Revit Desktop Connector - Change Local Path for Cached Files

[dan.stine]

Desktop Connector is hardwired to place cached files in the user's local folder on the C drive. In some cases it is important to be able to change that path. For example, if a laptop has a smaller SSD C drive, and a larger D drive, the former often gets filled with applications and such. Thus, in some cases it causes drives to fill up.

I understand there are reasons for this decision, but there are always exceptions to the rule.

[Anonymous]

Hey Dan...

Where are you finding that the Desktop app is downloading a cache?   I just checked mine and it was only 44mb

[dan.stine]

This request is for "Desktop Connector" not "Desktop App"... see this post I wrote for related info: https://bimchapters.blogspot.com/2019/05/bim-360-design-local-files-and-more.html

[Anonymous]

Ah...that helps.... Mine's just under 3gb

Also the idea for that exact thing was posted a couple of years ago....  you should go like the older one instead of creating a new one.  https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/changing-path-of-c4r-local-cache-files/idi-p/7405143

There is also a link to an unsupported workaround too.

[dan.stine]

Of course... but I did search for an existing idea and could not find one. To make it more complicated, it is not called C4R anymore, and we never used it when it was. Now, this specifically relates to 'Desktop Connector' and not BIM 360 Design... DC is a separate install.

Autodesk, any chance you could combine that previous, slightly outdated, idea with mine?

[dan.stine]

Looks like this has been fixed! I wrote about it on my blog: https://bimchapters.blogspot.com/2019/07/autodesk-desktop-connector-update.html

[CoopDYNA]

I know this is an older thread, but all indications seem to be that the path can only be changed on an install.  Can the path for Local Copy files in a BIM 360 hosted model be changed afterwards?  I'd really like to have it in a OneDrive Cloud folder or at least on my secondary drive...

[zawmyotun]

Same here, We need to install at second drive. C drive space constraint on laptop.

[bikashs]

  Dan's blog helps!

[dan.stine]

Here is a workaround I used for over a year on a laptop with a small C drive: https://bimchapters.blogspot.com/2019/05/move-bim-360-cache-files-to-another.html

[Christiaan_de_Wit]

The lack of a chosen file path is also an issue when working on VDI systems. The size of a user profile will increase dramatically when the cash is stored there. With multiple users working on the same projects within our company location, all user profiles contain the same cashed models in their own user profile. This is a real problem, since it causes the need for immense amounts of (expensive) storage in our VDI server. If we were able to store the cash files on our local file server, only 1 instance of a local copy is need for all users, while we still take advantage of the faster loading when opening a model. Maybe a server version of the Desktop Connector would be an option to provide this functionality.

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

Congrats! We think this is a great idea, so we've decided to add it to our Revit Public Roadmap. Thanks for the suggestion!

The Factory

[dan.stine]

Thanks so much, Autodesk (and Kimberly:))! This is really good news.

[cadmikeVZ572]

Is there any update on the road-map of this feature? Changing the cache location is a must before we can upgrade to the latest 16.x of desktop connector. We run a CVAD environment, with fslogix profiles and storing the cache folder in the profile just won't work.

Thanks

[dan.stine]

This has been implemented. I wrote about it in this article: https://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2023/issue105-revit.html

[cadmikeVZ572]

Will this only affect files of Revit type, or will it cache any files associated with that project the user chooses to cache?

[kimberly_fuhrman-jones]

Yes, @dan.stine , thank you for pointing out that this has been, in fact, implemented in Revit 2024. My apologies for missing the status update!