Unconventional Worksharing - possible?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm a part of a small firm and we're about to be at "all hands on deck" status in order to meet an upcoming deadline.  We've used worksharing on other projects but have had quite a bit of trouble not stepping over one another with edit requests - we are a collaborative firm with too few people to divide responsibilities into "shell", "interiors", etc.  Everyone kind of works on everything.  

With regards to our upcoming deadline, the model itself should not change too much (though it may change), most of the work will be in detailing distributed amongst seven people (each responsible for certain sheets), and there will be new views created here and there.  My question is, does anyone know of a good strategy for managing this kind of workflow (with tight deadline and little room for technical glitches) so that everyone has access to the most current model, can work on their respective sheets/tasks, and can get those back into one model for printing/compiling?

Thanks in advance

[damo3]

Workflow with tight deadlines, few glitches and trouble free user experience... sounds like what we strive for on every project! Haha

There is a worksharing extension tool available from Autodesk if you are on subscription. Some of its functuonality may assist, particularly in minimising users syncing at the same time (shows who has local open and when they are syncing)

What scale details? I ask because if larger than 1:20 i recommend using drafting views. Then reference callouts to them.

Other advice is don't use editing requests. They are annoying and disruptive. Communicate with eachother, yell out if you need someone to sync.
Utilise the reload latest button too and then sync, can improve sync times.
Ensure (where possible) everyone is running the same build version of revit, ie same updates packs installed.
Compact save end of each day and create a new central file once a week for very large work teams, normally these are longer but this will keep central file healthy and minimise file size. You may include a purge and audit.

End of the day its all about communication.

[rosskirby]

To add to what Damo3 already said, I would add that some brief game-planning each day to delineate specific tasks could help.  You could break it up by view type (wall sections, section details, plan details, interior elevations, exterior elevations, floor plans, etc.) or by task (notes, dimensions, detailing [linework, filled regions, and everything needed to make the detail "look" right], sheet setup, schedules).  Either way, each person needs to have a type of work that they are uniquely responsible for.  You don't want to have two different people working on the same view, especially with annotation, because when you're creating something (i.e. notes, dimensions, etc.), there's no way for the other team members to know that it has been done until they sync.  Then you're left with a lot of overlapping/duplicate info.  Bad business.

Also, if you've got half a dozen people working on a single file, you're going to have problems when it comes to syncing.  What I'd recommend is assigning a certain time to each person (i.e. 5 minutes past the hour, 10 minutes past the hour, etc.), so that no two people are trying to sync at the same time.

Yeah, worksharing is great in that you don't really have to deal with a hundred files for a single project anymore, but it still has its limitations, and nothing beats a good solid team meeting with clear roles and responsibilities to ensure the CDs go smoothly.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for the advice damo3 and rosskirby. One of the
reasons, perhaps, we had such a hard time with worksharing before was that
our central model was running through our dropbox account. I think we'll
be placing the file on the Time Capsule within our office network and
employ the best-practice strategies you two offered.

Thanks again for the help!

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