Reload Revit link

[luisPDAN6]

Hi!

We are using Revit 2020, BIM360 for storing our Revit projects, and consequently our Revit links. When we update a linked document and press Reload from the Manage Links / Revit, nothing happens. The link does not reload. 

But when we press Reload From... and select the same file, the file is then correctly reloaded. I have a feeling this is not just related with the case of files stored at BIM360, but also on local drives. Someone at Autodesk should do a test on their code and test this functionality as soon as possible. 

[RobDraw]

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@luisPDAN6 wrote:

When opening the project with BIM360 sometimes the link is updated and sometimes is not.

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That's not the same situation that you described in your OP and subsequent posts. You had a problem with the button not working at all. Has your problem snowballed into something worse or are you talking about something else now?

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@luisPDAN6 wrote:

one expects that Reload does exactly that, loads the latest information from its root document, since the path is BIM360:// .

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Not exactly. If the link also has a local copy stored on the computer, Revit knows that path and may be referring to it until a certain amount of time as passed and the local copy is updated.  Working on BIM360 is not the same as working on a network that may be why you are confused. For all we now it could be working as designed.

[ToanDN]

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@luisPDAN6 wrote:

When opening the project with BIM360 sometimes the link is updated and sometimes is not. When the link is not updated, one expects that Reload does exactly that, loads the latest information from its root document, since the path is BIM360:// 

That is the procedure described here:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2020/EN...

But now you are politely saying that maybe the local cache is outdated and that Reload From forces to refresh the cache. I think that is a good theory. What you are saying is that those two buttons are potentially doing two different things depending on the status of the cache. I cannot find anything in the Autodesk documentation that explicitly says that for BIM360 one must only use the Reload From... button to ensure that the latest information is loaded from the cloud. I also do not see much point on the button Reload as Autodesk has been writing, if the cache is not refreshed. If feels like somebody forgot to call that function in the Reload button.

That is my theory from my understanding how Revit handles BIM360 models.  I am among a minority group that do not find lacking official document from Autodesk is a deal breaker.  They cannot document everything.

The Reload button works fine (and works the same as Reload From if the file path is valid) when you are working with a central file hosted in local file server or local Revit server.

I read on the Revit API documentation that there is a method IsNotLoadedIntoMultipleOpenDocuments with some interesting remarks.

https://www.revitapidocs.com/2016/7e675de0-ce86-ef2e-fdef-f5e12558684d.htm

That is a different issue altogether.  You cannot load the same model in one Revit session, let's say you link B into A, if you have A open and you are trying to open B in the same Revit session, the B link in A will be unloaded in order to open B.  It's a common knowledge and you do not need to know Revit API to know it.  

But I cannot see that API methods remarks are being reflected in the general Revit Documentation either, or seen any dialog that informs that that is what is happening.

This is a moot point per the above explanation.

One thing is for sure in our office other users also noticed this issue in other projects, and they also never saw any Revit dialog explaining why the link is outdated some of the times. 

If other projects are also hosted on BIM360 so yeah, obviously.  If not, then they may have been from different reasons.  And there is no such dialog displaying the link is outdated or updated.  Keeping them updated is by user's due diligence of BIM management practice.

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[luisPDAN6 · Accepted solution]

After some more Google work I came across a Autodesk University document that clarifies a few points with working with the BIM360 links. Please note how the links path are presented differently depending on being local Autodesk Connecor Links or Live links direct to the server.

In the same document there is also suggested one does should work with ADC documents, as they can be outdated. So I did a small investigation to find out the status of the Autodesk Desktop Connector local files. And found that some files had the status "Online", that means that the local file is outdated. So I press sync to start the process as shown under.

After almost 5 minutes, 140Mbytes were downloaded from AWS server in the US where Autodesk stores the files, and the file got Synced.

It puzzles me why ADC does not alpha sync the files automatically in the background, like any other cloud file solution. I suggested that to Autodesk in the feedback of ADC. That would make the best of both worlds as it would not prevents one to work in Revit and would allow to fast local Reload.