Exporting All families on directory NOT project/model

Trying to export all families and family types from my directory into excel with some parameters as the headers. NOT trying to do this with only the families inside the model/project I want all families within library. Any help is appreciated.

make an ODBC export to excel.
That will save you some time.

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Wouldn’t that require all the families to be in the project

Try it
You will find all categories with all families and parameters i think on the type sheets.
@Andrew_Hannell

Edit:
all families needs to be loaded in a project before hand
i was wrong
-sorry-

You would have to open each family in a background document one at a time, but otherwise it’s fairly straight forward.

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Trying to avoid having to load all the families into project.

Try loading all the families into a blank project first. The exercise becomes fundamental once that is done. I believe there is a node for loading the families in the clockwork package.

Time wise this has proven to be faster than opening each document (even in the background) and accessing the data

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That would be adding over 2000 families into a blank project, but as you said it might be faster and easier to do this rather than background or trying to go around it

The benefit of background opening is that if for each document you can open, get the data, write the data, close, and free up memory… if it wasn’t in the background you would never see more than one document open at a time. However by default Dynamo can’t do that via nodes. It is opening all 2000 documents as a lost, then getting the data for each document, then writing out the data, then closing the file, then freeing up the memory. If it wasn’t in the background you would see 2000 files in your window at one point.

You could write full custom code to do everything you want in one go, then move to the next file; but that is a VERY big ask as each family may have new restrictions on how you navigate it (ie: tags).

By loading into a project you take advantage of the instancing and family management capabilities that Revit has by default in the project environment. It’s a ‘light’ open just like in the background open (no instances are created after all), has no geometry calculations to perform, and gives you the added benefits of identifying nesting issues, duplicate shared parameter issues (ie: multiple Color parameters), and doing QA on multiple types at once by creating instances.

Can you @jacob.small confirm if an ODBC export to excel would only need the loading of the families in an empty new Revit file to give me excel sheets with all info in just one excel file? eg bulk parameters and values?
(In that case just a multi-load families script would suffice?)

I think that this would require creating an instance first, as otherwise it’s an export of things which don’t really exist in the model yet, while ODBC is intended to be for things that exist in real life and the model.