Explore the concept of work sharing in Revit, a feature that allows multiple users to operate on the same project simultaneously. The article discusses the setup process for a central model and local models for collaborative projects, providing a comprehensive guide for beginners.
Key Insights
- The process of work sharing in Revit involves creating a central model, which serves as the master file of a project. Local models can then be set up to save changes onto the central model, facilitating simultaneous work from multiple users.
- The central model can be shared within a local network or on the cloud. However, users are advised not to work directly in the central model as it is the master project file.
- Revit's Collaborate function allows users to synchronize their local models with the central model. This helps to keep the central model updated with changes from all local models and vice versa. The function also includes options to reload latest changes and relinquish ownership of worksets and borrowed elements.
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In this video, we'll go over the concept of work sharing in Revit. Work sharing essentially allows multiple users to work on the same project simultaneously. Now, you won't need to open any files yourself, so just sit back and watch in order to understand this process.
On BIM projects, it's quite common to have one central model, as it's known, and then local models that then save their changes to that central model. Think of the central model as the master file for a work-shared project. In this video, we'll look at how to set up a central model as well as the local models.
In order to do that, I want to make this drawing my central model, so I'll go to the Collaborate tab, and then Collaborate. Now, I've got two options. I can share within my local network or in the cloud.
If I were to do the cloud option, I would first have to upload this to the Autodesk cloud, and then I could allow this option. So for this example, I'll just do within my network, so I'll click OK. Now, once you do that, by default, two worksets are created, and again, in Collaborate, I will click Worksets, and I am now in the Worksets dialog box.
You can see we have Shared Levels and Grids and Workset 1. We have the option to set new worksets, so in an MEP project, we could create a mechanical workset, a plumbing workset, electrical workset, et cetera. So once we're set up there, what we need to do is then save our central model. Now, the first time you go to save this, it will ask you if you want to save it as a central model, so I'll go to File, Save, and here it's asking me this is the first time this project has been saved since work sharing was enabled, so this will become the central model.
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Do you want to save this project as a central model? Yes, I do. All right, now that it's saved, very important to remember, you do not want to work in the central model. It's just the master project file.
So what I'm going to do is close it and then reopen it as a local model. So I'll get out of this. Okay, now we'll go to Open, and once I select this file, you can see I have two work sharing options.
The first is to detach from central. Now, I would only select this option if I wanted to create a new central model. So in this case, I'm going to stick with Create New Local, and once it's opened, you can see my Revit username has been appended to the file name.
Now, we also discussed worksets, so if I were to, in this project, if I wanted to make this a mechanical plan, I could go to Collaborate, and then under Worksets, I could go on ahead, create a new workset, and I will make this the active workset. Now, when I'm drawing out my system, it will be on the mechanical workset. Then, an important thing to know with work sharing is that you don't necessarily save your local models.
Instead, you synchronize with the central model, and again, to do that, in the Collaborate tab, I'd like to go over these three options here. We have the option to synchronize with central, reload the latest, and relinquish all of mine. So first, I'll go to synchronize with central, and in the dropdown, I have two options, synchronize and modify settings.
Let's go there first. After synchronizing, I have several options available. Since I created a new workset, I'm going to select user-created worksets, which was my mechanical workset.
Now, when I synchronize with the central model, it will also relinquish or show this on that model as well that it's been uploaded to. So I'll click OK. Now, when I go to synchronize, my worksets will be included.
The other option here is to reload latest. All this does is it reloads the changes from the central model to yours, but it does not include the changes that you have done. And then finally, relinquish all mine, this relinquishes ownership of worksets and borrowed elements.
In short, and the key takeaway here is that when you synchronize, it will publish your changes and reload the changes of the central model. In these lessons, we've set up our project with the correct template, linked our architectural model, and set up our room tags. We also discussed transferring project standards from one file to another.
And finally, we went over word sharing and creating a central and local model. These are the initial and crucial steps when starting any MEP project in Revit. And while it may initially seem like a lot, over time, it will become more effortless and intuitive.
So after having completed these steps, we're finally ready to get into the modeling aspects of our MEP project. So I'll see you in the next series of videos.
