Challenge – Revit Productivity Monitoring and Enhancement Tool

Luke Johnson

Here is a challenge for you API and programming wizards out there:  make a tool that monitors the performance and productivity of a Revit user.

What am I talking about?  Mainly, I want to know how I can improve my productivity.  I can see two big ways:

  1. Ensure I am using keyboard shortcuts where possible
  2. Avoid triggering commands unnecessarily, and thus having to abort them and retry

Here is the kind of output I would be looking for:

start sample data
REVIT SESSION Productivity Analysis

Number of commands initiated: 2493

Top 50 commands initiated:
Zoom Extents
Trim
Scale
Copy
…etc…



% of Top 50 initiated using keyboard shortcut:
43%

List of Top 50 commands initiated WITHOUT keyboard shortcut:
Align
…etc…

Total number of commands initiated and then aborted without doing anything:
176

List of commands most commonly aborted:
Cut Geometry
…etc…
end sample data

You get the idea?  Such a utility could show me which tools I should add to my arsenal of keyboard shortcuts.  It would also show me which commands I am not using correctly or triggering unnecessarily.

How could this tool be developed?  I see two main ways:

  1. Create a tool to parse and analyse the output of the journal file for the session.
  2. Create an API tool that monitors and logs the necessary data, then displays it

Who is going to rise to the challenge?

To quote one of my favourite shows:
And if ever a challenger wins over the Iron Chef, he or she will gain the people’s ovation and fame forever!