Thanks for all the great feedback I got from the recent posts about RFA security. I’ve submitted “Family Security Guard” to Autodesk to have it published (for FREE!). I will let you know when it is ready for download here.
The user will be prompted for a password in two situations:
- In the project environment when they attempt to open the Family Types dialog
- When they attempt to open a family file
After the password is successfully entered, the user will not be prompted again for the password during this Revit session. The password can be set in the pwd.txt file in the BoostYourBIM-FamilySecurity.bundle\Contents folder.
NOTE: This app only protects families when this app is installed. There is no protection when someone without this app attempts to modify families. (I know many people would like to protect families all the time, but unfortunately Revit does not support this)
Boost Your BIM 
Hi Harry, in a corporate environment we had hoped to password protect our standard family library. If we deploy the app that means our users would be free to password protect their own project library content which is not an ideal situation from a management perspective. Can you see any possible solution ?
Hi Bruce,
Could you explain a bit more about the difference between the “standard family library” and the users “project libraries”? Are the permissions you want based on the path to the RFA file? A previous commenter suggested a yes/no type parameter that could be added to each family to mark it as “protected”. Would that help you?
Regards
Harry
Hi Harry, we assumed that we could pw protect our standard library and that users would need to duplicate / rename these families in the event that they needed to amend them. This would make audits and troubleshooting a lot easier.
The content from our standard library is usually copied to a project library where revisions to that and other custom content is added and then loaded to the project. The project library is always archived at milestones.
Permissions would be based on the family, not on the path.
Adding the app globally, means that our users could pw protect their own project content which is not what we want. We accept however that if our file is linked into another file by a consultant we could lose the pw functionality, although again ideally, we would not.
Is it a password for all families or can you specify which family needs to be protected. Not all families need protection, if you have to enter a password every time you open a family (for the first time) you will go crazy. It’s only needed for some families.
OK. How’s would this be?
A password will only be required if the family contains a parameter named “AccessRestricted”. The value of this parameter will not matter, simply its existence.
I was also thinking about supporting a “AlwaysRequirePassword.txt” file that could be placed in the same folder as the DLL. If this file exists a password will always be required, regardless of the presence or absence or the AccessRestricted parameter.
I don’t know how this has so far passed me by Harry, top work – just installed it on my home machine for a quick test run, and will be certainly getting it installed at work, with license, on my return in a week’s time… but just a question (and apologies if this has been asked & answered before) but the addin appears to have installed (at least here on my single-account computer) in my user account’s roaming folder – not the “global” roaming folder – and we have a lot of desk & hardware swapping in our office but don’t employ roaming profiles of any kind (!) so I was wondering if I could “move” it, or better yet, install it at a machine-level? and it’s tricks like these that really make me want to learn the API!
Hi Kieran,
Glad you are finding this tool helpful.
You should be able to move these files so that they are in either of these locations:
C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2013\
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2013\
There is some more info about add-in registration at:
http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2013/Help/00006-API_Developer's_Guide/0001-Introduc1/0018-Add-In_I18/0022-Add-in_R22
Regards
Harry