Two Simple Fixes for Revit Drag & Drop Issues (Recently Discovered)

January 17, 2014 by Leave a comment

Last week there were three separate support incidents where users experienced difficulty with Drag & Drop. These were caused by something my team had not encountered before. In each case the users were dragging and dropping RPCs from Dashboard into Revit 2014 but nothing was appearing in the project. Upon troubleshooting we could not find any incorrect configurations that would account for this inability to Drag & Drop.

After hours of trying to reproduce and determine the cause of this, I called in the aid of ArchVision’s Development Team (the code wizards). They quickly analyzed thousands of lines of code to discover explanations for these issues. It turns out that there were actually two separate issues that have very simple fixes. First I will explain the causes and then the simple solution.

Cause # 1: Missing RPC Family Template file.

When Revit is installed a special family template folder is created in C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RAC 2014\Family Templates\English_I (location varies slightly by Language pack). RPC Family.rft must be present inside this folder or Drag & Drop cannot be performed. The problem occurs when non-default install locations are used. Inside Revit the location of the Revit Family File path is shown by clicking on Revit–>Options–>File Locations.

family_location

This can be resolved by downloading the following file and putting it into the directory specified in “Default path for family templates file”

Download the necessary file here: RPC_Family.zip
It will need to be unzipped for Revit to recognize it. Once in place simply restart Revit and Drag & Drop will work.

Cause # 2: Language Pack Issue.
The second Drag and Drop issue was caused by an issue with non-English language packs. The Development team has resolved this with 2 special patch files contained in a zip. Please download these here:
AVRevitPlugin.zip

Unzip these files and extract them to C:\Program Files (x86)\ArchVision\Revit Plug-in\2014 replacing existing files of the same name. Restart Revit and Drag & Drop will work.

As always, if you experience any issues at all, please contact ArchVision Customer Service at support.archvision.com.

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Resolving Network License Issues in Revit 2012 with RPC Content

October 18, 2011 by 2 Comments

The Problem
Unable to connect to your ACM on your Network when using Revit 2012. While Autodesk is reviewing this issue, a customer presented a workaround solution to access your ACM. Mike Hart of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, LLP found a fix that will have you successfully accessing your license from across the network with just a few clicks.

Applications like Revit have a configuration dialog where the location of the ACM is specified. When this information is provided a file called rpcapi.ini is written. This is normally written into the local user profile in the Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012 folder. While troubleshooting and testing with Mike, he discovered that by copying the ini file into C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2012\Program the issue was resolved.

The Cause
After a little further research I determined the cause of this behavior. When changes are made to RPC configuration in Revit, an rpcapi.ini file is written to %appdata%\Autodesk\REVIT\AUtodesk Revit Architecture 2012. The issue lies in the fact that at render time, Revit is looking for a license and not checking here.

The Solution
Configure the ACM connection in Revit (under the Render Settings found in Options) and then copy the rpcapi.ini file created from %appdata%\Autodesk\REVIT\AUtodesk Revit Architecture 2012 to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2012\Program. Once the rpcapi.ini with correct configuration information is located in this directory Revit will be able to access the license the next time that it is initialized.

If you need any assistance configuring your Revit, please contact me at

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