CTC Nexus

™

Suite

Installation and Configuration Guide

IMPORTANT: There are two separate installers available for CTC Nexus: 1) the “single user” installer and 2) the

“multi-user” installer. Both of these installers will be discussed in this document. The “single user” installer allows you

to install and run the software without requiring you to have administrative privileges on the computer, however, only

the user who ran the installer will see and can use the software. Other users on the same computer will each have to

WARNING: Installing a multi-user installer will remove all single user installs for all users on the workstation.

While a user that had the single user version installed will still see it appear in their Apps list, the single user software

will get disabled by the multi-user installer.

The CTC Nexus software contains an extremely powerful Content Management System (CMS) to help you effectively and

efficiently manage content files, with a focus on design software content files such as for Revit or Civil 3D.

It also contains a project standards analyzer tool called Ally, as well as the Project Activity Logger which can be used to

Revit and Civil 3D Workstations

In accordance with Autodesk standards for addins, during the installation the user does not get to choose where the

software will be installed on their local hard drives.

The addins will get installed to folders like the following examples:

For Revit (single user installer) –

%AppData%\Autodesk\Revit\addins\202x

For Revit (multi-user installer) –

%ProgramData%\Autodesk\Revit\addins\202x

For Civil 3D (multi-user installer) –

%ProgramData%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\CTC-CMS-202x.bundle\Contents

Where %AppData% is the user’s personal roaming folder and %ProgramData% is the ProgramData folder (typically

This folder will also contain key files for CMS (single user installer):

The following folders will also contain files needed by the CTC Software suites:

%AppData%\CTC Software

When upgrading a workstation to a new release, typically manually uninstalling an old version is NOT required. Running

software for that one user. To install the software for multiple users on the same computer requires Administrative

privileges, requires using the Multi-User setup program instead, and is discussed in the next section.

Double-click the installation CTCNexusSuiteSingleUserSetup.msi file to begin the installation process. First, you should

see a screen that looks like this:

Click the Next button.

administrator must uninstall them before you can proceed. CTC does have updates to all products that will work with

this installer, as needed.

This is the license agreement screen. In order to be able to move forward with the installation, you must read the

software license agreement and then click the “I accept the terms in the license agreement” option. You will then be

allowed to click the “Next” button, which needs to be done to proceed with the installation.

The next screen lets you control which components are installed. If you choose the “Complete” option, all the

components in this setup will be installed for you. If you choose the “Custom” option, you will have the ability to turn

on or off each component, as desired:

To turn off a product, click the dropdown button next to it and select the “This feature will not be available” choice. For

example, if we want to turn off (select to not install) the PAL component, we would click the down arrow button next to

it (seen above), then:

In this example, moving forward all the components except PAL will be installed.

Next is the standard confirmation screen. It provides one last chance to cancel this process without anything being

installed.

A file called CTCInstallLog.txt can be found in the installation folder once the setup completes.

%AppData%\CTC Software\CTC Nexus Suite

Checking that log can be useful when verifying something like a silent installation (discussed below) worked correctly.

When the installation is complete, the final screen should look like this:

running the installer with a command-line like that above, but with different parameters, will NOT change which

features are installed.

If the CMS application tells you that you need to modify these configuration files (“See the CTC Nexus Suite Installation

and Configuration Guide to correct invalid configurations for the following products:”), CTC has provided a command-

line tool to make this change for you:

CTCAddinConfigRepair.exe

This tool can be run silently from a script, for example. It is found under the “Support Files” folder where the software

was installed. For example:

Single User Installer: %AppData%\CTC Software\CTC Nexus Suite\Support Files\AddinConfigRepair

should be required for a successful result, but you can do things with parameters like specify where the log file should

be created.

The default log file CTC_Addin_Config_Repair_Log.txt will attempt to be created in the same folder as the program

itself.

Once on the settings page, click on the DOWNLOAD CONFIG button at the bottom.

Once the PALConfig.json file is in this folder, the PAL tool can start sending project activity data to your account on the

CTC Software portal.

Or from the desktop directly:

A text file called "SuiteVersion.txt" with only the software version (e.g. "25.0") in it can be found in the installation

folder.

Single user installer example: %AppData%\CTC Software\CTC Nexus Suite\CMS\SuiteVersion.txt

Multi-user installer example: %ProgramData%\CTC Software\CTC Nexus Suite\CMS\SuiteVersion.txt

The contents of this file may be useful for easily checking to see which version is installed via a script.

Multi-user installer example: %ProgramData%\CTC Software\CTC Nexus Suite

This file can be added to the Trusted Publisher’s store in any normal manner, for example via Group Policy.

CTC Certificate Installer Utility

In order for this program to install the certificate such that it will work for all users who login to the computer, it must be

run with the highest privileges (e.g. run “As Administrator”). If it is not run “As Administrator” it will only install the

certificate for the currently logged in user.

When run as a regular user, a window appears when complete showing this:

In this case, when the current user starts up the Autodesk product(s), no messages from Autodesk will interrupt the

In this case, regardless of who logs into the computer, the Autodesk product for the add-ins will open smoothly, without

asking the user what to do.

The CTCCertificateInstaller.exe program supports the following command-line parameters:

/Q – quiet. In quiet mode, no dialog window is ever displayed.

/L – Log file location. If a log file is specified, the results seen in the example dialogs above will be written to a new text

file specified, overwriting any previous file that may have been there previously.

The default file looks like this:

For example, this setting:

puts the buttons on the default Add-Ins tab, and appears this way in Revit:

C:\Users\Public\CTC Software\Suite Settings\Contact Support Settings.xml

Which looks like this:

As some organizations may want to control how support for Revit users is handled (e.g. internally) this tool can be

turned off.

Changing the highlighted value to: false

If this file is deployed to Revit workstations before the first time Revit is run with a CTC suite installed, the deployed file

will be used. Errors in the file will result in the button being displayed, which is the default behavior.

Click Start / Settings:

Search for: CTC

Then select the Nexus result:

Then select the Uninstall choice to begin the uninstallation process.