Divide Project into several files

[tl]

I have a Project that exists of 9 buildings (black sketch) and 3 parking basements (red sketch). See Attached image. Each of the buildings have a gross ground area of between aprox. 500 - 800 m2. And aprox 5 Levels in each building. 5 of the buildings area Connected With a parking basement With area 3700 m2, 2 buildings are Connected With a parking basement of 1580 m2 and the 2 last buildings are Connected With a parking basement of 2480 m2. So the big question is...how do I divide these buildings into how many files? If I divide them into one file per building, I end up With 12 different files + site file. This sounds a bit exhausting to me, when thinking of file maintenance, links, purging and cleaning up models. I would really like some advice on how to split this Project in order to get the smoothest possible workflow. Please see Attached image. Thanks 🙂

[David_Knight]

I'd look at it in the way your drawing sets are going to be assembled.

Or maybe how code will required you to break these up...

Or how you have to permit them.

Myself,  based on our how office sets these up...

I would guess that we would have (9) separate drawing packages for the buildings above grade, and an additional 3 for what is going on at the lower level.

[nmarcelis]

Its perfectly doable. We often work on projects that have +20 linked files. It has the benefit of the modularity, and the fact that you dont have to enable worksharing or use BIM360 to work with multiple people on the same project.

[constantin.stroescu]

It  this depends also of how many people are involved in the project . Anyway more than 6 or 8 will be to much in my opinion. 

I see several option to be taken in consideration:

• separate files for each building (9 files) + 3 parking basements + a site file that acts as a container for all other 12 files. Now , if there are identical buildings the 9 number can decrease. for instance , if there are 3 identical buildings , then we'll have only 7 files instead of 9.
• if the partition are different for each building  I could think to apply the scheme 3 building files (1+2+parking ; 3+4+parking , and 5+6+7+8+9+parking) and a site file use as container for all the other 3 building files. Again , if there are identical buildings , then I'll split apart a file with this one , in order to insert it as 2 or more instances of this file into the container.
• I'll group anyway buildings that share the same Levels into one file. If they have different Levels I'll split them in different files.