Mysterious view deletion

[Archman]

We have just had an elevation view mysteriously disappear from our project sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning.

We discovered this when we went to plot the sheet and the view was missing on the sheet. After some investigation we found the view was gone from the project completely. We had lots of detail line, filled regions, etc. on this view and just cutting a new view is not an option. Fortunately, we have a recent backup of the central file that we can use to cut and paste this info back in.

Although I can't rule it out completely, I don't think anyone on the team deleted the view. One member of the team was working in that view yesterday afternnon, and came back this morning to find the view missing.

This is the second time this has happened. The first time a floorplan quadrant mysteriously disappeared.

My question is this, has anyone else experienced deletion of views without user knowledge? What actions could cause the deletion of a view without warning the user? We are very concerned about this as it is undermining our confidence that the documents will remain stable.

Project stats:

190,000 SF arena
just finished CD phase, now entering CA phase.
90MB central file
2 users on the central file presently
version 5.1

[aaronrumple]

I've never had this happen. I would susspect "user error" first. The journal files might show exactly what and when it was deleted.

[rreissig1788]

As the project manager on this job, I can say definatively that "user error" is NOT the problem.

We have been over this with a fine tooth comb in the past when it has happened, and been unable to find the deletion of the view. Our other REVIT project - another stadium - in the office has had this problem as well, as is consequentially being converted to AutoCAD to prevent any more unexpected hiccups in the schedule.

Revit is a GREAT design tool, don't get me wrong. We are having a difficult time justifying it for CD's for the project types and sizes that our firm works on.

[bclarch]

If you saved copies of the corrupted files I would suggest emailing them to support. They have diagnostic tools that can provide more insight than you can get here.

[beegee]

I assume the view does not appear on the project browser any longer ?

I have never come across this type of behavior and can't recall any mention of anything like that on this board or in other ng's.

As bclarch said, this should definitely be sent to support for analysis. I'm confident they can find the cause.

[Archman]

Thanks. I have contacted support. I will post their findings here.

[sbrown]

Does everyone on the team understand that if the symbol for the elevation of the callout were deleted, then the view would be deleted? I have had many users(new users) picking up redlines of a plan and instead of hidding the annotation in view, they just delete it and since the error messages are so frequent in revit they didn't read what it said and just hit ok, deleteing the wall section, callout, etc. from the file.

If you send the journal file to revit from the day that was worked on from each users, they will be able to tell if the command delete was issued on a specific tag.

I have found numerous bugs in revit over the 4 years I've been using so I'm not doubting the existance of bugs but views just dissappearing isn't one of them. I would probably even stake a bet on it.

[cphubb]

We have also experienced this problem although only once and we do think it was operator/network error. I was able to trace the problem to multiple people updating the central fine at the same time.


1. User 1 creates new view and annotates it.
2. User 2 saves to central file.
3. While User 2 is saving user 1 also saves and gets the wait dialog.
4. after all saves complete user 2 updates from central to get access to new view. (note all worksets relenquished during save). View is not there.

5. User 1 saves again this time with less network traffic and is successful.
6. User 2 reloads and has access to view.

We have had similar problems with worksets not closing during a save to central when others are saving at the same time.

Now all of this happened with v5.1 have not tried similar scenario with 6.

We now communicate central file saves to prevent the overlap problem.

Chris

[Archman]

I have gotten a response from support. It is as follows:


Steve,

After sifting through all the data you provided and all the relevant code, a bug was found in Revit 5.1 that caused this view to be deleted. The portion of the code involved was completely rewritten for Revit 6.0/6.1 and is no longer susceptible to this kind of error. We recommend upgrading to Revit 6.1 to avoid this problem in the future.

Chris Mahoney, AIA
Client Service Architect - Autodesk Revit

[sbrown]

Well I apologize. Thats a mean bug that would delete views. I wonder how many times I told people they must have accidentally deleted the view when they really didn't.