AS220445

Revit Journal Files they aren’t just for Autodesk

Learning Objectives
• Understand what Journal files are
• Gain a knowledge of how Autodesk utilizes Journal files
• How to create Journal files for repetitive tasks
• Understand that Journal files can be Revit Scripts

Description
If you have ever submitted a support question to Autodesk and they have responded with “Can
you please send us your Journal files?” then you may already be aware of the hidden power of
journal files. If not, have no fear, this session isn’t going to dive into the troubleshooting aspect
of journal files. Instead, this session will discuss how to use journal files to help perform
repetitive tasks. This session will uncover the location of journal files, how to read portions of
the journal files that are pertinent to you, and then how to extract the task needed to perform
repetitive tasks. These tasks could be any number of items, including upgrading families at
each release, purging families, changing object styles in a family, adding line styles, etc. The
use of journal files can apply to anyone, in any disciple, and this session will provide several
ideas of how.
Speaker
Better known as “The Revit Geek”, Brian has spent more than 25 years in the AEC industry,
more than 10 of which have been focused on Revit and BIM. After nearly a decade of working
with Architects and Engineers to advance BIM in their companies, Brian started his BIM
consulting company in 2011 to focus on custom high-level training and mentoring. Brian has
clients all over the US and Canada that generally tolerate his sarcastic nature in exchange for
his wide breadth of BIM knowledge. Brian showcases his love of talking about Revit, or maybe
just his love talking, in a monthly light-hearted, occasionally irreverent, free Q&A webcast, Revit
Radio. Brian is a regular speaker at many conferences, including Autodesk University, BIM
Workshops and RTC/BILT Events in North America, Europe, Asia and
Australia, where he has been awarded top speaker several times. Brian
and his wife, who met at Autodesk University, welcomed baby Vienna
in2013, for a total of three daughters and in 2016 welcomed a son Paxton.
[email protected]
@TheRevitGeek
/in/MackeBrian
BDMackeyConsulting.com/Blog

Page 1
Introduction
If you have ever used the Autodesk family upgrade utility then you have utilized the power of
journal files to automate processes. Being introduced to this process back in Revit 8.0, I started
to wonder if journal files could be used for more than simply opening a family and saving it.
Upon further research I found that they can take almost any task in Revit and be applied to
repeat those tasks, and when set up along with a family list, it can do it on several items
consecutively. This session will cover automating tasks within families. Over the years I have
used journal files to purge all families while upgrading; set dimension styles, arrow heads, and
text; transfer project standards; change project units; add, rename, and set object styles; or turn
off all the annotation categories for a good preview.

Using a journal files to complete a task is a similar idea to running a macro, but with many
differences in the details of how it works. With a journal file, if the environment isn’t exact, the
process will fail. However, when all the conditions are met then they work well, and a user can
create them without any coding experience. Because journal files are sensitive to failure, it is
good practice to limit the amount of tasks to be accomplished. Instead of one journal file with
numerous steps, create several journals with one or two steps.

If a journal file fails, two things will happen: Revit will go into Interactive Mode, and it will also
generate a journal file in the folder from which the script was run. The nice part about being put
into Interactive Mode is it will do this on the family that it is having issues, thus making it easy to
check the problem file for the correct environment information. If it isn’t clear why the journal
failed, the new journal file created will have an error directing you to the line in the journal that it
is the problem.

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Files needed
To utilize a journal file for automation, two files are needed: the journal file itself, and a .txt file
that contains a list of the families to be opened. Creating the journal file will require opening
Revit, completing the tasks desired, closing out of Revit, then copying the appropriate
information from one journal file into another.
Batch File for Text list
To generate the text file needed to open a list of files, a batch file may be created. This file
should also include a line of code to delete any back up files such that these files won’t also run.
The batch file will generate a .txt file, and the name of this file must match the file name that the
journal file will be looking for. The example below also removes other files generated during the
journal process, so running it after running a journal file will help with clean-up.

Text File List

Page 3
Journal Log Files
Journal files are generated every time you open Revit. Normally they are used by Autodesk to
troubleshoot issues in a file, or to investigate why Revit may be crashing. They contain
information, not only about Revit, but also about the memory on the computer, user information,
any add-ins installed, files opened, amongst other things. Journal files also list all of the
commands that were used, and it is these commands where journal files can be utilized. These
are the areas of the journal file that may be copied and pasted into a journal template file.
Journal files may be found in the following location: %localappdata%\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk
Revit 2018\Journals. Of course if you are using a different version of Revit then replace the
2018 with the appropriate year. Opening a journal file will seem overwhelming at first, so there
are two tips to know: search may be used to look for the name of the file that was opened, and
Autodesk has added two rows of ****** to where the commands are started in the first open file.
Understand that searching for the file name will yield several instances, each with its own bit of
information, however the last instance should be just above the two lines of ****, where all of the
commands will be located. Along with the commands, there will be lines of data for times,
dates, and other things, most of the lines will begin with an apostrophe (‘), followed by a number
or letter. These lines are not needed and may be ignored and/or deleted.

In the image above, the highlighted lines are ones that are commands, and the others are
information. These highlighted lines are the ones that would be copied into a journal script
template to complete a task.

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Journal Script Files
Now that Revit has ran, and the commands have been located, a starting journal (or template)
file will be utilized for copying the command information. In my template, I remained consistent
with the automated journal files, and added two lines of **** to where any copied commands are
to be pasted (line 59). This template not only opens the file, but it also audits it (lines 47-55).

Page 5
Executing the Journal Script
In order to execute a journal script it must be in the same folder location as the .txt file
containing the family names. To run the script simply drag the journal file onto the Revit icon
that is on your desktop.

Page 6
Examples:
Default Reference Planes set to “Not a reference”
This example will create a reference plane in a family set it to be not a reference then delete the
reference plane, thus setting the default of all newly created reference planes to be not a
reference.

Page 7
Turn off Reference Planes in families
It is very frustrating to see a preview of a family to only see reference planes and/or dimension.
This example will turn off Reference planes in a family.

Page 8
Renaming View Types
When using the default family templates for some reason the Elevations type is named
Elevation 1. This example simply open up a view so it can rename the view type. The issue
with this file is it looks for an elevation view names Left, if that doesn’t exist it will cause an error.

Page 9
Dimension Set
Some users may have specific ways they like their families to display dimensions. This
example shows a partial script updating dimension styles.

Page 10
Purging
This example may be used to simply open and purge families or to upgrade and purge at the
same time.

Conclusion:
This session either exposed you to journal files and how they may be used or gave you some
new ideas on how to use them. It also gave you data sets to take back and start using journal
files on your own

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