Revit 2016 Missing Content after Installation

If you've installed Revit and then found your library was empty you're not alone. I haven't figured out who is to blame for this yet because the people I've encountered with this problem so far haven't been very computer savvy, haven't been able to recall what they did during installation or they didn't install it themselves. When the Revit installation is underway it is important to select which content is installed. I suspect that this is either overlooked or something has prevented that task from being completed. During installation it is important to make sure you visit this section.

The content is a separate section below the Revit application itself. It is important to review the settings lurking within the Content section too.

Assuming that was done then we should find the content installed in the default location or where we decided to put the content ourselves. This is the default location with individual sub-folders within it for each unique library you've selected:

C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RVT 2016\Libraries\US Imperial or US Metric etc

Still no content in this location, or the one you chose instead?

Revit downloads the content libraries you've selected to install so perhaps this task is being blocked by anti-virus, user permissions or internet access/restrictions? That's quite a conundrum for many people.

Making it a little more difficult, when you visit a related help document at Autodesk's Knowledge Network it describes the situation for 2015 and tells us to use the Control Panel Add/Remove feature. Fair enough for 2015 but for 2016 I find no such option for Content, despite the article specifically claiming it is similar for 2016. In fact I don't find such an option for 2015 either on my computer. FWIW, I only see an entry for Autodesk Content Service.

RAND IMAGINiT has made some of the content available via a blog post of theirs. It might help to try downloading it from their FTP site.

Autodesk Seek also hosts Revit content including its own library. If you visit the site, at the bottom of the page they have links for each disciplines library.

While I can download specific families and templates from that location I don't see an easy way to just download the entire library. They used to provide a page where we could just browse for and download a library bundle, for any of the localised versions too. I've not found its equal yet.

Revit 2016 - New Door Content

The What's New documentation for Revit 2016 doesn't mention this but if you look closely you'll find that it provides new door families separated into Residential (19 each) and Commercial (16 each) folders. The residential doors all use Type Catalogs except for the two garage doors (you can see them in the second image below). Revit 2015's Doors folder has 31 doors and Revit 2016 provides 35 (and another 12 you'll see below, for total of 47).

The Single-Flush family you can see in the image above is the same one we've had in past door content. Interestingly I don't see it in the library so I imagine it's a left-over from the stock template. This is what the residential doors look like in 3D with Detail Level: Medium.

The new doors feature nested hardware (visible with Detail Level: Fine) and new options, such as Swing Angle (doors that swing), Panel Open (pocket doors), Show Grill, Masonry Frame, Threshold and Masonry Inset. Those are just the ones I've noticed so far. They aren't available in every door, just those that the options make sense for. For example, in this image you can see a pocket door is selected and it has a Panel Open parameter, the image shows it is open.

This image shows a couple options for the single full glass door; Swing Angle and Show Grill.

When you switch Detail Level to Fine you can see the hardware and some families have additional trim. This image shows the hardware and a pair of separate sidelight families. I didn't take the time to see if I could make them fit the adjacent doors better.

These are the new Commercial door families, there are Type Catalogs for all but one of them (Door-Passage-Uneven-Flush).

This is what they look like in plan and 3D views. I've loaded and placed one type from each family.

There are door families (12 each) on their own within the Doors folder and several use Type Catalogs (6 each). You'll also find the three Curtain Panel Doors we are used to seeing in the library though they've been renamed a little. In fact all doors now include Door- as a prefix to declare their category. The curtain panel doors are always a source of confusion because they are doors in a door folder that can only be placed in the model by swapping them for a curtain panel.

They've also provided Hardware families in a separate folder, which are the families used on the doors that feature hardware.

I think they overlooked the Bi-fold (closet style) door families that are in the previous library, I don't see an equivalent version among the new doors.

I should also mention that these new doors don't resolve the Copy/Monitor issue with Walls and Openings. You can see in the upper wall at the right end that the pocket door has generated a much larger opening in the wall than it really should.

The only door families that create proper openings with C/M are those that use nested families for all the geometry and only the opening is defined in the host family. These new doors aren't built that way.