The options window

Before the first use, you have to define your sources in the options window, you can enter the options window with the gear button.

Define the family dictionaries

Sources for families are directories where you store your family files, the RFA files.

Go to the “Families” tab in the options window and use the plus button to add a new family source.

Define the system family types sources

The procedure is the same for all supported system families, so for the sake of simplicity, we use walls for the explanation.

A source for walls can be any Autodesk® Revit® (.RVT) file, that contains wall types.

Go to the “Walls” tab in the options window and use the plus button to add a new wall source. After selecting a file, you get a list of all found wall types and groups.

It is possible to use the same file for roofs, walls and floors, just select the same file in the different tabs.

If you edit the source file and want to apply changes of names or groups, you have to select the file again to update the type list.

Grouping of wall types

Create the project parameter “Deisboeck_Group” in the source file for the types you want to group, here wall types. Now you can give every wall type a group name, wall types with the same group name will be displayed in a blue entry named by the group name. Empty values get ignored and are displayed as normal.

The main window – blue entries …

… represents a family file, a system family type or a group, clicking starts the placement process.

If the entry represents a family, the families preview image is shown, you can change the image size by right-clicking the image.

Note: The thumbnails are generated from the preview view you have to set when you save a family file, if there is no preview view set the Resource Loader can only preview a Revit symbol.

The main window – yellow entries …

… representing a source or a directory that contains additional content, clicking on it will bring you one level down. 

After clicking, a combo box appears where you can change your selection or go back to this level by clicking the small arrow next to the box. Right-clicking the combo box allows you to add this position to your favorites.

The main window – green entries, your favorites

Serve as bookmarks to quickly navigate to regularly used resources. By right-clicking, you can reorder, rename or remove the entry.

Starting the placement process

For the best user experience, you should end all running Revit commands before starting the placement process by clicking a blue entry. Due to the nature of Revit the placement process can not start before the running command is finished. This may cause confusion because nothing happens when you click on the blue entry. By clicking multiple times, you will queue up multiple placement processes, which will start one by one after the running command is finished.

The installer that ran when you downloaded this app/plug-in from Autodesk App Store will start installing the app/plug-in. OR, simply double-click the downloaded installer to install the app/plugin.

To uninstall this plug-in, exit the Autodesk product if you are currently running it, simply rerun the installer, and select the "Uninstall" button. OR, click Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features (Windows 10/11) and uninstall as you would any other application from your system.

Expert Knowledge - Deisboeck.RevitResourceLoader.Settings.xml

You can specify the path for the source and the favorite/import settings. The storage location of the setting file determines the effectiveness, e.g. AppData -> per user, ProgramData -> per PC.

There are two placeholders for easy specification of paths, "%appdata%" for the AppData/Roaming directory and "%programdata% for the ProgramData directory. You can see the use of these placeholders in the default version of the file.

For normal use the default setting of this file is suitable, but for admins and specialists, this can be very useful.

If you use files from an earlier Revit version, the Resource Loader has to update this file during every loading process, this may have an impact on performance and should be avoided. Especially for system family files because there will also appear a dialog that you have to close manually before the add-in can continue its work.

The thumbnails with the family preview only work correctly if there is a preview view set in the represented family file.