Friday, February 6, 2015

"Unknown section" error at opening struxml file in FEM-Design


The situation is following: 


You have successfully exported your Revit model into a struxml file and you tried to open that struxml file in FEM-Design. But instead of seeing your model, you came across a following warning dialog:




The "XML loading error(s) occurred" dialog shows a following message: "@ C21F28BE-47EC-47B7-AE42-24FC91A43EDE: Unknown section!".

Explanation of the problem:

The first row of characters is a unique ID (GUID) that is related to specific element (it can be an ID of the element, section, material, etc. - depending on the issue). The second part of the message tells us of the specific problem. In this case the problem is an unknown section that has been applied to one (or some) of the elements.

The "Unknown section" error means this particular section that has been used in the mapping process is not recognized in FEM-Design, or in other words - is not present in the current sections library in the FEM-Design.

This situation is not so unusual. It happens often that a user modifies the default FEM-Design library (modifies sections, adds or deletes sections, etc.). But in such situation, one should update the sections library in the Revit StruXML Add-In, so it is consistent with the current FEM-Design sections library. Not doing so, can cause an error as described in this article.

How to fix the problem?

Fixing the problem is very easy. One shall go to FEM-Design and export the current sections library to a struxml file. Next, load that new sections library in the StruXML Export dialog in Revit, and redo the mapping.

And here is the step by step guide:

1. In FEM-Design, start the Beam / Column command. Go to Default settings, and then to Sections tab. Go to Export command, and save the current sections library as a struxml file type.

 

2. In Revit, start the Export StruXML command. Go to Sections tab, and start the Load FEM-Design library command. Browse for the earlier exported library and press Open.

 

3. Now the sections library in the Sections mapping dialog is consistent with the current sections library in FEM-Design. Redo the mapping using sections from the newly loaded library.