Revit – How to “Partial Load” like in AutoCAD

With it being a new year, 2017, you may have recently decided upgrading your Revit models to version 2017. This trick of how to open a Revit file, without links loading is something I’ve found necessary so that Revit does not attempt to temporarily upgrade the linked Revit files. For a large project, with many revit links, I found this helped save me an hour or so of waiting for the file to open.

This partial load trick is also useful if you just want to work in the main file, without loading links.

The desired opening sequence I am describing is just like in AutoCAD when opening a file you can choose open Partial Load.

In Revit however, this feature is not built in.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the .rvt file.

2. While it loads, if you’re upgrading files, you’ll see messages about the temporary link upgrades. If not, you’ll just see the green loading bar processing at the bottom left of your screen.

At this time hit the Escape key or click on Cancel at the bottom left.

*Note: be careful not to hit Esc too soon. Hitting it before the links try to load will prevent the main model from loading.

(Click on the image for a closer look)

3. This prompts an error messages to appear. Click Yes. Then Click Close.

4.Repeat Steps 2 and 3 for each link that tries to load.