Sharing Revit projects that contain custom images in materials

Sharing Revit projects that contain custom images in materials

Recently a customer had an issue sharing his Revit Project to a colleague in the same office and when rendered on the colleague’s PC some materials where not correct.  The materials he had added custom images to were showing grey on the second PC. 

There is actually quite simple solution to the issue and that is a simple setting to a link to these custom images so that they are found when the file is opened on the second PC for instance. 

Before we continue I need to just elaborate on workflow with regards to Revit Projects that have custom images in their materials.  If you are using custom images and you know this Revit file is going to be opened by anyone else you’ll need to place the images that you’ll be using in a network shared directory so that other Revit users can access these files.  So either a common area for all images on the server eg “\\server\Custom Revit Images\” or have a windows sub directory hosting custom image for each Project eg “\\server\Projects\Project 10\Custom Revit images\”. 

Once you have used the custom images that you have previously stored in the shared location you need to just set up a link to these image inside Revit as per the process below. 

Also any other users that will be opening this Project will have to do the following before opening the file. 

The Process:

In the Revit Options dialogue box click on the Rendering menu on the left (see arrow number 1 below)

Then click on the Plus sign (see arrow number 2)

Then click on the button on the right of the path area (see arrow number 3) and then browse to the area where the shared images are. 

Once this is set up you and others can open the Revit file that was shared and all the custom images will be shown. 

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I’m an Architectural Technologist (B.Tech. Arch) that has experience on the technical side of IT especially PCs, Large Format printers and Autodesk software.  I am working as an AEC Application Engineer for a Gold Autodesk Reseller in South Africa called Micrographics.  My role is focussing on support and training on software applications like Revit ( Arch,MEP and Str), Civil3D, AutoCAD, SANSCalc and Lumion.