After the 1.0 release, a user asked if the viewer could read Revit journals. Fair ask. A Revit crash report doesn’t carry the detail a Civil 3D or AutoCAD one does. No exception, no failing module, no model name. But it does come with a journal.
Revit 2026 ships the session’s journal with the crash report, zipped up as journal.NNNN.txt. That journal knows what happened. So 1.0.3 now reads it.
The hamster in the wheel has been busy. If you’ve watched him run while the viewer chews through a folder of crash reports, you know he doesn’t get many days off.
Download Shaan’s CER Viewer 1.0.3
The Revit Journal tab
When a Revit crash folder has a journal, the viewer adds a Revit Journal tab. It starts with the parts you’d go hunting for:
- How the session ended: the fatal error and exception code
- Add-in errors, with the add-in Revit itself names as responsible
- Add-in version conflicts
- Third-party add-ins that started in the session
- The last commands before the crash
- Memory at the end of the session
The full journal sits below that, if you want to read all of it. The Summary tab tells you a journal was found, and Hide names scrubs the tab like everything else.
The Revit 2023 and 2024 crash reports I’ve seen don’t include a journal, so those crashes don’t get the tab.
Revit 2024, not Revit 24
Revit and Plant 3D reported internal version numbers, so the viewer showed “Revit 24.3.30.11”. Now it says “Revit 2024 (24.3.30.11)” and “Plant 3D 2024 (15.0.6100.2)”. The Updates and Versions reports group them by the release people actually installed. If a report doesn’t say enough to pin down the year, the viewer leaves the version as reported instead of guessing.
Stack dumps
Some Autodesk processes, Desktop Connector most often, leave CDXStackDump files next to the crash report. Those hold a .NET exception with the full stack trace. The viewer used to ignore them. Now there’s a Stack Dumps tab that groups identical dumps and marks the first frame outside .NET’s own code, which is usually where you want to start looking.
Smaller fixes since 1.0
- Hide names now covers the header and Summary tab too. A user name inside a file path could slip through before.
- Civil 3D update labels match Autodesk’s build list, including 2024.4.9, 2025.2.8 and 2026.2.3.
- A damaged notes file can’t wipe out your crash pattern notes anymore.
Same as before: one exe, no installer, no network connections, free, as-is with no warranty. Source code is still coming.
If you support Revit and have a Revit 2025 crash, I’d love to know whether its folder has a journal in it. And I’d really like CER crash files from other Autodesk products for testing, if you have some. You can remove the user details in Shaan’s CER Viewer before you send them. Comment here or email me at shaan@shaanhurley.com.
Find the reason behind the crash. Don’t guess. Investigate.
Cheers,
Shaan.
