Setting Up Linked Models and Worksets in Revit for Streamlined Team Collaboration

Now that we've got the model set up in a condition that we're pretty comfortable with it, it may not be exactly where we want it right now, but I think it's in a good spot for us to get started on the project. First thing we want to do is we want to go ahead and load in that architectural model. And so what I'm going to do is I have a lot of views that look the same open right now.

So I'm going to use my closed hidden windows. And then I'm going to go to the model that I had opened before. And I'm actually going to close that because I don't want to have that file open when I do this, because if we have a file we're going to link in open in the same session of Revit, we're going to get an error.

And we don't want that. So I'm going to go ahead and link that file in now. And if you're familiar with X refs from AutoCAD, or linking or referencing files in any other software, this is essentially the same thing.

We're just going to go to insert. And then we're going to go to link Revit. And this is going to allow us to bring in another Revit file as a reference.

And so I'll say link Revit. And I'm going to go into my dataset folder. And I'm going to find that arch model that we've provided for you.

And if you look at the different options we have here, we want to make sure that we're using the internal origin or origin to origin options in here. Because there's a lot of different ones. And some of them are not going to work out so well, especially like if you use the center to center one, or one of the manual ones, and you just end up placing it anywhere.

This way, we know that it's always going to get reloaded in into the right location. So I'm gonna go ahead and click open. And it's going to link the model.

And you can see the base point for that model was grids A and one here at that intersection. And so what I'll do is I'll take my view, which is associated with a scope box, like I was mentioning in the first video. And we've got another one here that's called levels and grids, I'm going to go ahead and delete that.

And what I need to do is if I want to adjust this view, you can see it's kind of stuck here is I want to go ahead and check what my scope box setting is for this view. And if I go down to extents and my properties, you can see it's set to scope box views overall. And that's not a bad thing.

It's okay here, but I'm going to set it to none right now. Just because I want to show you what's going to happen when we do that, you can see I can now make an adjustment to it. And if I move this around, you can start to see that scope box that we were talking about.

And again, like I said, I like to use these because they're helpful for when we set up many different views. And so in this case, what I can do is I can adjust that scope box to cover our overall view. And it'll be pretty similar to the one that's already here.

That came in from the link. And remember, this is our crop region out here. And this is our scope box in here.

And so if I were to now make an adjustment to what my scope box for this view is, again, under extents, I can change this to the views overall scope box again. And it'll suck everything in to cover the overall view. And so when we look at this, if you recall before, I was able to kind of select everything individually.

Now it's all just its own one thing. And so there's something we want to do here to make sure we can isolate the two items. And that's going to be to set up our work sharing.

And so to make it essentially two different items within the same model, we want to go ahead and set up work sets, which is going to give us the ability to identify certain things as one work set and identify other things as another one. And then we can control their graphics and visibility better than we can if we're just doing everything by category. So previously, we had just done things where we can adjust the walls, or we had done things where we can just adjust the doors.

Those would be the categories that we can adjust. But we can lump all these things together into another hierarchy, which would be called our work sets here. And that'll allow us to have everything easier to control and easier to turn on and off and change the way they look.

So to enable work sharing, what I need to do is I'm going to go to the bottom of my screen. And you can see there's a button right here that'll allow me to enable work sharing. Before I do that, I always like to save before I do any kind of large operation.

Not that this is a large operation, but it is definitely a big step we're going to take forward. And I don't want to redo the other things I've already done. So I'm going to click on the work set.

And it's going to essentially push all my levels and grids to one, and then everything else to work set one. And that's fine. So I'll hit OK.

And once I've got that set up, you can see here that I've got my work sharing with shared levels and grids and the work set one set up. I'm currently the owner of these because I'm the only one that's going to work on the model. But this does give us the ability to now work on the model simultaneously with other people as well.

And so if I hit OK here, work sets are now set up. So I got work set one and shared levels and grids. And so when I go and hit save, this will be the first time I'm saving the project with work sharing enabled.

So I'm going to go ahead and save it as a central model, which is what I was just talking about, how this is now essentially that shared model that we can use. And just to give you a quick overview of what this means is essentially we have a central model that we're creating. And then each team member will have its own local model here.

And anytime we're using elements or touching elements, it essentially gets checked out on a temporary basis. And every time we save back to the central model, it relinquishes your control. So that means team members one, two, and three can all work on the same model at the same time.

And sometimes you'll bump into each other, like if two people were trying to work on the same wall, you'll get a notification saying that that element's not available. But essentially, this is just the way that people will work in an office with more than one person working on the model. We're not necessarily using it for that purpose in this lesson, but we are setting it up in a way that if you did have multiple team members, say one person was dedicated to working on the furniture plans, another person's going to be working on the finish plans, then you could have both people working on the same model at the same time and able to essentially work parallel to each other without bumping into each other, where that would be pretty difficult to do in different setups here.

So again, this is just a very basic understanding. We have another course that goes into this in much greater detail. But here, this is something that is just a good thing to understand is that it is one central model, which is where we're going to be working.

But then you could have different local models for each of your different people. Okay, so back to our model here, I'm just going to hit yes. And that's going to make this file a central model.

And you'll see one of the things that will change is the way that this gets saved. And we can still use this save icon as this goes through and finishes the process here. But we also have a save to central icon that will pop up.

And that's the one that I was talking about that will relinquish and send the information back to the central file. So you always have the option to save it locally. But you also have the option to go ahead and save the central back to your saved location and relinquish all of those files.

So I'll go back into my work sets dialog here by clicking on this button. And we're going to go ahead and create a couple of work sets. And so I can always rename this one because I'm not going to necessarily use it.

But I'll rename it. And this one I'm going to call 01. I'm going to call it interiors, because that's going to be our primary work set.

Then I'll create a new one. And this one's going to be called 02. We'll call this one arch model.

Okay, and I want you to pay attention to here, there's this option that says visible in all views. And we're going to leave those all checked right now. But if I keep going here, I can make another one.

That's called finishes. And I'll hit OK. Oh, let's fix that.

That should be 03 finishes. Want to stick with the same format too. You don't want to be that person who makes another one and then uses a different gap here.

You notice we use an underscore on the first two. We want to stay consistent there. And then I'm going to create one more.

This will be 04. And this will be for F, F and E. So anything that's our furniture elements that we're putting in here or equipment will go onto that work set. So I'm going to hit OK.

And then I'm going to look at the work sets that I've created here. And I'm going to evaluate if I want all of these or none of these to be visible in all views. If I look at my interiors work set, this would be any of the items that we add that don't fall into the categories here.

We can put that on there. So I'm going to say yes, I think that should be visible in all views. I want my arch model to be visible in all the views.

And then my finishes, I'm going to go ahead and uncheck that because in some views, I may not want to see the floor finishes and the floor pattern because the floor pattern might be pretty busy and we don't want that to be taking over too much of the view. So I'm going to uncheck it. And then for F, F and E, I'm going to go ahead and uncheck that one as well because I wouldn't want to necessarily have all the furniture and equipment showing up in my finish plan because then you wouldn't be able to see the floor patterns or the wall patterns or anything like that on those elevations.

And so these two work sets are things that are going to get turned on in specific views where we want to see everything. Okay, the next thing I'm going to do is you notice how everything says edible here. That means that as the owner of that work set, I'm the only person who can work on this.

If we're working in a collaborative environment, we need to make sure that all of these say no. And this is something we want to do so that every single person can work on it. And these new ones here, I have to go ahead and sync first.

But we'll come back in here and we'll do the same thing. So I'm going to hit okay first. And I can go ahead and it's asking me which one I want to make the active work set.

So I'm going to say no to that because we can always change that later. You can see interiors is the active work set. And so I'll go ahead and save back to the central model here.

And then if I go back into my work set dialog, I can go in and I can adjust these different work sets so that they're not editable because now you can see there's no owner here. But as I go through and modify elements within these work sets, I'll become the borrower. So I'll go ahead and hit okay.

And now we're ready to start working on our model by setting up some views and some interior elevations. So I'm going to again, always saving and then we're ready to go.