I am trying to save family revit version 2018 into revit version 2016 .
I tried with IFC but does not work for Family.
Any script or Dynamo nodes for that?
Thank you.
There is no way to my knowledge of doing this with out recreating the file. You can export to CAD or IFC but that will come in as a block.
I have had the thought that one could write a script to export all the start location of each line to excel and then somehow recreate a family in an older version this way but it sounds like a lot of work and I have never tried.
I would bet that it would be quicker to install Revit 2018 or recreate whatever it is.
Good luck,
If you’re only interested in the geometry, you could export your family in SAT format.
In Revit 2016, you can create a new family with for example Springs.FamilyInstance.ByGeometry node.
Can you share your dyn file.
Hi,
Here is the graph.
Create family from SAT.dyn (8.1 KB)
P.S : You must install the great Springs package.
@Steven yeah thats looks like so much work
There is no way to go backwards at this time. I did experiment with exporting all wall types and locations to an excel file, and then using that to recreate the elements in the older version a while back. This was effective for some system families (not stairs, ramps, ceilings), but families proved to be a stumbling block that wasn’t worth reworking. Annotations and views would have been a disaster.
Keep in mind that with the stl method above you will lose materiality and all family types, geometry flexibility, parameter values and constraints.
Is this still the case, need some door families to go back to R23 from R24 
Still the same.
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I wish Revit would switch over to one single Revit version, instead of breaking updated every year 
you could try with speckle…not sure how great it is…but take a look here from @john_pierson
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I haven’t tried it, but I believe that it has the same limitations of other export/transfer tools:
- Static geometry so no parametric controls
- Minimal parameter data transferred
- Materiality loss/mismatching
- Constraints lost
- Etc.
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yeah probably havent tried…just watch the video…i normally stay away from work in different revit verion 
guess its best …
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Nothing stopping you or your company from doing this now; just update Revit to the latest version every time we put something out on the same day it’s released, and upgrade all projects at the same time and only use that build.
Oh and all your add-ins and scripts have to update at the same point too or they might not work.
There are places where this is done (well not the same day as it’s released, but pretty quickly and never more than a month behind), and they work well actually. The problem becomes when you need to get EVERYONE outside the bubble to do the same - they won’t because they’re worried about other things.
I believe there are efforts underway to make this better across the board for everyone; however stuff like add-ins and ‘under the hood’ bits make that quite a bit more difficult.
It creates real Revit elements. It is NOT direct shape import. Is ALL THE DATA there? No.
But if you absolutely need to stream some Revit elements from a newer version to an older, it is better than the alternative, which is of course, nothing.
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100% better than the alternative. Guessing it’s using brep builder to transfer stuff? The mechanism is irrelevant though as long as it’s not a directshape (Or perhaps if it was a directshape before I’d be that now? Either way I digress…).
Sadly this ‘stream to a version’ is something which has impacted quite a few things over the years (even internal to Autodesk). It’s a VERY big lift to make ‘smart’ stuff to the level of complexity we see with users in the UI though, as there are a lot of gaps in the API for full compatibility.
But wouldn’t it be possible for Autodesk to do rolling updates, lose the yearly version and just keep one version of Revit?
We work with a ton of external companies who are very hesitant to update Revit, some still insist on using 2022… so updating immediately doesn’t work for us
Not brep builder. It is actually using Revit API calls to draw real walls, real roofs, real floors, etc.
And if you are using the same base template from each version, you will get the same wall types, materials, etc.
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Right - knew about system families which is super useful; was more curious about the loadable ones. Might kick the tires on it later if I get the time to get things approved. Thanks for the insight as always!
This was the preferred business model of the the original Founders’ vision for Revit: One version, continually updated, everyone on subscription so that everyone was always on the latest version. I suppose this is one reason (along with all the technical ones) why saving back versions was never implemented.