Explore how to create a central file and a local file in the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for Revit Project Management. This tutorial guides you through the process of opening a BIM 304 arch file, enabling work sharing, and setting up a central file with work sets.
Key Insights
- Creating a central file starts with opening a BIM 304 arch file and enabling work sharing. This process allows all model elements to be put on work set one and any levels or grids in the project to be on the shared levels and grids work set.
- After enabling work sharing and setting up your work sets, the first time you save your project, it creates the central file. This is an important step if you're working in an environment with more than one person as it ensures everyone can access the same information.
- Creating a local file is similar to creating a central file, but you must ensure that the worksets are not set as editable. You will then use the borrowing element system, which allows you to work on it, save to the central file, then relinquish those elements for others to work on.
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Hello and welcome to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for Revit Project Management. In this video we're going to take a look at how to create a central file and a local file and how we can use both of those. So what we're going to do, we're going to go ahead and open up our BIM 304 arch file.
So I'm going to go ahead and hit open under projects on my recent files window. And what I want to do is I want to navigate to that folder that we created in the last video, our BIM 304 shortcut folder. And within here we'll see a BIM 304 arch file.
I'm going to go ahead and open that up. So here we have a pretty basic file, this is actually the same model we used for BIM 101 and BIM 201. And what we're going to do is we're going to create a central file.
In order to do that we need to first enable work sharing. So down here at the very bottom of the screen, there's a button that's called work sets. Go ahead and click on that.
And what it's going to do is when we enable work sharing, what happens is it's going to put all of our model elements on work set one and then any levels or grids in the project are going to be on the shared levels and grids work set. So this is okay here, it's not something we can undo so it's definitely something you want to be sure that you want to do. But it's definitely the way you want to go if you're working in an environment with more than one person.
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So I'm going to go ahead and click okay. Okay, so now what we've done here is we've got our work set set. And it's showing the owner because this is the username for my computer here.
And these are the two work sets that we have, shared levels and grids and work set one. Right now they're both set to editable. That's something we're going to change a little bit later because this means when I have it editable, no other user can actually work on these files.
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and hit okay. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and save my project right now. And what happens is the first time you save it, it's going to actually create the central file.
So it enables that function. So this is definitely what we want to do. I'm going to go ahead and click yes.
And you'll notice after I save the file, our icon for save has changed now. It's kind of grayed out. And now activated has been the synchronize and modify settings icon.
And what this is going to do is this is actually the save to central tool. So I'm going to go ahead and click on that. Okay, this is saving to the central file for the first time.
So I'm going to go ahead and click okay to save. Okay, so now this is going to be my central file. So I want to give it a name that I can use that will actually help us out to identify it on our server and also make sure that we're not in that central file.
So I'm going to go ahead and do a save as. So I'll go to my application menu. I'm going to hit save as.
And we're going to do save as a project. So what's really important here is that we actually save it as the appropriate project type and also make sure we name it as a central file. So I've got my project file set to save as a Revit project file.
And I'm going to click options right here. And this is going to give me the option to make this a central file after save. So you can see my file save options.
I can determine how many backups I want. Twenty is going to be okay. And then I want to go ahead and click make this a central file after save.
And I'm going to hit okay. So what I want to do is I don't want to use this same name. The best approach here is I always go with an underscore.
And then I'll type in central at the end. That way everybody knows that this is a central file. So I'm going to go ahead and hit save.
It's going to save it as the central file of that name. Okay, and now I'm going to go ahead and hit save to central again. Okay, you can see here that it's saving to the BIM 304 arch central file.
So I'm going to hit okay. And now I've created a central file. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and close this file.
Okay, so this would be like when you start your day. This will be one of the or starting a new project. This will be one of the first things that you'll do.
So you want to open up the central file. And I've got it here from my recent files here. You should have the same thing.
And now we're going to create a local file. So this is one of the only times that you'll ever need to open the central file. Central file is not meant to be worked in.
It's only used as a link between the different users within the project team. So I'm going to do a save as. And this is the process for creating a local file.
We'll do application menu, save as, project. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep a lot of the same file naming conventions. I've got like a project number, discipline, and then central file.
But this time I'm going to give it a different name. Instead of central, I'm going to go ahead and call it by the user name here. So instead of central, I'll just go ahead and say user1.
Typically we'd use a last name or something like that. And then I'll go ahead and hit save. Now my file, you can see at the top here, is bim304arch user1.
If I were to go ahead and hit save to central, you can see that the central file is still the same here. But I'm working from a local file that's going to be saving back to a central file. So I'll go ahead and hit okay.
And so now any changes that I make will relate back to that central file. So one of the last things we need to do here, since we just made the local file and we were the first ones to do so, we need to make sure that the worksets are not set as editable. Right now they are set that way.
If I go back down to my workset settings, you can see that shared levels and grids and workset 1 are both set to editable. So I'm going to go ahead and say no to both of those. And that way what we're going to do is instead of checking out worksets, we're going to use the borrowing element system.
So that way we can work on it, save to central, relinquish those elements, everybody else can go back in to work on it. So I'm going to hit okay here. And then we'll do one more save to central.
And then we're all set. In the next video we're going to take a look at importing Revit links.
