Family IO — Load and Save

Panel: Families | Menu: IO

Tools to load families into the project in bulk, or save loaded families back out to disk.

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Load Them All

Loads .rfa files from a directory into the current project.

Workflow:

1. Pick the source folder. The tool searches it and all subfolders.

2. Revit backup files (*.0001.rfa and similar) are filtered out.

3. A list of the files found is shown — select the families to load. This is a multi-select list, so despite the button name you are not obliged to load everything.

4. The selected families are loaded with a progress bar.

Failure handling: loading runs with rollback enabled for both warnings and errors. A family that raises either is rolled back — it is not loaded — and the message is printed to the output window. This is what happens when a family of the same name is already loaded. So the effective behaviour is “already-loaded families are left alone”, but the reason is a rollback you will see reported, not a silent skip.

Use when: Populating a project from a library folder in one pass.

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Save Out

Saves families from the current project to a folder.

Workflow:

1. Select the families to export from a list. Only families where Revit reports the family as editable are offered — in-place and system families are not.

2. Pick the destination folder.

Files are written as .rfa directly into that folder, and existing files are overwritten.

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Save Out Advanced

The same as Save Out, with a switch dialog after the folder pick offering two options:

Switch	Effect when on
Save out to a single directory	All families go into the chosen folder
Overwrite existing families	Existing .rfa files at the destination are replaced

Turning Save out to a single directory off is what produces a category-organised library: subfolders named after each family’s Revit category are created under the chosen folder and each family is written into the matching one.

With Overwrite existing families off, a family whose file already exists at the destination is skipped.

Use when: Building or refreshing a structured library.

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Notes

• Each family is opened and saved in its own operation, so one failure does not abort the batch — failures are reported per family in the output window.

• Ensure the destination folder exists and is writable before starting.

• Save Out Advanced with category subfolders is the better choice for library work; plain Save Out always uses a single folder and always overwrites.