Orkestra can be used for a couple different things. One is developing Revit add-ins with OkPy, which we've already covered. The second is distributing customizations in a managed way, whether they are OkPy-authored add-ins or Dynamo or Grasshopper graphs.
The first step is publishing. If it's an OkPy add-in, you'll need both OkPy Pro and Orkestra subscriptions. For Dynamo and Grasshopper, an Orkestra subscription will suffice. For our example, we're going to work with the Color Warnings add-in from our OkPy review.
From the OkPy for Revit window, with the OkPy file loaded, click the Publish button:
The Publish to Orkestra window opens. There's some work to be done in this dialog: there's the Description, which is also the tooltip in Revit, the Body, which is the text for a wiki entry (this is what the user will see if they click on More Info in the tooltip), and Keywords:
Fortunately, if you're working with OkPy, the AI agent will do the work for you. Simply click on Draft with agent and the AI will create pitch perfect documentation for you:
Beautiful!
A note about the two icons the AI generates in the above step: consider them placeholders. You'll get a much more polished result in a later step.
Clicking Publish again will open the Publish your tool window. Here you'll select a destination for your tool. You can select an existing folder or create a new one. The only really important thing in this step is that you can find your tool in a later step.
Click Publish a third time and you're done with the publishing process.
For the next step, you'll need the Orkestra desktop app. To access it, in the Orkestra palette in Revit, click the gears icon:
This opens the Orkestra Revit Addin window. In the lefthand pane, click on QuickAccess. In the top bar, pick Ribbon Builder. Set your Revit version (for our purposes we'll use 2026):
(Astute readers may notice that we've created two new add-ins since our OkPy review: View Sheets By Element and Visibility/Graphics Off By Element.)
If you already have a tab and panel defined as I do (sorry, but we don't want to delete them), you can use them, or, to create a new tab, click the + symbol along the top of the preview:
In the Create a new Tab window, name the tab. We'll use "Revit Add-ons:"
Click Create. The tab is added to the preview. To create a panel, click on the + symbol below the tab:
In the Create a new Panel window, give the panel a name. We'll use "Warnings:"
Click Create. The panel is added to the preview. To create a button, click on the + symbol above the panel name:
Select either Add QA button or Add dropdown group. We'll click Add QA button.
In the Create Quick Access ribbon button window, browse to your tool definition:
Click Continue. If working with OkPy add-ins, remove ".okpy" from the UI Name.
Click on the icon and in the Replace icon window, click AI Icon Generator. Type a simple but meaningful prompt. We'll use "Warning icon with gradient color, red to yellow to green." Orkestra will return two icons. Click Apply under the one you like. Finally, click Create. The button is added to the preview.
Click Update Ribbon:
The UI is written to Revit:
Test your button!
It's a bit of a process, but easy once you're used to it. It wasn't especially easy to discover though.
One nice feature is that the interfaces are portable between the Revit versions. We were afraid that we'd have to recreate our buttons in Revit 2025, but we didn't have to. We simply selected 2025 and clicked Update Ribbon!
Grade: A
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