Getting started with Family Library
Set up a repository, export your first families to it, then load content back into another project.
Family Library opens from the BIM Hive tab on the Revit ribbon, in the Families panel. It has two tabs: Export writes families out of the open project into a repository of folders, and Import loads .rfa files from those repositories back in. The export only reads from your project — it never modifies it — and both sides show progress and can be stopped between families.
Installing Family Library
1. Download Family Library from the marketplace and run the installer. 2. Start Revit 2024 and open a project. Family Library works on a project, not on a family file. 3. The first time Revit starts it asks whether to load Family Library - click "Always Load". 4. On the BIM Hive tab of the ribbon, in the Families panel, click Family Library. The window is modeless, so you can leave it open and keep working in the model.
Setting up a repository
A repository is just a folder that holds your .rfa library — a local folder, a network share, or a synced drive. On the Import tab, click Add Repository and point at the folder. Add as many as you need; they all appear in the left-hand panel. On the Export tab, choose the repository to write into, or create a new folder from the picker. Use Rescan after files change outside Revit.
Exporting families
1. Open the Export tab. Choose All families, or Selected in model to narrow the tree to what you have picked in Revit. Click Refresh selection after changing the selection in the model. 2. Pick a grouping: Category > Family > Type, like Revit's Project Browser, or Family > Type when you know the name but not the category. Switching keeps every tick. 3. Tick what you want. Ticking a category or family takes everything beneath it. Use the filter box to narrow the tree, or hide un-checked categories. 4. Choose the destination repository and click Export families. One .rfa is written per family — types travel inside the family file, so nothing is written per type. The export only reads from your project and never modifies it. Progress is shown per family, and you can stop between families.
Export preferences and folder layout
Click Preferences on the Export tab to control how the output folders are shaped. "Group export by category" is the master switch. With it off, every .rfa lands flat in the repository root. Subfolder depth then decides how many levels to create: - 0 — {repository}\Door.rfa - 1 — {repository}\Doors\Door.rfa (the default) - 2 — {repository}\Doors\Single-Flush\Door.rfa, one folder per family Depth only applies while grouping by category is on.
Backup files, and why they are handled carefully
Every time Revit saves a family it leaves a numbered backup beside it — Door.0001.rfa. There is no Revit setting that turns this off; the minimum it accepts is one. Family Library caps the backups and then sweeps them away, so your library does not fill up with them. This is done cautiously on purpose. A backup cannot be identified from its name alone — a library with families called Curtain Panel.2024.rfa or Bolt.1234.rfa is perfectly normal, and deleting by name would destroy real content with no recycle bin. So the automatic sweep compares the folder before and after each save and deletes only what appeared in between. A family genuinely named Door.0001 that was already there is never touched. "Clean backups now" runs a manual sweep across a whole repository, for libraries that already accumulated backups. That one asks you to confirm, because it cannot use the before-and-after comparison.
Importing families back in
Open the Import tab and tick a repository or folder on the left to list the families inside it. Every .rfa is listed with the Revit release it was saved in, read from the file's own header rather than guessed from the name or the file date. Two things are called out for you: - NEWER REVIT — the family was saved in a later Revit than the one you are running. Revit cannot open these at all, so they are held back up front rather than failing part way through the run. - ALREADY IN THE PROJECT — the family is loaded already. What happens to it is your choice, below. Revit's own backup files are never listed. Right-click any family to open its folder on disk. If a family keeps its types in a type catalog beside it, Family Library reads the catalog and asks which types to load — the same question Revit's own Load Family asks — instead of loading several hundred types you did not want.
Families already in the project
Revit will not load over a family that is already in the project without being told which values win — without an answer the load simply fails — so Family Library asks you up front. Pick one: - Overwrite project values — take the library's parameter values. The library is the source of truth. - Keep project values — take the library's geometry and definition, but keep the values already in the project. - Skip existing — leave anything already loaded alone, so only genuinely new families come in. Each family is loaded in its own transaction. That means one family failing cannot roll back the ones that already succeeded, cancelling a long import keeps everything loaded so far, and each family appears separately in Revit's undo stack under its own name. When the run finishes you get a report listing what happened to each family, with the failures first.