[Revit]–Journal File Analyzer–Free Utility to identify Keyboard Shortcut candidates

Luke Johnson runs a great Revit blog called ‘What Revit Wants’, which is updated frequently with lots of good general Revit information. He recently issued a challenge in regards to Journal file analyzing which I have (somewhat) answered.

The result is a utility that I’ve developed that will take a look through your journal files and identify your most commonly used menu items, along with your most commonly used keyboard shortcuts. The idea is that you can run this utility and assess what commands you should add a keyboard shortcut to, in order to make your Revit usage more efficient.

To run the utility, you simply open it, enter the correct location of your Journal files and (optionally) your keyboard shortcuts.xml location (it tries to auto detect this for you, but you may need to change Structure to Architecture in the path).

Click Analyze and it will look through the journal files and tally up your 20 most commonly used commands with and without shortcuts..

An example output for Top Shortcuts used is as follows:

Create a straight detail line or a detail arc , DL  - 120 times
Control visibility and appearance of objects (applied only in the active view) , VG  - 116 times
Trim/Extend two lines or walls to make a corner. , TR  - 88 times
Create a line , XD  - 82 times
Create Aligned Dimensions , DD#DA  - 75 times
Create a text object , T3  - 69 times
Create a detail component , DC  - 65 times
Redraw everything as large as fits into window , ZF#ZE  - 56 times
Align references. , AL  - 39 times
Draw all lines as thin lines. This does not affect printing. , TL  - 36 times
Trim/Extend multiple lines or walls to the same bounding reference. , EX  - 34 times
Create a default 3D orthographic view. , 3D  - 34 times
Split walls and lines , ES#SPL  - 26 times
Manage Links , ML  - 24 times
Change style of selected lines , LW  - 22 times
Copy the type of one object to other objects , MT#MA  - 21 times

What this is saying, is the general name of the command, followed by the keyboard shortcut for that command (as long as you have linked in your shortcuts file) followed by how many times you used that command.

On the right is the display of the top commands used that weren’t started from a keyboard shortcut:

"Undo the last action , ID_BUTTON_UNDO" - 37 times
"Move selected objects or their copies , ID_EDIT_MOVE" - 23 times
"Show or hide recent files , ID_STARTUP_PAGE" - 20 times
"Move copies of selected objects , ID_EDIT_MOVE_COPY" - 8 times
"Finish the family , ID_END_INPLACE_FAMILY" - 8 times
"Prevent change of element position , ID_LOCK_ELEMENTS" - 8 times
"Save the active project back to the Central File , ID_FILE_SAVE_TO_MASTER_SHORTCUT" - 6 times
"Save the active project with a new name , ID_REVIT_FILE_SAVE_AS" - 5 times
"Open an existing project , ID_REVIT_FILE_OPEN" - 5 times
" , ID_FILE_CADFORMAT_LINK" - 5 times
"Finish Sketch , ID_FINISH_SKETCH" - 4 times
"Redo the next action , ID_BUTTON_REDO" - 4 times
"Save the active project , ID_REVIT_FILE_SAVE" - 3 times
" , ID_REVIT_SAVE_AS_FAMILY" - 2 times
"Pick Lines , IDC_RADIO_COPY_CURVE" - 2 times
"Review previously posted warnings , ID_REVIEW_WARNINGS" - 1 times
"Purge (delete) unused families and types , ID_PURGE_UNUSED" - 1 times
"Create a rectangle , ID_OBJECTS_CURVE_RECT" - 1 times
"Modify predefined types for this family , ID_FAMILY_TYPE" - 1 times
"Quit in place family , ID_QUIT_INPLACE_FAMILY" - 1 times

You can see here the name of the command, it’s ID and how many times you’ve used it.

The ‘Include Context Menu Entries’ checkbox is used for if you want to include commands that were fired from menus like the right click menu – which often you can’t create a keyboard shortcut for, but sometimes you can (Save To Central shows up in this listing).

To download the tool and run it on your own download it from HERE. Let me know how it goes for you!

Also, if you are interested in the source code, it’s available on GitHub. If you don’t have Git (you should check it out!) you can download the source code as a Zip. If you want to modify the code feel free to send me a Push request!