Issue

You are trying to test something manually in Revit on the task server, and the Task dialog is launching when you launch Revit, even though the Clarity Task Tray is exited.

Cause

When the Clarity Task Tray for Revit is running, it puts an addin in the addins folder while Revit launches to pick up a task, when we are done with the task, we try to delete it...if we are unable to delete it due to permissions issues generally, then that dialog will come up even though the task tray is not running.

Resolution

You need to make

Introduction

These prerequisites are required for all types of Clarity host.

This guide does not cover the full configuration and operation of the software – merely the host prerequisites.

Hardware/Operating System Requirements

Clarity requires a server-class Windows Server operating system to be the central web server. 

A dedicated server is highly recommended.  Whether you will be using Revit Server in your environment or not, the prerequisites are the same for Clarity, so the System requirements below should be referenced.

I highly recommend that you go with the Performance requirements, but no less than the Value for either circumstance of concurrent

If a task is stuck in the claimed status, the task server started opening the model, but something happened during that process that hung things up.  We aren’t able to kill it from the Clarity web portal, so you either have to wait for it to time out, or manually kill it on the task server.

If you are trying to get other tasks to run, you probably don’t want to wait for that to happen, so the resolution is to manually fix the issue on the task server.

Causes:

If we are waiting for a response in Revit while

General

Updates are patches to the current version you have installed.  For example 24.1.5

You can see if an update is available from the Server tab, Central Host to the right of the Update Version value.

Update Process

Log onto the Host server as the Clarity service account (application pool identity)

In Services, Stop the Clarity services

Right click on the desktop icon Update Clarity Host, Run as Administrator

The updater dialog will come up to determine if the update is needed, if so it will start downloading the files needed to update.

When the update completes, it will indicate

BIMTrack integration requires its own credentials to access all projects on BIMTrack for the Backup task and Upload post action.

In BIMTrack, it is a two-legged OAuth Token, giving access to Clarity to a particular BIMTrack hub.

There is NOT a different set of credentials per user.

You only need one API token to have access to all projects on a BIMTrack hub.

Setup

• Go to your BIMTrack hub and retrieve the API Access token.

  • In BIMTrack - Hub Settings > Gear Icon > API Access Token

  • Go to the Clarity Server/Settings/OAuth page, BIMTrack and add credentials.

  • Enter the hub name

The monitoring logs, with the default settings, will roll over at 100kb.

If you have a large amount of data, they will likely roll over too quickly for us to find the information we need for diagnostics.  To resolve this, and capture more data, we need to modify a config file.

Log onto the host machine as the Clarity Service Account

Go to the following folder:

• C:\Program Files\IMAGINiT Technologies\Clarity Monitoring Service

• Make a copy of this file: Log4net.config and rename the copy extension to .ORIG

• Edit the Log4net.config with Notepad

• Change the value as shown below to increase the file size

Prerequisite

.NET 6.0 Runtime installed

Download Link

Make sure the service is set to Log On as the Clarity Service account.

Issue:

The Journaling service won’t stay running even though the dotnet 6 is installed.

Solution:

We need to make a configuration change to the appsettings.json file in this folder on the host:  C:\Program Files\IMAGINiT Technologies\Clarity Journal Service

Process

Make a backup of the appsettings.json file and change the extension to .orig

Modify the .json file in Notepad.

Add the line below, (highlighted in green in the screen shot) after the password but before the “

;TrustServerCertificate=True

If you get

The Clarity team is happy to announce the availability of Clarity 2025!

This new version includes:

• Support for Revit 2021 thru 2025, with limited support for 2020.
• Revit Error Resolutions
• Aconex Integration  (additional cost module)
• Enhancements to Clarity Space Programming
• And more.

You are welcome to join us at the link below for a short webinar related to what's coming in the Clarity 2025 product.

Date: Thursday May 30, 1pm EST.

https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6735875851840934743

How Will I Get My Copy?

An email will be sent in the next day or so to the designated contact for your company with the new download

You want to know if you can enable FIPs on Clarity machines.

What is FIPS? FIPS stands for Federal Information Processing Standards These are standards and guidelines for federal computer systems that are developed by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and approved by the Secretary of Commerce.

If you are working on government projects, this is something that will likely apply to you.

You can find out more about FIPS at the link below. https://www.nist.gov/standardsgov/compliance-faqs-federal-information-processing-standards-fips#2

Clarity General Information Clarity should sense that FIPS is enabled. This information will

Issue

If you are unable to send diagnostics from the Clarity web portal completed task id, sometimes clearing the content of the logs folder will resolve the issue.

Process

• Log onto the task server as the designated Clarity account
• Exit the Clarity task tray, by right clicking on the Clarity icon and select Exit
• Open Services and Stop the Clarity Windows Task Server Service
• From File Explorer browse to the logs folder for your version of Clarity
• Example: C:\ProgramData\IMAGINiT Technologies\Clarity Task Server 2024\Logs
  • You can zip the logs folder if you want an archive copy or need to send them

Forbidden Characters

As a rule, all of the symbols below should be avoided, in both file names and folder names to reduce the likelihood of issues in various environments.  An underscore _ as a separator is always acceptable.

The table below shows what and where a symbol not allowed (No) or is allowed (Yes) or not specifically listed as not allowed.

• Don’t add a space at the beginning or end of a file or folder name. 
• Use less than 260 characters in file or folder paths, 245 for Egnyte.

Current Clarity version at this posting:  2024.1.2

2/9/2024

There is now a way in Clarity 2024, to configure an override when there is an error opening the model like the one shown below.

For Clarity 2025 refer to this blog:  https://imaginit.helprace.com/i659-clarity-2025-task-tray-configuration-for-error-overrides 

Error: One or more dimension references are or have become invalid.

This configuration change is done at your own risk and will apply to all models on this task server that have the configuration files modified.

WARNING

This modification will allow us to delete the dimension(s) so we can continue processing the task, this means that those elements will not show up in the model for that task. 

As of Clarity 2023 we have had the ability to set the task server to perform the post action locally.  This applies to all post actions.  The one thing to be aware of is, depending on the type of post action and where it is processed, the identity can be different.

If you are unable to use the updater tool to automatically download and install the updates due to network restrictions, you can download them and run them manually.

DOWNLOADS

First you will need to download the following into a folder on the machine or on your network… For example C:\Clarity\Updates

Host

• http://s3.amazonaws.com/IMAGINiTSoftware/Updates/ClarityHost2024.zip

Task Servers

• http://s3.amazonaws.com/IMAGINiTSoftware/Updates/ClarityTask2024.zip

Updater Files

Download the updater files from the links below and place them in the same folder as the content above.  For this it will just bring up a web page with that text so just right click on the page and save as to

Which tasks report Metrics in Clarity?

Model Metrics has most of them, then Performance Advisor.  for other tasks or configuration settings that pull model information, please refer to the information below for additional information.

Metrics Tasks and Configurations

1. Model Metrics
2. Performance Advisor
3. BIM Interoperability Model Checker
4. ClarityClient
5. The Task Server open time
6. Index Model Families

Model Metrics

Help Link

Metrics Captured:

• # of Sheets
• # of Views Not on Sheets
• # of Families
• # of Families Used
• # of InPlace Families
• # of Hosted Families
• # of Purgeable Families
• # of Links
• # of CAD Links
• # of Revit Links

Interested in seeing what is coming in the next version of Clarity?

Come to our webinar on October 18.

Click Here to Register

Due to a new project limit restriction on the 16.x versions of the Desktop Connector, we have added a new setting in the Clarity task tray, that will allow us to swap out the least used project, with a new one.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

If the screen is left in a locked state, it is not possible for any UI Automation to run. This is a Microsoft limitation from a security perspective.  That means that in order for this to work and swap projects, the machine must remain unlocked.

Desktop Connector

You will need to make sure you first select the

The process is the same as in Windows 10, but they did a better job of hiding it.

To add a form

• Go to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Devices and Printers • Select the printer you want to add a form to • Select Print Server Properties • In the Print Server Properties dialog, Forms tab • Create New Form • Enter name and dimensions (These are intentionally entered backward in here) • • Save Form

Clarity Task Server 2024 has a feature which does its best to auto-select whatever projects your are performing tasks on within your Desktop Connector environment. This is an inexact approach, but it is all that Autodesk allows us to do (we've pushed them for an API, or a change in behavior to better support Task Servers).

When 16.3 Desktop Connector was released, some customers saw problems with our automation to auto-select projects. On August 3rd, we released a task server update that mitigates the issues that were seen.

We still recommend staying on Desktop Connector 15.8 for as long as

6/27/2023

For clients using named user licensing, Autodesk has started enforcing that one named user cannot be logged in on 3 machines at the same time doing work.  When that happens, you will see the following warning, which will only allow you to have this user account accessing software on one machine at a time.

What Autodesk has told us in these cases is: The legitimate way of using Clarity with named-user licenses, is to have each task server have a separate email (user license) for each task server, just as if you had robotic interns sitting at each one doing