About Content and Revit Deployments

Before creating a Revit deployment, determine the content that you want to make available to users, and where it will reside.

Revit content varies depending on the software being installed. It may include the following:

• Help files (for offline access of the help system)
• Project templates
• Family templates
• Libraries of Revit families
• IES files
• Lookup tables

Revit content packs

Before creating Revit deployments, decide which content packs should be included with each deployment. See Select Content for a Revit Installation and About Languages for Revit.

During the deployment creation process, you specify the Revit content packs to include in the deployment using the Content option of the Revit Content Libraries installation. See Create a Custom Revit Deployment.

Location of Revit content

When creating a deployment, you can specify that Revit content is stored on the local computer or in a network location. Your content strategy will depend on the needs of users and the policies of your organization. See Configurable Folders for a Revit Installation.

The following examples reflect the broad spectrum of Revit content strategies you might employ.

• All content is local. For some organizations, users need instant access to Revit content and other files, even when traveling or working offline. To ensure fast access to content, it is stored locally on each user's computer. Steps must be taken to occasionally update the Revit content stored on each computer, so that users have the most recent versions of content files.
• All content is stored on the network. For other organizations, the need for instantly available content is balanced against the need to maintain corporate standards. All Revit content is stored on the network, so users always have access to the most up-to-date files. When they work offline, users have access only to content that is already included with their projects.
• All content is local and updated. Some organizations take additional steps to ensure that users have instant access to the most current versions of Revit content and other files. In this case, whenever a user starts Revit, a custom script runs to download the latest versions of all standard Revit content to the local computer. If the user is working offline, the script does not run; the user has access to the most recently downloaded content.
  Note: This strategy requires the creation and implementation of a custom script to download updated content to user systems.

During the deployment creation process, you specify the location for Revit content using the Configurable option of the Revit Content Libraries installation. See Create a Custom Revit Deployment.

Content-related settings in Revit.ini

You can also explore the following settings in Revit.ini. Determine whether they might be useful when implementing your content strategy.

• Directories Settings
• DirectoriesXXX Settings

Many of these settings correspond to settings on the File Locations tab of the Revit Options dialog.

For instructions on creating a custom Revit.ini file for use with a deployment, see Prepare a Custom Revit.ini File.