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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Revit Tip - Delete Backup Files

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Well, after months of tweaking a program that I was using as a personal tool to improve productivity and workflow, a wonderful reader of mine decided to crush my every ambition of being a programmer... Haha, okay, that was a little dramatic. I am an honest and ethical man and I felt I needed to post this after being informed.

If you are running Vista or Windows 7, this is a very easy solution (XP can be a bit tedious because of the awful search process involved). Simply search your hard drive for the following terms:

  • *.0*.rvt
  • *.0*.rfa

*Edit* I have now also been informed that you can type: *.0*.r??

This will bring up your back up files in which you can select all and then delete them. Granted, my program eliminates the need to type this every time and to empty your recycling bin every time (although Sal informed me that pressing "Shift" an then hitting "Delete" will not send the item to the recycling ben. Just when I thought I knew windows!)... But this will allow you to eliminate every single backup file no matter where it is located.

So, anonymous reader, thank you for killing my hopes and dreams. Being an optimist, I will take the good away from this; I am now very knowledgeable about computer programming.

For those of you who do not want to type the aforementioned search filters every time and you have very specific folders to clean Revit Sweeper is now free. Those of you who have purchased it I will grant a full refund at your request.

Oh, and no, the filter you type into windows explorer is not the method Revit Sweeper uses...
Posted by at Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Comments (7)

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tayothman's avatar - Go to profile

tayothman 12p · 785 weeks ago

Hmmmmm.... That's Great Now it's free...Thank you Jeff!!
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Nancy's avatar

Nancy · 784 weeks ago

Actually, if you search for *.0*.r?? it would find both rvt and rfa files. Thanks for all the other good content you regularly supply.
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Dave's avatar

Dave · 784 weeks ago

Just for fun and to add a deeper level of explanation-
Starting back in the good old days of DOS and perhaps earlier, the wild card character "*" meant search for any number of characters. The wild card character "?" meant search for any single character. So the search string "*.0*.r??" should be interpreted as "any number of characters, period (dot), zero, any number of characters, dot, the letter "r", any single character, any single character. This may very well find Revit backup files, but it has the potential to find other files as well. Also, should it happen that your Revit file has been edited more than 999 times, the first number in the 4-digit revision number would not be a zero, so “.0*.” would not find them. Perhaps your revit sweeper program has greater value than you think.
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David's avatar

David · 784 weeks ago

To extend what Dave was saying. That search string would also find any other files whose extension (3 letter) started with .R__, see the attached link for a listing.
http://filext.com/alphalist.php?extstart=%5ER
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David Kingham's avatar - Go to profile

David Kingham · 784 weeks ago

A simple batch file does the trick for me...

del /s /F *.0*.rte
del /s /F *.0*.rfa
del /s /F *.0*.rvt
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David Kingham's avatar - Go to profile

David Kingham · 784 weeks ago

Plus I have it setup as a scheduled task so it runs every night, no risk of ever getting near 1000 edits
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agidman 0p · 601 weeks ago

Hi there

I would like to list then move the backup Revit files to another location. Also how can I download the Sweeper version

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