Revit journal files & Copy between projects

Watching Brian Mackey’s video on Intelligent Details he mentioned using Journals for scripting. There is a AU talk on this at the link below:

Revit Journal Files: They Aren’t Just for Autodesk Support

There are alsdo a couple of downloadable files that go with the video just for reference.

This seems like agood way to automate some stuff in Revit, some of the dumb stuff like updating family files to new versions or doing a perge in a specific directory. A bit like .BAT files but could be a bit more temperamental. It is worth exploring.

You need the start and end of journal file for opening the file and then “DOING SOMETHING” then closing the file down after. They also need a bit of testing so that its pretty robust.

I’ve been looking on the web for some journal scripts and finally found this article Modifying That Journal Script to Actually Reduce Family Sizes that actually points to a place where there is a file. There seems to be a few issues about it , but at least there is a file that can be looked at:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3uxbAMNXvEPNVBmT0Rsb2pjV28/edit

Here is another resource regarding how to read the journal file and what the code in it means How to read the Revit Journal file – Understanding Journal Files Part 1

LineTypes & Copying between projects

I was thinking about this for scripting changing linetypes. As Brian Mackey mentions in his Details video the setup for thin/medium/thick lines in Revit OOTB is pretty irritating, I’d rather go back to the CAD designations of line thicknesses, colours and line types, they make sense. So that is what I want to do, setup my own linestyles. I thought about Journal Scripts, as Brian Mackey mentions thats what he does for clients, and a few other things in Revit but I found that HyperFine Architects have a great video on different ways to copy things between projects, Linetypes being one of them:

I’ll use their method for creating linetypes and copying from a Setup drawing across to different projects. I think that is a better way as if I’m not happy with the linestyle setup I can always alter it and then copy that update into the new project.

End comment

I’ve yet to play with the journal files or make a set of lineStyles, I just want to capture the resources for when I can get onto them for now.