General
Considerations
Decisions
made when sharing a project and setting up its Worksets can have long-lasting
effects on the project team. AutoCAD users will recognize some of these
implications from setting up xref structures for projects. In general, when
setting up Worksets you should take several considerations into account:
1.
Project size
2.
Team size
3.
Team member roles
4.
Default Workset visibility
Establishing
practical policies on how all team members access and create new Worksets in
the project will maintain performance for existing users and ease the process
of introducing new team members to the project.
Project size: The size of your building may affect the way you
decide to segment the Worksets for your team. Unlike AutoCAD xrefs, you don’t
need to make separate Worksets for each floor of the building. You will want to
separate the project into Worksets that allow team members to work without
interfering with each other. In a multistory structure you may want to create
separate Worksets for a set of building elements that will only appear on one
floor, such as a tenant interior. If the project’s floor plate is large enough
that you will need to split it with match lines to fit it on sheets, you may
want to consider creating separate Worksets for each portion.
Team size: The size of the team at the time you enable project
sharing will affect how you structure the project’s Worksets. You should have
at least one Workset for each person, not including the Project Standards,
Shared Levels and Grids, and View Worksets. Autodesk Revit projects are
designed to allow a single designer to work up a concept, and then share the
file to add members to the team. As more people join the team to finish the
detailing and documentation, you can create new Worksets for their use.
· Think of Worksets as Containers: Worksets are
not the same as layers in CAD. Try to
think of them as containers for major systems in your building (interior,
exterior, roof, core elements, etc…) You
really need to manage only the stuff that belongs to user-created worksets:
o
Datums (levels
and grids)
o
Geometry (building
elements that show up in multiple views)
o
Rooms (the spaces
that can be tagged)
·
How Many Worksets do I need? A good rule of
thumb is that you should have one or two worksets for every person working on
the project. (besides shared levels and grids, and workset 1) Once you have 6 to 8 people on a project in
Revit, the performance begins to slow.
·
·
Be Mindful of the Active Workset: As you are creating Datum, Geometry, or Rooms, be
mindful of the active workset. And keep
in mind that Revit Architecture manages the worksets for everything else
(views, Families, and project standards.)
·
Associate Linked Files to their own Workset: By doing this
you can open and close the worksets associated to those links. This strategy is much more predictable than
loading and unloading links (which will have an effect on everyone working on
the project.) Opening or closing a
workset only affects the time of a single user.
·
Stay out of the Central File: Do not move
it, and do not rename it (unless you are very familiar with Revit.) Opening the central file restricts access by
the files that are trying to connect to it.
And if you break something in the central file, you will break the
connections that others have from their local copies.
·
Network Connectivity is Important: The gigabit threshold should be maintained at all
stages of the network, including:
o
Workstation -
each workstation should have at least a gigbit ethernet card. This can be
checked by going to My Computer>Properties>Hardware>Device Manager.
·
Central File
– The Central File coordinates and propagates the changes of each user and
keeps track of which worksets, and elements are available. It acts as the distribution
point for information about worksets and for changes to the project building
model. The central file will be saved
somewhere on the network accessible to all users.
·
Save to Central
– The only time it is necessary to save locally is when you are about to close
the file or exit Revit. When the Save to Central dialog comes up as part of
closing the file (or exiting Revit), the local save button is checked. In this
situation you definitely do want to save to your local file after saving to
central (otherwise the local file will be invalid). Actually Save to Central
always synchronizes the local file with the central file, whether you check the
"save local file" checkbox or not. It does that in memory, affecting
what you see on the screen, so you'll immediately see the changes other people
have saved to central. The "save local file" checkbox just controls
whether the result is immediately saved to your local disk drive. There is
generally no need to save the file to disk locally right after a save to central
unless you are about to close the file. Always save local before closing the
file, otherwise it will become incompatible with the central file.
·
Central File Fixes – Options for trying to fix problems with getting to central file.
o
Copy the central file
to the local hard drive and rename the file.
o
Use the last good
local file to ‘Save to Central’ with a different name.
o
As a last result
you may need to use the Backup. Refer to the Help section on "Rolling Back
Workshared Projects" for detailed information on this process.
·
Detach from Central – Occasionally it may be desired to create a new central file based
upon an existing central file. There are two methodologies of accomplishing
this:
o
Access the Open
command and browse to the central file on the network. Pick the Detach from
Central check box at the bottom of the dialog box. After the drawing is open,
perform a save as to create a new central file.
o
Open either the
central file or a synced local file - then go to File>>Save
As>>Options>> then pick the Make this a Central File after save
check box. Be sure to save the new central file to another location or with a
different name.
·
Audit – Open
the central file and check the Audit option, then re-save and compact the file.
If this is done on a regular basis (weekly is the ideal recommendation), file
size is reduced and speed is increased. To perform an Audit, when opening the
central file select the Audit check box at the bottom of the Open dialog box.
This will display a warning that indicates that auditing a file may take a
while and that you should use this process on large files to aid in better
performance and prior to upgrading the file to a new release of Revit.
·
Compact File
– Compacting the file should result in the file being slightly faster to open
and save. The only reason the file isn't compacted on every save is that
compacting itself takes time. Think of compacting the file as being like
cleaning up your office: after you clean it up it’s faster to find things, but
you wouldn't want to clean it up every time you put something down -- instead
just clean it up once in a while when it gets cluttered. To compact a project
file. In the Save as Central dialog box, select the Compact Central File (slow)
check box. As a suggestion it is recommended that you compact the database once
a week to have the best performance when working on the file.
·
Templates –
You cannot initiate worksharing/worksets in a template file. Once a new project
has been started from a template worksharing may be entered.
·
Workset Organization - Suggestions for common workset organizational principles.
o
Links - make a
workset or worksets to contain links so that the project can be opened more
easily using the selective open tool. You may want a link for Structure, MEP,
and CAD details, for example.
o
Shell vs Core -
in larger projects this can provide a logical way of making the project more
manageable.
o
Furniture - NIC
objects like furniture might also be a good candidate for a separate workset.
o
Groups + Worksets
– It is best to place all items of a group within a workset.
·
Active Workset
– The Active workset is the workset in which newly created model geometry will
be placed. It is the one displayed in the Workset toolbar. It is unrelated to
whether the workset is editable or not (you can put new elements onto
non-editable worksets). To make sure that non-editable elements can't be
selected, you must check the "Editable Only" checkbox on the option
bar. The “Editable Only” check box will only stay unchecked until the next time
you enter the Modify tool. This encourages a workflow in which things are made
editable automatically as you modify them. This makes most work more
convenient, but decreases the usefulness of worksets as a way to restrict what
you can change. If you want to make it harder to change these elements, you can
also have someone else make them editable they'll still be selectable but
you'll get a dialog any time you change them and it won't let you continue.
NOTE: If you are using workset in your project and team members are creating
new geometry in the model, then make sure that they are setting an appropriate
workset as active in the Worksets toolbar.
·
·
Closing a View vs. Visibility - The differences between closing a workset and
turning off visibility are:
o
Visibility is per
view, while closing the workset hides it in all views.
o
Visibility is a
saved setting; every subsequent time you open the file it remembers whether
each workset should be visible in each view. Closing worksets is temporary --
it is generally forgotten the next time you open the file (though there is a
way to tell it to use the previous configuration).
o
Because closing a
workset hides it in all views, if you close the workset when opening the file
it often doesn't need to load most of the elements within that workset into
memory, so you save a lot of memory. This can improve performance.
o
Generally you
should use visibility if you want to permanently change the way a sheet will
look when plotted. Use workset closing when you are just trying to improve
performance by temporarily hiding stuff you don't need to see in the current
session.
·
Moving a level or major geometry changes - When making significant changes in a project (moving
a level or major geometry changes), it is recommended that you perform the
operation when no other users are working on the file and they have
relinquished all elements. Once the changes are Saved to Central, have all
users make new local files.
·
·
Selective Open
- Selective open is a reason to continue partitioning the model into worksets
instead of dumping everything into one workset (by default Workset 1). But,
even if you are using selective open you can still do frequent saves to central
and avoid explicitly making anything editable (letting elements become editable
automatically as you change them). It minimizes editing requests. To use
selective open, use the Open tool to open your local project file. In the Open
dialog box, select the drop-down arrow button beside the Open button. Choose
All, Editable, Last Viewed or Specify.. to display specific worksets when the
file is opened. Press the Open button to open the file. If the Specify option
is selected, in the Opening Worksets dialog box, pick the worksets to be Opened
or Closed, and use the Open or Close buttons to display or not display the
selected worksets. If worksets have been closed, you may turn them on by
accessing the Worksets dialog box pick the desired workset and pick the Open
button to open the workset in your local file.
·
Editing Requests – Revit is intended to facilitate a workflow in which you generally
don't make anything editable -- just start working and the elements get
borrowed automatically as you change them. Then, save to central frequently,
accepting the default of relinquishing borrowed elements (the Save to Central
button in the toolbar does this). It does it for all checkboxes except User
Created Worksets This way, most of the time people have very few elements
editable and it should be pretty rare that there is any need for an editing
request. Editing requests can be made when a user is trying to access an object
that is borrowed or owned by someone else. However, if placing an editing
request, the person whom the request is directed to must know to check the
Editing Requests dialog box as there is no notification that a request has been
made.
·
Upgrading a Work Shared Project to a new Revit version
or build - The process when upgrading
work shared projects is to make sure everyone saves to central, then open the
central file in the new release/build to upgrade it. Save the file, then create
new local files from the upgraded central. Remote Working with Worksharing –
You can add new elements to an existing workset without making the workset
editable, even if you are disconnected from the central file. You can continue
to edit these new elements until you reconnect and save to central. If a
workset is owned by you and you are disconnected from the central file you may
still work on the items within the workset. Other team members connected to the
central file see your workset as owned by you and not editable. You cannot
perform the borrowing of elements when disconnected from the central file. If
you attempt to perform element borrowing, you will receive an error that you
cannot edit non-editable elements. You can however checkout another workset.
This becomes a workset “at risk”. If another team member checks out a workset
while connected to the central file and you check out a workset while
disconnected, you both can make changes to the elements within the workset.
When you login back to the network, the project will attempt to re-establish
the link between your local copy and the central file. If you checked out
additional worksets while disconnected from the central file you will not be
able to re-link with the central file. You will need to open your local file
and detach from the central file, then you can copy/paste information back to
the central file. If you did not check out any other worksets while
disconnected from the central file, open the local file will re-establish the
link and allow you to save your changes made in your local file to the central
file.
·
Steps to relinquish control of a workset checked out
by another team member – There may be
instances where another team member has checked out a workset, left for the day
and for one reason or another is not available to relinquish control of the
workset. If this happens, have the entire team save to central and their local
files, and then exit the project. Rename your user name to that of the person
who checked out the workset. Open the central file. Access the Worksets dialog
box and relinquish control of any worksets. Save to Central and exit the
project. Change the user name back to your user name, open your local file and
perform a Reload Latest. Have the other team members do the same. The workset
is now open for all to checkout.
·
Workstation Specifications – Attempt to keep project team workstation
specifications equivalent. A dramatically weaker machine specification used by
a single team member can reduce overall project performance.
Comments
Post a Comment