Revit Add-ons: Bnotes: Advanced Keynote Manager

Sunday, October 25, 2026

Bnotes: Advanced Keynote Manager

Overview

Bnotes—Advanced Keynote Manager is a Revit add-in from BREVIT LLC that provides a visual interface for searching, editing, organizing, and maintaining keynote text files. It retains Revit’s external .txt keynote-file workflow while reducing the need to maintain that file manually in a separate editor. Its main capabilities combine hierarchical browsing, usage indicators, inline editing, reference updates, file recovery, and coordination tools for cloud-hosted keynote files.

Keynote Browsing and Editing

Hierarchical tree view: Keynotes appear in a collapsible parent/child structure. The Marketplace listing identifies blue entries as used, red entries as unused, and black entries as parent or category headings. This makes project usage visible without reviewing a flat text file.
Live search: Entering part of a keynote key or description filters the tree. The listing describes debounced searching intended to remain responsive with thousands of entries.
Inline editing: Users select an entry and change its key or description in the detail panel. Changes can be written back to the keynote file and applied to Revit. The guide distinguishes Update Selected, Reload From File, Refresh, and Save & Apply to Revit controls.
Adding and reorganizing notes: Users can add child or sibling entries, edit a parent key to move an entry within the hierarchy, and delete entries with confirmation. New keys are automatically numbered to follow the existing scheme, according to the listing.
File-wide text-case tools: Descriptions can be converted to Title Case, UPPERCASE, or lowercase. These are broad standardization operations across the file, rather than selective editorial corrections.

Usage Checking and Reference Coordination

Usage navigation: Users can click usage indicators to reach the sheets and views where a keynote is used. This provides a connection between library maintenance and placed documentation.
Bulk reference updates: Renaming a keynote key updates placed references across sheets in one Revit transaction. The precise coverage of element assignments, annotations, and project-specific conditions should be verified in a trial.
Orphan detection: Identification of missing-key references and entries no longer referenced. These conditions should be treated differently: an unused library note may be intentional, whereas a placed reference with a missing key requires investigation.
Keynote types: The product page explicitly identifies element and user keynotes. The reviewed material does not clearly establish equivalent material-keynote support; firms requiring that workflow should confirm it directly.

File Management and Recovery

Create or copy files: The File drawer can create a blank keynote file or copy an existing one. Bnotes automatically assigns the resulting file as the project’s keynote source.
Per-project file memory: Bnotes remembers the selected keynote-file location for each Revit project, reducing repeated browsing between sessions.
Save Project Keynotes As: Identified as new in version 2.0, this recovery feature exports keynote entries already loaded in Revit’s memory to a new .txt file. It is intended for lost files, inaccessible paths, or related file-access problems.
Recovery boundary: Exporting loaded project data is not the same as recovering every historical revision of an external file. Changes never loaded into the project should not be assumed recoverable through this feature.

Cloud Files and Worksharing

The Marketplace listing names Autodesk Docs, Autodesk Forma, and BIM 360 as cloud-file scenarios. It describes a Refresh function for resynchronizing keynote information when Revit shows question marks in keynote annotations. The guide also names OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, and Box in its cloud-worksharing discussion.

For a workshared model with a cloud-hosted keynote file, Bnotes prompts users to Sync With Central before editing and uses the Bnotes_ActiveUser project parameter to track editing activity. If another user has Bnotes open, it displays a warning with that user’s name. On closing, the user can synchronize or close without synchronizing. The documented flow is skipped for local keynote files. Although marketed as conflict prevention, the described behavior establishes synchronization prompts and editing-status warnings, not an unconditional file lock or demonstrated database-style concurrency control.

Compatibility, Pricing, and Licensing

The developer lists Revit 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2027, with one license covering all six supported versions. The Autodesk Marketplace listing offers a trial, but its duration was not established by the retrieved information. Advertised one-time prices are in US dollars:

Solo: 1 seat — $59.
Duo: 2 seats — $109.
Small Team: 5 seats — $239.
Team: 10 seats — $439.
Studio: 30 seats — $1,239.

The pricing page defines a seat as one activation, tracked per machine and email. Larger deployments and site licenses require contacting BREVIT. It states that every plan includes all features, a perpetual license, one year of updates and support, immediate license delivery, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. After the first year, updates and support can optionally be renewed for 30% of the license price annually; without renewal, the owned version continues working.

Terms to confirm: The main product page also advertises free updates within the major version, while the dedicated pricing page describes one year of updates with optional renewal. Those entitlements are not identical. Buyers should resolve the discrepancy and confirm the applicable terms before purchase. Prices and compatibility may change.

Practical Value and Evaluation Priorities

Bnotes is most relevant to teams maintaining substantial keynote libraries or project-specific files. Its likely workflow benefits are less manual text-file maintenance, faster identification of used notes, more consistent description formatting, easier hierarchy changes, and improved visibility into missing references and shared editing. These are implications of the published features, not measured productivity results.

Test automatic numbering and parent/child changes against actual office keynote conventions.
Verify renamed-key behavior across annotations, element assignments, views, and sheets in a representative project.
Confirm material-keynote support if required.
Check cloud-file accessibility, refresh behavior, simultaneous-editor warnings, and synchronization practices.
Compare recovered text-file output with the keynote data expected from the project.
Confirm activation administration, license transfer arrangements, trial duration, update entitlements, and support terms before wider deployment.

Overall Assessment

Bnotes is a focused keynote-management utility rather than a general-purpose Revit productivity suite. Its principal appeal is bringing visual editing, organization, usage checking, file recovery, and cloud-worksharing awareness together around Revit’s existing keynote-file system. The reviewed sources are predominantly developer documentation and the Autodesk Marketplace listing, which displayed two 5-star ratings. The feature set merits a representative project trial, but reliability, performance, reference-update coverage, and collaboration behavior should not be treated as independently validated.

Sources

BREVIT: Bnotes product overview — advertised capabilities and supported Revit versions.
BREVIT: Bnotes complete guide — interface, editing controls, and worksharing details.
BREVIT: Bnotes pricing — plan prices, activation model, updates, support, and refund terms.
Autodesk Marketplace: Bnotes—Advanced Keynote Manager — developer identification, feature descriptions, trial availability, and review status.