Revit 2018 - renames assemblies after a sync

[ekrout]

We have been having an issue with creating assemblies and spooling in Revit. We have experienced on several occasions where we create several assemblies with specific unique names, and after we sync the model we get warnings popups. These warnings say "Edits caused a new assembly to be created". What Revit has done is rename these newly created assemblies just by syncing the model. Has anyone else experienced this?

We are using Revit 2018.3 and Revit commands for creating the assemblies, not an add-in software.

Eric

[henryalgermissen]

We have given them access to C4R which genius...  you would know that it creates the exact work environment on every workstation.  Now go back to sitting on that magic wand...

Once again, if you're not going to contribute to the resolution of the issue at hand; kindly (not really) mind your own business.

[RobDraw]

---

@henryalgermissen wrote:

We have given them access to C4R which genius...  you would know that it creates the exact work environment on every workstation.  Now go back to sitting on that magic wand... 

---

Awesome. What about all the other details, like sync times, user settings, etc. that only you can see? Maybe Autodesk needs a crystal ball to see exactly when these are renamed since you can't figure out when it happens.

[RobDraw]

---

@henryalgermissen wrote:

Once again, if you're not going to contribute to the resolution of the issue at hand; kindly (not really) mind your own business.

---

Do you think your insults and unreasonable demands are helping to reach a resolution?

[henryalgermissen]

Seriously?  You're the one that started with the 'magic wand', 'genius' & 'crystal ball'...  Typical snowflake, start with insults and then get offended when someone comes back at them.  Now shush and go back to designing swimming pools...

If you had bothered to read the previous posts with screenshots and screencast showing the sync times etc, you would realize just how ignorant your posts are... 

Further, we have provided them with how to recreate the issue from one of my posts:
"Create 100 or so assemblies, sync, let a couple other users sync and then eventually Revit will eat itself...  Does it do it everytime, no.  Does it happen fairly often, yes."

You obviously didn't read the thread, you jumped in full-moron...  Once again, if you're not going to contribute to the resolution of the issue at hand; kindly (not really) mind your own business.  

We don't need input from the cool-aid drinkers... (that's you, in case you missed the reference).

[RobDraw]

But, yet, here you are doing exactly what you are asking me not to do.

Good luck finding a solution to your seemingly random problem with insults, name calling, and unreasonable demands. That's gonna make people want to help. You're on the right track. Keep it up.

[henryalgermissen]

Once again, if you're not going to contribute to the resolution of the issue at hand; kindly (not really) mind your own business.

[Zsolt.Varga]

@Anonymous

Thanks again for your input in this forum thread. 

We are still working on this investigation with Eric and our Product Development Team and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, which might help us to close down the root cause of the issue. 

If you could provide some more information about your experience and the circumstainces back than, that could be very helpful: 

• Do you still see the issue in other project files as well?
• Have you changed your workflow since then? (so that it still does or does not anymore reproduce the same behavior)
• Could you recognize any pattern in terms of the type of the elements in the affected assemblies back than?
• What Addins were you using in Revit with the affected files?
• Were those addins available for all users working on the same project?
• Could you identify certain assemblies or certain steps, which would always consistently reproduce the unexpected behavior?
• Can you still reproduce the behavior with a sample file?

Thanks for your feedback in advance.

Best regards, 

[henryalgermissen]

Do you still see the issue in other project files as well?
I'm only working on one project at this time.


Have you changed your workflow since then?
No. Same workflow. I've asked for several Autodesk support and developers
for an 'Autodesk recommended workflow'... this document or procedure does
not seem to exist. Send it over when you have a chance.


Could you recognize any pattern in terms of the type of the elements in the
affected assemblies back than?
The problem does not follow any specific element. It exhibits itself when
creating assemblies from fabrication parts.



What Addins were you using in Revit with the affected files?
Current addins: Victools (full license).


Were those addins available for all users working on the same project? Yes,
we are all using Victools.



Could you identify certain assemblies or certain steps, which would always
consistently reproduce the unexpected behavior?
That's the heart of the problem, it doesn't repeat itself all the time. As
I said in my previous posts, an easy way to make it appear is to create 100
or so assemblies and hit sync. If the problem doesn't appear, create
another hundred and sync. The problem will occur.


Can you still reproduce the behavior with a sample file?
Another user (Greg Cole) experienced the problem about 3 weeks ago.
Unfortunately, we're not sitting around just creating assemblies; we are
working to complete a project and doing the various tasks to meet that goal.

[CIPuyleart]

We're a little late to the party to watch the cage fight that this thread deteriorated into...but, on a more serious note we are experiencing the exact same issue.

We have several users that are creating assemblies (spools) in Revit with a very specific and unique naming system.  After the users does a SWC, the assembly names change to a new sequence that does not match what they were set to originally, and thus this data does not match the conventions and requirements of the project.

Some specific information:

• We are using Victaulic Tools 2018 (build 1.18.27) to create the assemblies, and to create the views and sheets in the assemblies.
• This project is on BIM360 Teams as a C4R project
• Current version of Revit is 2018.3.2.7
• This has affected several users on the project, but currently we have seen it occur twice in the past 24 hours with one specific user (the only one currently actually creating assemblies in this project)
• Journal file, log file, and dump file from the user's machine that experienced the problem this morning are all attached.  The issue occurred during the SWC at 09:30:27.385 timestamp (starts at line 60888 in the journal).
• The assembly names are 100% correct up until the point that the user syncs with central.  Not all assemblies are renamed, only some.

We are continuing to monitor this issue, and see if we can capture/catch any pattern or consistency in why it might be happening.  Given some of my past experiences with Revit worksharing, I wonder if it may not be tied to worksharing issues with extensible storage (if Revit uses that for storing any assembly data) or element ID issues during a SWC.  Just tossing darts at the wall...

[Zsolt.Varga]

Hi @CIPuyleart,

Thank you for reporting this - I was sorry to hear, that you have faced this frustrating behavior, on the other hand, this might give us a better chance to finally catch this behavior and help affected users.

Also thank you for the attached files I am happy to pass it to the investigating team, however based on the experiences so far I fear, that we might need to collect a lot more data to get a real chance to find out what exactly is happening. 

I´ve collected a few questions and a list of steps to execute, that our investigating team will need:

• Is the issue consequently reproducible or does it happen sporadically only?

• Can you identify any particular task or workflow that seems to precede the issue - if you can, please, make sure to describe the steps very accurately step-by-step (as this seems to be a rather rare behavior, any detail can be important)

• Can you reproduce the same issue on a simplified test file on the same environment? (if you could, that would help a lot with the investigation - a complex model with a lot of elements / assemblies make the investigation a lot more difficult)
• Can you reproduce the issue with one single user being logged in making changes/ synchronizing or do you need other users to be in the model as well for the issue to happen?
• If yes - do those other users have / have no active license of Victualic Tools

Right after the issue is reproduced, please, execute the following steps to gather data for the investigation: 

1. “Save As” a local copy of the open Revit project file with the changed assemblies and send it together with the collected data (listed below)
2. Note the names of the assemblies that have been changed (and note the element ID´s of at least one affected assembly)
3. Gather and send us:
   a. The username for the user that created the assemblies.
   b. The approximate time that the assemblies were created.
   c. The last time that the model was synched without the name duplication.
   d. The time when the duplication first was seen (and the username of the user that saw this, if different from 1 above).
   e. Get a collector utility dataset ( from every user working with the cloud workshared model over the time in question (from 2-4)
   f. The locally saved project file (with the renamed assemblies)
   g. All files in the local cache folder (C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Revit\ \CollaborationCache) of each users who were working in the model at the time the issue happened
4. Make sure to name the folders of the data in a way that the data of the separate users are easily identifiable
5. Feel free to send me a download link for sensitive/ confidential data in a private message 

Your cooperation and efforts to support the investigation are much appreciated.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks.

[CIPuyleart]

@Zsolt.Varga - I haven't had time to get back to your response, and currently only have limited time to let you know that it's still on our radar but not something we can jump into trying to produce or trouble shoot.

1. At this time, we have seen the issue occur sporadically, and are not able to reproduce it "at will".  The user that most recently experienced it tried to replicate it again after I made my post while using the Autodesk screenshot recorder (or whatever it is called), but the issue did not reoccur.
2. We have not had any users performing the specific set of tasks (creating assemblies and/or creating views/sheets in the assemblies) since we encountered the issue.  We will be watching for it the next time we have a user working on those worksteps again in the coming days.
3. We are in the middle of deadlines on this project that do not afford us the time to do any testing in simple projects to see if we can replicate, but given item 1 above, I don't know that we would even be able to do so.
4. All users in the project have the same set of add-ins installed (including licensed versions of Victaulic tools).

[Zsolt.Varga]

Hi @CIPuyleart,

Thank you so much for your feedback. 

I understand the challenges you are facing and I really wish that we would not have to bother you with the troubleshooting steps I described in my earlier post. 

As you´ve probably seen this in the earlier posts in this thread: What makes this issue particularly painful both for Autodesk´s investigating teams and the affected users is that: 

• it appears sporadically only - so we cannot be 100% certain on the steps to reproduce
• it doesn´t seem to be reproducible on all environments/ systems with the steps that affected users assume to trigger the issue
• the investigating team couldn´t reproduce the issue yet on any set-up test environment with any project data
• even just to get a real chance to track down what exactly is happening when the issue occures - doing this based on diagnostic data only - the investigating team needs a very extensive amount of data to be collected - parts of the dataset only are most likely not enough
• It is very important that the diagnostic data gets collected right after the issue happened, otherwise important information might get even harder to track or overwritten and entirely lost.

But again - I understand entirely that your project work has absolute priority and I appologize for all the troubles this issue has caused you.

I suggest to make the entire affected project team aware of the steps to be done, and the questions to be answered, when they see this issue happening again. And make sure that they follow all of the described steps accurately right after the issue has happened.

 ----------------------------------

Here again as a reminder:

I´ve collected a few questions and a list of steps to execute, that our investigating team will need:

• Is the issue consequently reproducible or does it happen sporadically only?

• Can you identify any particular task or workflow that seems to precede the issue - if you can, please, make sure to describe the steps very accurately step-by-step (as this seems to be a rather rare behavior, any detail can be important)

• Can you reproduce the same issue on a simplified test file on the same environment? (if you could, that would help a lot with the investigation - a complex model with a lot of elements / assemblies make the investigation a lot more difficult)
• Can you reproduce the issue with one single user being logged in making changes/ synchronizing or do you need other users to be in the model as well for the issue to happen?
• If yes - do those other users have / have no active license of Victualic Tools

Right after the issue is reproduced, please, execute the following steps to gather data for the investigation: 

1. “Save As” a local copy of the open Revit project file with the changed assemblies and send it together with the collected data (listed below)
2. Note the names of the assemblies that have been changed (and note the element ID´s of at least one affected assembly)
3. Gather and send us: 
   a. The username for the user that created the assemblies.
   b. The approximate time that the assemblies were created.
   c. The last time that the model was synched without the name duplication.
   d. The time when the duplication first was seen (and the username of the user that saw this, if different from 1 above).
   e. Get a collector utility dataset ( from every user working with the cloud workshared model over the time in question (from 2-4)
   f. The locally saved project file (with the renamed assemblies)
   g. All files in the local cache folder (C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Revit\ \CollaborationCache) of each users who were working in the model at the time the issue happened
4. Make sure to name the folders of the data in a way that the data of the separate users are easily identifiable
5. Feel free to send me a download link for sensitive/ confidential data in a private message 

---------------------------------------------------

Thanks again for your understanding and for your cooperation.

One more question at the end: Is your project team related in any way to the project team/ office/ C4R project/ IT environment...etc. to other users in this thread, such as @henryalgermissen, @ekrout, @Anonymous ?

Best regards, 

[CIPuyleart]

My apologies for not replying on this - we've been very busy the past several months getting several critical projects out.  We continue to see this issue intermittently, and across several users, but are still unable to identify specific circumstances or steps that cause it.  Some times, it will be only a few assemblies that are renamed, and other times it will be dozens.

One question - in your list of data to collect - what is the "collector utility dataset" you are speaking of?

Finally, no, no one on our team is related to or associated with the projects, companies, or original posters of this issue.

[jefffromwr]

We are encountering the same issue.

Here are the Journals.  I am working on getting screenshots.  This happens frequently, although not every time. The user will spool using Victaulic including creating sheets, he will check his work and then synchronize.  After synchronization, the new spooled assemblies are renamed.

Revit 2018

18.3.1.2

20180423_10000(x64)

2018.3.1

Occurred within the last hour, currently 11:30 MST.

Victaulic Tools For Revit 2018.v1.18.19

Regards,

Jeff

[Zsolt.Varga]

Hi @CIPuyleart ,

Thanks for your feedback and sorry for the late reply. 

The Collector Utility is a tool that my colleague, Lance Coffey in Autodesk Technical Support has developed to enable users to run an automatized collection of diagnostic data. 

This tool is attached to and downloadable from the article: 

Revit - Collecting and sending diagnostic data to Autodesk Technical Support

Once you downloaded, you can unpack the ZIP folder containing both the application and a readme file with instructions on how to use it. 

This tool collects much more data than just the journals and is therefore very useful for preparing investigations based on diagnostic data - as long as there is clear information about which data belongs to which user and which time and elements the investigating team needs to look for when searching for unexpected behavior. Of course, it is also very important to have the related model data available as well. 

Best regards, 

[Zsolt.Varga]

Hi @jefffromwr ,

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing this issue as well. 

I understand that the issue is relatively frequently reproducible, which might give us an opportunity to try again to catch this behavior. 
For that it is absolutely necessary to gather a complete dataset as described in my earlier post. Based on the experience with the previous attempts to investigate this issue: anything missing from that package of data will most probably lead to the investigating team losing track of what exactly is going on with the elements.

So here again the detailed guide, of what is needed to get a chance to catch this issue in an investigation:

Questions to answer one-by-one:

• Is the issue consequently reproducible or does it happen sporadically only?

• Can you identify any particular task or workflow that seems to precede the issue - if you can, please, make sure to describe the steps very accurately step-by-step (as this seems to be a rather rare behavior, any detail can be important)

• Can you reproduce the same issue on a simplified test file on the same environment? (if you could, that would help a lot with the investigation - a complex model with a lot of elements / assemblies make the investigation a lot more difficult)
• Can you reproduce the issue with one single user being logged in making changes/ synchronizing or do you need other users to be in the model as well for the issue to happen?
• If yes - do those other users have / have no active license of Victualic Tools

Right after the issue is reproduced, please, execute the following steps to gather data for the investigation: 

1. “Save As” a local copy of the open Revit project file with the changed assemblies and send it together with the collected data (listed below)
2. Note the names of the assemblies that have been changed (and note the element ID´s of at least one affected assembly)
3. Gather and send us: 
   a. The username for the user that created the assemblies.
   b. The approximate time that the assemblies were created.
   c. The last time that the model was synched without the name duplication.
   d. The time when the duplication first was seen (and the username of the user that saw this, if different from 1 above).
   e. Get a collector utility dataset (gathered by the Collector Utility tool, which is downloadable as an attachment of this article) - Important: Gather dataset from every user working with the cloud work shared model over the time in question (from 2-4)
   f. The locally saved project file (with the renamed assemblies)
   g. All files in the local cache folder (C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Revit\ \CollaborationCache) of each users who were working in the model at the time the issue happened
4. Make sure to name the folders of the data in a way that the data of the separate users are easily identifiable
5. Feel free to send me a download link for sensitive/ confidential data in a private message 

Thank you for your understanding and for your cooperation.

Best regards,

[jefffromwr]

Zsolt,

Thank you for your response.

I sent the steps outlined below to the Revit user who most recently had this problem.  We will attempt to capture the information as completely as possible.

Regards,

Jeff

[jefffromwr]

Zsolt,

Username: Steve.Spransy

Date/Time: July 2, 2019 between 10 and 10:30 a.m.

Last Time Model Synched Without Renaming: Unknown

Steve.Spransy Witness to Renaming at 10:38 a.m.

I am sending you an FTP link for the requested data files.

[jefffromwr]

Tried to PM you details for FTP via the Knowledge Network.  I am getting an error.  Are there any other options?

[Zsolt.Varga]

Hi @jefffromwr ,

I had some difficulties a couple of hours ago with sending you a Private Message too, but now it worked just fine again - I just sent you one from my account. I hope this was just a temporary glitch.

Please, retry and let me know the exact error message you see when /(if) the process fails again. 

Opening your browser and deleting the browser Cache (Ctrl+Shift+Delete) might also help.

Regards,