Friday, September 05, 2008

Smarter Local Files - Build Checking

When I posted this earlier I didn't really go into much detail about the application. One particularly nice feature that was added by David based upon inspiration from James Vandezande (SOM) was the notion of checking the build of Revit that the user is running compared with the version that was used to create the central/local originally.



David Baldacchino, David Kingham and James Vandeszande have contributed most of the actual code. The AUGI thread and comments on David's blog have provided feedback and some inspiration as well. This is a perfect example of why the Revit AUGI community works!

I must say AutoHotKey is a pretty quick "study". After downloading and installing it I was able to modify the existing script provided by David to do what I needed it to do within 10 minutes.

I still believe Autodesk should enhance this work flow directly themselves but grateful to people like David "squared" and James for creating it, and more importantly, for making it available to the rest of "us".

You can visit the AUGI thread or download the script file from HERE. If you download the script you still need the AutoHotKey software to compile it into an executable file you can use.

For another more recent option, read this MORE RECENT POST.

3 comments:

Dave Baldacchino said...

Hello Steve,

A little point about the build check: at this point, it's a little "low tech" if you will. Basically the script writes a text file to the folder where the central file is located and makes it hidden and read only. If someone tries to open a local file with a different build, you get that warning message, which will not automatically go away when everyone is upgraded to the same build. You have to manually delete the text file (make sure you enable visibility of hidden files in explorer). The script will then recreate a new text file when it realizes it's missing and since now everyone is on the same build, the warning won't come up again as long as everyone is on the same build.

I have figured out the logic to make this an automatic process through the use of an ini file perhaps 9or a txt file; not sure), but it'll take some time to shake it out. The idea is that the warning will actuall tell you which username/s is/are on the wrong build and once they're upgraded, the warning goes away automatically. I don't have a timeframe for working this out yet unfortunately, but you can be sure I'll post it!

Steve said...

Thanks for the extra info!

David Kingham said...

Not sure if you received it Dave, but the latest one I emailed you has everything you're talking about, checks an ini for the build number, if it's not correct it writes to text file to log all the users that need to be updated