My company is trying to create a step by step tutorial on how to utilize our RAM to Revit ISM transfer, as we've had some issues in the past and I am in charge of making sure it works. At the moment an error has been occurring during my transfer if a wide flange shape is not already loaded into the project. I try to load from the external family location and I get the following error:"Failed to import family type. Error occurred: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Continue?"
If I continue the family does not load and there is no longer a beam or column in the location of that member.To note: this wide flange family is one that our practice technology department created. It is identical to the w-wide flange family except that we have added some additional parameters within the .txt file. I do not know if this changes anything when trying to load externally. However, if I cancel the repository update and load the beam into the project prior to starting the repository, I do not have any issues. So it is only when trying to load an external family. However, we don't want to have to pre-load the beams and columns that we'll need... we should be able to load them externally as needed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
To update, I found a solution for this: 1. click match all2. go to edit shared settings3. reload all of your external families (they will go from a blue triangle to a green check mark)4. close and save the modifications5. click add6. select the family you are wanting to reference7. click ok8. now in the ISM window there will be a blue triangle next to the families you didn't have previously9. hit next and it should say they are loadingOnce you have done this you won't need to do it again in any model, unless you change the location of your reference folder for the external families (which I had recently done, so that is why I received this error).
Answer Verified By: Allison Hampton
Go to the Bentley menu - ISM Settings. Does it also produce an error?
See my previous response^. Although the external family catalog was "path'd" to the folder they were not loaded. Once I "reloaded' them all it solved the problem. I had discovered my settings were not in the default location, but in a project folder, so after I moved them from the project folder back to the default location I needed to reload the catalog.Thanks!