How to find Corrupted Families

[sophie_perron]

As we tried to open a model, an error message appeared saying that the model misses to much elements to open. One of my collegue read that it could be because of a corrupted family. How can I find in my model the corrupted family?

[dave_fagerstrom]

Hi Sophie, 

Sorry to hear that you are dealing with a model that's displaying missing elements.   A missing element can be any part of your Revit model, and often indicates some level of file corruption.   I'd suggest attempting to open your Revit file with Audit checked, as this will open and check all elements in the model, and attempt to automatically repair any issues.  

If it still fails I'd suggest opening a support case.   If it works, you can review your journal for any errors or warnings generated while auditing the file.  

You can also review this knowledge article: Missing Elements 

Hope this helps,

~Dave

[barthbradley]

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/revit-corrupted-file-solutions-amit-shah

[dave_fagerstrom]

Additionally, if audit doesn't work you can try following this article: Cannot open or save file with audit in Revit  

[sophie_perron]

Thank you for your answer!

Unfortunatly, even with Audit checked it shows the error and doesn't open 😞

I had to remake a new Central File from the Local File of one of my collegue that had close her model at 4h00 but 2 other team members closed at 5h45 so we lost about 3 hours of work 😞

Is it me or R19 crashes often? We encountered so much problems with at least 3 different projects and they were all in R19...

Revit was my "best friend" but since 3 months, I'm not sure that I want him again as my buddy... LOL!!!

[dave_fagerstrom]

Feel free to open a support case if you'd like one of our support specialists to take a look at the file.  

Are you on the latest patch of 2019?  

[sophie_perron]

2 of my collegues had R19.2.1, 2 other had R19.2 and I have R19.2.2.

From now, every team members have R19.2.2.

I had another issue with another Revit model. On thursday september 19th, I tried to open a case with a zip file of a ETransmit (we have some Revit links and for this project, I thought it would be better to include everything so Autodesk can have a better look at the model's issue). I think the zip file prevented my case to open... How can I make sure that they received my case?

[Anonymous]

Hi Sophie, did you get a solution from Autodesk on this issue?

It's happening to me now. Even though I can still open the model (only without 'Audit') but every time I try to upgrade it to Revit 2020, I get that dreaded message, "missing too many elements".

[dave_fagerstrom]

Hi Matt,

If your model will not open with Audit, that's indicative that there is some substantial corruption in your model.   While opening normally, Revit will only process what it needs, thus why many firms make use of a very lightweight starting view.   Audit, however, goes through all of the elements in the model and does several checks on the integrity of the data.   If Audit is failing, you've likely hit the point where a large amount of data in your model is corrupt.   

I'd suggest opening a case with our support team to start looking at this file and attempt a repair.   

I also suggest for all actively worked on projects to run Audit at least once every two weeks, as it's intended to find small issues and repair them automatically before they mount up and become a major issue.  

[Anonymous]

Dave is right, it's very likely data corruption in the model. Whenever I got that "too many missing elements" error, it's almost certainly some families in the model have become corrupt, and because we placed hundreds of their instances in the model, now Revit has too many things it can't generate.

To find which families are corrupt, try File > Save As > Library > Family. This will save out all your families until Revit crashes when a corrupt family is encountered. You then need to write down that family's name, repair it by reloading a working copy of it somewhere, then repeat this Save As - crash - repair process until all corrupt families are replaced. It's annoying you'll get these crashes though. My office use an Revit add-in called 'Cad Files Explorer' to save out all families. It scans all families, suppress any crashes & list all corrupt families at the end.

[Samantha-G]

Hi @sophie_perron 

I would also have everyone on the same version / patch of Revit.  Not having everyone on the same one, can cause problems as well.

[Anonymous]

You're right! It was some corrupt families that broke my file. Good call on that "Cad File Explorer" add-in indeed. It helped find all those bad families!

Thank you all for your help 🙂