Why Does My File Name Include the Word Central

The practice of adding the word "central" to a project file name came about in the early days of Revit to help users see the difference between any stand alone project file, their own local file and the actual central file for their project. Unless you notice a folder with a matching name plus "_backup" there isn't anything obvious to tell us that a file is "special" (central or local file). We used to copy the central file to our own computer and change the name to include our username to identify our local file as different from the central file. With the extra "-central" in the project file name it was easier to see its "specialness".

Since Autodesk changed how to make a local file it is less desirable to add the "-central" to the name. This is because when Revit creates the local file it adds our username to the resulting local file. If we use "-central" in the name we get something like this:

1234 BigProject-central.rvt (the central file)
1234 BigProject-central_Username.rvt (local file, including the -central part)

What made sense then doesn't now.

There are firms that still use a customized process to generate local files (there are other threads about that). For them it may still be advisable or desirable (even required) to continue including the "-central" in the project file name. If you just use the Open and check the "Create New Local" option it isn't as desirable or necessary.