Revit 2015: “The Path You Have Specified for the Default Family Template Files is Invalid”
By Microsol Resources | BIM, IT
In Computer-Land, Gremlins unfortunately exist. I started seeing this error lately on a lot of our training workstations and a couple of client’s workstations. This usually shows up when Revit is launched. If it was a new installation, I blamed windows permissions and antivirus software because the Templates Folder the message was referring to is located in the ‘C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2015Family TemplatesEnglish_I‘ folder – a folder that tends to be hidden and protected. This was the case until it happened to me while I was working on my workstation.
Revit froze, and a secondary installer started running without any warning. I call these zombie installers, because you don’t know where it is coming from or what it is doing. Thankfully this never happened until now. Soon after, I restarted Revit and got the message in the screenshot above. On checking I realized that the actual Templates were intact, but the path that Revit followed to find them was missing. This path is specified in the Revit.ini file.
Whatever the secondary installer did resulted in the deletion all the paths to Templates within the Revit.ini file in the local user profile. This *.ini file can be found in the user’s roaming profile under ‘C:Users<username>AppDataRoamingAutodeskRevitAutodesk Revit 2015‘.
An additional symptom of this problem is that the Default Path now reads ‘Templates‘.
Solution:
Now Revit keeps two copies of the *.ini file. The master copy is under ‘C:ProgramDataAutodeskRVT 2015UserDataCache‘. A version of this is copied to the Roaming Profile of the user when the user first launches Revit.
To resolve this problem, I simply deleted the Revit.ini file under the roaming profile (indicated earlier) and launched Revit causing a fresh copy of the Revit.ini file to be created with the appropriate paths. Problem Solved!
(Alternatively, you can simply re-path to the appropriate folders using the ‘Browse’ button within the Revit options.)
INDUSTRIES:
