Autodesk Revit: Worksharing Tips
The fundamental basis of the Revit platform (Revit
Building, Revit Structure and Revit Systems) consists of a
single database driven interface that holds all the views,
elements and sheets in one project file. In AutoCAD, users
are familiar with using external references to work on a
project simultaneously. How is that possible when working
with the Revit platform? The answer lies with taking
advantage of a tool called Worksharing or worksets.
It is common practice for users on Revit-based applications
who collaborate on large projects to divide the project onto
worksets so that they may each work on certain objects or
views. For instance, three users could be simultaneously
working on a project file where ownership is divided by
shell, interior walls and by furniture components. The user
who wants to make a change to a workset that he or she does
not own needs to be granted permission to become a borrower
of that element or workset.
This may not be the most flexible or efficient method to
work together, especially when trying to meet tight
deadlines.
The Borrowing Method
A method that provides more flexibility is one by which no
one “owns” any of the elements in the project.
Users who make changes to elements become borrowers without
needing permission to make edits.
Once the change has been made, the file is resaved to the
server and then other users can become borrowers of the same
elements.
No two users can make changes to the same element at the
same time. If an attempt is made to do that the user who is
not the initial borrower receives an error message.
Since all the elements in the project are part of the same
workset, one user may be making a change to a wall while
another is editing an in-place family. The workset dialogue
box would classify both users as borrowers. There can be
multiple borrows in the project.
There are times when a user will not want to post his
changes to the entire project team but will want to be
updated with the changes of everyone else. There is a tool
in Revit to do just this called Reload Latest (File>Reload
Latest). Keyboard shortcuts are a smarter alternative to
activating these types of tools. For instance, RL is the
default shortcut for Reload Latest. Changes to keyboard
shortcuts can be made in the program files location in your
Revit install.
Specify Open
Another worksharing tip is to specify which worksets you
want to open in a large project. This reduces the amount of
time it takes to open the file and speeds up performance.
This tool is similar to doing a Partial Open in AutoCAD.
The other worksets can later be opened from the Worksets
dialogue box. Open worksets can also be turned off from the
Visibility Graphics dialogue box.
To sum up, worksets do not have to be split up by owner. The
central server can act as the “owner” whereby everyone in
the team borrows elements on the fly to make changes without
needing permission to do so. The other issue that was
addressed in this article relates to being able to open only
a particular workset that needs to be edited. This saves
time from having to open the entire project file.
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