Timer to see total time working on a Revit file

[draftorb]

Would be nice if there was an option to see the total time spent working on a Revit file. A clock, that starts timing every time you open a Revit file and adds up the time all the way back since file creation. It would help with invoicing and once you know how much hours you spent on a type of project, it helps with estimating future timelines.

With ongoing projects that last several months, it is hard to remember how much time was spent working on a project. A timer would be really helpful.

[Anonymous]

Collaborate Tab, Show History.

But I figure timesheets would show history of what project was worked on and what was done each day?

[dplumb_BWBR]

I've never understood what useful information that would give you.

I walk around the office here and I see a Revit model up on everyone's screen all the time.

Even when I know they're in a meeting, at lunch or even off-site at a client's office.

I've even seen people leave their models open all night long.

So, apparently, they're working 24 hours a day

[Anonymous]

I don't know a simple answer but there should be a metric at least so we can tell how  much time we spent on the file. Maybe just calculate the time of mouse moving on Revit software screen so you know project is being edited versus keeping the file on all the time not doing anything.

[draftorb]

@Anonymousright now i only have access to revit lt, so in the full version, with the collaborate tab & show history - does that show total time working on file or just when/who/where file was saved? Also, by timesheet  do you mean something outside of the program? Typically for bigger projects we do that, it just would be nice to have the timer on revit. Especially if you forgot to log hours on a job, at least you have something instead of trying to dig some guess out of the brains memory banks.

@dplumb_BWBR, The vast majority of the time with revit, I only have it open when I am working on a particular project so it does not waste computer resources just sitting idle in the background. My computer is off at the end of the day so even if I forget to close revit, that would prevent overnight hours. So a timer in my case would be really accurate. The only additional time that would be clocked when I'm not on revit is when I'm getting a drink/going to washroom.

Perhaps the timer would only count the hours from opening to saving.

Thanks for the input!

[Anonymous]

Check out the journal files....that will show you when commands were entered and how often etc..etc...

[HOLT-KAS]

I totally agree a timer clock would be super helpful.  Yes, timesheets should be done separately for accounting purposes but there used to be a feature in AutoCAD where you could see how many hours had been spent on a sheet.  That is how we used to calculate the work to do a project (#sheets x #avghours per type of sheet).  In Revit, it would be fantastic for me to see how long it took to model a specific project so I have a reference for the next one.

[GertZJCDV]

Timer will be very helpful to have to also track how long certain projects or tasks took. One thing for a developer to consider is for timers to stop if a mouse don't move for a period of time or/and if a screen goes off etc.

[davetexter]

I wish Revit would record how much time was spent just waiting for an operation to complete (hour glass/spinning wheel of death).  I would say when working with large files I spend probably 10-20% of my time just waiting.