Journal File Parser

Last weekend I wasn't feeling that great, and decided to play around with some scripting while we were just sitting around watching football. What I ended up with was a Journal File Parser, and I think it turned out to be useful enough to share.

What it does, is parses through a folder of journal files and pulls out the following:

Journal File Name
Start Date & Time
Username
Revit Build
Hardware Acceleration Status
Graphics Card
Graphics Driver
Operating System
Last Memory Usage Statistics
Last Entry Line

It takes all of this information and populates it into an Excel file.

So how is this useful?

When someone comes to us with a Revit problem, one of the first things we want to do is check the basics. Are users on the latest build? Do they have certified graphics cards? Are the correct drivers installed? Instead of having to open individual journal files to check all of these things, a single run of the script will pull out all of the information. Even if users aren't having problems, it could be used as a quick audit to make sure everyone is on the same build, has the same drivers, etc.

In addition, if a user is crashing, this can help us understand which journals to look at, and to eliminate memory as a suspect. The Last Memory Line will tell us how much memory was left the last time Revit reported it in the journal. So if the available RAM is really low, we'll be able to quickly identify it. If a user experienced an issue but they weren't sure which journal recorded it, we can quickly verify the Start Date/Times of the journals to be able to narrow down the right files faster. Also, if the Last Entry Line ends with 0:< finished recording journal file, that session probably wasn't a crash, so we can focus on the sessions that ended unexpectedly without having to open each one to check.

To use the script:

1. Create a 'Journals' folder in the same directory as the Script file.
2. Place all journal files to be parsed in this folder.
3. Double click the .vbs to run.
4. An Excel file named 'Journal Data.xls' will be created in the same directory as the script file.

Now keep in mind, I'm certainly not a programmer - so if it's reporting information you're not expecting, please let me know and I will be happy to fix it!

Download Journal File Parser

I'm finding lots of great uses for it already, and hopefully you will too. :)

Comments

[Harlan Brumm]

One use that might be interesting is to combine the journal file gather script with this (http://revitclinic.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/04/who-moved-my-files-important-file-location-changes-for-revit-2012.html). I could see this script being used to help do a little Audit of your office and know what everyone is running. good work Katie!

[D]

What a great idea. Well done.
I've tried it out on my own computer and go the following error:

Windows Script Host
Script:
C:\"location name"\Journals\journal-file-parser.vbs
Line: 98
Char: 1
Error: Path not found
Code: 800A004C
Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error

any ideas:

Im running Office 2010 so I don't know if that effects the xls file?

[Kathryn Langan]

Did you put the script in the Journals folder? If so, it should go one folder up - so the main folder should have the script in it, and then the Journals folder should be a subfolder to that:
C:\Main\Journal File Parser.vbs
C:\Main\Journals\
Does that make a difference?

[Whatrevitwants.blogspot.com]

Along similar lines, you may be interested in:
http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-revit-journal-analysis-program.html
and
http://whatrevitwants.blogspot.com/2011/03/revit-journal-analyzer-boost-your.html

Both were posted in March 2011.

[Jason Bailly]

how about some keywords like Exception or Crash :-)
That's what I am typically searching journals for. I use Notepad++ to get all of the hits in the journal file. Plain old notepad is for suckas

[Account Deleted]

It is a good information And the article is well written..It helped me too since i also work in It domain..Thanks for the information..
Diamond core drill

[Joshua Moore]

not working for me...sometimes I get the following error:

Line: 142
Char: 4
Error: Subscript out of range: '[number:0]'
Coce: 800a0009
Source: Microsoft VBscript runtime error

Other times it runs all the way through, but the excel file is in a font I can't read!

[Joshua Moore]

I get symbols like this in the excel file:

¶ËQ'ó:R,<²[6æ”h¿ç
ø*Oy,¨ »¡I!å•E+¬Ë+D,AGûvzõ¼/x¶ŽÖ«ŸGF!j]e%w¤FOÏUQZÖ(É
#³Ø8«Fú5FôËY*û²,qq_1|’¢Tz†Ã]:AE5¦T§™Ô›b’¤³-³gšV$¨„gZMó­ÚÞÆòä©ÙpŒ"â½

I am on Office 2010 with Windows 7 x64. I checked the font and it is set to calibri, so it is somehow inserting the symbols that way.