Revit Journal Folder and Saving Files on Network Drives

Revitform.org member "Cellophane" dropped this reminder/tip recently.

When you save project files that DO NOT use worksets and family files on a network folder Revit stores a copy of the files in your user Journal folder. Since release 2012 Revit has been using this location for the Journal folder and files:

C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit "version"

While chatting with support they gave him this explanation:

"This happens when saving directly to a network location as a data security function, i.e. if the network save fails, the data can be recovered from the local journals folder. If you save locally you will not populate the folder. The reason behind it is saving non-worksharing files to a network introduces a greater possible of failure, so dropping a copy in the journal folder is a way of recovering them."

If you don't keep an eye on this you'll end up with quite a lot of files there. If other people use your computer and Revit then they've probably been "stealing" some disk space from your pc too. As tedious as it might seem to have to clean this out from time to time, the feature came in really handy recently when I managed to kill a few families that I thought I no longer needed. The next day a change came along and I needed them back. No, I didn't archive them for some reason...still not sure why. Regardless, the copies in the Journal folder sure came in handy though! I'm glad I didn't clean them out the day before.

API Throw Down - Rod Howarth

Luke who blogs via What Revit Wants put out a challenge for the API and those who speak "it" to provide a tool to inform him about productivity in Revit.

Such as:

• Ensure I (Luke) am using keyboard shortcuts where possible
• Avoid triggering commands unnecessarily, and thus having to abort them and retry

Rod Howarth decided to take him up on the challenge and wrote a post on his own blog that anybody who reads this blog is likely to be interested in seeing too.

Rod writes (partial snippet):
...snip
The result is a utility that I’ve developed that will take a look through your journal files and identify your most commonly used menu items, along with your most commonly used keyboard shortcuts. The idea is that you can run this utility and assess what commands you should add a keyboard shortcut to, in order to make your Revit usage more efficient.
...snip

Check it out!

To get the tool and run it on your own computer, download it from HERE. He writes: "Let me know how it goes for you!".

Also, if you are interested in the source code, it’s available on GitHub. If you don’t have Git (you should check it out!) you can download the source code as a Zip.

[Added March 30, 2011] Jose Guia offers up his own version of a response to the challenge HERE. Luke writes that it is a bit more advanced than Rod's.