Forum Discussion
Unable to preview Thumbnail of Revit (.rfa) files on Sharepointe Online or local desktop synced fold
I am having an issue being able to preview thumbnail views of Revit families (.rfa) on SharePoint online. We use SharePoint as cloud storage for our Revit library. Being able to preview thumbnail views of these files is crucial to my workflow, as it enables me to visually search my library and grab the file I need. I have downloaded a copy our entire library to my local desktop just so I can preview the files before I use them.
Does anyone have an issue with this or know how to resolve this?
4 Replies
MaiaBIM
Can you perhaps share an rfa file as an example?
Rationale, rfa files also contain an embedded thumbnail that can be extracted similar to dwg files. e.g.Paul
Paul de JongSegue exemplo de família para estudar a possibilidade de mostrar a miniatura no Onedrive, nos ajudaria muito https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgpptnlP1RuRiNAjtzuwVk7Vp7-Rwg?e=j8bdzb
jnengenharia2013
The thumbnail (png file) is present in the example file.In principle the thumbnail can be extracted programmatically from rfa files. For example, in Explorer (SharePoint browser app using JavaScript https://www.slimapplications.com/product/explorer/) the logic can be extended to also view the png thumbnail in rfa files. I expect that the number of tools offering this functionality will be limited since the topic is not raised often and is also not on the Microsoft SharePoint feedback site (https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/06735c62-321c-ec11-b6e7-0022481f8472).
Note: this will only work in the browser and not in OneDrive for Business.
MaiaBIM Unfortunately the file format isn't listed in the file types where Microsoft provides a preview
