@phi-ag/rvt

Parse Revit file format

Usage

pnpm add @phi-ag/rvt

Examples

Node.js / Bun

import { basicFileInfo, thumbnail } from "@phi-ag/rvt";
import { openPath } from "@phi-ag/rvt/node";

const file = await openPath("family.rfa");
const info = await basicFileInfo(file);
const image = await thumbnail(file);

console.log(info);

Deno

import { basicFileInfo, thumbnail } from "@phi-ag/rvt";
import { openPath } from "@phi-ag/rvt/deno";

using file = await openPath("family.rfa");
const info = await basicFileInfo(file.data);
const image = await thumbnail(file.data);

console.log(info);

Browser

import { basicFileInfo, openFile, thumbnail } from "@phi-ag/rvt";

// Get a file handle from <input type="file" accept=".rfa,.rvt" />
// see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_API/Using_files_from_web_applications
const selectedFile = document.getElementById("input").files[0];

const file = await openFile(selectedFile);
const info = await basicFileInfo(file);
const image = await thumbnail(file);

console.log(info);

If you don't want to throw errors, use tryOpenPath, tryOpenFile, tryBasicFileInfo and tryThumbnail

tryOpenPath("valid.rvt");
// => { ok: true; data: ... }

tryOpenPath("invalid.rvt");
// => { ok: false; error: "Error message" }

tryBasicFileInfo(validFile);
// => { ok: true; data: { version, build, ... } }

tryBasicFileInfo(invalidFile);
// => { ok: false; error: "Error message" }

Development

Install fnm or nvm (nvm-windows)

Install Node.js

fnm use

Install pnpm

corepack enable
corepack prepare --activate

Install packages

pnpm i

Watch

pnpm dev

Test

pnpm test

Reverse Engineering

The code in this repository was created through clean-room reverse engineering.

Tools

• 7zip
• binwalk
• Hex editor (eg. ImHex)

Example

1. Pick a file you want to inspect. I'm using racbasicsamplefamily-2026.rfa for this example.
2. Extract the Compound File Binary Format using 7z.

7z x racbasicsamplefamily-2026.rfa

.
├── BasicFileInfo
├── Contents
├── Formats
│   └── Latest
├── Global
│   ├── ContentDocuments
│   ├── DocumentIncrementTable
│   ├── ElemTable
│   ├── History
│   ├── Latest
│   └── PartitionTable
├── PartAtom
├── Partitions
│   └── 69
├── RevitPreview4.0
└── TransmissionData

3. Recursively analyze and extract data using binwalk.

binwalk -Me Global/ElemTable

extractions/
├── ElemTable -> /home/peter/rdp/family-2026/Global/ElemTable
└── ElemTable.extracted
    └── 8
        └── decompressed.bin

4. Use a hex editor to inspect the data.

imhex extractions/ElemTable.extracted/8/decompressed.bin

5. Start to guess what the data could represent.

Hex View 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00000000 C9 05 C8 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

After looking at a couple of files I'm thinking:

• The first byte could indicate the file version, seems to be consistent for a given Revit version.
• The second byte seems to be always 05.
• Interpreting the next 4 bytes C8 07 00 00 as little-endian int32 is 1992.
  • I believe this is the total amount of entries in this file.
  • It seems strange that they are using int32 for this value as they moved to int64 element ids, see 64-Bit Element Ids, Maybe?
• After the initial 6 bytes the file can be processed in 40 byte chunks (everything little-endian):
  • Id: int64
  • Unknown (1): int32
  • Unknown (2): int32
  • Unknown (3): int32
  • Id (2): int64 (seems to be always identical to the first id)
  • Unknown (4): int64
  • Unknown (5): int32

This is as far as I got for ElemTable.