Installing the Revit plugin

The Planscape Revit plugin (STING Tools) gives your model authors 763+ commands for ISO 19650 tagging, drawing production, MEP engineering, healthcare validation, and one-click cloud sync. This guide walks through downloading, installing, and licence-binding the plugin on a single machine.

System requirements

Step 1 — Download the plugin

Sign in to the web app at planscape.co. From any project workspace, open Tools › Download Revit plugin.

You get a single ZIP file: StingTools.zip (around 45 MB). It contains:

• StingTools.addin — the Revit manifest
• StingTools.dll — the compiled plugin
• Newtonsoft.Json.dll, ClosedXML.dll, MiniWord.dll, Lucene.Net.dll — supporting libraries
• data/ — 72 runtime data files (parameter registry, drawing types, AEC filters, healthcare data, ISO symbols)

Step 2 — Install

Two installation modes:

Option A — Per-user (recommended)

Only installs for your Windows account. No admin rights needed.

1. Press Win + R, type %APPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\, Enter.
2. You'll see folders for each Revit version (2025, 2026, 2027). Open the one you use.
3. If the folder doesn't exist, create it.
4. Unzip StingTools.zip and copy ALL contents into that folder.

Option B — All users on this machine

Needs admin rights. Useful for shared workstations.

1. Open C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\
2. Same as above — unzip into the matching year folder.

Step 3 — Start Revit & sign in

Launch Revit. You'll see:

• A new STING Tools tab on the Revit ribbon (Select / Docs / Tags / Organise / Temp panels).
• A new dockable panel on the right edge — the main UI, with 9 tabs.

If you don't see them: see Troubleshooting below.

In the dockable panel, click the Sign in button at the bottom-left. Use the same email + password as the web app. You'll be asked which firm to bind to (if you're a member of more than one), and which project to open.

Step 4 — First-run setup

The plugin asks you to confirm a handful of project-level settings on first run:

1. Load shared parameters?  Yes — binds the 2,555 STING shared parameters into the project. Takes about 30 seconds.
2. Apply ISO 19650 view templates?  Yes if this is a new project; No if you've already set up templates.
3. Run compliance scan?  Yes — surfaces any orphaned elements, missing tags, or non-compliant naming up front.

The status bar at the bottom of the panel shows your compliance % as a quick RAG indicator. New projects typically start around 20% and climb as you tag.

Step 5 — Quick smoke test

Confirm the plugin is working by running a read-only command:

1. Open any Revit project (a sample if you don't have one handy).
2. In the STING dockable panel, go to the SELECT tab.
3. Click Lighting Fixtures.
4. You should see selection statistics: count of lighting fixtures in the active view.

If that works, the plugin is installed correctly.

Updating the plugin

We ship updates monthly. The plugin checks for updates on Revit startup and shows a banner when one is available.

To update manually:

1. Close Revit.
2. Download a fresh StingTools.zip from your project workspace.
3. Replace the contents of your addins folder (delete old DLLs first).
4. Re-launch Revit.

Settings, sign-in tokens, and project caches are preserved across updates — they live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Planscape\, separate from the addin folder.

Troubleshooting

I don't see the STING Tools tab on the ribbon

• Check the addin folder — is StingTools.addin actually there? (Files starting with a dot are sometimes hidden.)
• Open StingTools.addin in a text editor. The <Assembly> path should match where the DLL actually lives.
• Check %LOCALAPPDATA%\Planscape\StingTools.log for startup errors.

Revit shows a security warning on startup

Revit checks the digital signature of each addin. Our DLL is signed by Planscape Ltd — click "Always Load". If you see "Publisher: Unknown", you probably have a corrupted download — re-download from your project workspace.

The dockable panel won't show

Revit hides docked panels by default. Click View › User Interface › STING Tools Panel to show it, or use the ribbon "Toggle Panel" button.

I get "Cannot connect to api.planscape.co"

• Most likely cause: your network blocks outbound HTTPS on a corporate firewall. Ask IT to whitelist api.planscape.co on port 443.
• The plugin works offline for most commands. Cloud-sync commands will queue until you're online.

The plugin is slow on a large model

Some commands (BatchTag on a 30k-element model, full clash detection on a federation) are CPU-bound and will use all your cores. Close other heavy Revit operations while running them. If you regularly work with federations over 1 GB, 32 GB RAM and an NVMe SSD make a real difference.

Uninstalling

1. Close Revit.
2. Delete the addin folder contents (your year folder under %APPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\).
3. Optionally delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\Planscape\ to remove cached tokens and settings.

Your cloud data is untouched — you can sign in from another machine any time.