Optimizing Revit Worksets for Efficient Model Management: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hello and welcome to the CAD Teacher VDCI video series for Revit Project Management. In the past couple of videos we've been focusing on worksets and how they relate to our Revit links and also have looked at a few techniques for adjusting the visibility and graphic overrides of those elements. So for this video, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at our current links.

So, for this video, what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at our model and how we could adjust the worksets for this model to work in our benefit. So for this project, since it's a typical office building with a core and a shell, those are the two pretty logical worksets that we could use for this. So the first thing we want to do is we want to define those worksets.

So I'm going to go ahead and create them. We'll go to our workset settings. And I'm going to click new.

And the first workset that I'm going to create is going to be called core and shell. Okay, I'm going to create another one. And this one's going to be called interior.

Okay, and I'll create one more here and this one's going to be for all the furniture that's in the project. Okay, and that looks pretty good. Okay, so the next step whenever we create new worksets, we need to be sure to save to central so that we can then go back in and make these not editable.

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So I'm going to hit okay. And then I'm going to do a save to central. And I'll hit okay again.

And now we're ready to adjust the worksets so that they aren't on. Okay, and now we're ready to adjust the worksets so that they're not set to editable but on not editable instead. So you can see the three on the top we just created are all set to editable by the current user.

So let's change those to no. And hit okay. And then we'll do a save to central again to register that change.

Now we're ready to make those changes. When we look at our model here, we can see the elements that would be part of the core and those that would be part of the shell. So these interior walls here probably wouldn't be part of our shell model, but the things for the corridor and also our stairs and restrooms, those are going to be part of that initial process.

So what we're going to do is we're going to adjust these elements so that they're on the appropriate workset. Okay, so now that I have the worksets created, I can go ahead and divide up the model into those worksets that we've defined. And we're going to start with core and shell.

We have to do this by category. So I'm going to start with all of my walls. So I'm going to select everything in the model here.

And we're going to use filter to just select walls. So I'm going to hit filter. And you can see this has selected every category.

So I'm going to hit check none. Scroll down until I find walls. And with walls selected, I'll hit okay.

And so now it's only going to select my walls. So what I want to do now is I want to remove any walls from the selection that I don't want to be on the core and shell workset. So it's going to be all of these ones here.

And this guy on the side. We just have our corridor, our two utility rooms, and the restrooms ready to go. Okay, that looks good.

Now from our properties palette, down at the bottom here, you can see it says workset. And the workset it's defined as. If I were to select the workset, I can change it to core and shell.

Now all of those elements are located on the core and shell workset. So I can do it again. And this time I can just get these stairs.

So with all of my stairs selected, I can go to filter, check none, and then I can just select stairs. Hit okay. And so now I've got my stairs selected, so I can change these to the core and shell workset.

Okay, that looks good. And let's go ahead and do doors. And so it'll be just these few doors.

So I'll go ahead and select them just like I normally would since it's not that many of them. And change those to core and shell. Okay, and then I want to do windows next.

So for windows, since they are kind of all over the place here, I'll go ahead and select these ones by category. And again using the filter tool. Okay, and I'll change the workset to core and shell.

So right now we're just working in level one, so there's still maybe some elements in level two that I need to modify. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to my 3D view. And I'm going to turn off my core and shell workset.

And that'll allow me to see what elements I haven't placed on that workset. Okay, so I'm going to go to my visibility and graphic overrides. And I'm going to go to my worksets tab.

So I'm going to turn off, I'm going to set core and shell to hide. And then I'm going to take mechanical, because I know nothing else will be on that one. Set that one to hide.

Plumbing, same thing. Change it to hide. And structural, I'll set to hide as well.

Okay, so now all I'm seeing are the elements that are remaining. So I can see that I missed my railings, my floors and ceilings. So I'll need to get the rest of those elements onto the worksets.

So I'm going to start with my floors, these two floors here. Change those to workset core and shell. And my roof elements are pretty important, so I might want to get those as well.

So I'm just using a crossing there. And this time I've got some walls and roof in there as well. And I can change that workset to core and shell.

And you can see as I select them, the ones that I'm using are going away because I have that workset turned off. So this little piece of roof here needs to be changed as well. Okay, and then lastly I'm going to grab the ceilings from my corridor.

And these little soffit walls here, you can see those there. Oh, there it is. That looks good, let's see what we got.

Oh, okay. And we'll change those to core and shell. Okay, so it looks like the last thing I need to get are the windows for level 2, all my plumbing fixtures, and the stair and railings.

So I'm going to pause the video and make those changes, and while I'm doing that, I think you should go ahead and do the same thing. Okay, so once you've done that, you should be left with a few ceilings and some floating interior walls. And so what we'll do now is we can actually put our furniture onto the furniture workset, and this will be an easy one because we actually grouped them in the previous classes.

So this is a simple step here, we just have to select one of the groups. If we right-click, go to Select All Instances, we can say In Entire Project, and it'll select all those model groups for us. Okay, and once we change the workset of the group, it'll actually change the workset of all of the elements within the group.

So I'll change that to Furniture, and then we're all set. And then I'll go into my Visibility and Graphic Overrides, and I'm going to hide the Furniture workset, so that now all I have left are the elements that are going to be on our Interior workset. So I'll go ahead and select all those, change the workset to Interior, and now we're all set.

So I can go back into my Visibility and Graphic Overrides, and I was just using the Visibility settings of the worksets to make it easier to turn them on and off. So I'm going to go ahead and turn them all back on to the Global settings so they're showing. And remember for Structural, we actually set the Global setting to Not Visible, but that's definitely something we want to see here, so I'm going to set that to Show.

Okay, looks pretty good. Okay, so let's go ahead and do a Save to Central. Okay, and then in the next video, I'll go ahead and show you how we could use those worksets to optimize our opening and closing time.