Accessing and Modifying Settings in the Ini File

Some interesting settings are stored in and can be modified by editing the Revit ini file Revit.ini.

Peter @pgerz ↗ pointed out yet another possibility in his answer to the Revit API discussion forum ↗ thread on adding a project template to ‘New Project’ via API ↗:

Question: I noticed that the UI method for adding a project template to the ‘New Project’ dialog on the Start Window is by going to Options > File Locations and clicking the little plus symbol.

Is there any way to achieve this same effect using the API?

I would like to add templates to the dropdown.

Answer: You can do it by editing the ini file with standard .NET functions; it is located at:

• C:\Users%username%\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2019\Revit.ini

In the section [DirectoriesENU], modify the setting DefaultTemplate.

Example:

  string oriFile = @""
    + Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable( "appdata" )
    + @"\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit 2019\Revit.ini";

  string tmpFile = @"c:\temp\11.ini";

  if( System.IO.File.Exists( oriFile ) )
  {
    using( StreamReader sr = new StreamReader( 
      oriFile, Encoding.Unicode ) )
    {
      StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter( tmpFile, 
        false, Encoding.Unicode );

      string inputLine = "";

      while( ( inputLine = sr.ReadLine() ) != null )
      {
        if( inputLine.StartsWith( "DefaultTemplate=" ) )
        {
          if( inputLine.Contains( "Example_SCHEMA.rte" ) )
          {
            // do nothing
          }
          else
          {
            inputLine = inputLine
              + @", Example_SCHEMA=C:\temp\Example_SCHEMA.rte";
          }
        }
        sw.WriteLine( inputLine );
      }
      sw.Close();
    }
    System.IO.File.Replace( tmpFile, oriFile, null );
  }

Many thanks to Peter for this solution!