The Revit Clinic

License Cascading for Autodesk Revit 2013

With the introduction of Autodesk Revit 2013 this year, we've had some customers come to us with questions about how the licensing works for the Building Design Suites in relation to the Revit Architecture/Revit Structure/Revit MEP Suites. For more information on the cascading, check out the following post from our Autodesk Systems Team on their blog, Up and Ready: Autodesk Revit [One Box]: Licensing and Installation FAQ.

 

Extensions Available for Autodesk Revit 2013

Just wanted to send out a heads up that the following Extensions have just been released on the Subscription Center for Autodesk Revit 2013:

• Globe Link for Autodesk Revit 2013
• Batch Print for Autodesk Revit 2013
• Worksharing Monitor for Autodesk Revit 2013
• Autodesk Revit Model Review 2013
• Autodesk Revit DB Link 2013
• Space Naming Utility for Autodesk Revit MEP 2013

Updating or Uninstalling Revit Server 2012 when the User That Installed It is Unavailable

A new Technical Solution has just been added to our Knowledge Base with information on how to update or uninstall Revit Server 2012 when the user that originally uninstalled it is unavailable:

Unable to update or uninstall Revit Server 2012

Up and Ready

A new product support blog has been around for a little while now, but I haven't posted about them yet.  

Up and Ready Blog is a blog maintained by the team of 5 people with collective experience of 57 years (so far) dealing with installs, setups and configuration of Autodesk products.

The team has a wealth of knowledge and information and installing and licensing Autodesk products and posts information about Revit product installation and licensing as well.  You'll probably see some of their posts pop up here and the other way around as well as we talk about the nity grity of Revit.  

I highly recommend checking them out.

And the Revit.ini file strikes again...

You may remember a few posts about the Revit.ini file and Revit 2012:

• Deploying Revit 2012 with a Customized Revit.ini file
• Revit 2012 Network Deployment Utility: Custom Revit.ini Settings and Content Supression
• Who moved my Cheese (Files) ? - Important File location changes for Revit 2012

Before diving into this post, I recommend you check out the above posts if you haven't already.

With UR1 for Revit 2012 products, the way the UserDataCache Ini file (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Revit Architecture 2012\Program\UserDataCache\Revit.ini) propagates to the users directory (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012\Revit.ini) have changed with the addition of a new Update tag.  

There are also some important details to understand about the hostname field that will impact your ability to roll out company wide changes to your users Revit.ini files.  

First, here are the details about how these fields work in the ini to propagate changes:

2012 behavior for RAC, RME or RST at startup as product is initializing:

Note: all keys are read from the [Install]  section of Revit.ini for either the user's file or UserDataCache (UDC) file.

If Hostname key in user's file does not match UDC Hostname key:

no further processing, InstallGUID and ReinstallGUID are skipped

If InstallGUID key exists in UDC and value does not match InstallGUID key in user's file

• delete all files in user's roaming profile folder (top level files only, no subfolders processed)
  • %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\<product name> e.g.   C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Revit\Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012
• re-copy all files from UDC into user’s roaming profile folder

else if Update key exists in UDC and value does not match Update key in users’ file  (new for UR1)

• parse list of Section/Key pairs and overwrite user’s values for any non-null values in UDC Update key
  • i.e.  for each UDC Section/Key read the value, and overwrite the user’s Section/Key value
    • e.g.  Update=Documentation|OnlineHelpServer
    • format:  Update=Section|Key;Section|Key;Section|Key
• write UDC Update value into user’s file

else If ReinstallGUID key exists in UDC and value does not match ReinstallGUID key in user’s file

• overwrite user’s values for these keys for any non-null values in UDC file (hard-coded list only)
  • FamilyTemplatePath
  • DataLibraryLocations
  • DefaultTemplate
• write UDC ReinstallGUID value into user’s file

The first item is probably the most important one for you if you want to roll out changes to a lot of users at once (after you have already installed).  It turns out that the hostname field is the first check Revit makes when comparing the UserDataCache ini with the ini in the users directory.  

If the names don’t match, then nothing else parsed through in the ini file.  The Hostname check was added because of roaming profiles so as a user logged into different machines their Revit.ini wouldn’t get overwritten due to different InstallGUIDs per install.  

In case you need to roll out changes to your user ini files from one source there are two options you can look at:

1. If you remove the Hostname entry from *all* user’s Revit.ini files and from the UDC Revit.ini, then you can more easily propagate changes and/or overwrite entire Revit.ini files.  
2. If you delete all user’s Revit.ini files on all machines, and update all UDC Revit.ini with the new settings and remove the Hostname entry, then a new Revit.ini file would be copied from the UDC the next time the user runs Revit.

Both of these options should have the desired affects and allow you to roll out changes to other users. Happy INI ing...

 

Plugin of the Month - Wall Opening Area for Revit

Quick heads-up if you haven’t seen it, the Autodesk Labs Plugin of the Month is Wall Opening Area for Revit.

Plugin of the Month

 

Revit Local Server Down: Next Steps and Data Collection…

Your Revit Local server goes down, or you cannot connect to your Local Revit server to synchronize.  Whatever the scenario, you may be looking for the next step to take; I’ve included a list of items to test [and what to collect should the troubleshooting need to go to the next level].  Keep in mind this post is targeted towards a Revit Local Server that was working as expected, not one being initially configured.  If doing initial configuration, first visit my previous post here for initial troubleshooting.

1.  Verify Central Server is Online

Before testing anything have a user temporarily connect to the Central Server under Collaborate > Synchronize > Connect to Revit Server.  This way we can confirm this is just the Local server and not the entire server network.

2.  All Users \ Models or Some Users \ Models?

Next verify how widespread the issue is.  Aside from the first user who reported the issue, have a few other users attempt to either synchronize or connect to the same Local server.  We want to verify if this issue affects all users and all models on the Revit server. 

If all users are experiencing the issue, move onto step #3.

If it only affects one or a few users [not all of them], verify if any of these users have experienced this dialog:

If so, and you are running Revit Server 2011 or the initial release of Revit Server 2012 [update 1 not yet applied] have them take the following steps:

[A]  In Windows Explorer, navigate to the Projects folder on the Central server.

[B]  Delete the contents of the Users_Temp folder for the user experiencing the issue.  This directory is located at [Revit Server Project Root]\[myModel]\Users_Temp\[my User].

For example, if a user “UserA” is having trouble syncing with the model “File.rvt” located in the folder “AllProjects,” and Revit Server’s project root is “d:\programdata\autodesk\revit server\projects” the contents of the folder "d:\programdata\autodesk\revit server\projects\AllProjects\File.rvt\users_temp\UserA" should be deleted.

[C]  Repeat the same process for the Local Server.  See if the specific user can connect \ synchronize with the server afterward.  

3.  Can you Connect via Revit Server Administrator or Remote Desktop?

Assuming no users can connect to a specific server through Revit, first attempt to open Revit Server Administrator from a client workstation.  For example, they would open Internet Explorer and enter the following address, substituting <RevitLocalServerName> with their Revit Server name:

http://<RevitLocalServerName>/Revitserveradmin

If nothing comes up the RevitServerAppPool may be stopped or the entire server may be physically down; ping the server to ensure it is up and running, and restart it if necessary.  In addition make sure to verify the network integrity, and VPN connection if in place.

Next attempt to make a remote desktop connection to the server.  Can you connect normally through Remote Desktop?  If Remote Desktop is not configured, have a user physically log onto the Local server to verify.

Assuming you can connect via remote desktop from a client workstation [or log onto Local server] move onto step #4.

4.  Verify the RevitServerAppPool and Autosync Service are Up and Running

Once connected to the Local server via Remote Desktop, verify the following areas:

[A]  Open Internet Information Services Manager [Start > Run > INETMGR].  Expand Server name > highlight Application Pools > highlight RevitServerAppPool.  Verify Status reads Started; if not click Start.

[B]  Open Administrative Tools > Services [Start > Run > Services.msc].  Locate Revit Server AutoSync.  Verify Status reads Started.  If not right-click > Start.

Specifically related to [B] Autosync, it is also a good idea to take a look at the LocalService.log file in “C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit Server\Logs”.  If you see numerous repeating lines for the same model \ same process it may indicate that Autosync is not functioning properly.

Once you verify the items above check out, move onto step #5.

5.  Has Anything Changed?

Before collecting data, step back and verify if anything has changed.  Such as:

[A]  Power \ Network Connectivity?
[B]  Windows Updates?
[C]  Did any users check Compact File when synchronizing with central?
[D]  All users have unique usernames?
[E]  Was this Local server recently brought online, or a large number of linked files saved to the server at once?
[F]  What was the last successful action?
[G]  And are there any project .lock files larger than 0 KB [See the page here for additional information]

6.  Data Collection

If you get here and the server is still outside communication, data collection and analysis are most important.  It is essential to collect data from a small period of time, focusing on recreating the issue.

Collect the following files using the attached process:

[A] Shut down Revit.
[B] Shut down Revit Server.
[C] Archive the logs on the Revit Server and then empty the Log folder [you can archive to another folder].
[D] Restart Revit and the Revit Server, then perform the action [that does not work] and then capture the log files and Revit journal file.

Additional information to include:

-The Revit Central and Local server names and IP addresses. 
-Paths specified during installation if other than default.
-Confirm if they are physical or virtual servers.  And if possible include their physical geographic locations.
-Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2

Revit Server 2012 Update Release 1

Autodesk Revit Server 2012 Update Release 1 is now available at the link below:

Revit Server 2012 Update 1

I have included the process to apply the service pack to all Revit 2012 Servers:

1.   Notify users that the Revit Server network will be taken offline for an update and that they should close all server-based models in Revit.

2.  Using Revit Server Administrator, apply a lock on the server to halt all Revit Server based activity.  If needed this process is included here.

3.   When the lock is successfully applied, for each server in the Revit Server network:

[3a] Shut down the server:

• Shut down the RevitServerAppPool application pool in IIS Manager 
• Stop the Revit Server Autosync Service in the services panel
• Use the processes tab in the Windows task manager to determine whether there are any processes named “w3wp.exe” or “DataStorageAutoSyncService.exe” still running; if there are, terminate them.

[3b] Install the Revit Server 2012 Update 1 Service Pack.

[3c] Restart the Revit Server:

• Start the RevitServerAppPool application pool in IIS Manager
• Stop the Revit Server Autosync Service in the services panel (it will appear to have restarted after installing the UR)
• Restart the Revit Server Autosync Service in the services panel

4.  After all Revit Servers have been updated, use Revit Server Administrator to release the lock on the server and notify users that the maintenance is complete.

Some of the major enhancements include the following:

• Several enhancements were made to improve stability of Revit Server under periods of high use and heavy load.
• Enhancements were made to Revit Server Administrator to provide information about model-level locks that may be orphaned.
• A change to reduce the rate of growth of the central file on the server.  [This change requires both Revit 2012 and Revit Server 2012 to have update 1 applied; if only one is updated no improvement will be implemented].
• An improvement to make RevitServerTool more reliable.  (The Revit Server 2012 update 1 release will update the server copy of this tool, and the Revit 2012 update 1 release will update the application copy of this tool).

Special thanks to Michael Brian Lee for this documentation!

Revit Extensions for Autodesk Revit 2012

The Revit Extensions for 2012 are now available for download through the Subscription Center.

Revit Extensions for Autodesk Revit Architecture 2012

 

Revit Extensions for Autodesk Revit MEP 2012

 

Revit Extensions for Autodesk Revit Structure 2012

 

Revit Server Operating System Requirement

Quick reminder for what we can and cannot support for Revit Server and operating systems.  

The officially tested and supported environments are available at the link here and included below:

• Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 R2 64-bit
• Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 64-bit
• VMware® Support
• Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Support (must be configured to use one virtual network adapter per virtual processor)

If creating a support case, please ensure your Local and Central Revit Server[s] are running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, or Microsoft Windows Server 2008. 

Microsoft Windows 7 environments are not tested or supported under any circumstances.