I touched upon journal files a couple of times in the past, for example to load an external application and automatically perform an action in the DocumentOpened event handler, or to implement a script automating IFC import.
The Revit SDK also includes the Journaling sample which demonstrates how an add-in can define what information goes into the journal file while it is being recorded, and how to use that data to repeat the add-in's external command functionality during replay.
However, several people had problems getting the Journaling sample to run in Revit 2012. This is due to changes in the add-in loading behaviour introduced in the recent releases of Revit in connection with the shift from INI files to the add-in manifest.
Here is the quick summary of the solution, which is utterly simple but pretty hard to discover on your own:
To run this sample, make sure that the journal file, the add-in manifest (.addin) and the add-in assembly (.dll) are all in the same folder, otherwise it definitely will not work. This is by design, to reduce the impact during regression testing: in this way, only the required add-ins in the journal folder will be registered and loaded by Revit.
This ties in very well with my current tendency to copy all add-in assemblies into the Revit add-in folder, where the add-in manifests have to be placed in order for Revit to find them. As I mentioned discussing the add-in wizard updates, this has the significant advantage of obviating the need to specify the full assembly path in the add-in manifest.
