So we all know how to impersonate another user to relinquish a WorkSet that's checked out to their name, and if you’re not sure what I’m talking about here is a link to bring you up to speed.
So the question that comes to my mind is, what if you don't want anyone pulling this trick on you and relinquishing your WorkSets. For example if you're a BIM manager and don't want people fiddling around with a few WorkSets, but unfortunately all your Revit technicians know the username swap trick, what can you do?
In Revit, the username field accepts multiple fonts as input however it displays some as bullets, kind of like when you’re inputting your password on a web page. A good place to find these fonts is in MS Word. The font 'MT Extra' for example I've tested and it shows up as bullets another one is the font ‘AIGDT’. What this means is that no one can know what Font or Letters you used to create your username besides you. But it is important that you remember your input or else the only way to unlocked those workset is to paste the bullets back into MS Word and go through the fonts one by one until one of them can translate it back. It's random at best so I can't say for sureten which font will translate it back to text but it is never the font you used to create it.
Steps:
1. First image takes you inside Revit where you would enter your username.
2. Second image is copying the username into MS Word and changing it to a different font in this example the font called AIGDT. (which is just associate symbols to letters).
3. Third image is copying the username (AIGDT font) back into Revit and as you can see Revit just shows it as bullets.
4. Forth image shows how WorkSets checked out to that user will appear to others.
5. To find out what the hidden username was, paste it back into MS Word and go through the list of fonts. Note: Make sure you relunch MS Word from the time you create the hidden username.
Have fun.