This is a detailed, technical deep-dive into the error, commonly encountered in applications using the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), such as Dynamo for Revit , Sandbox , Rhino/Grasshopper (with MEF), or custom .NET host apps.

MEF loads your DLL → .NET loader tries to resolve dependencies → fails → MEF wraps the error as “cannot load component.”

public class SafeDirectoryCatalog : ComposablePartCatalog

private readonly AggregateCatalog _catalog = new AggregateCatalog(); public SafeDirectoryCatalog(string path) foreach (var dll in Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.dll")) try var asm = Assembly.LoadFile(dll); _catalog.Catalogs.Add(new AssemblyCatalog(asm)); catch (Exception ex) // Log but don't crash Console.WriteLine($"Failed: dll - ex.Message");

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still unable to load mef component dll