Revit Freezing Issues Related to Windows 11

This article includes information on technical issues that may affect your Revit workflows, particularly if you are using AVAIL or other Revit add-ins on Windows 11 machines.

What's Happening

Over the past several months, we have received intermittent reports of Revit becoming unresponsive ("freezing") when using AVAIL. After extensive investigation, we’ve determined that the issue is not specific to AVAIL, but appears to stem from a low-level problem in Autodesk Revit that impacts any Revit add-in under certain conditions—specifically when running on Windows 11.

We’ve confirmed that:

  • The issue does not appear to affect Revit when running on Windows 10.
  • It impacts multiple versions of Revit, not just a single release.
  • The issue is not unique to AVAIL—it has been reported by other developers in the Autodesk community and confirmed to be reproducible.

What We've Learned from the Technical Community

A recent discussion among Revit developers on the Autodesk forums (see: Revit 2026 hangs after upgrading a family) has helped isolate the problem further:

  • The issue appears to be rooted in Revit’s handling of content, especially during upgrade or load operations. Our testing shows that the issue is not isolated to families as the Autodesk forum post suggests, but rather can affect any Revit element.
  • It seems tied to a low-level function in Revit's API that fails silently—meaning the software doesn’t crash, but becomes unresponsive.
  • These failures are more likely on Windows 11, which may be exposing underlying issues that didn’t surface on Windows 10.
  • The problem can occur even without third-party add-ins, though tools like AVAIL—which access and preview families frequently—may trigger it more predictably.
  • Revit 2026 appears to have structural changes that allow for a fix, though that fix has not yet been released. Autodesk is still investigating whether versions prior to 2026 can be patched.

What Autodesk Has Said

We’ve been in direct contact with the Autodesk Revit team, who have acknowledged the bug and informed us that a fix is in place for the latest version of Revit (2026), though it has not yet been released. Autodesk has stated that they are still investigating how to address the issue in earlier versions of Revit (prior to 2026).

We’re monitoring Autodesk’s release notes closely and will update you as soon as a fix becomes available.

What You Can Do

While a permanent fix is forthcoming from Autodesk, here are steps you can take to mitigate the impact:

  • Delay upgrades to Windows 11 where possible. Revit appears to remain stable on Windows 10.
  • If you are experiencing freezing issues, please let us know. This helps us track the scope of the problem and continue to collaborate with Autodesk on prioritizing a fix.
  • Keep Revit and AVAIL updated. We’ll work to ensure that any steps we can take within AVAIL to mitigate the issue are included in upcoming releases.

Helpful Tip:

Some customers have found the following workflow helpful to bypass the Revit freezing issue:

  1. Search for content in AVAIL.
  2. Right-click on the piece of content you need and select Open Location
  3. AVAIL will take you to the location of the content in the file system. 
  4. Drag the content from the file system into Revit. 

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the issue further, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer success team at support@getavail.com.