Where do Desktop Connector "Connected Drive" files live?

[Anonymous]

Hello:

Wondering if the connected drive for desktop connector can be pathed to a D Drive or other local drive? 

Had same issue with A360 Desktop. C Drive is often a small SSD these days. 

Thanks. 

[Bud_Schroeder_ADESK]

Hi James,

Thanks for posting your question and there is no ability to change the location of Desktop Connector at this time. I will share this with the Product Manager though.  Also be sure to check out the Help if you have not already done so, there is some great information there already. 

Autodesk Product Manager Help:

Hope this helps and have a great day. 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

So I see a "Desktop Connector" folder in:

C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Autodesk

But it does not seem to contain any Revit files. Where do files get cached locally? 

Thanks 

[Bud_Schroeder_ADESK]

Hi Paul,

They should be in that folder, but only if you have saved the files there. 

Hope this helps. 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

It doesn't seem to be working for me. It is my understanding that I can drag a file to the project using Windows Explorer. I am opening that BIM 360 Team icon in Explorer, browsing to my project and then dragging in a DWG file (with the intention of linking it to Revit). 

But then I get an endless "Pending Action" 

The alert comes up periodically indicating that I have pending actions, but the file never uploads. 

Further, I still see no files in that folder structure I mentioned. So other than having the icon in my Windows Explorer, I don't seem to be having much other luck with this. 

Thanks. 

[john.koerner · Accepted solution]

Paul,

The files for Desktop Connector are stored at C:\users\<username>\BIMTeam or C:\users\<username>\Fusion, depending on which drive you are using (BIM Team or Fusion). 

You stated that you are getting a pending action. If you right click on the white Autodesk icon in the tray (near the clock), you should see a menu called pending actions. That will bring up the pending actions dialog and from there you can select the action that is failing. There should be an error message associated with the failed action in the bottom right corner of the window.

Can you please share that error message with us?

Thanks,

John

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Thanks John:

That path does have files!

When I drag something into the BIM 360 folder, it immediately generates a warning about pending uploads. I am attaching a screen shot of the Pending Actions dialog.

 

It always shows two entries: One that says "Not found" one that says "New". Not sure why. But I can't upload anything this way. 

So I went to Chrome, logged in to my BIM 360 site, and manually uploaded the files I need to a project. But back in Revit, it fails whenever I try to link to those files. It looks like it is trying to upload them again; a small progress bar appears and it says "multiple files" even though I only selected one. Then it fails and says: "The Operation cannot be completed." 

Do I have a corrupt install? Or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks 

[DarrenP]

i am also getting this error message on the pending actions trying to upload a .ipt file using the Desktop Connector

[john.koerner]

@Paul_F_Aubin and @DarrenP,

Do either of you have a leading or trailing space in your folder names? We have seen this issue before when there are leading or trailing spaces in folder names. The web UI will trim them, so you have to check in Desktop Connector. Since the leading and trailing spaces are hard to see, the best way to check to to attempt to rename the folder using a slow double click or hitting the F2 key with the folder selected.  If the folders do contain leading or trailing spaces, please try to rename them and perform the action again.  Note, that you cannot rename a folder that has pending actions, so you will need to clear the pending actions prior to renaming the folder.

The development team has a bug logged for this and if this is your issue, we can add these notes to the bug.

Thanks,

John

[Paul_F_Aubin]

No spaces. But I am guessing that dots and commas might also be problematic? 

[DarrenP]

yes i have spaces and a period

[john.koerner · Accepted solution]

Just to be clear spaces and periods are fine inside the folder name.  It appears there is a bug if there is a space at the beginning or end of a folder name or if there is a period at the end of a folder name. I was able to reproduce with both periods and spaces at the end of folder names.

John

[john.koerner]

@Paul_F_Aubin

I confirmed on my end that having a period at the end of the hub name appears to cause this issue as well (the "Inc." on your hub).  I will update the bug we are tracking for this internally.

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Will renaming my hub have any adverse effects? For example would it cause other users to loose access or files to not function properly? 

Thanks for updating the bug. 

[DarrenP]

i tried with another hub that didn't have spaces or periods uploading the same file worked on this hub

[john.koerner]

@Paul_F_Aubin

I know you can rename hubs through the BIM Team website, so it is considered a supported operation. I am not clear on what downstream effects that has, so I can't really comment on that.

Thanks,

John

[Paul_F_Aubin]

Fair enough. I'll give it a try and report back. Thanks for your help. 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

I renamed my hub. Removed the trailing period. Everything is working now on my computer. I have a new issue on a different computer, but I suspect it is an installation issue. I'll try to track it down and detail in a separate post if necessary. 

Thanks for the help!

[Anonymous]

Hi;

This in an interesting topic as we are looking into BIM 360 team for managing our projects. I do see a big issue with the location of the local files and a file path that includes the username. We are currently using Google Drive (Business) and google just recently solved a big issue for us by releasing their new Google Filestream sync client. Previously the google sync client stored files in the same manner as the Autodesk Desktop Connector does in the user folder. The huge problem we had was with custom texture and pattern files. These are stored in a shared folder on our Google Drive that all project collaborators have access to. The problem was as soon as someone created a new material or object and used either a library item or material/texture/pattern stored on the drive, the Revit path includes the username - so everytime a different user would open the workshared model, the textures/patterns were lost. Google introduced their new sync client and now the default file path for everyone is G:\RevitLibrary which solved the broken file path issue. Using BIM 360 Team would re-introduce our old problem. 

[Paul_F_Aubin]

It is a valid concern. But once I got this working, (see the comments above about spaces and periods in the names) I found that it writes a path to either BIM360 or Autodesk Drive. It does not show the user name in the path in Revit. 

However, the local cached copy goes to the local path. So if you have a large C Drive, (or OS Drive), it should not be an issue. But in my case where my small 256GB C Drive SSD is filling up, I really don't want all my cached Revit files there...

So, I think in the situation you describe, it will be fine. But for folks like me with a small SSD, not so much...