Our office uses a custom script to open Revit files. It was developed, at least in part, by JV and, as you might expect, carries with it lots of well thought out, but sometimes complex little pieces. I call it a script, but it’s more than a couple of lines of code. I’ve been digging around in it and making a few tweaks and additions here and there to get it working with Revit 2011. One thing that’s been a stumbling block is the addins. We are using the standards (Worksharing Monitor and Navisworks 2011 Exporter) as well as a few custom tools (these will require some more involved rework that’s a little outside of my current capabilities) and then I have Ian Keough’s goBIM exporter for his wonderful, though still a little tempermental, goBIM iPhone app. I have noticed that, although Revit 2011 offers a new method of loading addins (the .addin manifest), Navisworks still uses a modification to the Revit.ini file. Worksharing Monitor and goBIM both use the .addin method which seems like a much easier path. When using our script to launch a file, only the Navisworks plugin is loaded. When launching a model directly from Revit all three plugins are loaded. This has led me to look at the journal file… and crack open Mastering Autodesk Revit Architecture 2011. Hopefully I will be able to post further development here or at least a small note of success. For now…

UPDATE: After some research and hints on the most excellent AUGI forums, and more specifically the thread mentioned in the book above and a couple of newer threads by dbaldacchino and david.kingham detailing their own versions of this script, I have found corroboration that the new .addin method of loading addin’s does not work when launching a file using a journal file. To quote David Kingham:

In 2011 Autodesk changed the way addins are loaded and a big flaw with this is addins do not get loaded when a journal file is used to open Revit (which is how I had previously opened projects)

So the mystery is solved and the rework begins. I have found that once I bypass the use of the journal file to open the files, I am always prompted to choose which worksets to open I can’t control the opening behavior to specify worksets or open all. More testing is in progress - I should know more by the end of the weekend.