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Thread: Revit backup files - can I turn it off?

  1. #1
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    Unhappy Revit backup files - can I turn it off?

    Can anyone share any insight on the backup file mechanism in Revit, and whether there's any way to turn it off so that it saves a single in-place file like other applications do?

    Here's my situation: I'm experimenting with using SharePoint to handle storage and version control for our drafting views library. However, the version number keeps getting reset and no version history is retained. My theory is that Revit is renaming the original file in order to create the backup, and is then saving a new file to the same folder using the original file name.

    Can anyone shed any light? Is there any way I can turn off Revit backups so that the primary file is only ever updated and my version control software will work?

    As a side note, I tried getting around it by doing a 'Save As' to the original file name, but Revit returns the error, "Failed to open document."

    TIA,
    Joel

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    Default Re: Revit backup files - can I turn it off?

    Turning off the Revit Backup's is a reeeeaaaaally bad idea. When things go wrong, or the file becomes corrupt, or something changes and you don't catch it until way down the road, there is nothing better than being able to restore from the backup.
    You can limit how often Revit backs up and how many versions it keeps (the default is 3), but I don't think you can turn it off completely.
    I always understood it as it saves a new file each time with the .number extension. Based on my work with Revit I don't believe that it moves the existing file to make a backup then saves new, but I could be wrong.

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    Default Re: Revit backup files - can I turn it off?

    Andy,

    Thanks for your input. I understand the benefits of the backup mechanism, and would actually like to have it active on a session basis. However, we want to use a more sophisticated backup/version-control system than that for the generations of the file (and one that is searchable too). Unfortunately, it looks like *something* Revit is doing is making that difficult.

    Thanks again,
    Joel

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