Alrighty, calm down! I know C4R is the old and BIM360 is what we mostly work with now, but it was a long time ago when I created this handy little tool.. and “BIM360 Cache Cleaner” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
You might remember a post I made a while back about how to manually clean out your C4R (now BIM360) cache. It’s a rare occurrence but on sometimes you end up with corrupt models in your local cache and you need to blow them away.
But explaining to the average user how to clear these models by searching journals and digging through their appdata folder, not to mention don’t forget your PacCache folder.. man.. it’s hard work!
As I’ve been getting involved in big projects again, I’ve already had two instances where I have had corrupted local files. This could be caused by all sorts of things, but I find usually the culprits are
- Dropped internet connection during open or sync
- Project partners running different patch versions of Revit (i.e. 2020.1 and 2020.2.1)
- Corrupt family elements
Realistically though it could be caused by any number of bad Revit practices and the bigger the project, well, the more chance you’re going to stumble across things that break models.
All that aside though, a long time ago I decided to create a tool that would assist with this local cache cleaning process, and as I’ve found that I’ve needed to use it recently, I thought I would provide it free of charge for anyone that might find it useful.
It’s pretty easy to use, and it’s premise is simple. C4R Cache Cleaner is a standalone program that reads the journal files saved on your local machine to discover local copies of BIM360 files stored on your machine.
It won’t tell you what models are corrupt, and it doesn’t save a list of files that you’ve opened over time. If the project or the file isn’t found in a journal file.. well.. it just won’t show up.
The reason for this is that when you want to fix up a locally corrupted model, it’s something that you have been working on just now. There is no point to over complicate the tool to record a history of models through Revit addins and other fun stuff.
Most people should be able to figure out how to use the tool without any further instruction, but just in case you want a little more direction on how to clean your cache, I present you with probably the least pretty diagram I’ve created.
Hopefully someone else out there will find this little tool helpful, I know I do.. but I’m kind of biased.
Download
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As someone who’s just been forced to jump onto BIM 360 but has already faced corrupted files – this is awesome, thank you! One suggestion – would it be possible to include an option to show the GUID that the file and project are saved with in case we need to recover a local file? Just because I’m lazy and don’t want to trawl through journal files to find it.
I was thinking about this today actually, I had to tidy up someone’s files but was too lazy to figure out the single model so just copied across everything.
Let me see what I can do, but it might take some time because I’m just pulling it together in my spare time.
All good. What you have done is very helpful as is!