Transparent Local file creation

[Kevin Janik]

Actually I figured this one out. There was part of an .ini file in the same directory that had the user name set to me. Somehow Revit knew to use that as a supplemental and made any changes that were in that .ini file.

Now that I know about about that functionality it would allow us to customize certain aspects of Revit per project (i.e. file paths for health care vs. schools)

Nick

What is that file and how is it working?

Kevin

[NKramer]

It was just part of an .ini file. It seems like a fairly random part so we dont know who created it or why it was there. The only thing that seemed to be of importance was the

Username=nkramer

The rest was just color tables and previous files which the general user doesn't really pay attention to or use in our office. I can post the actual part of the file when I get back in the office on Monday if you want to see the whole thing.

Nick

FYI: Augi would not let me upload the file so I had to change the extension from .ini to .txt.

[Kevin Janik]

I would be interested in seeing it if it is not a problem.

Thanks for posting back and for the file in advance.

Kevin

[Kevin Janik]

Nick,

Thanks for posting the file. I just noticed it and did not get an E-mail since you just editted your post. Pretty tricky!

What was the name of the file before you renamed it? It looks like a copy of the Revit.ini file mostly.

Kevin

[NKramer]

Kevin,

It was just Revit.ini so yes it was part of an .ini file, we just dont know how it got there or where it came from....

Nick

[Kevin Janik]

User Name Issues

The local gen is copying the file and renaming it correctly per the windows login but for some reason the Revit user name is being set to my login (I modified and compiled the exe and created the original central file, but reliquished all mine). The username is not actually written to the .ini file which seems even more strange.

The code still reads the same

IniWrite, %DESTINATION%, %AppPath%\Revit.ini, Directories, ProjectPath ; Sets the project path in revit.ini to the local folder location
IniDelete, %AppPath%\Revit.ini, Partitions, Username ;----------------------Let's delete the username from the Revit.ini first, then we open Revit
GoSub, GUIMENU



This seem to only happen with our U drive (a cross office user network drive). As soon as I put it on a different server everything seems to work just fine.

Has anybody seen this or know why it would happen?

thanks,
Nick

Nick,

I am a bit confused because the Revit.ini file is the file Revit reads for you username and various program items listed in it. From you first paragraph above I thought you were saying that you look in the Revit.ini file and the file you sent me was another partial .ini file.

Kevin

[Steve_Stafford]

If Username="blank" (nothing entered) Revit uses the logged in user's username as the Username found under Settings > Options > Username

If you manually enter a username in Settings > Options > Username then that is persistent regardless who logs into the computer.

Some folks run a script to remove the stored username=value just in case so the logged in user name will be used instead of a manually entered value.

[dbaldacchino]

The app posted in the first post of this thread does exactly what Steve just said. This prevents users from losing work when two users using the same username end up working simultaneously on the same project. It's not as uncommon as you might think.

Revit needs to tie the username to the windows log-in instead. Also, we probably need a permission-based username system where a project administrator can control what certain users can and cannot do. Wait, I read that on Steve's blog

[NKramer]

Steve and Dave are all correct. We use the local gen so it purges out the username in the Revit.ini file located at %A_ProgramFiles%\Revit %Discipline% %VERSION%\Program\

However, this partial .ini file was located in the same folder as the project. Revit ran the standard .ini file first and then ran this second file. The second file had the username set which was generating problems and subsequently why we were able to figure it out.

I removed the secondary file, reran the local gen and the username was correct. Just to test it out I tried putting the secondary file back, and everyone was me again.

Kevin, at my initial post I was at a loss for why this was happening as the second .ini file had not been found/ noticed. Once we found the second file I was able to figure it out.

In the long run I may have stumbled across something useful (unless it was generally known and I just wasn't aware of it) in that you could create a secondary .ini file with project specific apps, pathing, etc and place that in the project folder....

Hope thats a little more clear.

Nick

[david.kingham]

I'm still confused Nick, you can't have two files in the same folder named the same thing, could it have been Revit.ini.bak ?