topic Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design in BIM 360 Support Forum

Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

markus_briglmeir — Wed, 09 May 2018 07:38:40 GMT

When cloud worksharing with BIM 360 Team (the thing done historically with the C4R product), the only option for linking between cloud workshared models was to link to the "live" version of those models. Within a single team, that's often desired, but across multi-discipline, multi-company teams, it's been highly desired to be able to control what version of a cloud workshared model is linked by other disciplines. With cloud worksharing in next gen BIM 360, we've added more flexibility to how models can be links as part of the new "controlled worksharing" workflow to project teams.

Controlled Sharing

This example demonstrates the Design Collaboration workflow where teams fully control the versions of other team's models that are linked. This is consistent with how many multi-discipline, multi-firm teams have historically worked.

Team B controls which versions they share.
Team A controls which versions they consume.

Team B shares Package 1 with the other Teams on the Project. That Package contains versions of the model, along with 2D Sheets and 3D Views in the included Sets, that Team B would like other teams to use. The result of sharing that Package is the copying of that model version, along with 2D Sheets and 3D Views in the included Sets, into the Shared folder on the Project.
Team A reviews the contents of Team B's Package 1. When ready, they consume that Package. The result of this operation is a copy of the model version in the Package 1, along with 2D Sheets and 3D Views in the included Sets, into the Consumed folder contained into their team space.
As this is the first time this model has been shared, Team A creates a link in Revit that points to the version contained in the Consumed folder in their Team Space. Team A now can work in their data in context of the latest shared version of Team B.
Team B progresses their work, and wants to share updated data with the other Teams on the Project. They create Package 2, and select the desired Sets (3D Views and 2D Sheets) and Model to be included. They share that Package with the rest of the Teams on the Project, which results in an updated version of data contained in the Shared folder.
Team A reviews the contents of Team B's Package 2, using change visualization to understand the model updates. When ready, they consume Package 2. The result of this operation is a copy of the model version(s) in the Package, along with 2D Sheets and 3D Views in the included Sets, into the Consumed folder contained into their team space.
The version of the model linked into Team A's architectural model has now been updated, so the new model state is available to the team the next time the link is loaded.

Live Linking

This example is when the team wants to link to the "live" version of another model. Historically, this was the only way to work when cloud worksharing with BIM 360 Team, and it remains part of cloud worksharing in next gen BIM 360.

Team A has "View" permission on Team B, and thus has access to the Folder that contains the "live" version of the cloud workshared model. View permissions prevent Team A from editing Team B's model.
Team A links to the model in Team B's working folder.
Any time Revit loads this link, it will load the latest version.
No sharing or consuming is required for model updates in Design Collaboration, but can be used to exchange Sheets, 3D Views, and visually understand changes, between discipline teams.

If you'd like a more shareable version of these diagrams, use this link.

See as well this article on AKN (Autodesk Knowledge Network) on model linking.

We are looking forward to hear your thoughts, ideas and comments. And of course post any questions you have.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

sburke — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 17:43:57 GMT

Hello,

The over all goal of this process is valid but its execution is far to complicated. There needs to be a better UI for this process and the shared and consumed folders really need to be hidden and handled internal internally by the software.

I would also suggest adding another master category to docs so we would have Plans, Project Files and the Design Collaboration section only visible in docs to people on design teams.

These are just suggestions, but I feel that others may feel the same.

Thanks,

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

markus_briglmeir — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 21:06:34 GMT

Thanks again for your ideas and suggestions.

Hiding the Shared or Consumed folders sounds tempting, but they (and the models they contain) need to be visible. For example that users can link from Revit to models that a team got from another team (Consumed folder). Or users that want to work with these models in Document management.

I hope this clarifies a bit more.

Best regards,

Markus

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 22:17:17 GMT

There is still no clear "picks & clicks" of how to link models in the Revit environment. The user guide clearly writes to go to Insert>Manage Links>Project Files>Team Folder>Filename.rvt The location / path does not exist within Revit nor have I been able to find it in the Project I have set up. Please simply show the picks & clicks - are we copying models all over the place in Docs and they link automatically? There is a very unclear explanation or graphic provided for this workflow.

As of now - the platform is a no-go for our teams to transition into

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

martyn_messerli — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:21:58 GMT

@Anonymous I assume you are refering to the workflow described here | BIM 360 Design - Getting Started.

I will make sure that we will add some more picture to this section to make the workflow clear.

In the meanwhile let me share this screenshots of what you should see to move one:

When you hit Add... in the Manage Links dialog, you should see the Import/Link RVT dialog. Depending on your previous selection you may have to change the path and navigate to the External Resources>BIM 360>Project Name>Project Files>Your Team Folder>Consumed>Other Team Folder

Depending on the access rights you my only see Your Team Folder instead of the Project Files folder. From there you can link the Revit files shared by your team or the latest Consumed Revit files from the other teams. The files from the other teams will show up in the Consumed as soon you have consumed at least once a Package from that team.

I hope this provides the information so you can move on.

Thanks

Martyn

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 12:44:56 GMT

Thanks Martyn-

What we found was if a company already has traditional C4R projects and they activate and create the “new” company profile in the Document Mgt / new version – you cannot name the company the same. This is odd as why would a company name their company profile anything different? Turns out it matters. Revit was seeing two companies with the same exact name in each version of C4R – they basically cancel each other out– kind of like 1 + (-1) = 0.

My recommendation would be to let people know as they go through the set up process to perhaps change the name of the company profile in the older version before creating the new company profile in the newer version.

Once we did this, I could see the folder and files for linking.
Thanks!

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

KyleB_Autodesk — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 14:41:48 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks Martyn-

What we found was if a company already has traditional C4R projects and they activate and create the “new” company profile in the Document Mgt / new version – you cannot name the company the same. This is odd as why would a company name their company profile anything different? Turns out it matters. Revit was seeing two companies with the same exact name in each version of C4R – they basically cancel each other out– kind of like 1 + (-1) = 0.

My recommendation would be to let people know as they go through the set up process to perhaps change the name of the company profile in the older version before creating the new company profile in the newer version.

Once we did this, I could see the folder and files for linking.
Thanks!

Alice,

Glad you worked through this. One important point for others reading this, which I'd like to clarify.

There is no issue we are aware of where cloud worksharing problems arise when Users are members of a BIM 360 Team Hub and a Next Gen BIM 360 Account with the same name. As you noted, there is a current issue when a User is a member of multiple Next Gen BIM 360 Accounts with the same name. The former is entirely likely, and desired, while the latter is likely the result of some up-and-running hiccups with the Next Gen account setup.

We are working to get that existing issue resolved with an update to Revit.

-Kyle

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 19:36:39 GMT

I've been playing around with linking the "Live" model, Share model, and Consumed models in to my test project. As I do this, I wish there was an easy way to know what type of link I'm using in the model since it doesn't note the full Project File folder structure in the Saved Path under the Manage Links in Revit. See included screenshot.

Being a previous C4R user, We are leaning towards using the Live model but i want to explore these other options. I could foresee there being times we want to use a mix of linking methods. It would be nice to quickly confirm what model is actually being linked.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:07:12 GMT

Can you explain if there is a need to "Update to latest" in the BIM 360 Design Collaboration Module every time I want to share a Package? This process takes about 20 minutes for a 200 MB model. This delay is inconvenient when I want to share a model. I could probably email it and re-link a file quicker than that.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

KyleB_Autodesk — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:22:31 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

Can you explain if there is a need to "Update to latest" in the BIM 360 Design Collaboration Module every time I want to share a Package? This process takes about 20 minutes for a 200 MB model. This delay is inconvenient when I want to share a model. I could probably email it and re-link a file quicker than that.

Nope, not unless you want your new Package to contain the absolute latest version of your cloud workshared model(s).

By default a new Package will contain the latest published version of the Model(s) that are included in it. If you want to update the version of those Model(s) before you Share out the Package, then you can use "Update to latest" option. When that completes, the next time you open that "Work in Progress" package, you'll see a prompt asking if you'd like to use the new data version(s), or if you want to continue with the existing version(s).

-Kyle

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 20:31:45 GMT

In general I'm not sure why I wouldn't want to share the latest version of the model. I have tried to "Publish Latest" from the Collaborate>Manage Cloud Model in hope that would save time. After the model is successfully modeled, i navigated to the BIM 360 Design Collaboration Module and was greeted with a spinner. The spinner continued for another 15-20 minutes before I could post the new Package. Regardless, it looks like I need to wait to share any package. It would be nice if there was a way to automate the Publish and Share a new Package. Waiting time reduces productivity.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

routman — Wed, 02 May 2018 21:39:54 GMT

Deleted due to posting in "wrong" thread.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

greenMEPengineer — Thu, 03 May 2018 18:49:14 GMT

If the live linked model (Team B) becomes corrupted, what will be the impact on the team model (Team A) linking to that corrupted model?

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

KyleB_Autodesk — Thu, 03 May 2018 18:52:18 GMT

@greenMEPengineer wrote:

If the live linked model (Team B) becomes corrupted, what will be the impact on the team model (Team A) linking to that corrupted model?

Revit will post an error when the link is loaded. The Host model will still load, just without the corrupted link loaded. The team responsible for the corrupted model can restore a previous SWC operation to clear up the corruption, after which point reloading the link on your Host model will succeed.

-Kyle

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

markus_briglmeir — Wed, 09 May 2018 07:36:42 GMT

Here's a brand new article on AKN (Autodesk Knowledge Network) on model linking: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/article/170176

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

chubbard — Thu, 17 May 2018 00:30:36 GMT

So I am trying to follow these steps on a test project. We uploaded the design models (Revit) as a link set of files. Now we are trying to create a package so we can link the set or individual files into our working file in another team/folder.

However the package never finishes. It seems to get stuck at Fetching view sets. We left it for a couple hours and still in the exact same spot. Any idea on why we cannot get a package so we can link to another team? Should we not us the upload linked files feature?

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

markus_briglmeir — Thu, 17 May 2018 07:14:05 GMT

@chubbard wrote:

We uploaded the design models (Revit) as a link set of files.

What do you mean by upload? Please make sure you start in Revit, sync your models with central, and then publish to Design Collaboration. There you can start and create packages.

@chubbard wrote:

However the package never finishes. It seems to get stuck at Fetching view sets. We left it for a couple hours and still in the exact same spot. Any idea on why we cannot get a package so we can link to another team?

When opening Design Collaboration, do you see you model and sets you published for a team?

@chubbard wrote:

Should we not us the upload linked files feature?

Nope, no need for that.

Regarding the linking, here's a new article on that topic with some good screenshots:

Understanding Revit Model Linking in BIM 360 Design | BIM 360 | Autodesk Knowledge Network
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/article/170176?utm_source=None&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Bonfireshares&utm_content=0

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

chubbard — Thu, 17 May 2018 15:02:35 GMT

So that article is a bit different than the original help files.

I had understood based on the marketing and original help files that we could straight upload Revit files and ACAD files and they would be available for linking to live C4R models. either directly or via the Desktop connector. Is that not true?

We did create a package of the models from the design team and it shows on the timeline, we can click edit but we just get the chasing dots in the viewer and never resolves the views or models.

Seems like if we didn't upload properly we shouldn't be able to create the package or interact with the models?

We can view the individual models create issues markups etc. But the collaborating requires Revit?

How do we collaborate with ACAD files?

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

markus_briglmeir — Fri, 18 May 2018 07:23:34 GMT

Correct, Design Collaboration Share & Consume workflows are available only for models published from Revit. The translation processes in the back-end then enable working with large and many models in aggregated view, filtering by level, phase. etc.

Re: Linking Cloud Workshared models in BIM 360 Design

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:37:48 GMT

Marcus,

Great visuals by the way (should incorporate into the Quick Start guide!) They demystify a lot of the functionality in how packages distribute their data in BIM 360 Docs when using "Controlled Sharing." I do need some clarification on "Live Linking" though. Firstly, is BIM 360 Design still hosting the live model in a hidden folder within the BIM 360 project? The reason I ask is in classical C4R and BIM 360 Team, only the "Published Models" were visible in BIM 360 Team and the "Live Models" were visible within Revit. This is evident in Revit when using Manage Models to publish versions to the Team folder of Docs. The versions of the "Published Model" in the Team folder are minimal in quantity as compared to versions of the "Live Model" visible in Manage Models. Secondly, this leads me to believe that "Live Linking" is not truly live. In actuality, it's simply circumventing packages and linking to the latest "Published Model" in another Team's folder. The term "Live" is a little misleading here. The "Live Model" that the Revit team is working on is not what is in each Team folder or, is it?

I guess my question is, does Manage Links in Revit see the "Live Model" in a hidden folder of the Team folder or, does it see the latest "Published Model" in the Team folder?