked in files, tried the upgrade on 2 different user computers, and confirmed the software is up to date. Revit 2016 now crashes at 72% each time, without any chance to send a bug report. I Looked for a way to contact technical support like every other piece of software we have, but apparently, these forums are all Autodesk is willing to offer its customers unless one buys access to them for additional money on top of the subscription. It'd be nice to be able to have Autodesk look at the model as they could probably see exactly what element it was crashing on, and it would surely be a good bug to address, but it seems we as users are on our own. Any suggestions?

[L.Maas]

In your subscripiton account you are not able to create a support request?

Otherwise some troubleshooting is in order. Delete and purge things/families from the project and see if and when it will convert.

[jasonmccool8686]

Well, we had already purged all unused. Our detailer finally got it to work after deleting most of the model... but that kind of defeats the purpose of doing an upgrade instead of just starting over.

Thank you for the hint about a support request. I found that form now and was able to submit a description and the troublesome file. I had looked for a way to contact Autodesk for support earlier and all I could find was an Express Service number, and a telephone number, but when I called, their menu said we had to have "advanced" support to use that. I found a table on some page that gave the breakdown of different levels of support, and it sounded like this was the only option at our "basic" level. Thanks again. I had looked around about a year or so ago and hadn't found any way to contact Autodesk with technical issues then either, and had thought this whole time we were just on our own, which has been frustrating at times. Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

You say your file is a central file...it sounds as if there are corrupt family elements in the 2015 version ( this occured initially when upgrading from version 2014) and (this was/is a known issue to Autodesk and was only fixed with the service pack updates) which were released only after a lot of models had been upgraded .... Always use the audit function when upgrading......so what i have found to be a good and reliable method when upgrading is to use the option of specifying which worksets are to be opened when opening the model....i have found that if all the worksets are closed then there are very few to no issues on the upgrade, even if there are corrupt element in the model....as you switch on each workset once the model has upgraded you should receive the error messages then regarding the corrupt elements and then you can address each one individually. Not sure if this is a recommeded workflow, but it works for me....

[jasonmccool8686]

If it were tied just to the 2015 version, then it should've worked going straight from 2014 to 2016, which is what we were originally trying to do. Also, as I said, we are current on software - all service packs, user releases, patches and anything else Autodesk has put out for all versions of Revit - so 2015 still should've worked if it was a bug fixed by a service pack. As I said, we audited many times at various points, just in case timing of auditing made a difference. And like I said, it doesn't work when it's a central model or not, when there are worksets, when there are preseverd worksets, or when all worksets have been discarded.
After Louis's response, I found where to submit a request to tech support, and they are looking at it now. Got a response from them last night asking for the backup folder so they could look at those files as well. Thanks, everyone.