Thread: Is there a tool to determine what version of Revit a model was created in?

Hey guys, I'll preface this by stating that I'm a network admin not a BIM admin so maybe this is an obvious question. I was wondering if there was a way or a tool to determine what version of Revit a particular model is. Short of opening the file and seeing if it tells you that it was created in a previous version or that it's incompatible. We have many models/projects spanning the past few years that have been done in 10, 11, and now 12. Some were upgraded mid project others were finished in the version they were started in. Not a huge deal but my users are complaining that they need to open a model (some of our models are HUGE with other large models linked in) just to determine what version the file is in. Sometimes this can take 10 or 15 minutes or more depending on the size and links and whether they guessed right or not. Not a huge deal, but the chorus is getting louder. Thanks.

You mean besides adding a custom value to the file properties through windows explorer? Or add it to the project name? Or adding a tiny txt-file to the project folder stating which version the file was created in?

Then no... There's no way to tell from the mere file.

Originally Posted by DKowalchik

Not a huge deal but my users are complaining that they need to open a model (some of our models are HUGE with other large models linked in) just to determine what version the file is in. Sometimes this can take 10 or 15 minutes or more depending on the size and links and whether they guessed right or not.

Let me introduce you to the Specify Workset option when opening a file. Click the down arrow next to the Open button, then click Specify.
Select all the Worksets when the box pops up and hit the Close button, or close everything you don't want to load. We put our links on separate Worksets for this reason.

We've got a 250mb file with well over 3gb of files(30+) linked into it and it takes about 15-20 seconds to open if we close all the Worksets. Of course nothing is visible when it's open...but it gets you in the file. And you can Open the Worksets again if you need to see something.

You can open the file in a text editor and find the version and build number. Notepad is really slow but a good editor like Textpad opens the file quickly

Originally Posted by Rick Moore

You can open the file in a text editor and find the version and build number. Notepad is really slow but a good editor like Textpad opens the file quickly

Could you please elaborate on that? I get nothing but weird characters when I open a .rvt file with Notepad++

Scroll down a bit and you'll see real words

Nope, nothing....

This is in TextEdit on the Mac, but should look the same in any raw text editor.

FWIW, it is a 72MB file and opened in about a second. A 200MB plus file took all of 2 seconds.

Gordon

EDIT: Note that the data is just a little ways down from the top, maybe 2 or three screens in this shot. The scroll bar doesn't get grabbed by the screen capture, so where this is in the file is not obvious. One could also probably search for Build: to get there a little quicker.

Originally Posted by Munkholm

Nope, nothing....

2012-02-28_1646 - Alex_Cunningham's library

Maybe it's text wrap that's hiding it. I see the text just after a scroll down. Textpad opened a 110 meg file almost immediately, notepad took about 45 seconds.